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Based on a project on Chinese Malaysians' educational mobility across the Chinese-speaking world, this paper highlights their reasons for attending university in Taiwan while examining their subjective formations as ethnic Chinese vis-à-vis transnational processes. Resulting from ethnographic and interview-based research conducted in 2019–2021, the findings demonstrate that the students' choices for higher education are, to a great extent, culturally driven and historically contingent. Thus they provide an alternative view to the dominant paradigm of international student mobility that emphasises economic and future career incentives. By focusing on three factors—state racism, historical connections, and Sinophone cultural consumption—that motivated them to leave Malaysia and go to Taiwan, this paper moreover draws attention to the transnational infrastructures (e.g. policy, media, interpersonal networks) that have continually reproduced and transformed a long-existing migration pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is Taiwan's overseas community, and how does it connect with Taiwan's diplomacy? The ad hoc organization representing migrants from Taiwall, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, evolved from the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission (OCAC) of the Republic of China (ROC), established in 1926. The jargon overseas Chinese is the English translation of the Chinese term huaqiao. The latter refers to migrants from China and their descendants who consider themselves sojourners from China, but not all ethnic Chinese residing abroad would accept the huaqiao identity. The ideas concerning huaqiao and Taiwan's diplomacy constitute the theme of this paper. It adapts Joseph Nye's thesis of soft power (cultural diplomacy) and Jacques deLisle's concept of sharp power (political warfare) to interpret the two views on the articulation between Taiwan and migrants from China. It points out the Chinese nationalist embeddedness of the huaqiao concept and the ways in which nationalists drew reference from the history of Chinese migration to Taiwan in the seventeenth century to construct the huaqiao discourses. It also traces the institutional foundation of the Kuomintang's (KMT) huaqiao policies transplanted to Taiwan after 1949. The debate over Taiwan's overseas community policies reflected the twofold question: the competition between Taiwan's cultural diplomacy and the People's Republic of China's political warfare over overseas Chinese mobilization and the construction of Taiwan's national identity after democratization. In conclusion, I highlight the importance of de-nationalizing the huaqiao ideas to ensure a democratic approach for Taiwan to connect with its migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between China and Taiwan today is at the level of its greatest intensity since the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis. Chinese military actions against Taiwan are considered to be the greatest threats from the Taiwanese perspective. As Taiwan sees its air force as a key component of its overall military power, a study on ways Taiwan constructs its airpower based on strategic concepts seems extremely timely, serving as a potential reference point for various future conflict scenarios. Against this backdrop, this paper poses two research questions: 1) what are Taiwan's military strategy and relevant strategic concepts against Chinese military threats? 2) what are the concepts and directions behind utilizing and constructing its airpower to achieve its strategic concepts? This paper finds that Taiwan is currently constructing its airpower to achieve its military objectives with a defensive strategic concept. Understanding and examining Taiwan's security environment and military strategy with strategic concepts put forth by the Taiwanese Air Force could serve as a valuable resource for countries with similar military assets and security environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Education Research (1680-6360) is the property of Angle Publishing Co., Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While most ethnic Chinese in northern Thailand are Thai citizens now, their everyday lives are a site where we can witness the political power entanglement of China, Taiwan and Thailand. With this in mind, this paper aims to look into the relationship between global China and overseas Chinese from the perspective of the ethnic Chinese in the northern borderlands of Thailand. The purpose is not just to disclose the multiplicity of global China in people's everyday lives, but also to complicate the picture of overseas Chinese as portrayed in top-down grand narratives about global China. I argue that the ongoing re-Sinicization in South-East Asia and the territorial geopolitics among China, Taiwan and Thailand have opened a conceptual space for the ethnic Chinese in northern Thailand to flexibly articulate themselves within the changing geopolitical economy. I use tea production and related Chinese-language education programmes, two separate but intertwined cases, to address these issues. By looking beyond the competition, conflict and dilemmas between China and Taiwan, I argue that Taiwan's previous engagement with agricultural transfer to Thailand and the rooting of pro-Taiwan identity and discourse in language education have paradoxically paved a way for China to stretch its influence into the everyday lives of the Chinese communities in the northern Thai borderlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan) have taken divergent paths in the area of human rights. Since the two leaders Xi Jinping and Tsai Ing-wen came to power, the differences in the area of human rights have further increased. The paper analyses and compares their external human rights strategies based on realist assumptions and the soft and hard power resources of the PRC and the ROC. The PRC's objectives are to deflect international criticism of its human rights situation and to weaken the global human rights system and its underlying human rights norms. Taiwan's objective is to use its record as a human rights leader in Asia to expand its limited international space and to strengthen its ties with other consolidated democracies and the global civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a multi-sited physical and virtual ethnography of Chinese migrant women's entrepreneurship in Taiwan, this paper illuminates the role of digital migrant entrepreneurship in the making of globalisation. In the digital age of gendered migrant entrepreneurship, it challenges the long-lasting dichotomy between 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' globalisation and contributes to the theoretical debate about migrant transnational entrepreneurship, elucidating how capitalism and globalisation can take multiple forms. Drawing on Chinese women's migratory biographies and the commercial geographies of the objects they trade between China and Taiwan, it shows how our global economic system is simultaneously forged by supply-chain capitalism and migrants' digitalised petit capitalistic practices. Chinese migrant workers firstly manufacture goods whilst working for multinational companies