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As the first ethnographic account of Foxconn in Zhengzhou—the world's largest iPhone manufacturing base—this paper argues that a new labor regime features 'hegemonic precarity' has arisen since capital's move to inland China. Despite being offered formal contracts with long-term benefits, inland Foxconn workers choose a more precarious employment status. I argue that this surprising pattern is a result of the interaction between dynamics at the point of production and that of social reproduction. Through the mechanism of 'hoarding of time', Foxconn's management pays relatively high wages to a minority of workers while keeping the majority's wages minimal. Meanwhile, changing dynamics in the realm of social reproduction makes Foxconn workers, especially women with children, constantly struggle between work and the family. Working together, these factors have led to extremely high turnover rates, bleak prospects for labor solidarity, and the rise of 'gig manufacturing' in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the intersection of gender, sexuality and class in shaping the ways in which 'leftover' women navigate legal and social discrimination. 'Leftover women' is a stigmatising term in China that refers to women who do not get married by the time they reach their late twenties. Based on my fieldwork in China with queer and heterosexual 'leftover' women, I introduce two strategies of stigma management: 'buying a licence to be deviant' and 'identity-hopping'. The former is a strategy adopted by heterosexual women with financial resources and a desire frequently expressed by queer women. 'Buying a licence to be deviant' refers to the strategy of accumulating sufficient financial resources to justify one's choice to be deviant and deal with the legal consequences of the evasion of the population policies. 'Identity-hopping' is popular among those with a lower social and financial status, who use the law's labelling function to hop from one stigmatised identity to another as a way to deal with stigma. From an intersectional lens, this paper advances law and society's study of stigma and discrimination by emphasising the hierarchy of stigmatised identities and the strategy of using the law's power of labelling identities to hop from one identity to another. It also demonstrates how the intersection of gender, sexuality and class complicates the ways in which leftover women understand and engage with the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of developments in inclusive education have seen the waning of deficit discourse towards children with special needs, but exclusion has not yet left the scene. In response to this persistent problem, the Special Issue 'Destroying the Trojan Horse of "lazy inclusivism"' collects the wit of Chinese children, parents, and educators to promote inclusion. In this concluding paper, I engage with some sociological analyses of exclusion and inclusion followed by some sociological rethinkings of the notions of agency and resilience. My intention here is not to portray a panorama of the Special Issue or provide a summary of the knowledge built and lessons learnt throughout the articles included in the Special Issue. As these articles are empirically complex and contextually rich, it would be presumptuous to reduce those profound ideas to this concluding article. The concluding article therefore aims to question the perennial, conservative reproduction of structural problems that have long perturbed inclusive education; propose some sociological reworkings to force structural problems to retreat; and spark some debates and critiques among sociologists of education and colleagues of inclusive education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operational indices optimization is crucial for the global optimization in beneficiation processes. This paper presents a multitasking multiobjective evolutionary method to solve operational indices optimization, which involves a formulated multiobjective multifactorial operational indices optimization (MO-MFO) problem and the proposed multiobjective MFO algorithm for solving the established MO-MFO problem. The MO-MFO problem includes multiple level of accurate models of operational indices optimization, which are generated on the basis of a data set collected from production. Among the formulated models, the most accurate one is considered to be the original functions of the solved problem, while the remained models are the helper tasks to accelerate the optimization of the most accurate model. For the MFO algorithm, the assistant models are alternatively in multitasking environment with the accurate model to transfer their knowledge to the accurate model during optimization in order to enhance the convergence of the accurate model. Meanwhile, the recently proposed two-stage assortative mating strategy for a multiobjective MFO algorithm is applied to transfer knowledge among multitasking tasks. The proposed multitasking framework for operational indices optimization has conducted on 10 different production conditions of beneficiation. Simulation results demonstrate its effectiveness in addressing the operational indices optimization of beneficiation problem. Note to Practitioners—Operational indices optimization is a typical approach to achieve global production optimization by efficiently coordinating all the indices to improve the production indices. In this paper, a multiobjective multitasking framework is developed to address the operational indices optimization, which includes a multitasking multiobjective operational indices optimization problem formulation and a multitasking multiobjective evolutionary optimization to solve the above-formulated optimization problem. The proposed approach can achieve a solution set for the decision-making. The simulation results on a real beneficiation process in China with 10 operational conditions show that the proposed approach is able to obtain a superior solution set, which is associated with a higher grade and yield of the product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we aim to establish a mathematical model to design a maximizing social welfare intervention mechanism of healthcare service goods in China. The intervention mechanism is helpful to facilitate the adoption of the healthcare service goods. We consider a research problem that regulates the supply chain system for healthcare service goods by an intervention mechanism, and two intervention strategies composed of demand-growth strategy and subsidy strategy are used to the combination of intervention mechanism. Then this paper presents a new method based on fuzzy set and bilevel programming to design the intervention mechanism. