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Preferential access to scarce resources can bring competitive advantages and better performance to enterprises. However, the existing literature has a relatively single research path on the influencing factors of enterprise resource access, which has lack of sufficient research from the perspective of multidimensional environment. In particular, as an important factor affecting enterprises' access to external resources, few studies have given empirical results on the impact of political factors such as government structure on enterprise resource access. Preferential access to scarce resources can bring competitive advantages and better performance to enterprises. However, the existing literature has a relatively single research path on the influencing factors of enterprise resource access, which lacks sufficient research from the perspective of multidimensional environment. In particular, as an important factor affecting enterprises' access to external resources, few studies have given empirical results on the impact of political factors such as government structure on enterprise resource access. Through the discussion of multidimensional environmental factors, this paper can provide theoretical reference for the reform of government institutions and the establishment of good political relations between enterprises and the government. Focusing on the multidimensional environment of government structure, political relations, and enterprise resource acquisition, this paper takes 129 enterprises in Central China as samples and uses the structural equation model to empirically verify the relationship between the formalization of government structure, liaison mechanism, decentralization, and enterprise resource acquisition, especially the easing effect of political relations. The results show that the formalization of government structure is promoting enterprises to obtain policy resources and financial resources; the liaison mechanism helps enterprises to obtain financial resources and market resources; decentralization has a significant positive impact on enterprises' access to policy resources and market resources; and political connection magnifies the positive effect of government structure on enterprise resource acquisition, but there are differences in different dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has been contributing to new approaches to global governance. The Health Silk Road (HSR), a significant component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), was proposed by China in 2016. This paper claims that HSR is a new institution introduced alongside the existing WHO-led multilateral health system, and its relationship with the existing system can be described as layering. Having explored the new development of HSR during COVID-19, this paper further argues that while HSR has its unique strength in making contributions to global health governance and economic recovery, it faces a prominent issue of securitisation in the context of China-U.S. strategic competition, suspicion of the quality of medical products and sectoral fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatial political logic of the construction of Chinese metropolitan areas (CMAs) is unique and complex, involving the interaction of power, spatial production, and the construction of political rationality between multiple scales. Taking the representative Nanjing metropolitan area as an example, we use the "material–organizational–discursive" analytical framework of politics of scale theory to analyze the construction logic of CMAs. This study finds the following: (1) In general, the CMA is a high-quality spatial construction resulting from multi-city negotiation, inter-provincial collaboration, and central–territory linkage, and has generally undergone a process of increasing the power of subjects, nested power relations, frequent scale interactions, and complex interest games; among them, planning is not only a scale tool for competing for power, but also an important representation of the results of multiple power games. (2) In terms of the construction of material space, both the delineation of boundaries and the cross-border connection of infrastructure represent rational thinking and stand as two-way choices of the two power subjects in the MA based on the maintenance and expansion of their own spatial development rights. (3) In terms of organizational space construction, CMAs mainly adopt flexible means, with bilateral and multilateral cooperation at the horizontal level, while there is a certain power inequality at the vertical level. (4) In the construction of discursive space, CMAs have experienced increasing construction significance, escalating scale subjects, and overlapping discourse narratives, and the contrast of power relations has also changed. The contribution of this paper is an expansion of the analytical framework of politics of scale based on the division of spatial dimensions, which provides a new perspective for understanding the construction of CMAs, and also helps us to picture Chinese city–regionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online food delivery increases dramatically during the COVID-19 era and has grown into a global marketplace worth more than $150 billion dollars, necessitating a more effective and responsive governance system. Public-private governance systems with whistleblowing to the public are seen as an effective tool for addressing the formidable challenges of food security in modern society. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the determinants of whistleblowing intentions and to propose policy policies for the whistleblowing system to fully utilize the advantages of public-private governance systems. Through empirical research, this paper finds that employees' perceived effectiveness of government authorities, as well as their familiarity with whistleblowing systems, positively affect their intentions to blow the whistle. However, the whistleblowing intent of restaurant employees is adversely affected by the online platform's focus. The root cause lies in the employee's trust in both the government sector and corporate sector. This study thus argues that a suite of measures to promote individual trust in public-private governance systems is desired and that this is an effective means of better mitigating food safety governance challenges in terms of capacity and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data has become one of the most valuable assets for governments and firms. Yet, we still have a limited understanding of how data reshapes international economic relations. This paper explores various aspects of data politics through the lens of China's digital rise and the country's global engagement. I start with the theoretical premise that data differs from traditional strategic assets (e.g., land, oil, and labor), in that it is nonrival and partially excludable. These characteristics have generated externality, commitment, and valuation problems, triggering three fundamental changes in China's external economic relations. First, data's externality problem makes it necessary for states to regulate data or even to pursue data sovereignty. However, clashes over data sovereignty can ignite conflicts between China and other countries. Second, the commitment problem in data use raises global concerns about foreign government surveillance. As data is easier to transfer across borders than physical commodities, Chinese tech companies' investments abroad are vulnerable to national security investigations by foreign regulators. Chinese tech companies, therefore, confront a "deep versus broad" dilemma: deep ties with the Chinese government help promote their domestic business but jeopardize their international expansion. Lastly, data's valuation problem makes traditional measures (e.g., GDP) ill-suited to measure the relative strengths of the world's economies, which may distort perceptions of China and other states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Background. With the enhancement of China's international influence, China has stepped into the international ecological environment in the fields of economy, politics, culture, art, and so on, accompanied by the spread of China's culture and literature. China's 5000-year-old cultural history and artistic characteristics are integrated into the ecological field of the international environment. Research Purpose. The international spread of Chinese literature also has a certain impact on the physical and mental health of teenagers. This paper studies and discusses the impact of international communication of Chinese literature on teenagers' physical and mental health in the digital humanistic environment. Under the development environment of Digital Humanities in China, the impact of Chinese literature on the healthy psychology of teenagers, the impact content, and the characteristics of each were evaluated. Through the comparison of physical and mental health growth of adolescents in different ages, the characteristics of physical and mental health of adolescents are explored. The coupling degree of physical and mental health of adolescents in different development environments is compared and analyzed. Research Results. Through the research, it is found that with the development of Digital Humanities, the spread of Chinese literature with internationalization has a positive impact on the physical and mental health and psychological quality construction of teenagers and plays a promoting role in promoting mental health, increasing personal quality, and improving teenagers' correct values. The various ideological and moral qualities of Chinese literature can play a greater role in helping and growing up the physical and mental health education of young people in the new era and are also the literary value of promoting the quality education of the next generation of young people in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, Korea and Japan have increasingly exhibited different strategic priorities in trade in face of China's rising global economic prowess and worsening USChina trade conflict. Japan's trade policy decisions have worked to reinforce its economic and security ties with the US as a means to counter China. Japan has used both bilateral and multilateral means to secure its ties with the US against China. In contrast, Korea's trade policy positions have been one of 'strategic ambiguity'. Korea has been more conciliatory towards China, reluctant to take actions that would counter China's interest. Korea has mainly resorted to bilateral channels to maintain favorable relations with both China and the US. Korea's reluctance to clearly ally with the US against China has been observed across different administrations with opposing political orientations. This paper examines Korea and Japan's diverging strategic priorities in trade through the 2017 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference; the 2017 US imposition of Section 232 on steel; the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Korea-US FTA renegotiation and the Korea-China FTA Phase Two Negotiation; and the 2019 Japan-US