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Our project seeks to analyze the interactions and exchanges between China and India in this age of decolonization through the pages of the Nehru Papers. Although the members of our group have all been engaged in the study of China and India, for many of us, the types of documents that comprise the Nehru Papers vary significantly from the kinds of materials we otherwise work on. Some years ago, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) in New Delhi declassified the post-1947 materials within the Jawaharlal Nehru Papers collection. [Extracted from the article]

This article investigates the practice of returning marked papers to rejected candidates in late imperial Chinese examinations. The practice--common from the sixteenth century to the abolition of imperial examinations in 1905--established a sense of personal communication between examiners and examinees and was an opportunity for rejected candidates to benefit from the examination system. The failed papers returned to their authors enabled them to make sense of their performance by interpreting, when not misconstruing, examiners' comments. The examiners sometimes praised the papers and blamed the decision to fail on other examiners. As a result, most rejected candidates tended not to challenge the examiners through official channels or take collective action against the examination system. Thus, in the late imperial examination system, the ways in which rejecting decisions could be negotiated and construed were no less important than the awarding of degrees to an extremely small proportion of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Imperially Commissioned Golden Mirror of the Orthodox Lineage of Medicine (Yuzuan yizong jinjian 御纂醫宗金鑑), first printed in 1742, was one of the most important and widely circulating works on medicine in late imperial China. This paper analyzes a group of twenty-three medical manuscripts from the nineteenth and early twentieth century that include parts of the Golden Mirror. The findings suggest that most of the manuscripts should not be considered mere copies, but as deliberate selections. They served didactic as well as epistemic functions that differ from, or go beyond, those that could be fulfilled by the printed Golden Mirror (or a faithful manuscript copy alone). This is indicated not only by different content type selections (verse form for memorization or recitation; prose form for study or consultation) and the combination with medical knowledge from other sources, but also by the ways in which these contents were formatted, usually to facilitate reading and navigation. Adjustment, updating or supplementation of Golden Mirror contents likewise functioned epistemically, integrating previous medical knowledge into the medical discourse of the time. Hence, the findings of the present study help to clarify the lasting importance of manuscripts in the age of print, for which possibilities of adapting knowledge to personal interests and requirements seem to have been decisive factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the bilateral trade relations between Tanzania and China by examining the trend, intensity, and the determinants of the Tanzania exports to China from 1988 to 2018. It augments the traditional Gravity Model of bilateral trade and employs the dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag and Error Correction Model techniques. In general, the two partners have witnessed a tremendous trade increase over time. Empirically, the influence of Tanzania’s economic size and foreign inflows on exports are significant in the short and long run. Specifically, the effect of the economic size is positive throughout, while foreign capital is positive in the short run. On the other hand, the estimated coefficients of the population, exchange rate, and relative distance are significant only in the long run. This study recommends expanding the national income and strategic FDI attraction, among others, to enhance Tanzania’s export capacity and eventually trade with China and the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a response to imbalanced economic development across different regions, this study aims to explore how the Fair Trade nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) promote inclusive growth in areas facing insufficient institutional supports and challenging local conditions in a developing market. Through a 5-year longitudinal case study in the context of small-scale tea supply from rural China, this paper explores and identifies a set of institutional voids blocking economic growth and challenging the realisation of the Fair Trade goals. We systematically describe how the Fair Trade NGOs intervene and integrate with other actors in local supply chains. The results reveal important and complex roles the NGOs play in coping with the institutional voids to stimulate Fair Trade. From an institutional perspective, this paper finds that the Fair Trade NGOs can leverage and shape local institutions through collaboration in market structure building, norm promotion, and cognitive development to achieve inclusive growth. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the crucial roles NGOs may play in Fair Trade, inclusive growth, and poverty alleviation. They offer important and practical guidance for NGOs, small farmers, as well as relevant government agencies in their initiatives to fight poverty and achieve economic equality and inclusive growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology in food production is constantly evolving and advancing, and the emerging genetically modified (GM) technology is making a significant contribution to solving the world's food problems. However, sporadic food safety incidents and negative media coverage have caused Chinese consumers to remain apprehensive about the safety of food and GM technology, even to the extent that they are reluctant to buy vegetables in unusual shapes because they believe the vegetables are produced by GM technology. This paper examines this negative association with GM food. The results show that when seeing an abnormally shaped vegetable, consumers perceive that the vegetable is likely to be genetically modified, thus increasing their perceived risk. In order to estimate the mediation effect, we adopted the causal step approach using an ordered probit model. To investigate consumers' preferences for attributes of vegetables, we employed a choice experiment, stochastic parametric logit models and latent class logit models. Apart from price, consumers place the highest importance on appearance attributes, followed by traceability attributes, and then safety certification attributes. There is also heterogeneity in consumer preferences. Consumers' characteristics such as age, marital status and family size influence their preferences. The findings of this paper suggest that traceability labelling and safety certification labelling can be useful in addressing information asymmetry in food safety and can increase consumer utility and improve their trust in the safety of the food they buy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores difference within geographical writings in the transition to modernity in nineteenth century China. In some maps, the experiential realities of travelers were valued and expressed. More significantly, landscape maps sometimes pointed to a reality of absence rather than of presence. This contrasted with the arising modern commitment to triangulation, which deleted the phenomenological in favour of an omniscient 'view