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, we conduct a case study for Wudang personalized health package and verify our model by the specific result analysis, the result indicates that our joint intervention mechanism is helpful to achieve the target and increase social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) universities are important bases for science and technology research and play a critical role in China’s National Innovation System. Based on the Web of Science (WoS), this article analyzes the statistics of paper published by MIIT universities and universities from across China including MIIT universities. The results are as follows: (1) Both the MIIT universities and universities nationwide in China have increased their international academic publications, and MIIT have shown a greater increase for the past decade. (2) In terms of U-I-G interaction, for UG relations, the Tug value of MIIT universities has remained stable, while that of universities in China has become declined. For UI relations, the Tui value of both MIIT universities and universities in China has shown steady growth. For UIG relations, MIIT universities have a greater synergistic effect of Triple Helix relationship than universities in China. (3) For more details in seven MIIT universities, universities elected into “Project 985”, including HIT, BUAA, BIT and NPU, have published more papers, and been more synergistic with government and industry (UIG relations) than other three universities, including NUAA, NUST and HEU. Based on the empirical results, we discuss our findings, and make certain suggestions regarding policy incentives, reasonable administrative system and U-I-G interaction mode, which is significant not only for Chinese universities but also for universities in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology as a dominant discipline usually assesses the two groups of countries in various terms. The industrial world (The North) is widely different from the countries of developing world (The South) including their demographic trends. The North world countries that experienced socio-cultural change earlier, their demographic norms and values have changed too in that, women have started giving birth to fewer children, followed by less maternal mortality and longer life expectancy for them. In African countries where women give birth to 7-8 children, they usually remain at very high risk. Sociology as a comprehensive social science investigates the causeand- effect of high and low fertility rate within women. Quality of children in the South world countries among other factors remain poor from nutritional and educational viewpoints. One of the risks of high pregnancy and child birth is associated with deaths of mothers. Babies of such mothers are at the risk of low birth weight and often preterm birth. Average age of the first birth between 26 and 29 years, overall, provides better opportunities and quality of life to the newborns. While Africa is a great threat, as far as high birth rate is concerned, Asian (especially East Asian) countries are improving well, and currently have a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.5 children in their life time by an average woman. China also took a revolutionary step since 1979 to modify its population patterns. Method of research used in the present paper is of qualitative type, using documents to complete the manuscript. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to optimize a desirable fare structure for the public transit service along a bus-subway corridor with the consideration of those factors related to equity in trip, including travel distance and comfort level. The travel distance factor is represented by the distance-based fare strategy, which is an existing differential strategy. The comfort level one is considered in the area-based fare strategy which is a new differential strategy defined in this paper. Both factors are referred to by the combined fare strategy which is composed of distance-based and area-based fare strategies. The flat fare strategy is applied to determine a reference level of social welfare and obtain the general passenger flow along transit lines, which is used to divide areas or zones along the corridor. This problem is formulated as a bi-level program, of which the upper level maximizes the social welfare and the lower level capturing traveler choice behavior is a variable-demand stochastic user equilibrium assignment model. A genetic algorithm is applied to solve the bi-level program while the method of successive averages is adopted to solve the lower-level model. A series of numerical experiments are carried out to illustrate the performance of the models and solution methods. Numerical results indicate that all three differential fare strategies play a better role in enhancing the social welfare than the flat fare strategy and that the fare structure under the combined fare strategy generates the highest social welfare and the largest resulting passenger demand, which implies that the more equity factors a differential fare strategy involves the more desirable fare structure the strategy has. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hypochondriac symptoms are commonly reported in health science students. With their incomplete medical knowledge, they may compare their own bodily symptoms with disease symptoms during the process of learning, which can lead to mental distress and the need for repeated medical reassurance. Objective: To estimate the prevalence of hypochondriac symptoms in Chinese health science students. Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted on PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, China Biology Medicine disc, and Wanfang Data on July 1, 2018. Additionally, the references of the retrieved papers were searched. Cross-sectional studies published in either English or Chinese that reported the prevalence of hypochondriac symptoms in health science students were included. The selection process was executed based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis, and study quality was assessed with the checklist recommended by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for cross-sectional studies. A random-effects model according to the DerSimonian-Laird method was used to calculate the pooled prevalence. Results: Seven cross-sectional studies involving 6,217 Chinese health science students were included. The pooled prevalence of hypochondriac symptoms among health science students was 28.0% (95% CI = 19.0%–38.0%). The symptoms were a little more common in females (30.0%, 95% CI = 19.0%–42.0%) than in males (29.0%, 95% CI = 16.0%–42.0%), but the difference was not significant. No significant differences were found between participants grouped by study year. Only three studies explored the coping styles of students with hypochondriasis, and these revealed a high tendency toward help-seeking behaviors. Conclusion: Our