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In this paper, I situate C.S. Peirce's theory of knowledge and action in comparison to Chinese philosophy. My argument is that the comparison makes it important to understand Peirce's abduction and his maxim as a much more potent force in comparative philosophy. Peirce's priority of practical effects over theory is similar to Confucian conceptions of truth and action. Jon Alan Schmidt has summarized sixty-one formulations of Peirce's maxim, from which I draw the four main expressions of the maxim here. According to Peirce, understanding the meaning of concepts in terms of actual effects is the core element of the maxim. This view can be seen as an echo in Wang Yangming's theory of the unity of knowledge and action. The theory is essentially a moral humanist philosophy. It integrates morality, ethics, and politics. It is similar to Peirce's pragmatic maxim, as James Liszka has explained. Finally, reflecting on the recent studies of Peirce's semiotics in China, I discuss the significance of Peirce's pragmatism in Chinese philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the curtailment of constitutional rights arising from the implementation of emergency measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic in China's Hubei Province, which was not at all counterbalanced by introducing new forms of due constitutional protection. Likewise, high expectations cannot be set on pre-existing means of constitutional safeguards since the Chinese government clearly refused to establish new or different safeguarding procedures nor did it deem it necessary to establish ad hoc courts in order to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper is laid out as follows: (1) fundamental rights in a contemporary socialist state: an overview; (2) containment measures against COVID-19 and flexibility of constitutional right;. (3) the centrality of governing bodies and restrictions of constitutional rights; (4) territorial governance and centralization of containment measures against COVID-19; (5) between soft law and totalitarian propaganda; and (6) the ubiquity of the Communist Party of China and the "alignment" of judicial functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to inform readers of the prevalence of and increasing demand for human trafficking, both domestically and globally, and to propose necessary next steps governments must take in order to end the demand for such human exploitation. This paper will closely analyze the issue of trafficking humans for sex and labor within the Western Hemisphere and throughout Asia by using the United States and China as primary case studies. These case studies analyze the specific actions or inactions taken by the United States and Chinese governments to combat modern day slavery, as well as the current criminal sentencing guidelines these countries employ. Further, this paper will examine the theories of criminal punishment, taking a specific interest in the deterrence theory of tort law as a method that can be used to deter offenders and possible future offenders from engaging in such heinous crimes against society. By focusing on the economic principles that fuel human trafficking, such as low-risk, high-reward; systemic inequalities; and supply and demand, this paper stresses the importance that legislatures, government officials, and country leaders across the globe take an assertive approach in not only enacting legislation that enhances criminal punishments for those who engage in the trafficking of persons, but also enforcing the provisions that are established within the legislation to reduce the overall demand for human exploitation. Lastly, this paper emphasizes the need to reduce at-risk victims’ level of vulnerability of exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In classical Greek philosophy, the pursuit of Truth was done primarily through logical argumentation using language as "Truth tool." The major thinkers in classical China, on the other hand, were famously suspicious of language, with Confucius declaring, "I wish to be wordless." They turned instead to music to express the philosophically ineffable. In this paper, we use the example of the Chinese guqin to show how music serves as "Truth tool" in the Chinese philosophical tradition; in fact, music may be Truth itself. Through a quartet of interrelated themes–namely, the "Search for Truth," the "Search for Harmony," the "Search for Ethical Awakening," and the "Search for Sagehood"–we show how playing the guqin constitutes the doing of philosophy in this musical tradition. Through the guqin, performers and listeners experience Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist philosophical insights; no words are needed. We conclude by proffering implications for contemporary music education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the history and development of women entering legal education in China. Based on a survey, interviews, and archival research, this paper attempts to analyze Chinese women's current status in legal education and reaches the conclusion that although women have made significant gains in legal education, they are still facing gender discrimination and bias in the legal sector. The paper also looks into the reasons why women have in the past belonged to 'the other' in the legal area, and whether there is any conflict between 'legal characteristics' and 'feminine characteristics.' It attempts to break the constraint caused by dualism and gender essentialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sub-Saharan Africa's economy grew rapidly from 2004 to 2008, driven largely by Asian investment and trade. Much of this activity has been in primary commodities, but Asianowned manufacturing and other businesses in Africa, despite growing rapidly, have received very little attention. Using survey research and other primary and secondary data, this paper investigates the nature and impacts of Asian businesses in Zambia to interrogate whether their developmental impacts are inclusive or exclusionary. It then moves to assess the likely impact of the current global slowdown and how it will affect Sino-Zambian economic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper is that governments of some otherwise enlightened states are increasingly fearful of acknowledging the restraints imposed on them by existing international law. They are also reluctant to enter into new commitments by way of international conventions that would expand the reach of international law. The paper asks whether these fears are based on a true understanding of international law or on some distorted view of it. It will draw comparisons and some contrasts between Australia and the United States in their reactions to a number of recent events as well as to some enduring situations of contemporary relevance. Had time (and the limits of my research) permitted, one might also have examined public attitudes toward international law in China, Japan, and Russia in this context, where similar fears appear to be entertained. France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, also enlightened states, appear by contrast to belong to a group more dedicated to international law. As Robert Kagan has recently remarked, the experience of two world wars at close quarters, and the formation of the European Union, have made the European countries more dedicated to process, where the United States is more interested in results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the current status of Abdulrazak Gurnah in Chinese literary and academic circles. Although Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, recognition and translation of his works in China are still in their infancy. Gurnah is regarded as an expert in postcolonial literature in China and is frequently cited in related research articles. However, it was not until 2013 that some of his short stories were officially translated into Chinese, and none of his ten novels have been translated into Chinese so far. Research on Gurnah in China has only provided brief descriptions of his literary works or reviewed the status of his research in China and internationally. After Gurnah won the Nobel Prize, newspaper reports and research articles focused on his role as an immigrant and diasporic writer, triggering an upsurge in recognition of his importance. It is hoped that translations of Gurnah's works in China can be promoted to enrich people's understanding of African and postcolonial literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The writings of Emily Hahn demonstrate the ways in which the semi-colonial context of China served as a contested and transformative space in the Western literary imagination during the mid-twentieth century. During her nine years in China, Hahn became a well-known figure in America, writing a biography of the Soong sisters, a best-selling autobiography, and number of vignettes for the New Yorker that document her perspectives on life abroad. During this period Hahn also published two novels, Steps of the Sun (1940) and Miss Jill (1949), works that were less suited for a mainstream readership and which explored themes of inter-racial romance, drug-use, and prostitution. While Hahn's work can be read in terms of crossing boundaries and challenging normative conceptions of gender and race, her writings also offer a critical comment on the trope of transgression itself and its visibility in popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the negotiation of the Taiwan-Panama free trade agreement (FTA) and Panama's switch of diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China. It explains why Panama's revocation of recognition of Taiwan as a state does not mean the end of the Taiwan-Panama FTA. Topics discussed include Taiwan's abandonment of the claim to be the legitimate government of China, the country's international legal personality, and its World Trade Organization (WTO) membership.

