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As the world economy shifts towards services, transnational corporations ( TNCs) in the service sector have accelerated their expansion in emerging economies. This paper examines the development and embeddedness of foreign hypermarket retailers in China. It also analyzes the spatial penetration patterns of retail TNCs, the impacts of home and host economies on their local embeddedness, and how they resolve the structural paradox between enforcing standardization and conducting localization. The expansion of retail TNCs has been influenced by the gradual liberalization policies of the Chinese government. Spatially, they expanded in two directions: from the eastern costal region to the central and western hinterland, and along China's urban hierarchy from larger cities to smaller cities. While home economies greatly influenced their initial strategies, foreign hypermarket retailers are constantly adjusting to better embed in the Chinese market and to more effectively resolve the structural paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economic reforms have resulted in spectacular growth and poverty reduction. However, China's institutions look ill-suited to achieve such a result, and they indeed suffer from serious shortcomings. To solve the 'China puzzle,' this paper analyzes China's institution-a regionally decentralized authoritarian system. The central government has control over personnel, whereas subnational governments run the bulk of the economy; and they initiate, negotiate, implement, divert, and resist reforms, policies, rules, and laws. China's reform trajectories have been shaped by regional decentralization. Spectacular performance on the one hand and grave problems on the other hand are all determined by this governance structure. (JEL O17, O18, O43, P21, P25, P26) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The world has enough for both of us" has come to be a regular refrain of Chinese and Indian leaders. Even academic commentaries sometimes use this argument to explain why Asia's two fastest growing economies and increasingly dynamic billion-plus-strong societies will not clash as they pursue peaceful development. Their relationship continues to be examined in simplistic dichotomies of competition or cooperation, rivals or partners, friends or foes, etc., ignoring the complex nature of their evolution and interactions. This paper argues that their continued rapid economic growth and resultant ever-expanding engagement with the external world is not completely innocent, and that their growth has begun to influence their bilateral relations. Prima facie, multilateral forums provide China and India with a relatively neutral playground in which the two countries have gradually begun to decipher their stronger commonality of interests in addressing their regional/global challenges within multilateral settings. This expanding mutual trust and understanding at the multilateral level is expected to have a positive impact on the nature of their historically complicated bilateral equations. No doubt, their difficult bilateral engagement also impacts their interactions at the multilateral level and their mutual trust deficit circumscribes their joint strategies in multilateral forums. Yet, on balance, contemporary Sino-Indian relations seem to mark a clear shift in the center of gravity from a bilateral to a multilateral matrix. This shift is nosy discernible enough to stand scrutiny and also to guide the future direction of Sino-Indian equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite close geographical proximity and centuries-old ties, the relationship between China and India has been filled with obstacles and stumbling blocks. The majority of academic research and media reports tend to examine relations at the national level, yet cities have become increasingly important due to urbanization and globalization. This paper argues that, through the city platform, India and China can turn potential cooperation into reality. The differences between Chinese and Indian cities beget complementarity that provides great potential for cooperation. Local governments in both China and India have high levels of administrative power in decisionmaking. Cooperation between cities can avoid many obstacles that prevail in national-level cooperation. Local governments will not only be motivated to cooperate, but also can accomplish a great deal in promoting cooperation between the two countries. The conditions for city cooperation are improving. Cities can and should become a key path and a new engine for Sino-Indian cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the threat of a water war between China and India. It argues that Indian suspicion of China has been premature. Beijing has not yet given its approval for major water diversion projects in Tibet, it has taken some limited steps toward easing the concerns of the Indian government and a growing number of Chinese experts have taken an interest in developing institutional frameworks for managing transboundary rivers. However, definitive settlement or cooperation will be difficult because both countries perceive themselves as the victim of a greedy neighbor. While India complains about China's ravenous exploitation of the Himalayan rivers, it is common in China to accuse India of exaggerating the Chinese threat and being unreasonable in its demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid economic development and transformation of Chinese society over the past three decades has, by a large mass of analysts, been called a "Miracle." This paper not only addresses the shortcomings of existing interpretations but also develops a new multi-dimensional framework based on North's theory of institutional change and Hayek's theory of institutional evolution to explain China's miraculous growth. Our analysis shows that both Hayekian spontaneous order and Popper's "piecemeal social engineering" played a major role in attaining China's miraculous growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a response to the 2006 Chinese white paper "China's African Policy." He considers Chinese involvement as an actor in Africa's economic, environmental, and political spheres. China's policies have included debt forgiveness to 23 African nations and large sums of developmental aid which includes 13 billion dollars for Angola, 9 billion dollars for the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 2.5 billion dollars for Ethiopia. The article also discusses international security issues, single-party governments in Africa, the One-China principle, the use of Chinese emigrant labor in Africa, and China's relations with both the African Union and United Nations.

The topography and continental configuration of East Asia favor the year-round existence of storm tracks that extend thousands of kilometers from China into the northwestern Pacific Ocean, producing zonally elongated patterns of rainfall that we call "frontal rain events." In spring and early summer (known as "Meiyu Season"), frontal rainfall intensifies and shifts northward during a series of stages collectively known as the East Asian summer monsoon. Using a technique called the Frontal Rain Event Detection Algorithm, we create a daily catalog of all frontal rain events in east China during 1951-2007, quantify their attributes, and classify all rainfall on each day as either frontal, resulting from largescale convergence, or nonfrontal, produced by local buoyancy, topography, or typhoons. Our climatology shows that the East Asian summer monsoon consists of a series of coupled changes in frontal rain event frequency, latitude, and daily accumulation. Furthermore, decadal changes in the amount and distribution of rainfall in east China are overwhelmingly due to changes in frontal rainfall. We attribute the "South Flood-North Drought" pattern observed beginning in the 1980s to changes in the frequency of frontal rain events, while the years 1994-2007 witnessed an uptick in event daily accumulation relative to the rest of the study years. This particular signature may reflect the relative impacts of global warming, aerosol loading, and natural variability on regional rainfall, potentially via shifting the East Asian jet stream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between neoliberalism and masculinity in China from the late 1970s through the early 21st century, often referencing Chinese Olympic gold medalist sprinter Liu Xiang in this regard. The impact that the Western conception of gender has on Chinese civilization, including the role that capitalism plays in this regard, is discussed. The relationship between China's economic policies and masculinity, including in regard to athletics, is also discussed.