systematic review and meta-analysis showed a high prevalence of hypochondriac symptoms among health science students, indicating that it is a noteworthy phenomenon. We suggest that counseling and other support services are necessary for health science students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a meta-literature review, this paper examines the changing contours of Chinese sociology of homosexuality in contemporary China. It unfolds the different theoretical orientations and methodologies that construct the modern male homosexual subject under major socio-economic and political changes. Chinese sociology of homosexuality started in the reform era and has been dominated by Western knowledge production and the political ideology of the communist party-state. Fused with the bio-medical model and the state's modernization project in the 1980s-1990s, the sociological study adopted a functionalist and positivistic approach with survey-based methodology in the main which focused on the etiology of homosexuality. A new transnational knowledge production of sociology of homosexuality has formed since the 2000s which has shifted towards a constructivist/ post-structuralist approach and reflexive qualitative methodology. The new sociological study examines the rise of male (as well as female) homosexual identity in China, questions the hetero/homosexual binary and discusses how an individual makes sense of homosexual identity to form same-sex intimate relationships. By tracing the epistemology of homosexuality in contemporary China, this paper rethinks the dominance of the Western construction and the role of the state in shaping the knowledge of homosexuality and proposes alternative spaces for theorizing Chinese sexual identities, desires and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the development and baseline data of a vignettes-based measure of gender equality. Methods: Vignettes were developed through 3-day long focus groups. After piloting in 13 sites and repiloting a revised version in 6 countries, responses were categorized by the construct tapped and a scoring system developed. Finalized vignettes were then tested in DR Congo, Ecuador and China. Results: Young adolescents can successfully respond to vignettes; and can differentiate self from hypothetical protagonists of same and opposite sex. Response differences by sex of respondent and protagonist were statistically significant across a range of scenarios and settings. Conclusion: This is the first vignettes-based measure for young adolescents assessing young adolescent perceptions of relationships differentiated by sex of the protagonist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have investigated the distribution of sexual orientation among Chinese university students and identified the socio-demographic factors associated with sexual orientation. For the present study, we administered a paper-based, 5-point, self-report, sexual orientation scale to a stratified, random sample of 9071 undergraduates across all 10 universities in Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center, Guangzhou, China. Multivariable ordinal regression analysis was used to explore the relationship between demographic factors and sexual orientation. A total of 8320 respondents completed the survey. Of 8182 valid respondents, 80.6% self-reported as exclusively heterosexual, 12.6% self-reported as mostly heterosexual, 5.4% self-reported as bisexual, 0.7% self-reported as mostly homosexual, and 0.8% self-reported as exclusively homosexual. About one fifth of male students and one fourth of female students reported some degree of divergence from exclusive heterosexuality. This indicates that in China there are a large number of university students who are potentially involved in same-sex sexual attraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accidents, bad weathers, traffic congestions, etc. led to the uncertainties of travel times in real-life road networks, which greatly affected the quality of individual’s life and the reliability of transportation system. This paper addressed the school bus routing problem in such a stochastic and time-dependent road environment. Firstly, the problem was set based on a single-school configuration, and the students were picked up at their homes, which was in line with the current situation of school bus systems in China. Thus, it could be regarded as an independent problem of school bus route generation in random dynamic networks, which could be solved as a variant of extended Vehicle Routing Problem. However, due to the fluctuation and uncertainty of link travel times, the arrival time at each stop including the destination was varying. Therefore, the selection of optimal path connecting the current service node with the next one was treated as a sub-problem in this study, where the reliability of travel times in the stochastic and time-varying network was highly concerned by such time-rigid commuters. To this end, a Robust Optimal Schedule Times model with a hard time windows constraint was built to generate a most cost-reliable route for school buses. By the use of Robust Optimization method, it was intended to minimize the worst-case total cost which combined the cost of earlier schedule delays with the disutility of travel times. It was also proved that the proposed model could be converted into solving a conventional problem in deterministic dynamic networks for a reduction of computation complexity, which provided the potential of applying to the practical problems. Finally, the validity of the proposed model and its performance evaluation was analyzed through a small-scale computational instance, where all the link travel times in the simulated network were attributed to both time-varying and stochastic. Then, a mathematical programming solver was used to find the exact optimal solution. The results indicated that the model was valid, and the necessity of considering the stochastic and time-dependent nature of transportation networks was also confirmed in the case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting and analyzing behaviors of investors is of great value to financial institutions. This paper uses survey data from about 9,000 individual investors across China to explore the predictability of decision behaviors by studying demographic characteristics that are relatively easy to obtain. After applying Pearson’s chi-squared test, Spearman rank correlation test, and several data mining methods, we verified that demographic characteristics are closely linked to decision behaviors, and it would be an economical and feasible solution for financial organizations to build initial behavioral prediction models especially when investors’ behavioral data are insufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the interplay between social structure of accumulation