in China, then, after marriage-migration, they commercialise the products in Taiwan via WeChat. Findings illustrate the link between ICTs, migrant entrepreneurship, gendered social networks, and border transgressions in shaping a mutable globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical review of the study of masculinity among overseas Chinese. Rather than turning to Confucianism which has been deployed as the "deep structure" for explaining Chinese masculinity, this paper argues that attention should be directed to the Chinese kinship ideology, which will prove to be a more helpful tool in conceptualizing Chinese masculinity. Through ethnographic cases in Taiwan and Hong Kong, I will show how Chinese masculinity has derived from the Chinese kinship system, on the one hand, and how men in Taiwan and Hong Kong ended up expressing Chinese masculinity differently because of the different geopolitics on the other. This paper concludes that the nature and character of Chinese masculinity overseas, after all, hinges upon another two contexts: geopolitics and its relationship with femininity. It follows that Chinese masculinity cannot be studied in isolation but must be considered in relation to contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how Si-shu, a traditional form of local, private education grounded in classical instruction, responded to the rapid modernization of education during the late Qing dynasty and early Republic of China and to explain why these schools, once extraordinarily adaptable, finally disappeared. Design/methodology/approach: The authors have examined both primary and secondary sources, including government reports, education yearbooks, professional annals, public archives, and published research to analyze the social, political and institutional changes that reshaped Si-shu in the context of China's late-19th- and early-20th-century educational modernization. Findings: Si-shu went through four stages of institutional change during the last century. First, they faced increased competition from new-style (westernized) schools during the late Qing dynasty. Second, they engaged in a process of intense self-reform, particularly after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911. Third, they were marginalized by the new educational systems of the Republic of China, especially the Renxu School System of 1922 and the Wuchen School System of 1928. Finally, after the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, they were considered remnants of feudal culture and forcibly replaced by modern schools. Originality/value: This paper brings hitherto unexplored Chinese sources to an English-speaking audience in an effort to shed new light on the history of traditional Chinese education. The fate of Si-shu was part of the larger modernization of Chinese education – a development that had both advantages and disadvantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the role of Taiwanese psychiatrists in turning neurasthenia into a culture-specific disease in the late twentieth century. It first delineates the shift in both explanatory models of psychoneuroses and patient population in post-World War II Taiwan. Neurasthenia became a focus of international attention in the 1970s and 1980s with the advance of cultural psychiatry, and, as China was closed to the outside world, Taiwanese psychiatrists were influential in framing the cultural meaning of neurasthenia. With the rise of post-socialist China, Taiwan lost its status as a key laboratory of Chinese studies. This paper argues that the history of neurasthenia during the period was closely associated with the professional development and national identity of Taiwanese psychiatrists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades, cognitive translation studies in China has been gaining momentum, which is spurred by three lines or perspectives of inquiry: psychology (especially cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics), cognitive linguistics, and translation process research (TPR). Despite the limited numbers of researchers in the first two lines, their increasing number of monographs reflects their influence. Also, while the first two lines have distinctive Chinese characteristics, TPR has been quite parallel to its Western counterpart. This paper offers a survey of Chinese researchers in the three lines, mainly including those in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. It briefly presents dissertations, publications and current lines of work. As many of the researchers publish in Chinese only, this paper provides a window for looking at the Chinese research scene in cognitive translation studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the recent features of China's economic coercion against Taiwan by offering an up‐to‐date and in‐depth analysis of China's targeted sanctions on Taishang in Tsai Ing‐wen's first term. The paper elaborates on China's specific reasons and means for imposing informal targeted sanctions, as well as their newly observed features in comparison with the past. Heavy dependence on the Chinese economy by certain enterprises of the island has made them vulnerable to sanction targeting. Compared to the past, nationalist boycotts by Chinese consumers and online activities have had a greater influence as part of China's informal targeted sanctions. Beijing's demands for supporting the "one China" policy and the "1992 Consensus" have also become more obvious. These findings suggest that the impetus for developing the cross‐Strait economic exchanges has become more susceptible to the effects of non‐economic factors. Although Beijing's sanctions on Taishang have not yet changed Taipei's policy, they cannot be said to be ineffective. Through the tactics, Beijing definitely sends clear signals of what it wants as it advances their strategy on cross‐Strait relations to the outside world. The case studies on Taiwan provide important implications for other economies as a barometer of China's increasing economic sanction practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-book markets in Taiwan and China have developed gradually in recent years. Currently, Taiwan is promoting the e-book industry. There are advanced Chinese e-book technology developments and industrial activities, but little academic literature. This paper presents and evaluates the current status and milestones of the Chinese e-book in Taiwan. Chinese e-book standards adoption, major e-book platforms, and some content providers are included. This paper describes the development of Chinese e-book standards and platforms and finds that the EPUB has not been adopted widely as the Chinese e-book standard, and an excessive number of Chinese online e-book platforms exist. Promoting the EPUB to gain extensive adoption as the Chinese e-book standard is necessary and would benefit the development of the Chinese e-book. And the public and private sectors might consider cooperating to establish one or two Chinese-language e-books content exchange centers in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Civil War split the Chinese into two politically conflicted states from 1949. The People's Republic of China and Republic of China both claimed to be the legitimate representative