Trade Agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original article did not include an acknowledgements section. This has been corrected in both the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between Maoism and psychiatry in the work of the Argentine psychiatrist Gregorio Bermann (1894-1972). As a result of the cultural diplomacy deployed by the People's Republic of China since 1949 and of specific institutional networks, the author produced knowledge regarding China, its practices and institutions of mental health as an expert-traveler. Those works were a dissemination of the "mass science" promoted by this country, applied to the field of psychiatry, though not without tensions. The relevance that China had for rethinking psychiatric practice in the case studied is evaluated, and it is argued that Gregorio Bermann's interest in largescale psychiatry and the international political commitment that he held were decisive in it. Lastly, this article studies the spaces where those works circulated and shows the variety of existing knowledge regarding China based on the political positions that were held towards it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent research has shown a growing interest in the consequences of China's foreign aid giving, few have examined how public attitudes towards China in recipient countries have responded to the surging inflows of Chinese aid. Using a geo-referenced dataset combining individual survey data with foreign aid project sites information, this paper examines the association between Chinese aid projects and public approval of China's influence in African countries. Despite contributing to development and growth in recipient countries, Chinese aid inflows may have a bifurcating effect on the approval of the donor along a partisan line. In the African context of neopatrimonialism and patronage politics, Chinese foreign aid packages are likely manipulated by the recipient government to further its domestic political interests, which could result in a partisan bias in the distribution of aid benefits favoring supporters of the incumbent government. As a result, the local presence of Chinese aid sites would be more strongly associated with a favorable attitude towards China among supporters of the incumbent political party than supporters of the opposition. We find support for our argument from a multilevel modeling of the association between the approval of China among individuals and the presence of nearby Chinese aid projects sites between 2009 and 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are global neoliberal pressures on the academy that are more or less faced by anthropologists around the world. To what extent are anthropologists required to publish in English in SSCI-ranked journals to keep their jobs and get promoted? But there are also distinctly national and local pressures to some extent counteracting or eclipsing these global pressures. In this article I explore these counteracting pressures in the context of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, my home society, neoliberalism has reigned supreme, with a remarkably short-term mentality. Yet despite this, anthropology has been flourishing, and has operated with great freedom and generous funding that is quite exceptional by global standards. However, this may be coming to an end. In China there is direct government control over anthropology. Hong Kong, following the protests of 2019 and the advent of the national security law in 2020, may be following suit, with many democratic political figures and some journalists now in jail. In light of this ongoing narrowing of room for freedom of inquiry, what will happen to Hong Kong academics and to anthropology? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper recognizes the challenges faced by the People`s Bank of China in its central banking endeavor The fundamental problem lies with the entrenchment of party politics within the government, which compromises its operations. We conclude that it needs to make a paradigm shift from its current controlled disposition to one that calls the shots in all central banking decisions, especially now that more is expected of it with China becoming a member of the World Trade Organization. However the relationship between the government and the party has to be changed before it can enjoy the manifestations of a truly independent central bank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the book "China in the 1990s," edited by Robert Benewick and Paul Wingrove. Twenty-one papers of the book introduce the major transformations of post-Mao China, their consequences and the emerging new Chinese society. The current edition has been updated by an afterworld addressing political, economic and foreign-policy changes during Deng Xiaoping's last years and in the aftermath of his death. Many papers discusses the Tiananmen crackdown and its legacy, the decline of ideocracy. China's political structure, leadership politics since 1989, the center and province in China, civil society; justice and tile legal system in China young offenders and juvenile justice, collectivism contractualism, and crisis in the Chinese countryside, village politics; new economic elites, industry and the urban economy, the People's Liberation Army and the market economy; trade, development, and the political economy of China's open policy, gender in China, population and family policies, family strategies, social welfare reforms, Chinese literature and film in the 1990's, China's foreign policy in the post-1989 era, and China and the Pacific Rim.