theory and labor process theory, this paper is to specify the particular mechanism that labor institutions take in accomplishing China’s rapid capital accumulation in the reform era. The paper starts by proposing a framework to understand the relation among overtime work, labor process, and the wage gap and presents the puzzling contradiction between low wages and the need to sustain the reproduction of labor power for Chinese workers. The paper then details the bi-directional determination between the subordination of labor in the workplace and the wage gap, and further analyzes the critical conditions for the stability of the current labor institutions and sustaining capital accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While numerous papers have illuminated the worthiness of research collaboration, relatively few have addressed its prerequisites. In our study, seven prerequisites for research collaboration were extracted from the existing literature, and 460 student researchers were surveyed for their perceptions of the prerequisites’ importance. Focusing on voluntary research collaborations rather than brokered ones, it was found that socially oriented prerequisites such as reciprocal interactions, accountability, trust, and equality are perceived of more importance than prerequisites of psychical proximity, networking channels, and funds and material supplies (substance- and entity-related prerequisites). With latent regression analyses, we also found that Chinese and older, more experienced researchers are inclined to stress the importance of equality. Researchers of different cohorts prioritise substance- and entity-related prerequisites disparately. Specifically, Chinese researchers emphasise the necessity of funds, while researchers from first-tier universities place more value on networking channels. Disciplinary differences for the prerequisite of proximity were also discovered. Based on these results, discussion and implications were referred. Further suggestions on research collaboration studies are rendered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hearing loss is the most common sensory impairment, but limited studies focused on the association of socioeconomic status (SES) with hearing loss among adults of working age. This paper aimed to fill this gap among Chinese adults. We obtained data from Ear and Hearing Disorder Survey conducted in four provinces of China in 2014–2015. The survey was based on WHO Ear and Hearing Disorders Survey Protocol and 25,860 adults aged 25 to 59 years were selected in this study. Trained local examiners performed pure tone audiometry to screen people with hearing loss, and those who were screened positively for hearing loss were referred to audiologists to make final diagnosis. SES was measured by occupation, education and income. Results show after adjusting for SES measures and covariates, in urban areas, compared with white-collar workers, blue-collar workers and the unemployed were more likely to have hearing loss, with an odds ratio of 1.2 (95%CI: 1.0, 1.3) and 1.2 (95%CI: 1.0, 1.4), respectively. Compared with people with education of senior high school or above, those with junior high school, primary school and illiteracy had 1.6 (95%CI: 1.4, 1.8), 2.1(95%CI: 1.7, 2.5) and 2.6 (95%CI: 1.9, 3.7) times as likely to have hearing loss, respectively. In rural areas, the unemployed had 1.5 (95%CI: 1.0, 2.3) times the risk of hearing loss compared with white-collar workers, and illiterates had 1.6 (95%CI: 1.6, 2.1) times the risk of hearing loss compared with people with education of senior high school or above, after SES variables and covariates were taken into considerations. Income was not significantly associated with hearing loss in urban and rural areas. In conclusion, SES, in the form of occupation and education, was associated with hearing loss among working-aged population, and further studies are needed to explore the mechanism of such association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, food safety problems have occurred frequently in the past ten years, causing great concern for the public. Adolescents, with higher exposure to problematic food, represent a unique target for interventions aimed at risk reduction. To understand their food safety knowledge, attitude and practice, a cross-sectional survey using paper questionnaire was carried out among 4,220 students (median age of 14 years, 50.3% females) from nine secondary schools in 3 districts of Beijing. The findings showed that the majority of respondents (42.0%) had a high knowledge level. Significant association was found between food safety knowledge score (median = 11, IQR:9–13) and demographic characteristics of region, school type, residence type, habit of smoking and alcohol use, academic record and parents’ education background. In terms of attitude and practice, only 17% of those surveyed regarded China’s food safety situation as good, 53.6% regarded it as worrying; almost all students (96.5%) did pay attention to food safety; 95.3% of the students had worried about the safety of the food provided by the small restaurants and street peddlers, but in reality, as many as 69.4% often or occasionally bought food from peddlers around their campuses and nearly half continued the consumption of such food in spite of worrying about its safety problems. Overall, the food safety knowledge among Beijing secondary school students was relatively good. They did not show much confidence in the country’s food safety situation, but many aware of the safety issues did not bother to change or take action. The study suggests that more systematic and targeted education on food safety is necessary for this age group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aimed to investigate the role of parental education in child disability in China. We used nationally representative data from China’s National Sample Survey on Disability, iterated twice, in 1987 and 2006, with data of 764,718 children aged 0–14 years. Logit models were used for statistical analysis. Results showed that the prevalence of child disability was significantly associated with each parent’s education. Maternal education was more important than paternal education in child disability in both surveys. The analysis of marginal effect indicated a one-year increase in maternal and paternal schooling led to an average decrease of 0.121% and 0.091% in the probability of child disability in 1987, and 19 years later, these figures had dwindled to 0.091% and 0.072%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Understanding the past-year prevalence of male-perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV) and risk factors is essential for building evidence-based prevention and monitoring progress to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.2, but so far, population-based research