from nowhere'. It is conventional to treat this transition as an expression of progress in which non-Western scholars started to undo a scientific deficit regarding precision and measurement with the use of new tools, or for postcolonial scholars to propose heroic resistance from native map makers. Against these interpretations, the minutiae in the 1886 Chinese gazetteer Tukao of Tibet do not simply show a progressive or coerced transition, but rather the expression of an inconsistent difference. Tukao reflects different survey methods, producing fundamentally incompatible ontological worlds. The paper shows that the Tukao does not legislate between different practices, and argues that the alterity in Tukao offers lessons for postcolonial theory and practice, avoiding both hegemony of modern science and relativism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis in this paper reveals that on the individual level, the institutional framework continues to exert a profound impact on social organizations' forms and civic engagement in China. The CGSS2012-based analysis leads to the following findings. For a start, political party members and danwei employees demonstrate a higher degree of social organizational involvement and civic engagement. In the meanwhile, the party members' role in promoting civic engagement is achieved to some extent through mediating effect of social organizations. Next, various types of social organizations have significantly increased civic engagement on a practical level. Finally, income plays a large role to increase the individuals' organizational involvement, albeit with no obvious influence on civic engagement in practice. These findings are significant in the following ways. First, from an empirical perspective, the current institutional design for social organizations to participate in social governance has delivered the expected results. Second, it confirmed the existence of activists with distinct features in social life as well as the integration of multiple governing networks in social space at grassroots level. Third, in theory, this paper noted that apart from institutional environment of technical governance by bureaucratic government, institutional framework constitutes an important institutional foundation for the development of social organizations, giving rise to the need of further discussions about the interaction mechanism between political parties and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both home-grown school feeding (HGSF) and short food supply chain (SFSC) emphasize on proximity and aim to strengthen the competitiveness of local smallholder farmers. From a theoretical perspective, HGSF implemented as a type of SFSC could help deliver synergies. A pivotal question is how HGSF can be combined with SFSC and the benefits and drawbacks of such combination. Using an HGSF program which was implemented as an integral part of a free preschool lunch pilot in South Central China, this paper shows that HGSF and SFSC (in its full term) could be combined through one structured demand intervention. This study uses both qualitative and quantitative materials. Qualitative data were collected through focus group discussions with government and preschool staff, parents or caregivers, cooks, World Food Programme representatives and other stakeholders involved in the pilot program. The quantitative part used both small panel data and cross-sectional data from 106 smallholders. This study analyzes the design, implementation, good practices, benefits and constraints of the HGSF-SFSC model. We find that direct purchase from smallholder farmers was linked with higher income and production and dietary diversity. Moreover, this study identifies several constraints of the current HGSF-SFSC model. The policy implications for sustaining and scaling up the current pilot are discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late imperial China saw the development of print culture, in which one of the practices was combining the illustration and texts, thus visualizing the contents and changing readers' reading experience. This paper explores an illustrated account of the famous Confucian Wang Yangming (1472–1529) entitled The Illustrated record of Master Wang Yangming (Wang Yangming xiansheng tupu) by Zou Shouyi (1491–1562). By tracing the earlier pictorial Confucian hagiographical tradition and the practices of book publishing, this paper examines the cult of Wang Yangming as revealed in this book along with other deifications of him at that time. I argue that such deifications in narrative texts and illustrations not only helped Wang reach a larger audience but also shifted people's mentality of reverence by enlarging the space of worship from portraits to books. Such an analysis will enhance our understanding of the nuances of the Confucian hagiographical tradition in late imperial China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has emerged as an important norm-shaper in Africa in recent years and can be credited with influencing various policy sectors across the whole continent. Despite the massive impact COVID-19 had on China's presence in Africa and the palpable decrease in financial and technical cooperation in recent years, in the field of policy dissemination China has been and still is one of the most influential external actors on the continent. Numerous ideas and practices from China have found their way into African politics, and China has directly or indirectly (and intentionally or otherwise) affected how Africans see development and the shape and implementation of development practices. This article traces the rise of China as a norm-provider to African elites and compares the impact of two influential policy sets – the development-security nexus and the Belt and Road Initiative – on African policymaking. It analyzes why some policies and ideas travelling from China have reverberated with African leaders and have had a direct impact on the developmental agenda of several countries while other concepts did not take root on the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars such as John Strong and James Robson have laid firm foundations for the study of the development of Buddhist sacred geography, highlighting the role of relics, stupas and the importance of pre-Buddhist sites of religious significance. Their work has inspired this paper which examines extracts from three texts produced by the monk Shi Daoxuan between 650 and 667 CE: the Shijia fangzhi 釋迦方志 (A Geography of the Śākyas, 650 CE), the Ji Shenzhou Sanbao gantong lu 集神州三寶感通錄 (Collected Records of Stimulus and Responses to the Triple Gem in the Divine Continent, 664) and the Lüxiang gantong zhuan 律相感通傳 (Account of the Stimuli and Responses Related to the Vinaya, 667). Concentrating on two places, the Zhongnan Mountains and Mount Wutai, these materials provide a rare opportunity to examine the role one man played in the promotion of these sites over few decades. This paper argues that Daoxuan was among the first to promote the idea of Mañjuśrī being present in China, initially in the Zhongnan, and only latterly on Wutai, and that Daoxuan was influenced by the picture of Indian Buddhist sacred geography provided by the accounts of Xuanzang's travels in his consolidation and development of a similar geography for China. Daoxuan utilised Buddhist and non-Buddhist writings, and eyewitness testimony from the human realm and beyond, in his efforts to promote these two places. A close reading of these extracts can provide insight into the factors which stimulate the creation of sacred sites, and the methods