of China in the international community. "Chinese Taipei" has become the name of Republic of China in the international sport field and almost every international organization since 1981, after Kuomintang (The Chinese Nationalist Party) refused to play under the provincial name "Taiwan," which was suggested by the International Olympic Committee in the 1960s. However, the relationships between Taiwan and China and the nationalistic discourses have changed drastically in Taiwan in the past 40 years. "Chinese Taipei" became the compromised, shameful symbol of Republic of China. At the same time, "Taiwan" turned into the most progressive, resistant, and aspired but banned name and self-identity for many Taiwanese. In 2018, the "2020 Tokyo Olympics Taiwan Name Rectification Referendum" was launched. It requested to rectify the current "Chinese Taipei" to "Taiwan". This paper aims to build a contextualized and historical understanding of this interrelation of sport and nationalism in Taiwan via this name game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that while China now attaches geostrategic importance to Taiwan, it has not always done so. It has only accorded such significance to Taiwan in the post-Mao era. By reviewing how Taiwan became a Japanese colony, how it came under the control of Chiang Kai-shek's government, and how it came to be seen by the government of the People's Republic of China as a sacred territory before being deemed geostrategically significant, this paper seeks to demonstrate that Taiwan's importance to China is not based on geography, an immutable factor. Instead, it was the result of contingencies of history and the changed calculations of succeeding governments in China. This leads to the important conclusion that the geostrategic importance the Chinese government now attaches to Taiwan may change if the Chinese leadership alters its strategic calculus or if the government itself is replaced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a theoretical model of how perceived parental, teacher, and peer support in adolescence mediate the pathway from cybervictimisation to psychological distress and further examines how the interrelationships of cybervictimisation, perceived support, and psychological distress differ between countries and genders. A cross-societal probability sample of 1,932 middle school students was collected from Taiwan and Chinese Mainland. The results of structural equation modelling analysis showed that cybervictimisation has a significant direct association with psychological distress and stronger indirect association through parental support. Similar results were found across countries and genders. The findings imply that the perceived support in adolescence plays an important mediating role in the pathway from cybervictimisation to psychological distress. This suggests that developing or incorporating social support into an intervention on cybervictimisation could effectively prevent further psychological distress in both genders and in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the Markov regime-switching model to explore the effect of economic policy uncertainty on Mainland Chinese and Japanese tourists' room demands in Taiwanese international tourist hotels. Results show that Mainland Chinese and Japanese tourists tend to decrease their room demands in the trough period of Taiwan's international tourist hotels due to the lack of certainty and limited knowledge about economic policy. Empirical evidence indicates that the hotel business is very sensitive to economic policy uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A core issue in the interdisciplinary study of human morality is its ontogeny in diverse cultures, but systematic, naturalistic data in specific cultural contexts are rare to find. This study conducts a novel analysis of 213 children's socio-moral behavior in a historical, non-Western, rural setting, based on a unique dataset of naturalistic observations from the first field research on Han Chinese children. Using multilevel multinomial modeling, we examined a range of proactive behaviors in 0-to-12-year-old children's peer cooperation and conflict in an entire community in postwar Taiwan. We modeled the effects of age, sex, kinship, and behavioral roles, and revealed complex interactions between these four variables in shaping children's moral development. We discovered linkages between coercive and non-coercive behaviors as children strategically negotiated leadership dynamics. We identified connections between prosocial and aggressive behaviors, illuminating the nuances of morality in real life. Our analysis also revealed gendered patterns and age-related trends that deviated from cultural norms and contradicted popular assumptions about Chinese family values. These findings highlight the importance of naturalistic observations in cultural contexts for understanding how we become moral persons. This re-analysis of historically significant fieldnotes also enriches the interdisciplinary study of child development across societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of Hong Kong tourism demand for the top-three major tourist arrival countries, namely Mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan, with an error correction model. Specifically, this paper will examine the effects of relaxing the visa requirement, the launch of the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS), for Mainland Chinese tourists in 2003. Empirical results show that tourists are income-elastic and consider international tourism to be a luxury good. Tourists are more sensitive to changes in the nominal exchange rate than to changes in the foreign pricing level. The positive effect of the launch of the IVS for Mainland Chinese tourists outweighs the adverse impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) on tourism demand for Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conjectures that Chinese managers' personality in the Taiwan context, as shaped by Chinese tradition, has been moderated in response to their career experience. The paper begins with an introduction to Chinese culture and its impact on values and personality. It then goes on to argue that if the cultural context can nurture personality, we should therefore expect that as the context changes, personality can be moderated via economic reforms as in the case of Taiwan. It is reasonable to assume that among the Taiwanese, the occupational grouping that has most actively felt the impact of these reforms is managers who have been at the forefront of making them happen. We are not aware of any studies focusing on Taiwanese managers which attempt to assess how far their personality is still shaped by Confucian values which have strongly influenced Chinese traditions, and how far it has experienced changes that have come about through modernization and economic reform. We have addressed this research gap using the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI), an indigenous Chinese personality instrument developed by Cheung et al. (1996) with the support of an interview programme and a biographical data sheet to flesh out details related to the subjects' lives and experience. The findings suggest that the traditional Chinese