Using renowned Chinese actress Li Lihua's border-crossing career in Asia and the United States during the 1950s as a case study, this article examines how Asian free celebrities like Li participated in and complicated the facile dichotomy of democracy versus communism in Cold War discourse. When read in juxtaposition with her writing in the US-funded magazine World Today, Li's appearance in the Hollywood war film China Doll (1958) exposes the tensions within the Free China-US relationship on the one hand and, on the other, reasserts the role of Nationalist China in the Free China-US matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many modernist writers, museum exhibitions of art and artifacts from ancient China provide a touchstone for the conceptual and linguistic innovations of the twentieth century. However, even critics who explore the influence of these exhibitions on modern literature, such as Zhaoming Qian, understand the museum's effect in terms of how it shapes literary motifs, rather than considering the impact of broader curatorial principles that present China as an aestheticized emblem largely disengaged from the realities of its modern counterpart. This study considers how the museum informs modern literature's fantasy of China as curated in the Little Magazines. First tracing the reception of Chinese antiquity through the institutional frame of the modern museum, I then proceed through an analysis of how the poetry and prose of the little magazines mirrors exhibitionary principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that Chinese adjudication is in a dilemma: on one hand, the judicial discretion is extensive; on the other hand, public opinion supervision is adopted to control the discretion. In fact, the public opinion and judicial discretion could co-exist and compliment one another. There is no objective and stable framework regulating both. There are attempts aiming to completely negate the judicial discretion, such as computer sentencing. A strange logic of judicial reform exists in China: either eliminating the judicial discretion through such mechanical methods as computer sentencing in the hope to guarantee judgment in conformity with the law; or resorting to the arbitrary external power intervention or public opinion supervision to constrain the judicial discretion, resulting in a new form of discretion. In the author's opinion, the critical nexus of institutional designing of good governance is an independent judiciary following the principle of procedural fairness. Therefore it is necessary for China to first establish the courts' authority through judicial reforms, laying the institutional foundation of rule-of-law. Then comes the supervising and checking of the legality of the government power. More importantly, an independent judiciary functions as a neutral arbiter of conflicting interest groups and a third-party enforcer of contracts, which enhances the predictability of market transactions and safeguards fair competition. Compared with structural shift of political power, judicial reform is relatively less difficult and more practical. If judicial reform dooms to fail, how is it possible for a comprehensive political reform to succeed? It is admitted that the judicial reform is subject to the overall power arrangements, nevertheless, it is still probable that we resort to judicial reform, as a breakthrough or reference, a gradual switch on the transformation of political power structure, centering on fundamental requirements of rule-of-law. This roadmap, of course, has preconditions, that is, that the ruler has adequate practical rationality and that society reaches consensus on rule-of-law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the Sino-Israel relationship from the Chinese perspective. It argues that the relationship is at a crossroad because China is increasingly more proactively involved in the international arena, which will inevitably lead to China's more assertive role in trying to facilitate solving the Israel-Palestinian conflicts. China has been inclined to be more supportive to the Palestinian side based on Chinese cultural values, traditionally stronger ties with Arab countries, and also since Palestine is generally considered as the weaker side of the conflict. A strong Israel-U.S. relationship will help balance Israel's relationship with China. The Sino-Israel relationship cannot be viewed out of the context of a Sino-U.S. relationship. China is more concerned with its relationship with the U.S., the only other world economy comparable in size to China's, in order to protect the peaceful world order for further development. Future Chinese involvement with the Palestinian region will be more constructive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines China--Africa relations by contextualizing China's economic activities in Africa and interrogating the ramifications of the evolving relations for economic development in the region. China--Africa relations need to be understood as the logical outcomes of the marginalization of Africa in the age of globalization. China is filling the vacuum in Africa created by Western disengagement from the region since the end of the cold war. That Africa is embracing China is informed by the former's appraisal of the consequences of its colonial experience and the realities of its postcolonial dependent relationships with the West. China--Africa relations embody opportunities and threats. Africa needs to utilize the new architecture of cooperation to maximize benefits and minimize threats. Africa's economic interest and quest for development could be in conflict with those of China, yet Africa must determine how to leverage the deepening relationship with China to its own advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the ways in which U.S. philosopher John Dewey's notion of Pragmatism could possibly inform democracy and culture in China. Dewey's influence on early 20th-century Chinese education reform efforts is first described. The author goes on to explain Chinese nationalism's tenuous relationship with democratic development in the country. The Chinese concept of shiyong zhuyi, or instrumentalism, and its divergence from Pragmatism is explained. The author also details the Chinese government's notion of democratic centralism, which involves Communist Party (CP) leadership over a proletarian dictatorship and is therefore antithetical to Dewey.