and processes through which they develop and evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's growing influence in the Indian Ocean cannot be gainsaid as the East Asian economic powerhouse engages in a series of activities to secure maritime routes for energy supplies; to guarantee its trade routes; and to exercise increased maritime influence on the sea lines of communication (SLOCs). Since the beginning of the 21st century, Beijing has enhanced its presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) through construction of ports, increased Chinese naval presence, participation in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, construction of a military base in Djibouti, One belt One road initiative and 21st century Maritime Silk Road. While China reassures of its peaceful development, critics contend that Beijing's military-strategic intentions are aimed at dominance in the Indian Ocean. Countries of the IOR are a home to 2.5 billion people. About 80 percent of the world's maritime oil trade flows through three chokepoints in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, Indian Ocean is emerging as a pivotal zone due to fast growing economies in the region. Due to its geostrategic significance, the Indian Ocean is expected to play a considerable role in the development of East African littoral states including Kenya. This paper analyzes the growing presence of China in IOR and how Nairobi's engagement with Beijing could enable Kenya to realize its geostrategic interests in the Indian Ocean. The paper recommends that Kenya needs to have effective strategies to maximize the potential from its exclusive economic zone and secure its national interests as a littoral state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, China has become increasingly influential in Africa, and the US policy pivoting to confront domestic challenges and withdrawing from its role in international fora has raised many concerns. Based on this global context, this paper examines the US-China soft power competition through foreign aid. It takes a relational lens to analyze their aid to the African countries. It first looks at how foreign aid could be transformed into soft power assets, and then innovatively puts the two countries side by side and examines the relational powers of their foreign aid and the impacts on the other's national image. The paper uses ordered (Ordinary Least Squares) OLS, ordered logit, and IV regression to analyze aid data and opinion poll data. The results show that foreign aid can promote the African perceptions of both countries. It also finds that Chinese aid has a negative impact on the image of the US in Africa, while American aid has no significant effect on African perception of China. This conclusion aligns with the competitive nature of the US–China relationship. China's model of aid may be preferred by Africans, while the US may need to revisit its approaches in Africa in order to turn this situation around. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are we to understand China's decades-long sovereignty claim over Taiwan? One assumption upheld by many international relations scholars is that state behaviour will change according to a variance of polarity in the international system. Yet while China can flexibly manage its territorial issues elsewhere, its goal of unification with Taiwan has not changed despite multiple structural changes in the international system over the decades. This paper argues that historical and nationalist approaches alone do not explain China's unswaying obsession with this island. Geopolitics plays a far more prominent role in the minds of Chinese leaders than scholars have previously acknowledged. Since 1949, China has viewed Taiwan as a geopolitical buffer protecting the security of Chinese coastal areas. China's buffer thinking towards Taiwan was a significant factor in China's decisions to launch military action against Taiwan in 1954, 1958, and 1996. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how two contemporary Chinese ekphrastic poems respond to an era characterized by visual media and globalization. It analyses how the poets connect their engagement with visual art to their explorations of complex cross-cultural encounters. These inter-art-form and inter-cultural engagements question the self-other dichotomy that operates in many simplistic imaginings of the relationship between art forms, between China and the West, and between so-called cultural centres and peripheries. Building on the example of these two poetic works, I propose a networked framework as an alternative to dichotomised conceptions of world literature and as a way to rethink global cultural politics and contemporary sociohistorical experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of transformative technologies, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, a natural language processing tool, significantly impacts the future of education, society, and the economy. Drawing on the theory of knowledge socialism and public goods, this paper critically examines the potential impact of ChatGPT in the context of China's high-tech development and higher education. We believe these technologies resonate with the principles of knowledge socialism by promoting decentralization, openness, and collective intelligence and are poised to reshape the education sector and beyond. The non-competitive and non-exclusive nature of ChatGPT makes it a public good with significant social benefits. In the educational domain, it has the potential to revolutionize teaching and learning by providing students with convenient, personalized learning experiences, real-time feedback, and multilingual support. However, despite its benefits, educators, and users must work to overcome its limitations, such as limited expertise, language understanding, reasoning skills, and potential risks associated with privacy, security, and misinformation. This article discusses the need to prepare students for a future heavily impacted by AI, which requires a reassessment of digital literacy and competencies. Doing so would require leveraging AI tools and promoting human-centered approaches, developing higher-order thinking skills, emphasizing emotional education, and teaching academic ethics. In addition, introducing AI tools like ChatGPT in higher education requires regulation to prevent plagiarism and improve independent problem-solving. This paper further explores the impact of ChatGPT on China's technological development. The global attention attracted by ChatGPT has stimulated the growth of the AI industry and prompted the emergence of domestic products and applications in countries such as China. It is critical to harmonize the enforcement of competition laws and capitalize on the contributions of sizable enterprises in the realm of technological innovation and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is a preliminary study of the Philippines' foreign policy towards China under President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. It will examine China's economic statecraft as the sender country towards the Philippines as the target country. The ultimate goal of China's economic policies is to foster a submissive response from the Philippines over their territorial disputes in the South China Sea. This paper applies the theoretical model proposed by Jean-Marc F. Blanchard and Norrin M. Ripsman (2008 and 2013) to study the political theory of economic statecraft, as applied by the sender and target countries. Blanchard and Ripsman argue that domestic factors serve as significant