We use the recent trade escalation between the USA and its trade partners to study whether retaliatory tariffs are politically targeted. We find comprehensive evidence using individual and aggregate voting data suggesting that retaliation is carefully targeted to hurt Trump. We develop a simulation approach to construct counterfactual retaliation responses allowing us to quantify the extent of political targeting while also studying potential trade-offs. China appears to place great emphasis on achieving maximal political targeting. The EU seems to have been successful in maximising political targeting while at the same time minimising the potential damage to its economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transboundary fine dust has been a leading cause of dispute between China and Korea since the mid‐2010s. This study observes that transboundary fine dust is not purely an environmental issue, but rather mixed with political and diplomatic challenges. Despite the emerging bilateral and multilateral efforts to tackle this issue, this research sheds light on how political and diplomatic factors have undermined the outcomes of environmental negotiations between China and Korea. We highlight three dimensions of policy‐based studies: scientific joint research on source‐receptor relationships, interstate environmental negotiations, and multilateral environmental institutions in Northeast Asia. This study argues that transboundary fine dust cooperation has been extensively entangled with national political interests and proceeded via diplomatic channels, leading to the current absence of binding agreements and policy commitments. Therefore, a steady process of de‐linking environmental cooperation and diplomatic fluctuations would be the best direction to proceed in a long‐term perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Translational Sociology--Interdisciplinary Politics and Society by Esperança Bielsa in 2023 has aroused our great interest, as the title has explicitly indicated a further fulfillment and development of Translational Sociology from the perspective of interdisciplinary politics and society. The recent decade witnesses how Translational Sociology is well-received in China, the further exploration of translation and society, translation and politics, translation and experience in this book enables more teachers, researchers, and postgraduates in translation study to be fully aware of the diversity, complexity, and modernity of translation as a social practice. Moreover, by reinforcing the core role of translation in mediating language differences in all aspects of social life, questioning simplistic views of cultural homogenization, probing into the identity and transformation, politics and democracy, and the nature of modern experience in translating, this book updates our comprehension of the global characteristics of contemporary society from the perspective of translation study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares Chinese nationalism of the 1990s with the historic beginning of modern Chinese nationalism in the 1910s and argues that they are two different nationalisms. While the post-imperial May Fourth nationalism of the 1910s arose in a poor and backward China to seek wealth and power for the nation, the 1990s saw the resurgence of nationalism rooted in China's late communist authoritarian prosperity. Following a Weberian framework to examine nationalism's connections with material interests, political power and cultural orientations, the paper finds that the Chinese nationalism of the 1990s reversed all the radical features of early 20th century developmental and cosmopolitan nationalism, as it defended the Chinese model of development, endorsed political authoritarianism, and sought sources of legitimacy and identity in traditional Chinese culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interpretations and memorialisations of China's long history, in service of political aspirations of the present and towards the future, have long attracted scholarly attention. This special issue addresses how the curation, performance, and consumption of collective memory provide valuable insight into the interplay between the reconstruction of Chinese identity, cultural modernisation, and the shifting role of heritage and memory in Chinese domestic and international politics. Touching on issues around diversity in, for instance, personal/collective memory or community-based/state-led heritage, we consider how state–society relations inform local memory practices. Furthermore, the articles enclosed discuss pertinent and far-reaching impacts of China's cultural-material changes, transformations, and destructions in service of memory re-formation. Investigating the politicisation of heritage and the material solidification of strategically selected representations of the past, we consider how the notion of "memory infrastructure" contributes to an academic understanding of the interaction between history, memory, and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the role of organisational politics (i.e., general political behaviour, going along to get ahead and pay and promotion policies) and political skill on the relationship between non‐financial performance measures and job performance, relying on a sample of manufacturing firms in China. Results suggest that non‐financial performance measures positively affect managers' job performance, and non‐financial performance measures reduce general political behaviour and pay and promotion policies. Results further suggest that managers' political skill positively