The Working People’s Cultural Palace (WPCP), formerly the Imperial Ancestral Temple, is a celebrated public park near Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing. A closer look at the park, which was created by the government in 1950 to provide recreational activities for the local residents, reveals that it was not primarily used as a conventional urban amenity but rather as an arena for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to launch political campaigns and stage propaganda exhibitions. The park, therefore, under the guise of a recreation area, was used to promote labor policies, international diplomacy and Party politics, thus extending the CCP’s control of people’s lives. Based on recently available archival sources and by comparing the CCP’s use of urban parks to how they were used in the former Soviet Union and in the United States, this article argues that the WPCP reflects the conflict between the state and society, resulting in the domination of the former over the latter and rapid loss of citizens’ private space in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article looks at the history of China and its relations to the West from the 19th century through 2013. It describes the Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace, in Beijing, China, the Qing dynasty residence, noting it was destroyed by British and French forces during the mid-1800s Opium Wars and saying its remaining ruins are a symbol of Western imperialism. It outlines the period of foreign domination of China in the century following the Opium Wars, saying it was reversed by the 1949 Communist revolution under Mao Zedong. It describes Mao's effort to implement Marxist ideas of class struggle, which it says were reversed in the country's move toward a capitalist economic system beginning under Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. It traces Chinese-Western relations into the 21st century.

The article discusses mass science in Maoist China. It attempts to study a broad perspective on the relationship between science and state and to ascertain whether the model can be utilized in other historical cases. The author analyzes concepts such as scientific expertise, the scientific establishment and the concept of elite science, and theoretical notions of the state. The article discusses the role of the Cold War in Maoist China, and the Xingtai earthquake in March 1966 and the Tangshan earthquake in July 1976 in the connection between what the author identifies as mass science and the state.

The article discusses the impact which the city of Hong Kong, China has had on manufacturing industries in mainland China, particularly in the province of Guangdong. Hong Kong is said to have played a leading role in the modernization of Chinese manufacturing. The city's evolution from a trading port to an inexpensive manufacturing location to a locus of service providers is analyzed. Hong Kong's financial industry and supply chain services are emphasized. The ways in which technological developments have affected Chinese industrial policy are also discussed.

After exploding its first nuclear device in 1964, China did not develop sufficient forces or doctrine to overcome its vulnerability to a first strike by the United States or the Soviet Union for more than three decades. Two factors explain this puzzling willingness to live with nuclear vulnerability: (1) the views and beliefs of senior leaders about the utility of nuclear weapons and the requirements of deterrence, and (2) internal organizational and political constraints on doctrinal innovation. Even as China's technical expertise grew and financial resources for modernization became available after the early 1980s, leadership beliefs have continued to shape China's approach to nuclear strategy, reflecting the idea of assured retaliation (i.e., using the fewest number of weapons to threaten an opponent with a credible second strike). The enduring effect of these leadership ideas has important implications for the trajectory of China's current efforts to modernize its nuclear force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses some problems which have arisen in the course of China's efforts to transition to a market economy. Certain sectors, such as electric power, have been less successful than others at adapting to market principles. The article focuses on a political struggle between two groups which has stalled further reform. One group is described as bureaucrats in favor of market reform. The other group consists of power sector industrialists and bureaucrats from a related state agency. This latter group's vested interests would be damaged by further market reform, so they oppose it.

This article recommends a change in China's policy toward Tibet to better conform to national commitments and international obligations. Since the People's Liberation Army marched into Tibet in the 1950s China has generally imposed its will on the Tibetan people. The 1951 "17-Point Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet" reflected the view that China was liberating Tibetan territory from imperialist forces. From the Tibetan perspective such "liberation" was imposed and promises of local self-rule were not kept. The emerging communist and totalitarian state that followed the 1949 Chinese revolution proved incapable of allowing genuine Tibetan self-rule. A harsh attitude of domination ensued. The present instrument of Chinese rule is China's national minority policy provided in Article 4 of the Chinese Constitution and China's Law on Regional National Autonomy (LRNA). Though this policy promises local self-rule, the habits of intervention both formally in the political system and in the mechanisms of Communist Party oversight leave Tibetans with very little of the promised legislative and administrative autonomy. Assessing this policy against the backdrop of China's long historical relationship with Tibet and the requirements of international law, this article concludes that China's national minority policy fails to meet its obligations to the Tibetan people. Taking account of standards articulated in the new UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, this article recommends a change of course to establish a more genuine autonomy under Article 31 of the Chinese Constitution relating to the establishment of special administrative regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reports on changes which have occurred regarding the legal profession in China. The author discusses an initiative which began in the 1990s that privatized the legal profession. Legal challenges which lawyers are involved in, such as cases which have a social impact on people's everyday lives, are discussed. Weiquan lawyers, who advocate for a cause larger than their clients, are discussed. The formation of weiquan lawyers is discussed, as is their basic taxonomy and the way in which they have assisted in creating Chinese society.