intervening variables in the strategy of the target country's leaders towards the sender country. Thus, the target country's leaders will view the sender country's economic sanctions or economic inducements differently, depending on the domestic socioeconomic situation. By looking at the Duterte administration in the Philippines, this paper intends to expand upon the research agenda of the theory on economic statecraft and international relations. It will shine a light on the puzzling flip-flop of the Philippines' foreign policy strategy. It shows that Blanchard and Ripsman's "stateness" conditionalist approach provides a plausible explanation of the Filipino response to China's economic statecraft. Instead of relying on conventional neo-realist, economic liberalist, or regime-type conditionalist arguments, this paper will focus on the control of leaders over the decision-making environment. However, it does acknowledge that stateness does not fully explain the Philippines' strategic adjustment towards China, as international variables could have affected the Philippines' policy response to China's economic statecraft. This paper, therefore, argues that domestic and international factors play vital roles in affecting the dynamics in the target state and the effectiveness of the sender state's economic statecraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of NGO s' participation in poverty alleviation has not only been well documented by extensive studies but also confirmed by rich experience both at the international and national levels. In China, the government officially opened its resources to NGO s in combating poverty in 2005, and NGO s are expected to work as important participants in China's accurate poverty alleviation project, which is the largest anti-poverty campaign launched by the central government since the foundation of PRC. However, empirical data in the paper shows that NGO s' participation in this ambitious project is at best very limited. Drawing from more than 30 interviews and some other sources of data, this paper argues that it is the nature of poverty alleviation in China, which can be defined as political task, that should account for the NGO's limited participation. To be more specific, the excessive workload assumed by the local government deprives officials' motivation to cooperate with NGO s, excluding NGO s out of the poverty alleviation project is also a rational behavior that can avoid risks for officials. Moreover, the over-supplied financial resource also makes the participation of NGO s unnecessary. This research adds more insights to the study on NGO s in China by arguing that the state-society interaction in China is still asymmetrical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's identity in Zambia has been constructed in polarizing terms depending on the political and social standing of Zambians from political parties, civil society to ordinary citizens. The current paper looks at how the Patriotic Front (PF), from its time as an opposition to its time as a governing party, has constructed China's identity. The ill-will towards China that the PF constructed in its opposition days is described here as Sinophobia, a fear of China, the likely consequences of its investment and the presence of Chinese nationals. The paper traces how the PF (as an opposition party) moved from being a critic of China to being a staunch defender of China and Zambia-China relations (as ruling party). The conclusions drawn are that while Sinophobia was constructed, the fears expressed by the PF during its opposition days were justifiable and have become even more significant with the deepening of Zambia-China economic relations. Furthermore, the paper argues that current hostile positions towards China by opposition parties in Zambia reinforce the argument that China is an opportune pretext for those who hope to win the support of ordinary Zambians, who endure the perceived threat that comes with Chinese investment and Chinese employers and entrepreneurs. The paper relied mainly on Zambian media, government reports and legislation documents, the author's empirical study on China's identity and interest in Zambia and scholarly secondary literature as sources of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a paper about the speed and intensity with which new and intensive human land use in a semi-arid environment can bring about large-scale environmental change. In particular, this paper pinpoints how and why it was that the Yellow River shifted from a long-term condition of relative stability to a later state of frequent floods and course changes in the eleventh century. It is possible to trace the environmental history of this dramatic and sudden change of state with precision and confidence. Historical sources that record the dates and characteristics of flood events downstream align well with those that note the locations and dates of human activity upstream. More important, each aligns well not only with one another, but also with information from environmental science: sediment cores that preserve soil and pollen evidence for the timing and processes of systematic change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cooperative breeding system of birds is an ideal model for studying and exploring social evolution in animals. However, a basic question, i.e., how many cooperative-breeding bird species exist in the world, remains controversial due to the lack of accumulated knowledge of the natural history of many birds, which prevents a generalized understanding of the evolution of cooperative breeding in birds and challenges the accuracy of results in many comparative studies. In this paper, we provide the first evidence of cooperative breeding in red-billed blue magpies (Urocissa erythrorhyncha). Moreover, we document and discuss potential relationships between cooperative breeding and nest predation, brood parasitism and breeding performance in U. erythrorhyncha. These findings about cooperative breeding in red-billed blue magpie will lay a foundation for further research on this species' sociality and provide useful insights into the evolution of cooperative breeding and other social systems in birds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduced the historical process and internal logic of China's rural land system reform and analyzed the successful experience of land reform in Dongling village. The results show that the long-term stability of land contracting right makes the ownership be virtualized, and the legalization of the land transfer lays the foundation for the diversification of the rural management subjects. The clear property rights enable them to allocate labour and capital freely, obtain economic benefits and then promote the development of rural industries. Land moderate-scale management is a dynamic and differentiated concept. All management subjects can achieve their ideal moderate scale of operation through land circulation. The experience of Dongling village shows that the land transfer should rely on the industry, and the key to the success or failure of the reform is that the industry should be sustainable, the distribution should be reasonable, the management should be scientific, and the supervision should be adequate. Of course, for developing countries, we need to formulate reform plans based on the differences in resource endowment instead of pursuing "fixed models" and "one-size-fits-all policy". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the Probit model was established based on the survey data of 105 loan officers in China's Western Region, and the factors influencing the willingness of mortgage loan supply of farmland management rights under the government-led model were investigated from the perspective of financial supply. The research shows that farmers' income, farmers' policy awareness, farmland scale, loan experience, risk compensation system, legal perfection and policy stability have a positive impact on the willingness of loan officers to issue mortgage loans for farmland management rights. Factors such as farmers' age and education level have a negative impact on the willingness to supply. In addition, by comparing the stability of the regression model before and after the addition of risk compensation system, legal perfection degree and policy stability degree, it is concluded that the policy variables have a great influence on the decision-making of financial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finally, the third part focuses on China's and India's actions in the field of population control and utilizes Nehru Papers, newspaper articles from I Renmin ribao i (People's Daily) and the I Times of India i and other sources primary and secondary to excavate information on China-India comparative contraception policies. The 1877 famines in China and India, according to Matthew Connelly, launched the population control movement in Europe and the US.[8] How exactly this Western comparative lens colored China-India contact in the 1950s begs further research as well.[9] This article consists of three parts. One of the items on the agenda of the first independent government of India was the reforming of women's rights, particularly with the goal of raising female literacy levels and encouraging participation in the workforce.[18] As diplomatic relations between India and China became closer, Indian government officials paid particular attention to the roles women assumed in the People's Republic of China (PRC). "Our Women Should Certainly Emulate": China-India Gendered Exchanges. [Extracted from the article]

Since 2008, a negative image of China has prevailed in Europe, leading to the country's image crisis in the region. The state has implemented several policies to improve such a perception. This paper aims to examine the major tools of China's attempts at influence in Europe, targeting the media and public opinion. Applying the concept of soft power and public diplomacy, we analyse the tools China uses to modify and shape public opinion about itself in Europe. The research framework comprises secondary resources on China's foreign policy, soft power, public diplomacy and media strategy in Europe. We distinguish four primary influence tools: China buys European media outlets to prevent negative information about itself; it pays for inserts in leading European newspapers; it signs cooperation agreements with media organisations and holds media forums; and it limits access to its market to affect media, film and academic content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late imperial China practitioners of forensic investigation in legal cases were predominantly male. While crime literature frequently features female characters, the question of how this literature represents the gender dimension of forensic knowledge remains unanswered. This paper aims to answer this question with an examination of a number of late imperial era theatrical works that depict how forensic knowledge differed across the male and female divide. It argues court-case literature increasingly valorized male forensic knowledge and its relevance to the state legal system. At the same time, these theatrical pieces signify female forensic knowledge following two literary traditions, namely, the commendation of exemplary women and the condemnation of "wanton women." Investigating these theatrical works at the interstices between court-case literature, women's history, and forensic history, this paper suggests that the representations of forensic knowledge in Chinese drama accord with major developments in the history of women and gender in premodern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important archaeological finds excavated from the Tianhui Laoguanshan Han tombs in 2012–13 was a manuscript on horse medicine, dated around the third century BCE. Prior to the discovery of this highly specialized veterinary text, only a handful of horse recipes from the Qin and Han periods had been found, and a sixth-century CE agricultural treatise, Essential Techniques for the Common People , was generally regarded as the earliest surviving source of extensive veterinary material, including various medical treatments for horses. Although the Laoguanshan manuscript – given the modern title Book of Treating Horses by the Team for Collating the Medical Bamboo Slips Excavated from the Han Tombs in Tianhui Town, Chengdu – has suffered significant damage, it nevertheless gives us an insight into the knowledge and treatments for horses during the Qin and early Han periods. A variety of ways of treating horses are recorded in Treating Horses , including herbal remedies, piercing, cauterization, hot packs, bandages, massage, and bathing. The use of gold needles is also mentioned in this text, echoing the gold and silver sewing needles excavated from Liu Sheng's (d. 113 BCE) tomb in Mancheng, Hebei Province. This paper offers a short introduction to this valuable text on horse medicine by examining the content of its fragments, including names of ailments, symptoms of certain diseases, etiologies, and treatment methods. The discovery of Treating Horses challenges the established view that horse treatment methods in ancient China were predominantly herbal and that techniques of bleeding and cauterization recorded in Essential Techniques were brought to China from elsewhere, together with the introduction of Buddhism. The paper argues that the "foreign influence" had already occurred at a much earlier date, in the form of interactions with nomadic tribes such as the Scythians, the horsemen par excellence of classical antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China–Africa relations have been a topic of huge interest in international relations, as well as the subject of wide scepticism and criticism. Drummond and Liu (2013) observe that more than half of sub-Saharan African countries have a trade deficit with China and that China remains a dominant actor in China–Africa relations. However, is this so? Are African states mere spectators in China–Africa relations or do they also have a strategy to gain something from the engagement? This study examines the role that African agency plays in Sino-African relations under the FOCAC framework. It highlights the main features of Sino-African relations and specifically assesses why China is important to African states. It examines FOCAC objectives for Africa, FOCAC conferences, the decisions adopted and their impact on Sino-African relations. The paper offers recommendations that will allow African states to better leverage their relations with China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China features significantly in the Covid-19 narrative for good and bad reasons. The purpose of this paper is to test, empirically, the assumption that Covid-19 would negatively influence perceptions of China in Ghana, due to its perceived relationship with the pandemic. We characterise Chinese manufactured products as soft power resources and analyse the role they play in addressing the personal needs and interests of Ghanaians and how they affect positive and negative perceptions of China amid the Covid-19 pandemic. We used a mixed research method and collected data from a sample size of 1,020 for analysis. We found that Ghanaians are rational actors who maximise the perceived gains of their actions in pursuit of their objectives. Thus, the self-interest and personal satisfaction Ghanaians gain through China's manufactured products outweigh the negative representation of China in the Covid-19 narrative, shaping a positive attitude in Ghana towards China. We situate the argument within rational choice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information related to China and Arctic International Law. Topics include to utilise multilateral institutions and international law as a platform to allow them to interact in a more equal fashion in the international system; the policy elaborates China's position as an important stakeholder in the Arctic and country's main policy goals such as deepening exploration and understanding of the Arctic, protecting the eco-environment of the Arctic and addressing climate change.