on this remains very limited. The objective of this study is to compare the population prevalence rates of past-year male-perpetrated IPV and nonpartner rape from women's and men's reports across 4 countries in Asia and the Pacific. A further objective is to describe the risk factors associated with women's experience of past-year physical or sexual IPV from women's reports and factors driving women's past-year experience of partner violence.Methods and Findings: This paper presents findings from the United Nations Multi-country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific. In the course of this study, in population-based cross-sectional surveys, 5,206 men and 3,106 women aged 18-49 years were interviewed from 4 countries: Cambodia, China, Papua New Guinea (PNG), and Sri Lanka. To measure risk factors, we use logistic regression and structural equation modelling to show pathways and mediators. The analysis was not based on a written plan, and following a reviewer's comments, some material was moved to supplementary files and the regression was performed without variable elimination. Men reported more lifetime perpetration of IPV (physical or sexual IPV range 32.5%-80%) than women did experience (physical or sexual IPV range 27.5%-67.4%), but women's reports of past-year experience (physical or sexual IPV range 8.2%-32.1%) were not very clearly different from men's (physical or sexual IPV range 10.1%-34.0%). Women reported much more emotional/economic abuse (past-year ranges 1.4%-5.7% for men and 4.1%-27.7% for women). Reports of nonpartner rape were similar for men (range 0.8%-1.9% in the past year) and women (range 0.4%-2.3% in past year), except in Bougainville, where they were higher for men (11.7% versus 5.7%). The risk factor modelling shows 4 groups of variables to be important in experience of past-year sexual and/or physical IPV: (1) poverty, (2) all childhood trauma, (3) quarrelling and women's limited control in relationships, and (4) partner factors (substance abuse, unemployment, and infidelity). The population attributable fraction (PAF) was largest for quarrelling often, but the second greatest PAF was for the group related to exposure to violence in childhood. The relationship control variable group had the third highest PAF, followed by other partner factors. Currently married women were also more at risk. In the structural model, a resilience pathway showed less poverty, higher education, and more gender-equitable ideas were connected and conveyed protection from IPV. These are all amenable risk factors. This research was cross-sectional, so we cannot be sure of the temporal sequence of exposure, but the outcome being a past-year measure to some extent mitigates this problem.Conclusions: Past-year IPV indicators based on women's reported experience that were developed to track SDG 5 are probably reasonably reliable but will not always give the same prevalence as may be reported by men. Report validity requires further research. Interviews with men to track past-year nonpartner rape perpetration are feasible and important. The findings suggest a range of factors are associated with past-year physical and/or sexual IPV exposure; of particular interest is the resilience pathway suggested by the structural model, which is highly amenable to intervention and explains why combining economic empowerment of women and gender empowerment/relationship skills training has been successful. This study provides additional rationale for scaling up violence prevention interventions that combine economic and gender empowerment/relationship skills building of women, as well as the value of investing in girls' education with a view to long-term violence reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the development and evaluation of the train-the-trainer (TTT) workshop for lay resident leaders to be lay health promoters. The TTT workshop aimed to prepare the trainees to implement and/or assist in conducting a series of community-based family well-being activities for the residents in a public low rent housing estate, entitled “Learning Families Project”, under the FAMILY project. The four-hour TTT workshop was conducted for 32 trainees (72% women, 43% aged ≥ 60, 41% ≤ elementary school education). The workshop aimed to promote trainees’ knowledge, self-efficacy, attitude and practice of incorporating the positive psychology themes into their community activities and engaging the residents to join these activities and learn with their family members. Post-training support was provided. The effectiveness of the TTT was examined by self-administered questionnaires about trainees’ reactions to training content, changes in learning and practice at three time points (baseline, and immediately and one year after training), and the difference in residents’ survey results before and after participating in the community activities delivered by the trainees. The trainees’ learning about the general concepts of family well-being, learning family, leadership skills and planning skills increased significantly with medium to large effect sizes (Cohen’s d: 0.5–1.4) immediately after the training. The effects of perceived knowledge and attitude towards practice were sustained to one year (Cohen’s d: 0.4–0.6). The application of planning skills to implement community activities was higher at one year (Cohen’s d: 0.4), compared with baseline. At one year, the residents’ survey results showed significant increases in the practice of positive communication behaviours and better neighbour cohesions after joining the family well-being activities of LFP. Qualitative feedback supported the quantitative results. Our TTT workshop could serve as a practical example of development and evaluation of training programs for lay personnel to be lay health promoters. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Around the world, regulatory bodies have taken the lead in determining the competencies required to become a physician. As a first step in addressing this project, it was decided to develop a set of core competencies that were unique to China and that might serve as a basis for medical education. The purpose of this paper was to construct a competency model for clinical physicians in China. Methods: Data was collected using a cross-sectional survey of 6247 clinicians from seven administrative regions (31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) in China. The total sample was randomly divided into two sub-samples, an initial sample (Sample 1) and a replication sample (Sample 2). Independent exploratory factor analysis was conducted in each sample and the results were compared to determine the stability. After that the confirmatory factor analysis was used to ascertain the competency model for physicians. The reliability, convergent and discriminant validity of competency-based instrument