This Note explores the global problem of gender-based labor inequality as exemplified in China. China's historic and cultural framework, the efforts the Chinese government has made to coordinate with the global community on women's rights initiatives, and recent legislation passed at both national and local levels in China provide an interesting case study for countries facing gender inequality in the workplace. The items of legislation, though sometimes drafted using international treaties as a framework, contain unique provisions that provide protections for Chinese women that are not seen elsewhere in the world. Additionally, the Chinese government's current political goal of achieving a harmonious society signals potentially forthcoming advancements in workplace gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to film historian Zhong Baoxian, the Hong Kong film industry in the "Golden Age" of the 1970s and 1980s was dominated by three major theatre chains or circuits, which maintained their regular film supply by setting up their own production companies. As a case study in the international distribution of Hong Kong cinema during this period, this essay examines the business records of the Sun Sing Theatre in New York's Chinatown, now in the collection of New York's Museum of Chinese in America. The Sun Sing was not only an exhibition site, but also the headquarters of Gordon's Film International, a company that distributed films from Hong Kong to theatres in North America in the 1980s. The author argues that the circuit system, which made a soaring industry possible in Hong Kong, has ironically contributed to the demise of the business and entertainment culture of the Chinatown communities in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of China in the rise of Asia and the implication of the rise for global governance. It compares what may emerge in an Asian-dominated world with the governance trends seen in the European Union (EU). According to the author, how Asia, particularly China, might influence international relations is not clear, and multiple possibilities exist. Possible obstacles to the vision of Eastphalia are also discussed.