affects job performance, and political skill also moderates the relationships between (1) general political behaviour and (2) pay and promotion policies, and job performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bangladesh-China relations has been a matter of much scrutiny since China emerged as Bangladesh's biggest trading partner in 2006. Most of the research surrounding bilateral relations provided political, economic, and strategic explanations for a rising bonhomie between the two countries. Often, these studies failed to expand the nature of the relationship from regional and global perspectives. This research plans to address these lacunae in the research in understanding the patterns of the contemporary relationship between Bangladesh and China by taking bilateral, regional, and global perspectives into account that reinforce the patterns of the relationship. In other words, this research aims to look into Bangladesh-China relations analyzing the roles of individual and domestic factors, regional politics, and global perspectives. The article, by highlighting China's involvement in Bangladesh on multiple levels, shall argue that without paying attention to and identifying the interplay among the three levels of analysis, the contours of Bangladesh-China relations cannot be fully explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes a particular form of everyday politics through the case of land development in a Chinese village. Commonly referred to as edge ball politics (cabianqiu), it implies the act of transgressing certain rules or laws and testing the limits of what is socially and legally possible. We found that the state, the village leadership, private developers, and villagers all vie to influence the outcomes of land development in the village by engaging in this practice. We suggest that edge ball politics plays into the Chinese state's governing strategies, which allow for a manageable space of negotiation to ward off a collective sense of injustice in the face of rampant dispossession of the weak and accumulation by the powerful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the perspective of comprehensive modernization, the Sinicization and modernization of Marxism are inseparable from the popularization of Marxism, which will promote the Sinicization and modernization of Marxism and make it more practical and vital. Time has changed, and the traditional ways and methods have faced a new pattern, but they still contain the practical value worth exploring and give full play to the contemporary function of beneficial historical experience. On the basis of drawing on historical experience, we follow the idea of establishing basic principles, focusing on important ways and looking for the development prospects, and discuss the discussion layer by layer in clear guidance, grasping the key points and thinking about the future. In today's era, with the development of the network, the popularization of Marxist philosophy has ushered in a period of opportunity for development, but at the same time, the development has also encountered some challenges. Based on the actual situation of contemporary China, in recent years, the popularization of Marxism has made great achievements, but it also presents the phenomenon of unbalanced overall development, low operation efficiency, and uneven cooling between the officials and the people. Under these conditions, popularizing network knowledge, developing network culture, improving relevant laws, and making its theories more popular are all important ways to realize the popularization of Marxist philosophy. The research on the popularization of Marxism and the academic level is more profound, while the practical practice is more lacking. In order to correct the bias of emphasizing science and theory, it is of strong practical significance to conduct in-depth theoretical research and practical discussion from the perspective of "ways and methods." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on global economy and human communities. Promoting the accessibility and affordability of vaccine via diplomacy is the key to mitigating the pandemic crisis. China has been accused of seeking geopolitical objectives by launching vaccine diplomacy. The definition of vaccine diplomacy is neutral by nature. China's vaccine diplomacy is based on its holistic approach to national security and the importance China attaches to the "Belt and Road" Initiative. With a whole-of-government approach on both the bilateral and multilateral levels and marketization of vaccines, China's vaccine diplomacy has immense implications for global health governance, in that it helps to narrow the global immunization vaccination gap and to promote human-right-based approach to global health governance. However, the sustainability of China's vaccine diplomacy is questionable because of the Sino-American geopolitical competition and doubts over the efficacy of China's vaccines. The escalation of power rivalry between China and the U.S. and the concerns over the efficacy of China's vaccines forebode the gloomy future of China's vaccine diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on the articles about planning practices in different regions of Asia, published within the issue. From an essay over the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China he concludes that the planning in the region is suffering due to the influence of bureaucracy over the city's government. The politics in Taipei, Taiwan, he explains, is hampering the national development. The planning system is still under construction in Beijing, China.

