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The democratic reform of civil ships is a social transformation movement carried out by the CPC in the field of inland river civil ship transportation in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Before liberation, the aquatic society was "far from the Jianghu" for a long time. It was not controlled by the state power and was not baptized by the revolutionary struggle. As a working class, the boatmen and boatmen had no obvious class consciousness, let alone strict class groups. Therefore, the democratic reform of civil shipping needs to take the question of "who feeds who" as the incision, promote the embedding of class discourse, gradually change the cognitive model of some administrative cadres in the movement, establish the ideology and behavior methods of relying on the masses and relying on activists, and clarify the class boundaries and identity differences between "I" and "others", which is an effective way to achieve the change of social order and political integration on water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the sustainable development strategy by the United Nations and the 10th anniversary of eco-civilization becoming one of the key elements of China' s modernization. Sustainability science is a theoretical study of sustainable development but there are opinion conflicts between weak sustainability and strong sustainability. Eco-civilization is recognized as China' s agenda for sustainable development but would be potential to contribute to the theoretical construction of sustainability science. Based on policies and practices of eco-civilization in China and discussing five controversial key issues, this article shows that China' s eco-civilization is strong-sustainability-oriented, and suggests that the theory base of sustainability science should include five critical elements with logic relationships. The five critical elements pursue the social and economic prosperity within Earth' s bio-physical limits; consider controlling eco-scale much more important than improving eco-efficiency; introduce different transition models for developed and developing countries, respectively; set up a three-level framework for sustainable development; and organize the interdisciplinary studies into an integrated paradigm. This article concludes that academic studies of sustainable development need to be updated to a new version with strong sustainability as a core principle, and that China' s eco-civilization as a social movement of such a large scale unprecedented in the rest of the world could play a leading role in deepening and developing sustainability science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between contentious politics and the state building is a classic topic in the study of social movements. Through detailed analysis of a ten-year struggle of a group of state workers to defend their pensions by active engagement with state agents, this paper attempts to explore the circular feature of the state and how this circular state functions to absorb the labor contentions. From August 1998 to October 2008, a group of retired state workers in H Steel Factory carried out radical street protests, persistent legal litigations and peaceful collective petitions to fight against their factory's retention and reduction of their pensions. The trajectory of the workers' struggles delineates a gradually formed state bureaucratic field of labor governance. This state is composed of three intersecting circles--a circle between different petition offices,a circle between petition offices and courts, and a circle between the local and the center. This system full of tensions within and between different circles produces the negotiation and bargaining relation between different levels and sectors in the state, which in turn leads to the circulation mechanism of social conflicts rather than a resolution structure. The institutional configuration of this circular state includes the double bind between decentralization and marketization and the mutual reference between the petition system and the legal system. The circulation of the workers' case in this circular bureaucratic field, on one side elongates the struggles of the workers and prevents the radicalization of their resistance; on the other side, promotes the circulation and inculcation of the statist capitals among the workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By definition, power is relational, so studies of power should concern with the object of power, i. e., the powerless people. In practice, power is characterized as a process, meaning that it is a process in which power structure is keeping changing. So, these two properties make legitimacy an inherent demand of power. According to known research, we think that power is generative, i.e., to obtain power is a dynamic process in which power can be generative and accumulative. From the perspective of the powerless, the powerless can take effective actions to generate "power of the powerless". Because of the appropriation of their buildings by the government, residents in Leetung Street have launched a social movement that has sustained the longest duration of protest, elicited the largest reaction, and demonstrated the strongest influence among social movement in recent Hong Kong history. As an organization of the powerless, H15 Concern Group has gathered and mobilized diverse action takers and networks to engage in civil, constructive protest. It has become a highly influential social organization, demonstrating that ordinary people can be a powerful force of production in city planning and renewing. In response, the government has also made some efforts and improvements in the administration and governance ideas. This movement has demonstrated that ordinary people are able to produce "power of the powerless". The process of power's generation and growth can, to some extent, change the original structure of power relationship in certain contexts and result in social changes. The analysis of the key elements of power generation and the demonstration of this process in Hong Kong re-explain the concept of power, and are helpful for us to understand and improve the public politics in the cities of mainland China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the movement of "Return to Citizens" in the 1990s, a reflection on the libertarian views on institution will lead us to a deepened understanding of the interaction between virtues and institutions, which constitutes a key issue in modern political philosophy. In this paper, we argue that institutions, viewed from the perspective of libertarianism, have both distinctive strengths and weaknesses. However, the civic republican concept of the renaissance of virtues is a necessary complement to the theory of institutional justice. Therefore, libertarianism and civic republicanism, each with a theoretical design for institutional justice and civic virtues, can both enlighten us substantially about the cultivation of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and democracy were two great banners carried by Chinese revolutionary thinkers during the May 4th Movement, but science was worshiped as a surrogate of religion, which made people at that