personality with its grounding in Confucianism has been gradually eroding but that some elements of it are still strongly in evidence. The contribution of this study lies in illustrating how personality may be undergoing convergence through modernization. It also signals that cultural boundaries with reference to emic and etic research may also be converging. To the extent that this is so, future studies on culture and business management in China may need to reappraise their understanding of the nature of Chinese culture, values and personality, and how they have responded to business forces in a globalized world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changeable situation from the late 19th century to the 20th century makes the world's politics, societies and ideologies into a great change. In this epoch, a lot of new problem, new phenomenon and modern ideology appeared. The publication of periodicals, establishment of publishing houses and new writers coming out that promoted modern literature and translated literature growth. Firstly, modern fiction imitated Western model emerged in the South of Vietnamese society, written by romanization language. Secondly, Chinese classical fictions translated into romanization, then published on periodicals; at the same period, with the popularization of romanization words, French classical fictions translated too. Beside that, Chinese people in Sai Gon Cho Ló'n read many of from Hong Kong, Taiwan popular fictions, especially Qiong Yao and Louis Cha's works. These Chinese people whom translated their works into Vietnamese language, which in the first time as a new phenomenon of receiving popular Taiwan fiction in South of Vietnam. This paper, through the modern literature movement under Vietnamese society context, the interaction between Taiwan and Vietnam, the author is deeply going to discuss the phenomenon of receiving popular Taiwanese fiction in Vietnamese society from the early 20th century until nowadays, express the loving Taiwan popular fiction of Vietnamese readers so much so that as a popular craze. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Zhang Wojun (1902–1955) and the memory of his 'collaboration' with Japan during the Second World War. A Taiwanese-born writer and educator who lived in Beijing for 25 years, his drifting identity was full of ambiguities. Although he was one of the key intellectuals behind Taiwan's New-Old Literatures Debate and responsible for introducing many May Fourth ideas to Taiwan, he also played an important role in bringing Japanese literature and thought into Chinese discourse during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. During the war, he continued to teach in Beijing and travelled to Japan to attend the Greater East Asia Writers' conferences. Some of his works from this period call for the Chinese people to support the empire and eradicate Western culture and literature from Asia, but many of his writings also indicate a strong sense of Chinese nationalism. This article considers the memories of Zhang, his various intellectual contributions, and his oeuvre, arguing that his collaboration must be understood and contextualized within his intellectual landscape through a research methodology that examines continuities and change across decades of his life and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I. n mainland China, Augustine's Confessions translated by Mr. Zhou Shiliang (Commercial Press, 1963) is very popular. However, before Mr. Zhou's translation, during the late Qing and the Republic of China, there were five Chinese translations of Confessions. In this paper the author first examines the translation and publication of the five Chinese translations, their respective characteristics, and secondly examines the history of the translation of the word "Confession," the discussion of the precise meaning and translation of "confession" among some writers during the Republic of China. This article is the first systematically academic retrospection of the eastward transmission of Augustine's Confessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military dependents' village (juancun), in Mandarin Chinese, are communities built by the Nationalist Government between the 1950s and 1960s in order to accommodate soldiers and their families who had fled to Taiwan during and after the Chinese civil war. From the 1980s onwards, many literary works and films were produced to represent life in the villages. Although many of them were highly acclaimed, juancun culture was rapidly marginalised in the face of the growing socio-political trend towards Taiwanization. Stan Lai and Wang Weizhong's play Baodao yi cun ... [The Village] (2008) marked a turning point in the acceptance of juancun culture. Centring on nostalgic memories of juancun, it was well received not only in Taiwan, but also in Singapore, America, and China. It has also successfully popularised the related issues in Taiwan. In this paper, I will compare the play with some of the previous literary works and films on the villages, analysing the reasons for its popularity in terms of its comedic presentation of juancun. I argue that while the earlier works highlight the feelings of helplessness and displacement of the Chinese immigrants, in order to demonstrate the unique experience and identity of the group, the play uses a humorous tone to tackle the heavy-hearted issues of Chinese exile, ethnic tensions and the problem of identity crisis. While, to a certain extent, Baodao yi cun distorts the real situation in juancun and understates the complicated ethnic conflicts in Taiwan, it shows Lai and Wang's attempt to mediate these problems by means of laughter, and to turn the special juancun experience into a collective memory of Taiwanese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a self-paced reading experiment comparing the processing of subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) and object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) in supportive contexts in Chinese. It is argued that lack of a consistent pattern in the literature for the comparison between Chinese SRCs and ORCs is due to potential temporary ambiguity in these constructions in null contexts. By placing the materials in contexts biased towards a relative clause (RC) interpretation, we limit the effects of temporary ambiguity. The results of the experiment demonstrate that SRCs are read more slowly than ORCs in supportive contexts. These results provide evidence for working memory-based sentence processing theories whereby processing difficulty increases for connecting sentence elements that are further apart. Some convergent evidence that strengthens these conclusions comes from recent research on aphasic populations where a dissociation between English and Chinese RC processing has been revealed: whereas English aphasic patients have more difficulty with ORCs and Chinese aphasic patients have more difficulty with SRCs (Su, Lee, & Chung, 2007). Taken together, these results support the idea that sentence processing is constrained by working memory limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