The article argues that an important part of the future contributions Asia can make to world affairs is the strategic relationship between Japan and China. It discusses the key dynamics of the evolving order in East Asia, including regional economic integration and its spillover effects and China's peaceful and comprehensive rise. The author proposes a framework to help improve the relations between China and Japan.

The article examines the dynamics of the health-foreign policy in China. It provides an overview of the Maoist health diplomacy and the elevation of health issues in the hierarchy of foreign policy objectives in the reform era of China. Features and dilemmas of health-foreign policy interaction of China are offered. According to the author, the tensions and dilemmas inherent in the health-foreign policy mix in China provide risks and challenges to global health governance.

Macau, the first permanent European settlement on the China coast founded 450 years ago, exhibits in its monuments, commemorative statues, architecture and museums the changing encounter between Europe and China. Such tangible cultural forms reflect the construction of Macau's historical meaning in the vision of their creators. First a vehicle of the Christian evangelical enterprise in Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Macau became an extension of the heroic Portuguese national colonial epic in the nineteenth century, and finally was reenvisioned as the legacy of an open-ended process of multicultural exchange, a city where East meets West in a discourse of mutual tolerance and understanding. In this process the past comes to be experienced as the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ruling elites often make pernicious national myths for instrumental purposes, creating divergent historical memories of the same events in different countries. But they tend to exploit international history disputes only when they feel insecure domestically. Societal reactions to elite mythmaking, reflected in radicalized public opinion, can reinforce history disputes. During the 1950s-1970s, China avoided history disputes with Japan to focus on geostrategic interests. Only from the early 1980s did domestic political incentives motivate Beijing to attack Japanese historical memory and promote assertive nationalism through patriotic history propaganda, which radicalized Chinese popular views about Japan. Media highlighting of Japan's historical revisionism exacerbated societal demands to settle war accounts with Japan, while factional politics within the Chinese Communist Party made it difficult for the top leaders to compromise on the bilateral "history issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of its "Look East" foreign policy strategy, Zimbabwe has sought to strengthen its ties with China--a move that has alarmed many Western states. While not necessarily denying the pragmatism behind such a strategy, I examine how this policy represents an attempt by the Zimbabwean government and its leader, Robert Mugabe, to redirect the public imagination toward a different identity at the domestic and international levels. The government seeks to draw on its image as a freedom fighter and liberator to shore up its domestic legitimacy, while simultaneously reasserting its role as an important international actor. The rhetorical strategy used by Mugabe and his government has had material benefits, but its success in redefining Zimbabwe's identity has been decidedly mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the development and celebration of the Mid-autumn festival in China. This traditional occasion is related to the myth of Cháng'é and the legend of Han Chinese's ruling of Mongols at the Yuan dynasty. It has been noted that the festival, which is handed down for thousands of years, has a strong centripetal force to the Chinese communities and societies.

Focuses on the globalization and localization of higher education in China. Background on interrelated trends in Chinese higher education, as of January 2005; Number of students studying in post-secondary schools in China in 2004; Role of the Chinese state in the decentralization of higher education.

Looks at the trauma experienced by the Chinese people during the Taiping Rebellion and the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Collapse of the imperial state and the occurrence of civil wars and revolution during the period; Overview of the range of traumas induced by state violence; Interrelation between the study of traumatic events and memory.

Discusses the theme of traumatic memory in Chinese history. Impact of mass killings in China after the 1911 Revolution on social policy in the country; Role of cultural traits in aiding or inhibiting people from recovering from trauma; Efforts of scholars who had fled the country after international and civil wars to promote renaissance and reconstruction.

The article focuses on the attitudes toward German, Austrian and Polish refugees who escaped the Nazi terror to the International Settlement in Shanghai, China, from 1938 to 1939. As the number of refugees approached 1,500 by December 1938, and the tempo of their arrival increased almost daily, all residents of the settlement, including the Jews, feared that this influx can not be absorbed. Objections to the refugees are manifested in different ways, most of which can be traced to the overriding fear of economic competition and the severe housing shortage in Shanghai. The attitude of the Jews of Shanghai, as well as of other parts of the world, helped shape the generally negative reactions toward the refugees.