Research on the mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of perceived organizational politics' (POP) effect on employee voice is underdeveloped. Based on conservation of resources theory, we proposed a moderated mediation model in which organizational embeddedness acts as a mediator to explain why POP inhibits promotive and prohibitive voice. Additionally, we posited sense of impact as a boundary condition affecting this relationship. A time-lagged survey of 227 employed MBA students from a university in southwestern China revealed that organizational embeddedness mediates the relationship between POP and promotive and prohibitive voice, and sense of impact moderates the relationship between POP and promotive voice, such that the relationship is stronger when sense of impact is weaker. The moderating effect was not significant for prohibitive voice. These findings have implications for theory, practice, and further organizational research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets forth a preliminary theory of the substructure of Chinese politics. Power is based on an influential constituency in China as elsewhere, but here there are two types of such constituencies: the formal, consisting of an actor's bureaucratic colleagues and subordinates, which exerts formal power [ch'üan-li]; and the informal, consisting of interested family members, long-term friends, and protégés, which exerts informal influence [shih-li]. The support of the former may be relied upon during "nonantagonistic contradictions"; but if the contradiction becomes "antagonistic," only the informal base is likely to be of any avail, because of the severe sanctions applied to any associate of an "enemy of the people." The "Gang of Four" could be considered as "favorites" of Mao Tse-tung, inasmuch as their narrow and shallow "backgrounds" afforded them no constituency, formal or informal, aside from the Chairman himself. Their political actions were characterized by exclusive loyalty to their patron and by a disregard for the formal rules of the game. Sensitive to the long-range untenability of their positions, the Four sought to expand their base by appealing to the masses through the media and by building an incipient bureaucratic constituency. Their ultimate failure may be attributed not only to their ineptitude at base-building, but to the inherent limitations of their positions in an increasingly determinate bureaucratic-political game. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to 1976, legislatures did not play a significant role in Chinese politics. In the last decade, however, efforts have been made to revamp the Chinese legislative system and strengthen its centerpiece, the National People's Congress (NPC). This paper assesses the evolving role of the NPC by analyzing the legislative reform debate of 1979-1982 and by evaluating the pattern of changes accepted and rejected. The analysis shows that four long- standing obstacles to legislative development (manipulated elections, large size, perfunctory plenary sessions, and weak committees) have yet to be fully overcome. However, reforms in personnel selection, procedures, and committee structure are enabling the NPC to play a larger consultative and rationalizing role in the political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has implications for climate politics. Carbon emissions from states are expected to increase rapidly when the states strive to maximize their production in a post-pandemic world. The two countries that are crucial in combating climate change are China and the US, which are respectively the first and secondlargest carbon emitters in the world. Nevertheless, the growing tensions between these two countries on several issues are hindering the climate cooperation and the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement. The objective of this article is to explore the evolution of climate change debate between China and the US and to analyse the factors that are likely to shape the climate responses of these two countries in the future. This article argues that without forging cooperation between China and the US combating climate change would be very difficult. This article analyses that China is unlikely to stick on to its Paris emission reduction commitments without the US re-engagement with the Paris Agreement. This article has employed a qualitative methodology in carrying out research collecting data from the primary and secondary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how politics has shaped Hong Kong's education system and the curriculum 23 years after the British handover of Hong Kong to China. Particularly, through the concept of nationalism, the article examines how the education system is being shaped. The article is intended to provide international readers with a perspective of the political and socio-educational dynamics at play in Hong Kong. The central question at issue is: how has political culture and identity been promoted in school education under the framework of "One Country, Two Systems" after the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty from Britain to China? Two areas--the censorship of curriculum materials and the politicization of nationalism-- particularly reflect the influence of power relationships, and the historical and societal pressures on the formation of students' identity in school education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although China's community health system helped inspire the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration on Health for All, it currently faces the challenge of strengthening primary care in response to hospital sector dominance. As the world reaffirms its commitment towards primary health services, China's recent history provides a salient case study of the issues at stake in optimizing the balance of care. In this study, we have used path