tsai y-f., wong t.k.s., ku y-c. & liu w-c. (2012) Reasons for living among older male chinese residents of veterans' homes. Journal of Advanced Nursing 68(9), 1978-1987. Abstract Aim. The purpose of this paper was to report a study of reasons for living among older male residents of veterans' homes in Taiwan. Background. Suicide rates are high for older persons worldwide. Little is known about protective factors against suicide among elderly Chinese populations. Method. A qualitative descriptive design was used. Two veterans' homes, one government paid and one self-paid, were randomly selected from 18 institutions throughout Taiwan. Participants were 36 residents (≥65 years) who had expressed suicidal ideas in the past 6 months but had never shown suicidal behaviours. Data were collected in individual interviews from 2006 to 2007 and analysed by content analysis. Results. Five major themes related to reasons for living were identified: fear of death, comparative improvement in health condition, maintaining self-dignity, family related concerns and concerns for staff. Conclusion. Fear of death, maintaining self-dignity and family related concerns are similar to reasons for living found in western studies, but not comparatively better health and concerns for staff. These differences may be due to our sample being veterans' home residents rather than community-dwelling elders and residents' perceived social support from staff. Since most healthcare providers are nurses and nurses' aides, they may consider promoting/maintaining older people's health, promoting their self-dignity, and strengthening relationships with family members and staff to strengthen protective factors against suicide in older Chinese/Asians. Given the aging population worldwide, nurses should become aware of protective factors related to suicide among older people to improve care for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper induces three stylized facts about the present situation of the cross-strait relations and Taiwan's political ecology. These stylized facts may be summed up as the deterioration of the Taiwanese people's Chinese national identity. And these problems are to a great extent the result of Mainland China's totalitarianism political system and the low level of livelihood and the underdevelopment of the civil rights conditions in the Mainland as well as the improper policies of the Mainland towards Taiwan. In conclusion, Mainland China needs to reform its totalitarian political system, increase the level of livelihood and the civil rights conditions, as well as improve its policies towards Taiwan. These measures may help to optimize the policies of the Mainland China towards Taiwan and reconstruct the cross-strait imagined communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient Chinese made stone statuaries for different purposes. Be it a facsimile of a human being or an animal, the stone figure is always embedded with the hopes and fears of the Chinese people. The stone guardian figure ‘Wind Lion God’ (fengshiye) from a small isolated island between Taiwan and Mainland China named Kinmen is no exception. This lion-headed deity pervades extendedly throughout every entrance of the villages; standing guard against the monsoon wind from Northeast. On this 20×15 square kilometers island, there are approximately one hundred Wind Lion God protecting the properties and welfare of the villagers (Yang & Lin 2000, p.40). Unlike other guardian figures which have solemn or ferocious perspectives, the Wind Lion God has extreme facial expressions and overly exaggerated sexual organs. Some of them even wear capes like those superheroes from comic books. These hilarious characteristics make you wonder whether these ‘Looney Tunes’ are capable of performing their duties. In 1996, the county government of Kinmen invested millions of dollars on a Wind Lion God Sustainable Park project. The idea was to replicate all of the lion guardian statues from around the island and place them within the precinct of this particular park. This costly project also incorporated a 40 foot high Wind Lion God statue to stand directly in front of the park to act as a landmark of Kinmen. Ironically, a devastating hurricane brutally cracked this monumental ‘guardian of wind’ and damaged several statues in the theme park right before its completion. Although one might think this overwhelming event would jeopardize the faith and reverence of the Kinmenese towards this divine creature, the worship of Wind Lion God still remains and continues to be admired on this small island. Therefore, in this paper, I shall argue that the reverence of Wind Lion God is not just a wanton idolatry but an affection that entwines love and aversion contributing to the formation of this peculiar guardian angel of wind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DITRA, acronym for deficiency of interleukin‐36 receptor antagonist (IL36RN), leads to unopposed pro‐inflammatory signalling which typically manifests as pustular psoriasis. In Asian patients, c.115 + 6 T > C mutation is the most common and important single‐nucleotide variant in DITRA. We present the largest case series consisting of 58 DITRA patients carrying heterozygous or homozygous c.115 + 6 T > C mutation. The mean age of onset (±SD) was 20.74 (±20.86), and the median age of onset was 13 years old. Twelve patients (20.7%) had disease onset before the age of two. Twenty‐two patients (37.9%) had disease onset between the ages of 2–18. Main clinical phenotype was generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP) with systemic symptoms (33 patients, 56.9%), followed by acrodermatitis continua of Hallopeau (ACH) (16 patients, 27.6%). Nearly half of our patients (27 patients, 46.6%) ever had ACH, and only three of them are free of ACH currently, which indicates that the development of ACH is relatively persistent and irreversible. Thirty‐four patients (58.6%) had recurrent GPP and 29 patients (50%) have been admitted due to GPP flare. Compared to those with heterozygous (C/T) mutation, more patients carrying homozygous mutation (C/C) have recurrent episodes of GPP (C/T vs. C/C: 25.53 vs. 76.47%, p = 0.0367). Two patients with squamous cell carcinomas arising from the pustular psoriasis skin lesions were noted. Two patients had elevated serum IgG4 levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), who expelled the Dutch and established the first Han Chinese regime in Taiwan in 1662, has been "claimed" by various states as a hero wearing different hats. However, his Chinese father Zheng Zhilong's pirate and turncoat status and his Japanese mother Tagawa Matsu's unclear origin make his family's history rife with sex, violence, and betrayal. The existence of a Japanese (half-?) brother Tagawa Shichizaemon added more suspicions of the matrimony of his parents. This essay critically examines Chinese and Japanese primary sources and secondary literature to demonstrate how layer upon layer of accreted accounts twisted historical memories of the Zhengs every step of the way. One cannot but empathize with the family that lost many members to violent deaths and endured relentless prejudices in their struggle to transcend familial stigma while making history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how optimistic bias, consumption cognition, news attention, information credibility, and social trust affect