China's manufacturing has developed rapidly due to the integration of the global value chain (GVC) production division system. But the early OEM and processing can hardly meet the needs of high-quality development of the manufacturing. The "low-end lock-in" and "double squeeze" faced by China's manufacturing will impede the pace of upgrading the manufacturing. From the perspective of GVC accounting, this paper studies the industrial chain upgrading of China's manufacturing industry through four indicators: GVC participation, GVC division of labor status index, share of foreign value added in domestic exports, and manufacturing 'servitization' index, which from the value chain value added effect at the national level and industrial chain correlation effect at the industrial level, and drawing on the WWYZ method of Wang Zhi et al. (2017) and the input-output method of Leontief (1936). Through the research, it is found that the servitization level of the mid and high-tech industry and high-tech industry of China has been steadily improved, gradually getting rid of the "low-end lock-in" of developed countries and climbing to the high value added production links; Not only do the reindustrialization strategy of developed countries provide the obstacle to the upgrading of the industrial chain and value chain of China's high-tech industry, but also promote domestic talent training and technological innovation. The linkage and integration of the industrial chain of low-tech industry and low and mid-tech industry have been further improved, which plays a favorable role in relevant industry's value chain climbing and industrial chain upgrading. China's manufacturing is progressively improving its own value-added capability and international competitive advantage, further enhancing the two-way integration of the industrial chain, and gradually transitioning to both sides of the "smile curve", to achieve high-quality development of the manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed the impact of COVID-19 outbreak and targeted required reserve ratio cut policy on stock returns of Chinese listed companies. This paper uses the data of 3,449 A-share listed companies from February 3, 2020 to December 31, 2020 for research, the empirical results showed that stock prices of private enterprises with stronger debt-paying ability and looser financing constraints, and state-owned enterprises with less supply chain credit risks performed better, in the central and western regions, enterprises with stronger solvency and looser financing constraints have better stock price performance during the early stages of pandemic. After the implementation of the targeted RRR cut policy, the stock prices of enterprises with poor solvency, private enterprises, and enterprises in central and western regions with strong financing constraints, state-owned enterprises, and enterprises in eastern region with high credit risks all showed significant reversals, and the stock prices reflected the effect of the targeted RRR cut policy in the short and medium term. Over time, the pandemic has been controlled, and the resumption of work and production has freed most enterprises from financial difficulties. However, due to sporadic outbreaks, large private enterprises and eastern enterprises with strong risk resistance and loose financing constraints enjoy better stock price performance. This study is helpful for enterprises to understand the value of financial flexibility and solvency and provides a reference for enterprises to make financial decisions: how to balance the benefits and costs of solvency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous lectures targeted at overseas Chinese children have mostly been offline in the form of youth camps sponsored by the Chinese governments before the COVID-19 pandemic and are now usually administered online in a single-topic format transnationally post-pandemic. This form of "one-to-many" singular online lectures comes along with discontinuity, mass audiences, chaos, and being less tailored to the individual needs and context, failing to meet the evaluation metrics in different evaluation levels. This paper proposes a model of transnational online livestreaming serial socio-cultural lectures for overseas Chinese children, which puts forward the synergy of lecturing staff from higher educational institutions (HEIs) in China and students at Chinese language schools (CLSs) worldwide as participants. Lecturing staff from needs and context HEIs can guarantee sufficient keynote speakers for "one-on-one" mode and cope with the above-mentioned problems. After the implementation of five sessions of these serial lectures, evaluation of this model shows that the pre-lecture, during-lecture, and post-lecture stages have are applicable. Furthermore, for sociocultural lectures, the audience may be more interested in literature classics than folk arts from a specific region. Correlation analysis reveals that younger children have a better evaluation of this model and an improved inclination to attend lectures, which sheds light on the improvement of sociocultural lectures as online lectures are preferred among overseas Chinese children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 21st century, the digital economy has developed by leaps and bounds. As a key factor of production in the digital economy era, data plays an important role in China's green transformation. Based on the panel data of 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2019, this paper studies the relationship between data elements and green transformation. The results show that data elements can significantly promote green transformation by improving technical efficiency and achieving technological progress. Based on the above conclusions, all regions should speed up the infrastructure construction of digital economy, train digital talents, reduce resource dependence, improve the green, low-carbon and circular development system, formulate a digital economy development strategy considering local economic development levels, improve resource utilization efficiency and labor productivity, and actively promote green transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since establishing diplomatic relations in October 1949, North Korea and China have forged a complex alliance characterized by both firm solidarity and mutual distrust. This paper analyzes the ups and downs of their alliance relationship by examining the "Northeast Rear Doctrine" (NRD) suggested by Mao Zedong in the early 1960s, which proposed that North Korea could utilize China's Northeast region as