were also examined. Results: 76 items with 8 dimensions were identified, accounting for 68.41% of the construct’s total variance in the initial sample and 67.47% in the replication sample. For the two samples, the overall scale reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) was both 0.985 with dimensions from 0.905 to 0.954 for the initial sample and from 0.902 to 0.955 for the replication sample after deleting the items. In confirmatory factor analysis, the result showed that all items had acceptable goodness of fit index. RMSEA and SRMR were less than 0.08 (RMSEA = 0.046, SRMR = 0.040), while GFI, NFI, IFI, and CFI were higher than 0.9 (GFI = 0.905, NFI = 0.903, IFI = 0.909, CFI = 0.909), leading to acceptable construct validity. All construct reliability values of the factors were higher than 0.70, and all average variance extracted values exceeded 0.50. Thus, we considered the reliability and validity of the 8 dimensions were acceptable. Conclusions: The instrument was shown to be both valid and reliable for measuring clinical physicians’ competency in China. The results of the competency-based instrument can be used by ministry of health and administrators of hospitals to assess physicians’ competencies, encourage and guide them to modify their behaviors according to the evaluation criteria, and also cultivate physicians with strong clinical practice, innovation and independent scientific research ability. Through these measurements and understandings, the overall level of clinical physicians will be increased in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although studies have increasingly linked air pollution to specific health outcomes, less well understood is how public perceptions of air quality respond to changing pollutant levels. The growing availability of air pollution measurements and the proliferation of social media provide an opportunity to gauge public discussion of air quality conditions. In this paper, we consider particulate matter (PM) measurements from four Chinese megacities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu) together with 112 million posts on Weibo (a popular Chinese microblogging system) from corresponding days in 2011–2013 to identify terms whose frequency was most correlated with PM levels. These correlations are used to construct an Air Discussion Index (ADI) for estimating daily PM based on the content of Weibo posts. In Beijing, the Chinese city with the most PM as measured by U.S. Embassy monitor stations, we found a strong correlation (R = 0.88) between the ADI and measured PM. In other Chinese cities with lower pollution levels, the correlation was weaker. Nonetheless, our results show that social media may be a useful proxy measurement for pollution, particularly when traditional measurement stations are unavailable, censored or misreported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent formation of the field of security demographics has drawn attention to the importance of population as a security issue. For example, Hudson and den Boer argue that the populations of Asia's largest countries are a threat not because of size but because of as unusual composition - excess males. Their argument is based on the observation that, after thirty years of population limitation policies, the Chinese population has a distinct gender bias. There are millions more males than females, creating what has been dubbed a 'bachelor army.' Hudson and den Boer posit that the problems caused by this 'bachelor army' may lead to war. This paper argues that fear about China's population is not new but has shaped the way China has been portrayed since the foundation of the PRC. The large size of the Chinese population was originally seen as a weakness likely to bring down the government. However during the 1950s and 60s the industrious and organized nature of the Chinese population earned the Chinese people the moniker 'blue ants.' It seems more than coincidental that the development of recent fears about China's population coincides with the emergence of China as a major economic power. After analyzing the development of the gender ratio imbalance, this paper concludes that the re-surfacing of fear about China's male population continues a tradition of Orientalist stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research over several decades about subjective life satisfaction has led to the conclusion that the majority of people seem to be satisfied with their lives when their social and physical needs are met. In empirical studies which have used self-report instruments, this trend is reflected in respondents’ consistent preference for the positive end of scales. This led to the suggestion that there is a normative range for life satisfaction, which should hold true for general population data and, therefore, serve as a reference point, or a gold standard, for comparison (Cummins "Social Indicators Research," 35, 179–200, 1995, "Social Indicators Research," 43, 307–334, 1998). Subsequent research has shown that Western and non-Western samples generally conform to the normative range, but more data are needed from Chinese societies. In an attempt to remedy this situation, this paper investigates normative life satisfaction there. This paper reanalyses published and unpublished data from various Chinese societies (People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan) in order to confirm whether or not they lie within the normative range for non-Western countries. The results provide support for the relevance of Cummins’s normative range in Chinese societies. That the normative range generalised to the present study is a very useful finding, as it supports its utility for Chinese samples, and adds support to a theoretical explanation – i.e. the Wellbeing Homeostatisis theory—in Chinese groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The society of Hong Kong objected strongly when the government instructed schools to change their medium of instruction from English to Chinese at the junior secondary level soon after Hong Kong was reunited with the People's Republic of China in 1997. This paper tries to make sense of the objection to this piece of politically correct and pedagogically sound policy. It analyses the situation from Bourdieu's ideas of habitus and various types of capitals. The paper argues that the government's effort to persuade Hong Kong society to accept mother-tongue education on pedagogical grounds alone was to no avail because the English language has not only become a habitus of society; it also serves to distinguish Hong Kong people from mainland Chinese. The failure of the government was partly due to its insensitivity to the nature and social functions of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the potential causal relationship(s) between China’s urbanization and income inequality since