dependence analysis to explain China's coevolution of hospital and primary care facilities between 1949 and 2018. We have identified two cycles of path-dependent development (1949-78 and 1978-2018) involving four sets of institutions related to medical professionalization, financing, organization and governance of health facilities. Both cycles started with a critical juncture amid a radically changing societal context, when institutions favouring hospitals were initiated or renewed, leading to a process of self-reinforcement empowering the hospitals. Later in each cycle, events occurred that modified this hospital dominance. However, pro-primary care policies during these conjunctures encountered resilience from the existing institutional environment. The result was continued consolidation of hospital dominance over the long term. These recurrent constraints suggest that primary care strengthening is unlikely to be successful without a comprehensive set of policy reforms driven by a primary care coalition with strong professional, bureaucratic and community stakes, co-ordinated and sustained over a prolonged period. Our findings imply that it is important to understand the history of health systems in China, where the challenges of health systems strengthening go beyond limited resources and include different developmental paths as compared with Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Progress in gender equity can improve health at the individual and country levels. Objectives: This study's objective was to analyze recent trends in gender equity and identify historical and contextual factors that contributed to changes in gender equity in three countries: China, Nepal, and Nicaragua. Methods: To assess gender equity trends, we used the Gender Gap Index (GGI) from the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report (2006–2017). The GGI incorporated data on economic participation, educational attainment, health, and political empowerment for almost 150 countries. We selected China, Nepal, and Nicaragua because of their major changes in GGI and diversity in geographical location and economic status. We reviewed major social, economic, and political events during 2006–2017, and identified key events in each country. We compared countries' GGI with matched controls average using interrupted time-series analysis. Results: Nepal and Nicaragua both had dramatic increases in GGI (improvement in equity), Nepal (β = 0.029; 95% CI: 0.003, 0.056) and Nicaragua (β = 0.035; 95% CI: 0.005, 0.065). This was strongly influenced by political empowerment, which likely impacted access to education and employment opportunities. Despite major economic growth and new policies to address gender inequities (e.g. the One-Child Policy), China saw a significant decline in GGI between 2010 and 2017 (β = −0.014; 95% CI: −0.024, −0.004), largely resulting from decreased gender equity in educational attainment, economic participation, and health/survival sub-indices. Conclusions: Key social, economic, and political events helped explain trends in countries' gender equity. Our study suggested that supportive social and political environments would play important roles in empowering women, which would advance human rights and promote health and well-being of individuals, households, communities, and countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how the Chinese government engages in online political debates and whether it adjusts its policies to respond to public concerns raised in such debates. This research explores government actions and discourses by using debates between Chinese net-users and the government around the building of an oil refinery in Kunming as a case study. It finds that the government used traditional party newspapers and social media as platforms to express its opinions and to interact with net-users regarding the oil refinery. The reports published in party media and government social media posts acknowledged the government’s awareness of the public’s concerns, demonstrated their reaction to the concerns and reinforced the government’s agenda. However, although the government engaged with the debate, it did not change its decisions about the oil refinery to respond to the public concerns raised online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contentious political climate surrounding air pollution regulations has brought some researchers and policymakers to argue that evidence of causality is necessary before implementing more stringent regulations. Recently, investigators in an increasing number of air pollution studies have purported to have used "causal analysis," generating the impression that studies not explicitly labeled as such are merely "associational" and therefore less rigorous. Using 3 prominent air pollution studies as examples, we review good practices for how to critically evaluate the extent to which an air pollution study provides evidence of causality. We argue that evidence of causality should be gauged by a critical evaluation of design decisions such as 1) what actions or exposure levels are being compared, 2) whether an adequate comparison group was constructed, and 3) how closely these design decisions approximate an idealized randomized study. We argue that air pollution studies that are more scientifically rigorous in terms of the decisions made to approximate a randomized experiment are more likely to provide evidence of causality and should be prioritized among the body of evidence for regulatory review accordingly. Our considerations, although presented in the context of air pollution epidemiology, can be broadly applied to other fields of epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The regulatory agency responsible for prudential supervision of the banks in China, the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), is not an independent authority. The agency's regulatory actions