its rear base in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula. Mao's proposal represents the apex of the Sino-North Korean alliance, implying China's temporary concession of its sovereignty over the northeastern territory to North Korea. However, when China and South Korea established diplomatic relations in 1992, the NRD policy was virtually abolished, thereby significantly affecting Sino-North Korean relations. First, it exacerbated security threats to North Korea's regime as Northeast China, which once served as Pyongyang's rear base, was transformed into Seoul's outpost for infiltration into North Korea. Second, it deepened North Korea's distrust of China and served as a catalyst for transforming Sino-North Korean relations into normal state-to-state dynamics, rather than the traditional party-to-party relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The People's Republic of China's (PRC) policy toward the Korean Peninsula can be largely characterized as the maintenance of a "stable status quo." This has been a constant feature since the founding of the PRC in 1949. Even when China was extremely radicalized and encouraged revolutions in the Third World in the 1960s, it prevented North Korea from attacking South Korea. However, the reasons behind China's policy choices have varied over time. This paper attempts to highlight the different reasons that led the PRC to maintain the same policy toward the Korean Peninsula during the Cold War. This article takes a historiographical perspective, juxtaposing the Sino-North Korean, Sino-Soviet, and Sino-US relationships, to reveal useful clues for understanding China's policy toward the Korean Peninsula and to elucidate the international political context China's policy exists within. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and when did domestic donkeys arrive in China? This article sets out to uncover the donkeys' forgotten trail from West Asia across the Iranian plateau to China, using archaeological, art historical, philological, and linguistic evidence. Following Parpola and Janhunen's (2011) contribution to our understanding of the Indian wild ass and Mitchell's (2018) overview of the history of the domestic donkey in West Asia and the Mediterranean, we will attempt to shed light on the transmission of the beast of burden to Eastern Eurasia. Due to its length, the paper is published in two instalments: Part I covers archaeological, art historical and textual evidence for the earliest occurrence and popularization of donkeys in China. Part II (in the fall issue) contains three sections: Two sections explore possible etymologies of ancient zoonyms for donkeys or donkey-like animals in Iranian and Chinese languages respectively. In a final discussion, possible ways of transmission for the donkey from the Iranian plateau to the Chinese heartland are evaluated with regard to the cultural, linguistic, and topographic conditions reflected in the previous parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the implementation of the right to adequate housing in Brazil, China, and Russia, which are part of the BRICS group of countries. The study reveals that while Brazil and Russia have legally recognised the right to housing through domestic law and multinational human rights treaties, China has been less willing to do so. Even when international instruments have been implemented, they have not always successfully ensured state accountability for housing rights violations, and few cases have been brought under individual complaint procedures. This study highlights common housing issues faced by each jurisdiction in the practical implementation of the right to housing, which are similar to those encountered by other countries but are often more severe due to the economic, political, and historical circumstances of the countries under review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper profiles the ten-household settlement of Yangma, a yak-herding community in Taplejung District at the Nepal/China border, under the dual crises of Covid-19 and climate change. As livelihoods here depend entirely upon cross-border livestock trade with China, pandemic mobility restrictions have severed the village's sole income stream. Consequently, Yangma's yak herders have become holders of 'stranded assets': resources that lose value before their anticipated useful life due to market forces or legislation changes. During Covid-19, hundreds of livestock (worth $900 each) have become stranded in Yangma, remaining illiquid despite their significant monetary value. Herd sizes have increased with every breeding season, deepening pressure on limited pasture and fodder resources. Climate change has also caused declines in land and water quality, linked to repeated crop failures, and the further weakening of livestock. The community is poised to sell their herds and migrate once the border reopens. However, if new livestock trade restrictions follow in China's effort to control zoonotic diseases, herders might be prevented from liquidating their assets after borders reopen, becoming 'stranded' in Yangma themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a collaboration between two anthropologists specialising in China and Siberia, an Evenki reindeer herder and co-researcher from Russia and Evenki reindeer herders from China, as well as on fieldwork data gathered separately from the 1990s and collectively in 2014, this paper examines the cross-views of the Evenki from both sides of the Sino-Russian border. Using what we call a 'cross-view methodology', we explore what emerged when this transborder people gather for the first in China after decades of separation. After our methodology, we present the Chinese and Russian Evenki's recent ethnohistory, their specificities, and common features. We then analyse the intellectuals' meetings of the 2000s and the reindeer herders' mutual interests. We explore some cross-views allowed by the pan-Evenki encounters we organised in 2014: the role of Evenki language, human-nature relationships, hunting and reindeer herding, identities, and a real or symbolic 'porosity' of a border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 20 years of economic reforms, China has embraced an explicit policy of urbanisation. In the literature, space and place-making are often perceived as distinct or conflicting dimensions of urban change, whereby the former is severed from or dominates the latter. By focusing on the multi-ethnic south-western frontier of Yunnan, this paper explores the effects of recent urbanisation on Tai ethnic minority communities in the expanding border city of Jinghong. It suggests that we need to conceptualise urbanisation in dialectic terms rather than as a dichotomy. Drawing on Massey (2005), it analyses space through the prism of 'multiplicity', 'interrelation', and 'openness' and place through its interconnection with the broader power geometries of space. Specifically, the paper argues that urbanisation can produce a two-way dynamic whereby space co-opts place and place permeates space through consensus, in the guise of 'ethnic modernity'. The resulting 'sauté urbanisation' captures these mutually informing practices of space construction and place-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports part of a study of a 3-year large project on international schools in China, where the landscape of international education has been recently transformed. The COVID-19 pandemic, together with the policy context in China, reshaped international schools. The three-year project investigates the challenges as well as