time miss a true understanding of science. As Chen Duxiu was the staunchest advocate of science in the movement, it is very informative to explore his views on science and his descriptions of science with a religious passion in his writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April of 1895, a group of Western women founded the Natural Feet Society in Shanghai. The Society condemned Chinese footbinding as a cruel and injurious practice and called for funds and friends to assist their movement and create public sentiment against footbinding. These elite women, or "memsahibs," whose husbands were diplomats, merchants, and other influential foreigners in late-Qing treaty-port communities, developed a secular anti-footbinding discourse which diverged from missionary discourses of the time. In so doing, these women created a social space for themselves through which they could participate in public life even far away from their homelands. However, unlike missionaries and indigenous reformers whose antifootbinding movements were initiated and backed by previously established organizational bases and networks, the Society (led by Alicia Little, wife of British merchant Archibald Little) encountered difficulties when mobilizing material and cultural resources and had to find its own niche in developing a secular and female oriented discourse. This article analyzes the strategies the Society used to compete and cooperate with local churches and the connections it employed to obtain influential support from both Western and Chinese male political and cultural elites. The convergence of and crossover between members of the Society and Chinese female reformers of the time is also discussed in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lu Bicheng was a very special woman and a gifted writer in the late Qing and early Republican period. The previous scholarships on Lu found her as a poet and an advocate for women's education. This paper goes on to analyze the neglected aspect of her religious life and her influences on modern Chinese Buddhist movement. By introducing the international vegetarian movement and animal protection groups in 1930-1940's China, Lu helped bring together the lay Buddhist vegetarian groups and the animal protection movement, consequently promoting the adaptation of international animal protection ideas among the Chinese lay Buddhist activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wei Yuan's “learning the advanced technology of foreigners to save China” as a prelude to “Saving China Through Science” ideology has given way to “reform” and “revolution” of the wave of “political salvation” after the Sino-Japanese War in 1894. After the founding of the Republic of China, the ideology of “Saving China Through Science” thrived once again under the influence of the thinking of “building China by industry”and “politics can not save China”, thus leading to the rise and development of the New Culture Movement. But as the New Culture Movement prospered, the sound of “Being Incapable of Saving China Through Science” emerged, and was manifested in three aspects: 1. science was taken as “the culprit” of World War I in the cultural debates between the East and the West; 2. the political revolution once again replaced science as a tool for national salvation under the influence of flourishing political revolutionary practice; 3. along with China's scientific development and social change in history, people gradually come to realize that science is not just a tool for saving China, which itself has a wealth of content, whose essence is to extend the horizons of human knowledge, so that science finally completed the change from a tool of salvation to the pursuit of truth and returned to science itself. The evolution of the thought of “Saving China Through Science” in modern China displaying a kind of relationship between learning and politics: academic ideology is often taken as a tool because of other outer factors such as foreign invasion or extrinsic power, but not for learning itself. But once such external factors and conditions do not exist, learning won't be taken as a tool, eventually resumes its own features, and develops on its own right track. But the paradox is that learning is always used as an available tool and does not show its original essence for most of the time in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before China's reform and opening up, the representation of women's image in women's magazines tend to be non-sexual (or even masculine) in general. Along with the progress of social and economic reform, the long-lost feminine characteristics in terms of gender role can not only be found on Chinese women again but in much diversity. In this essay four magazines, issued in different years, are selected as the focus of this case study, that is, Women of China, Family, Woman Friend and Cosmopolitan. All represent distinct times and aim at different types of readers. First of all, with the four texts, I would like to investigate whether the "tough girl" image of Iron Girls that had prevailed or even been praised before the reform due to the class struggle still exists in contemporary women's magazines in China? Or is such image largely diminished or scarcely shown? Secondly, after the reform, though being able to regain their gender role, do these modern women fall back to a submissive role for needing the support of the family to continue their career, which, in the meanwhile, once again highlights the traditional value of marriage as being a man's better half? That is, does the role of a better half no longer stands for housewives exclusively but also career women? Third, along with the change of China's society to state capitalism during mid 90s, more and more women join business and do well upgrading their social and economic status that is unprecedented and had never happened. However, do these fashionable and modern women also fall into the ideology of consumerism constructed under patriarchy while enjoying their fashion shopping and chic purchases? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social protests by ethnic minorities are frequent and increasing in China, and thus it is imperative to better understand the reasons behind them, which is especially important for the central government's attempts to help ethnic minorities and ethnic areas with their economic and social development. I take the protests by minority ethnic in China as the subject to explore the role of state-society relationship in social movements and how the government should formulate its policy about such protects. Two variables are examined: one is minorities' perception of frustration in market competition, and the other is the capacity alteration of minorities' political and social participation in the process of state-building. The interaction between the willingness and capabilities of the ethnic minorities affects the degree and intensity of social protests. Social protests by ethnic minorities are mainly provoked by the dislocation associated with the marketization and state-building. It seems that an effective course of action by the government is to focus on keeping ethnic tensions below a certain acceptable threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]