the purchase intention of food consumption. Data used in this study came from a questionnaire survey conducted in college students in Taipei and Beijing. Respondents in the two cities returned 258 and 268 questionnaires, respectively. Samples were analyzed through structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the model. Results showed that Taiwanese college students did not have optimistic bias but Chinese students did. The models showed that both Taiwanese and Chinese students' consumption cognition significantly influenced their purchase intention, and news attention significantly influenced only Chinese students' purchase intention. Model comparison analysis suggested significant differences between the models for Taiwan and mainland China. The results revealed that optimistic bias can be reduced in different social contexts as that of the Taiwan model and the mainland Chinese model found in this study were indeed different. This study also confirmed that people had optimistic bias on food safety issues, based on which recommendations were made to increase public awareness of food safety as well as to improve government's certification system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a multicultural country, such as New Zealand, multicultural education has become the subject of early childhood polices and research. Increased national and international attention towards minority rights has resulted in the development and implementation of multicultural practice for realizing quality early childhood education for children and families of diverse cultural backgrounds. The study addressed in this paper set out to examine the multicultural education of early childhood settings in New Zealand from the experiences and perspectives of Chinese immigrant young children, their teachers and parents. It analyses data in the conceptualization of children as active agents, with the emphasis on the influence of their homes and the early childhood centres, giving rise to a tension between the children's needs to fit in the centres and the children's and their parents' right to inclusion and be different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city is often understood as the antithesis of Indigeneity. In Taiwan, a settler colony where the Han Chinese have colonized Austronesian Indigenous peoples, dominant understandings and representations situate Indigenous vibrancy outside large cities such as Taipei and Kaohsiung, despite the large‐scale urbanization of Indigenous peoples over the past several decades. This essay is based on long‐term ethnographic research in Taipei and explores how urbanized Indigenous people in the Taiwanese metropolis persist in claiming the city's space, land and ecology despite both cartographic and physical displacements of their presence. It maps out emerging Indigenous and decolonial urbanisms in Taiwan, discussing the work of Indigenous artists and the spatial and ecological practices of urban Indigenous community residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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China's ruling Nationalist government saw the Second World War as an opportunity to shape the postwar world in China's favour. However, existing studies have often focused on China's plans on territorial arrangements in East Asia. This article examines how Nationalist China imagined and attempted to improve the postwar status of the Chinese diaspora in host countries. During the war, Nationalist China envisaged the removal of discriminatory treatment against the Chinese diaspora and planned to advocate racial equality. However, this equality was often intended to be parity with white people and Japanese rather than other Asians. Some Chinese officials even claimed that the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia should receive preferential treatment, which resonated with their perceptions that Chinese were superior to other Asians. As atrocities against Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia after the war mounted, China was forced to concentrate on saving their lives and assets. At the Asian Relations Conference, held in India in March–April 1947, Chinese delegates defended the Chinese diaspora against sceptical delegates of Southeast Asian nations. Although the conference delegates reached an agreement on treating foreign migrants in each country fairly, the Chinese diaspora still found itself in a precarious position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, Taiwan's cross-border marriages, often involving less educated and rural men, raised concerns regarding these couples' disadvantaged position and how the wives, mostly from mainland China and Southeast Asia, fared and integrated. Using data from the surveys of female marriage migrants from outside Taiwan in 2003, 2008, and 2013, along with comparable data among recently married women in Taiwan, we compare educational assortative mating among marriages between men in Taiwan and women in Taiwan, mainland China, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong and Macau. The findings from log-linear models reveal that, over a period of 15 years, less educated Taiwanese men have become much less likely to form cross-border marriages with women from mainland China and, to a lesser degree, Southeast Asia. We argue that against the backdrop of rapid economic development in mainland China and Southeast Asia, the advantage in spatial hypergamy for less educated Taiwanese men has declined markedly. Female migrants married in recent years are more likely to marry Taiwanese men with higher levels of education than those married in earlier years. Lack of marriage prospects among less educated men in Taiwan may become another social problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attending cram school has long been a trend in ethnic Chinese culture areas, including Taiwan. Despite the fact that school reform policies have been implemented in Taiwan, cram schools have continued to prosper. Therefore, in this educational culture, how to achieve a good educational effect is also a topic worthy of discussion. However, whether students really engage in those tutoring programs provided by cram schools has seldom been studied. To address this gap, this study explored how parents' hovering attitude toward life and coursework influences their children's engagement in cram schools. This study targeted those students who attend English cram schools to test the correlates between two types of helicopter parenting, tutoring engagement and continued attendance at cram schools. A total of 320 questionnaires were sent out, and 300 were returned, giving an overall response rate of 93.75%. Excluding seven incomplete or invalid questionnaires, 293 valid questionnaires were received. The results of this study show that hovering behavior awareness is negatively related to cram school engagement, whereas cram school engagement is positively related to the intention to continue attending cram school. Moreover, the results imply that parents should alleviate their helicoptering behavior to enhance their children's engagement in cram school tutoring programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Taiwan seeks to establish itself as an independent