This paper presents the motives that pushed the Chinese leaders to build the Great Firewall and the political functions attached to it. The paper argues that the immaterial wall is a way to preserve an authoritarian regime with little legitimacy because mainly based on fast economic growth. From this perspective, the purpose of the Great Firewall is not to ban access to Internet but to prevent certain western ideas to spread, so perceived as threatening the regime's stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
The article presents graphs reflecting number of scientific papers computed by several countries including U.S., China, Korea and Singapore from 1980 to 2010. It is mentioned that the U.S. has gathered knowledge developed in other nations and tapped to stoke innovations to be on the top most position in the field of science and technology. It is also mentioned that only six percent of U.S. federal Research & development (R&D) spending is used for international collaborations.
China is one among many other countries that have recognised the necessity in aligning national scientific progress with that of global development. As China is striding along the path of scientific development with determination and initial success, a key concern confronted by international scientific community is how China will transform existing global scientific atlas. Based on a project carried out in six Chinese cities, this paper mainly employs Ulrich Beck's cosmopolitan theory in examining China's life sciences 'development in the last decade to investigate how Chinese stakeholders have developed a (cosmopolitan) sensibility to rival ways of scientific reasoning, and in what way Chinese stakeholders have contributed to the cosmopolitanization of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
*POETRY (Literary form), *LITERATURE & society, *LANGUAGE & languages in literature, *SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Abstract
ABSTRACT: In recent years, interest in Hong Kong poetry in English has grown remarkably. Amidst all the excitement, the question has arisen as to how to define Hong Kong poetry in English. This paper is an attempt to provide an answer from linguistics. Subsumed under this controversy are three questions: What is poetry? What is good poetry? What is Hong Kong poetry? The first question has to take into account the revived interest in relating literary English to the general use of English. The second one relates to literary standards, which are inevitably tied to cultural norms of interaction and interpretation. The last one can be answered with reference to sociolinguistic concepts of speech communities. The paper deals briefly with the first two questions and focuses on the last. It affirms the existence of Hong Kong poetry in English. Each poet writing in or for Hong Kong may identify with more than one poetic community just as many users of English in Hong Kong may communicate with more than one group of English speakers. The application of linguistics to the task of defining Hong Kong poetry should offer insights towards a framework for identifying literary communities elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]