the start of the economic reform. Based on the economic theory of urbanization and income distribution, we analyze the annual time series of China’s urbanization rate and Gini index from 1978 to 2014. The results show that urbanization has an immediate alleviating effect on income inequality, as indicated by the negative relationship between the two time series at the same year (lag = 0). However, urbanization also seems to have a lagged aggravating effect on income inequality, as indicated by positive relationship between urbanization and the Gini index series at lag 1. Although the link between urbanization and income inequality is not surprising, the lagged aggravating effect of urbanization on the Gini index challenges the popular belief that urbanization in post-reform China generally helps reduce income inequality. At deeper levels, our results suggest an urgent need to focus on the social dimension of urbanization as China transitions to the next stage of modernization. Comprehensive social reforms must be prioritized to avoid a long-term economic dichotomy and permanent social segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: About 1 million people worldwide commit suicide each year, and college students with suicidal ideation are at high risk of suicide. The prevalence of suicidal ideation in college students has been estimated extensively, but quantitative syntheses of overall prevalence are scarce, especially in China. Accurate estimates of prevalence are important for making public policy. In this paper, we aimed to determine the prevalence of suicidal ideation in Chinese college students. Objective and Methods: Databases including PubMed, Web of Knowledge, Chinese Web of Knowledge, Wangfang (Chinese database) and Weipu (Chinese database) were systematically reviewed to identify articles published between 2004 to July 2013, in either English or Chinese, reporting prevalence estimates of suicidal ideation among Chinese college students. The strategy also included a secondary search of reference lists of records retrieved from databases. Then the prevalence estimates were summarized using a random effects model. The effects of moderator variables on the prevalence estimates were assessed using a meta-regression model. Results: A total of 41 studies involving 160339 college students were identified, and the prevalence ranged from 1.24% to 26.00%. The overall pooled prevalence of suicidal ideation among Chinese college students was 10.72% (95%CI: 8.41% to 13.28%). We noted substantial heterogeneity in prevalence estimates. Subgroup analyses showed that prevalence of suicidal ideation in females is higher than in males. Conclusions: The prevalence of suicidal ideation in Chinese college students is relatively high, although the suicide rate is lower compared with the entire society, suggesting the need for local surveys to inform the development of health services for college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tradition of keeping written records of gift received during household ceremonies in many countries offers researchers an underutilized means of data collection for social network analysis. This paper first summarizes unique features of the gift record data that circumvent five prevailing sampling and measurement issues in the literature, and we discuss their advantages over existing studies at both the individual level and the dyadic link level using previous data sources. We then document our research project in rural China that implements a multiple wave census-type household survey and a long-term gift record collection. The pattern of gift-giving in major household social events and its recent escalation is analyzed. There are significantly positive correlations between gift network centrality and various forms of informal insurance. Finally, economic inequality and competitive marriage market are among the main demographic and socioeconomic determinants of the observed gift network structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Confucius Institutes (CIs), modelled on similar European organizations, promote China's official national language and culture abroad. Unlike their European counterparts, however, the interactions between CIs and Canadian audiences are haunted by complex histories of a racialized "Oriental Other" in Canada and "Western Other" in China. Through ethnographic research on the Confucius Institute in Edmonton and the CI Headquarters in Beijing, this paper explores racialized representations of China and Chinese culture, as well as racialized understandings of the desired Western audience, in both locations. I argue that representations of Chinese culture are caught between two competing logics which I term reorientalism and reorientality. Reorientalism attempts to reclaim definitions of Chineseness and redress misunderstandings about China while simultaneously making China comprehensible and ultimately marketable through reorientality, or a use of familiar Orientalist tropes. Canadians (most often imagined and represented as white) are encouraged to engage with this reorientality through their own performance and embodiment of Chinese culture (a conceptually distinct process I call re-orientality) as a means of understanding the project of reorientalism. However, the spectacle of Chinese culture through CIs resonates with Canadian multiculturalism in ways that may unintentionally reproduce a social landscape that normalizes whiteness and the consumption of ethnicized Otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explain how individuals’ self-perceived long-term mate value influences their mate preference and mate choice, two hypotheses have been presented, which are “potentials-attract” and “likes-attract”, respectively. The potentials-attract means that people choose mates matched with their sex-specific traits indicating reproductive potentials; and the likes-attract means that people choose mates matched with their own conditions. However, the debate about these two hypotheses still remains unsolved. In this paper, we tested these two hypotheses using a human’s actual mate choice data from a Chinese online dating system (called the Baihe website), where 27,183 users of Baihe website are included, in which there are 590 paired couples (1180 individuals) who met each other via the website. Our main results show that not only the relationship between individuals’ own attributes and their self-stated mate preference but also that between individuals’ own attributes and their actual mate choice are more consistent with the likes-attract hypothesis, i.e., people tend to choose mates who are similar to themselves in a variety of attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While China has recently taken an amazing economic leap, completely transforming and liberalising its economic system, the absolute domination