polity in the international community, it simultaneously confronts the problem of how to integrate almost 300,000 marital immigrants from Mainland China. This most recent wave of marital immigration across the Taiwan Strait began in the early 1990s and reached its peak in 2003, stabilizing since then at roughly 10 percent of all marriages annually. Chinese marital immigrants in Taiwan face more onerous requirements for residency and citizenship than any other category of foreign spouse. In the years immediately following naturalization, moreover, they remain barred from civil service employment and have limited family reunification rights. This paper examines these post-naturalization inequalities in relation to 1) broader population concerns that encourage continued restrictions on Chinese immigration; and 2) struggles over how to define the scope of the Taiwanese family and nation. It asks whether, given this environment, Chinese marital immigrants can ever become full Taiwanese citizens, both in terms of juridical status and national incorporation. This question underscores a key tension in Taiwan's nation-building project: how to integrate immigrants who are racially, ethnically, and linguistically similar but who come tainted by longstanding political differences across the Taiwan Strait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages (Wenzao) in Kaohsiung, Taiwan has run the 36-credit General English courses for seven years. Although it has collected information about the students' language proficiency, it has not, until now, collected information about students' beliefs about language learning. This paper reports on a survey of the beliefs about English language learning (ELL) of a group of tertiary level students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at Wenzao. The survey instrument, the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) developed by Horwitz (1987), was designed to collect information about students' beliefs in the following areas: language learning aptitude, difficulty of language learning, the nature of language learning, learning and communication strategies, and motivation and expectations. Data were collected from the 38 freshmen attending one of one of Wenzao's 36-credit English program classes. The data were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), a t-test being performed in the analysis of the learners' responses. The findings reveal that survey participants overall have a strong instrumental motivation for learning English and that most of them believe that they will ultimately succeed in speaking it very well. Even so, many of them appeared to have unrealistic expectations, with as many as 37% reporting believing (or strongly believing) that it is possible to become fluent in English in less than one year if you spend one hour a day learning the language. Among the most surprising findings were the fact that as many as 34% reported believing (or strongly believing) that learning English as a foreign language is mostly a matter of translation, and as few as 39% reporting believing (or strongly believing) that learning vocabulary is essential to learning English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the analysis of the structure of text segments occurring in a range of journals, Bruce (2003) proposes four prototypes for the overall rhetorical structure and internal discourse structure of academic texts in English that focus on explanation, argument, recount and classification. This paper reports on a study involving 20 texts written in Chinese by native speakers of Chinese resident in Taiwan who were judged to be highly competent writers of Chinese. Five of these texts focused on explanation; five on argument, five on recount and five on classification. Analysis of these texts in terms of overall rhetorical structuring and internal discourse structuring suggests that texts written in Chinese by competent writers of Chinese may be closer to texts written in English by competent writers of English than is sometimes supposed, something that may have significant implications for the teaching of writing in English to native speakers of Chinese. However, the participants in this study were residents of Taiwan, a country that has had long-term academic and trading links with the USA and one in which most residents have some competence in English. It may be that a similar study involving native speakers of Chinese from other areas would yield different results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We inquire whether assessment of an individual''s upper limb function may be improved by using specific regional norms rather than consolidated global norms. Grip strengths were measured in a sample of 482 adults across Taiwan, and compared with consolidated norms. To ensure comparable conditions, our procedures were those recommended by the American Society of Hand Therapists (ASHT). Overall the mean grip strength of our sample was significantly (male 25%, female 27%) lower than consolidated norms derived from largely Caucasian populations. We investigated variables that might relate to this divergence. Results of ANOVA and stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that gender, age and palm length were effective predictors in grip strength. A regression equation was derived. When other variables were matched, palm length appeared an important discriminating factor. Further anthropometric and socio-economic factors also need investigation. Specific regional norms should provide more accuracy for ergonomists and health workers assessing an individual''s upper limb function, and may avoid errors in appraisal. This paper suggests grip strength values for Taiwan. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An all-volunteer organization called the Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS), headquartered in Taiwan, was initially designed to translate open source materials from MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) site into Chinese. Given the recent plethora of open educational resources (OER), such as the OCW, the growing use of such resources by the world community, and the emergence of online global education communities to localize resources such as the OOPS, a key goal of this research was to understand how the OOPS members negotiate meanings and form a collective identity in this cross-continent online community. To help with our explorations and analyses within the OOPS translation community, several core principles from Etienne Wenger's concept of Communities of Practice (COP) guided our analyses, including mutual engagement, joint enterprise, shared repertoire, reification, and overall identity of the community. In this paper, we detail how each of these key components was uniquely manifested within the OOPS. Three issues appeared central to the emergence, success, and challenges of the community such as OOPS: 1) strong, stable, and fairly democratic leadership; 2) participation incentives; and 3) online storytelling or opportunities to share one's translation successes, struggles, and advice within an asynchronous discussion forum. While an extremely high level of enthusiasm among the OOPS members underpinned the success of the OOPS, discussion continues on issues