are constrained by the central government, which has to balance the prudential and non-prudential consequences of bank regulation for its political survival. The conditions and limits of the government's influence on the CBRC is analysed through an investigation of three regulatory cases. The conclusion is that the CBRC's regulatory actions are determined by the relative importance of prudential outcomes for the government's policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did Communism take root in China during the May Fourth Movement era (1917 to 1921)? I argue that a key factor was the revolutionary vanguard’s emergence through taking over existing activist organizations. Using reports and meeting minutes of 28 organizations and individual activists’ correspondence, diaries, and memoirs as sources for comparative cross-sectional analysis and processual case studies of the organizational debates over whether to adopt Bolshevism as a unifying ism, I find that a crucial factor explaining an organization’s positive response to Communist bloc recruitment was whether it practiced ethical activism, which engendered a sectarian group ethos that meshed with Bolshevik organizational culture. By contrast, the absence of ethical activism, and the correlative mismatch in organizational ethos, was associated with a negative response to Communist recruitment efforts. Two key mechanisms—frame resonance and group discipline—mediate this selective attraction. I conclude by discussing how organization-level analysis of selective spillover between social movements enhances our understanding of both individual participants’ motivations and the distinct style in which a movement responds to its political environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the first decade of the 21st century, new situations have emerged with great significance for the study of national development on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, namely, the generally accepted phenomenon of democratic consolidation in the 'Taiwan experience' and the rise of the 'China model' which attracts worldwide attention. This article aims to analyze the development experiences of Taiwan and of Mainland China, to identify their common ground and differences, and to fathom the theoretical implications of these experiences. Moreover, since Taiwan is comparatively more advanced in terms of economic and political development, the author attempts to explore the value of the 'Taiwan experience' to China and the possible direction of the 'China model'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the authors examine aspects regarding the uncertainty of politics in China through the exploration of three case studies related to labor organizations. It is noted that civic groups are becoming increasingly powerful vehicles for political participation among the Chinese population. Owing to the vagueness inherent in governing informal political rules, interactions between Chinese government agencies and nongovernmental civic organizations are beset with uncertainty, according to the authors.

This research applies a transaction-focused institutional analysis to compare the value of political capital in different institutional domains of China's market economy. Our results show that the value of political capital is associated with institutional domains of the economy in which agents can use political connections to secure advantages. Political capital is most fungible in institutional domains where government restricts economic activity. In this sense, the value of political connections in China does not differ fundamentally from patterns observable in established market economies. We interpret this as evidence suggesting China may have experienced a tipping point in its transition to a market economy around the turn of the new century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprise philanthropy is practiced in a very unique and rudimentary form in China. Based on a unique random survey data on 3837 Chinese private enterprises conducted in 31 provinces of China in 2006, I find the significant positive relationship between enterprise philanthropy donation and enterprise profitability, and the result supports the political and institutional power view of enterprise philanthropy in the latest development of China. Simply put, Chinese private enterprises carried out philanthropy activities to better protect property rights and nurture political connections, which in turn, leads to better enterprise profitability. The result is even stronger in institutions weaker provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents documentation of news relating to China from July to September 2008. The topics dealt with in the documentation include the Fourth Session of the 11th National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC), the country's political, social and economic affairs, China's space program, the earthquake in Sichuan, and the Beijing Olympics. Issues relating to Tibet, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and China's foreign relations, particularly relating to territories and international meetings, are also discussed.

The core Chinese foreign policy principle of non-interference has recently come under increasing and more visible strain in China's relations with Sudan. Non-interference has been central to Beijing's relations with different governments in Khartoum since 1959. From the mid-1990s, however, the Chinese role in Sudan has become more embedded and consequential. Today China faces the challenge of accommodating its established policy of non-interference with the more substantive and growing complexity of Chinese involvement developed over the past decade in Sudan, amidst ongoing conflict in western Darfur and changing politics after the North-South peace agreement of January 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]