of the Communist party, operating in an extremely organised and centralised system and without free general elections, is the opposite of the models advocated by Western nations and remains a stumbling block for a number of Westerners. This governance from the top seems to exclude forms of expression and practices at the grassroots, but can this first reading explain the practical reality of Chinese politics? This paper looks into the links between the economic regeneration and the political transformations of two cities in Zhejiang. Studying the incredible advances of these two cities over 30 years reveals that their development was based not only on economic factors but also on a broad continuous movement of political and local reorganisation from the bottom up, promoting a new social and political dynamism, first locally then provincewide: a huge and profound change developed in a very specific way. Is this a premonitory model or announcement of the specifically Chinese methods of incorporating economic and political changes coming from the grassroots, which still affect certain sectors of the social and political spheres of Chinese society? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnitude and speed of social work's development in mainland China is unprecedented in human history. This inevitably gives rise to multiple perspectives on its nature and future development, particularly as part of the international social work discourse. Some of these perspectives are based on unexamined assumptions about China. In the present paper, we examine three of these assumptions, namely the homogeneity of Chinese culture, the global-indigenous dichotomy, and social work as an academic discipline and practice profession. We argue that in order to understand the development of social work in China we need to locate our discussion at the discursive intersection among different competitive articulations in both local and international arenas. Based on this critical examination, a brief discussion on the future development of social work in mainland China is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the in-depth analysis of the features of Huabei rural industrialization, the unique factory regime in Baigou, Hebei, and the resulting special workers, this paper reveals two dilemmas the migrant workers in Baigou and larger Hubei area face: Because of the interpersonal network of labor market, personalized trade, familial labor process, and patrimonial management, the workers are unable to become either industrial working class or citizens. Facing this special group of workers, we still believe in their power of self-liberation. Drawing on Touraine’s action sociology and sociological intervention, and Burawoy’s public sociology and praxis-oriented research, we modify “sociological intervention” according to the reality of Chinese society and propose the methodology of “strong sociological intervention” whose vehicle is “Baigou Migrant Worker Night School.” The night school provided workers with courses of labor law, English, and computer based on their actual needs. Labor law is the core to evoke the self-consciousness of the workers. Through communications in the night school and workers’ real living circumstances, we collected their true information and treated it as the source of sociological knowledge. After three sessions of night school training, workers showed changes in skills, social, and psychological aspects, laying a foundation for the growth of self-consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with a review of the Chinese government's reforms on the personnel system in the public health care sector since 1978. These policies were designed to give greater economic autonomy to the public health facilities and public doctors in order to stimulate productivity, but failed to satisfy the medical workers. As public employees whose professional knowledge and skills have long been considered as public property, Chinese doctors have been engaged in 'unofficial conduct' to increase income. This 'conduct', which includes taking 'red packets', 'drug kickbacks' and 'moonlighting', is argued to be an unofficial form of the privatisation of professional knowledge and skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the use and impact of the Internet by disabled people in China, informed by the social model of disability. Based on survey data from 122 disabled individuals across 25 provinces in China, study findings suggest that there is an emerging digital divide in the use of Internet amongst the disability community in China. Internet users in our study do not appear to be representative of most disabled people in China. For the minority of disabled people who do have access to the Internet, however, its use can lead to significantly improved frequency and quality of social interaction. Study findings further suggest that the Internet significantly reduced existing social barriers in the physical and social environment for disabled people. Implications for future research, and strategies for increasing reducing the digital divide between the minority of Internet users and the majority of disabled people in China are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines urban China's socio-political control crisis under the impact of economic reforms as an epitome of a more general social crisis. The traditional urban institutional form of socio-political control in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the work unit form of control, is a variant of age-old forms. The latter's reproduction in variant form in the former was premised upon the fact that the PRC's industrialization was carried out by a peasant-based party creating a new working class of rural migrants engaged in non-market production and exchange. The persistence of non-market economic relations ensured this form of control's continued reproduction. Post-1978 market-oriented reforms have undermined this form. As the emergence of new forms has been slow, a socio-political control crisis has arisen, at a time when millions of urban employees are being thrown out of work. In dealing with the crisis, the official trade union, an organic constituent institution of the work unit form of control, plays a prominent part, in being given the tasks of sustaining this decaying form, and preventing and defusing potential social explosion. Yet, the very economic reform programme that has undermined the work unit form of control, is also gravely weakening the union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the agendas and methodologies of the Chinese popular culture. Status of binary schemes specific to the logic of the Chinese pop culture; Details of papers on pop culture presented at an international workshop; Reasons why popular culture form a vantage point for contemporary Chinese cultural studies.