related to quality control, purpose and scope, and forms of legitimate participation. This study, therefore, provides an initial window into the emergence and functioning of an online global education COP in the OER movement. Future research directions related to online global educational communities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the validity of the tree model of evolution for the particular case of Sinitic languages (or Chinese dialects). Our approach is lexically based, using standardized word lists. First, these lists were tested for their congruence, as they are supposed to have evolved at different rates. Then, we undertook a phylogenetic analysis, using both a distance-based lexicostatistical method and a character-based maximum parsimony method. The traditional classification of Chinese dialects is recovered to various extents depending on the method and on the word list used, but the character-based analysis of the 200 Swadesh word list outperforms all other analyses. Finally, the validity of the branching patterns obtained was tested using a variety of techniques. Although the data fits the inferred trees well, the topology of these trees is collapsed to a star-like pattern when investigated through resampling methods. The application of a network method confirms that the development of these Sinitic languages is not tree-like, highlighting the fact that in cases like this tree-reconstruction methods can be misleading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how International Studies as a scientific discipline emerged and developed in China, against the background of a Sinocentric world order that had predominated in East Asia for a long time. The argument of this article is threefold. First, the discipline relied heavily on historical, legal, and political studies, and placed a heavy focus on the investigation of China's integration into the Westphalian system. Second, studies of International Relations were grounded in a problem-solving approach to various issues China was facing at various times in the course of modernisation. Third, the historical development of International Studies in China has had a profound impact on the current IR scholarship in both the PRC and Taiwan, including the recent surge of attempts to establish a Chinese School of IR theory in China and the voluntary acceptance of Western IR in Taiwan. By way of conclusion, the article suggests that there is still an indigenous Chinese site of agency with regards to developing IR. This agency exists despite the fact that in the course of the disciplinary institutionalisation of IR Chinese scholars have largely absorbed Western knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on consumer behavior in the sharing economy mainly focused on users' utilitarian benefits in market‐mediated exchange businesses and the social benefits of not‐for‐profit sharing practices. In particular, existing research on market‐mediated exchange indicates that the effect of personal utility outweighs altruistic and pro‐social values in consumers' sharing behavior; social utility factors, such as sustainability and benefits for the community, do not play significant roles in consumers' participation in for‐profit sharing businesses. Theoretically, this study complements previous studies on consumer behavior in the sharing economy with the social exchange theory (SET). It is important because it fills the research gap by proposing the effects of consumers' altruistic traits, interpersonal relationships, and pro‐social concerns on the commercial shared‐ride service. We conducted two empirical studies in the contexts of Uber in Taiwan and Didi in Mainland China. The results show a significant effect of altruism and social utility on consumers' sharing participation in market‐mediated exchange. Practically, this study highlights the significance of socio‐cultural contexts and psychological mechanisms to sharing‐platform operators. Efforts to promote consumers' altruism and concerns for sustainability and others' benefits will encourage the consumers' involvement. Our results also reveal the cultural differences between Taiwanese and Chinese consumers' sharing adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the genetic characteristics of idiopathic centr al precocious puberty (ICPP) and validate its polygenic risk for early puberty. Design and methods: A bootstrap subsampling and genome-wide association study were performed on Taiwanese Han Chinese girls comprising 321 ICPP patients and 148 controls. Using previous GWAS data on pubertal timing, a replication study was performed. A validation group was also in vestigated for the weighted polygenic risk score (wPRS) of the risk of early puberty. Results: A total of 105 SNPs for the risk of ICPP were identified, of whi ch 22 yielded an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.713 for the risk of early p uberty in the validation group. A replication study showed that 33 SNPs from previous GWAS data of pubertal timing were as sociated with the risk of ICPP (training group: P-value < 0.05). In the validation group, a cumulative effect was observe d between the wPRS and the risk of early puberty in a dose-dependent manner (validation group: Cochran-Armitage trend test: P-value < 1.00E-04; wPRS quartile 2 (Q2) (odds ratio (OR) = 5.00, 95% CI: 1.55-16.16), and wPRS Q3 (OR = 11.67, 95% CI: 2.44-55.83)). Conclusions: This study reveals the ICPP genetic characteristics with 22 in dependent and 33 reported SNPs in the Han Chinese population from Taiwan. This study may contribute to understand the genetic features and underlying biological pathways that control pubertal timing and pathogenes is of ICPP and also to the identification of individuals with a potential genetic risk of early puberty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wearing face masks and maintaining social distancing of 1.5m are two common preventive measures against the spread of COVID-19. However, the interaction of these preventive measures in interpersonal space (IPS) perception remains unknown. This study evaluated the effects of wearing surgical masks, sex dyads, and approaching patterns on IPS judgment. Data were collected from participants from Mainland China (n =100) and Taiwan (n =100) through an online survey. Therefore, the regional differences were also examined. A smaller IPS was observed when participants faced confederates wearing surgical masks than in the no-mask condition. Female dyads tended to maintain a smaller IPS than did both male and mixed-sex dyads, and Taiwanese participants maintained a significantly larger IPS than did Mainland Chinese participants. No significant difference was observed between the active and passive pattern. Moreover, the interaction between region and mask had a significant influence on IPS perception. Among all test combinations, only the IPS perceived by Taiwanese participants facing confederates without surgical masks exceeded 1.5m. This study revealed that the wearing of surgical masks for health protection during the pandemic influences IPS perception in different regions. The current findings may provide useful information for social interaction and environmental design during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]