opportunities that the international schools in China are confronted with in the post pandemic era and how the successful principals enacted their leadership practices in the contextually diverse international schools, by employing a mixed-methods design. This paper only demonstrates the initial results from the interview data with twelve participants, which aims at exploring the nuanced profile that international schools in China had. Implications and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational education has attained increasing significance at the K-12 school level. This trend is seen in China with the recent expansion of offshore branch campuses that are exported from major Anglophone countries, most notably the UK. In recent years, many British private schools have set up franchised branches in China's international school market. This paper investigates how these franchised schools manage to forge a distinctive institutional identity in China, using document analysis of 28 British school brands and case studies of two schools. Informed by the theories of the experience economy and commodity-sign, this paper explores how a "British school experience" is created through the reproduction of particular cultural objects and rituals, and is transformed into a new form of commodity prized for its sign value. I argue that this phenomenon represents an advanced stage of commodification in international schooling. This paper also discusses the internal contradictions between cultural commodification and education, as well as the external challenges that have emerged as the schools confront a changing policy context in China's private education sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When using maps to study China's historical concept of itself, we find that the research can be divided into two schools: the "Map of the Traces of Yu" (Yu ji tu 禹跡圖) system and the "Unification Map" (yitong tu 一統圖) system. There are also two major classifications for the type of map used: the "China Proper" type and the type that includes the outlying areas. These competing concepts of what constitutes China reflect the different modes of life that have existed alongside each other throughout China's long history, namely the agrarian and the nomadic lifestyles. The relationship between these two economic modes has alternated between peaceful and hostile and this tumultuous relationship has influenced who are considered "real" Chinese and who are the outsiders. This paper explores the evolution of what is considered China's territory and what is not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts "Great Unification" (Dayitong 大一統), "China" (Zhongguo 中國), and "all-under-Heaven" (Tianxia 天下) are all research topics which continue to attract the focus of the Chinese historical community. The three concepts are both related and different. This paper conducts a preliminary comparative analysis of the content of the three concepts and the role that they play in specific historical studies. It finds that the concept "China" emphasizes the origin of Huaxia 華夏 civilization and its significance as a center for expansion and Sinicization of surrounding ethnic groups. The concept "all-under-Heaven," meanwhile, places more stress on the overall political governance relationship between the center and the periphery. Finally, the concept "Great Unification" focuses on the process by which a dynasty establishes its legitimacy in terms of both ideology and practice. Only by examining the three concepts together can we fully grasp the overall direction and characteristics of Chinese history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the vexed relationship of doctrine, or teaching (C. jiao /K. kyo /J. kyō 教) in the three kindred traditions subsumed under the rubric of the Sino-East Asian graph 禪 , known through their distinctive pronunciations in modern languages as Chan, Sŏn, and Zen. While the stipulation of these traditions as 'a special/separate transmission outside the teachings'; (jiaowai biechuan 教外別傳) presumes independence from Mahayana doctrinal teachings, the reality, as we know, was much more complicated. In this paper, I use Yongming Yanshou 永明延壽 (904–975/6), one of the most prominent Chan figures to promote doctrinal engagement, as a barometer to look at how doctrinal engagements and disengagements are regarded throughout each tradition. Perspectives on Yanshou, a figure at once revered and marginalized, unlock key features of each of these three interconnected traditions, what they share and how they disagree. Fundamentally, perspectives on doctrinal engagements and disengagements are rooted in seminal Chan disputes over the nature and value of Buddhist teaching, and Yanshou is a conduit for these disputes. Given the theme of the conference, 'How Zen Became Chan'; I also look at the discrepancies these disputes reveal between modern Rinzai Zen orthodoxy's defining of Zen in the modern world and the practice of Chan in China and Sŏn in Korea. The options that these discrepancies reveal are indicative of the relevance of doctrinal entanglements and disentanglements to the contemporary Chan, Sŏn, and Zen worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Built in 2009, Kunlun Station, China's third Antarctic research station, is located in the Dome A region. In 2013, during the 36th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM), China proposed the establishment of a new Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA) within Dome A and prepared a draft management plan for it. Yet, several ATCM members questioned China's motives for designating Dome A as a new ASMA, and, as a result, no consensus could be reached. Surprisingly however, the Chinese ASMA proposal spurred a new impulse to introduce guidelines for the designation of ASMAs. This paper explores the legal implications of China's proposal for an ASMA at Kunlun Station in Dome A and, in particular, focuses on the new legal developments that followed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential economic benefits the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project under Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) may bring to Kenya. This will contribute to the ongoing debate on whether Chinese investments on BRI infrastructure projects in Africa are mutually beneficial or not. The key issues discussed include the economic benefits of SGR in Kenya, the economic risks or challenges of SGR given the emergent issues of debt burden in Kenya and how China and Kenya would engage in the future to deepen Sino-Africa relations in BRI projects especially transport infrastructure. The paper relies on secondary information from available published literature on railway transport infrastructure in Africa with specific reference to SGR in Kenya. Information from key informants drawn from the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and the United States University based in Nairobi was used to enrich literature review. The main findings of the paper are: (1) SGR will lead to socio-economic development of the country (2) it will contribute revenue to the Government through the railway development levy levied on containerized transportation from the port of Mombasa, and (3) will boost trade and regional integration through better rail connectivity. To make BRI projects more transparent, it is recommended that there is need for more stakeholder engagement in these projects. It is also recommended that the funding mechanism should be reviewed to make borrowing more affordable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]