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This paper explores the location choice of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China, shedding special light on the role of agglomeration of same-nationality firms. We examine how this role differs according to firms' productivity. Furthermore, we compare the location choice of Japanese and Taiwanese MNEs in China, taking into consideration that Taiwanese MNEs experience less uncertainty in investing in China due to Taiwan's linguistic and cultural advantages. When considering firms' productivity, we find that less productive Japanese firms prefer to locate close to larger same-nationality agglomerations while there are no differences in location choices in the case of Taiwanese firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role that veterans played in the construction of historical memory narratives in mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan. I argue that veterans, who had long established a ‘language community’ with a particular way to speak about the war, found it difficult to communicate with post-war audiences that did not share that experience. The paper analyses six categories of ‘memory writing’ that veterans used to engage with memory debates: post-war diaries, ‘testimonial literature’, articles and literary works, surveys and oral histories, memoirs, and paratext. This study thus proposes that veterans do not avoid discussion of war, but can only be ‘heard’ by members of their language community, or by a post-war society that is prepared to ‘listen’ to their message with little mediation. This is a direct consequence of their experience of the war, and how they crafted their language community at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Hong Kong, from 28 March 1946 to 20 December 1948, four British military tribunals tried war crimes cases from across the British colonial territories of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, and also from Formosa (Taiwan), China (Waichow and Shanghai), Japan and from the high seas. The author has made the process and the cases publicly accessible online through the Hong Kong's War Crimes Trials Collection website at hkwctc.lib.hku.hk. This paper is a window into the rediscovered Hong Kong war crimes trials and the key issues in international law that they raised. Further advanced research by international experts is currently underway for a book commissioned by Oxford University Press, due for publication in 2013. As such, this article will provide a 'taster' of what is emerging from the research that is currently in progress. The author's intention is to present the Hong Kong war crimes cases on their own merits, to allow them to be understood in their own right. The author does not engage in a comparative study of what was done elsewhere then or in recent years; that would be a major project for another occasion. The author instead seeks to draw out some of the richness and diversity of these cases as they are, and to enlighten our contemporary understanding through a look back at a process that was part of the making of modern international criminal law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of painting in Taiwan in the early twentieth century was first inspired by Japanese art teachers. The new idea of "realistic painting" introduced at the time allowed the discovery of "local colors." However, the Taiwanese painters who employed the artistic ideal of "painting one's intent" were able to escape the limitation imposed by the concept of "local colors." How did the painters explore the artistic styles offered by the new global contexts through the colonization of Japan is an important issue that requires in-depth investigation. This issue is further complicated by painters who were not only influenced by the Japanese arts but also the traditional Chinese arts, as some of the Taiwanese painters moved to China after their training in Japan in order to search for a new style that conflates the Eastern and the Western arts. Taking several painters, Liu Jintang, Chen Chengpo, and Guo Bochuan as examples, this paper explores issues of identity, cultural impacts, and stylistic developments of the arts in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines generalized trust and trust in institutions in Confucian Asia, covering six countries namely, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, and one dependent region, Hong Kong. Using data from the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey, our study affirms the reliability and validity of using a two-item scale to measure generalized trust. Our analysis suggests that due to demographic differences, there are variations in the level of generalized trust of countries in Confucian Asia, despite the fact that these societies share a similar background in Confucian philosophy. The relationships between generalized trust and political trust, and between generalized trust and trust in public institutions, are weak but positive. The positive relationship between generalized trust and trust in economic institutions is only significant for some of the economies, while trust in international institutions has the weakest relationship with generalized trust for all societies. We conclude the paper with research implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]