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The 2022 anti–zero Covid White Paper protests that erupted in China and its diaspora demonstrated the intertwinement of politics and performance in contemporary China. The symbolic dimensions of blank sheets of A4 paper and other performative tactics used in these demonstrations exemplify the shifting roles of performance art in the field of contemporary Chinese art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualises digital displacement as both a way through which the digital, dynamic and fragile spatialities of contentious politics can be examined and as a geographic critique of censorship. Digital displacement, understood here as the act of removing users from the digital places and spaces they wish to remain in and use, often through the act of deletion, is conceptualised through the digital displacement of two contentious political groups that attempted to contest the forced eviction of migrants from Beijing in 2017; hashtag focused #BeijingSurgery# and instant messaging group using BeijingTogether. Explored through participant observation, interviews and playful digital exploration, this paper examines the spatialities that made multiple digital displacements possible and the activist spatialities that emerged during and post‐displacement. In exploring this, I develop a flexible vocabulary around digital place, space, scale, territory and mobility to analyse the practices of digital displacement, to understand the socio‐spatial positionality of activists involved in digitally centred contentious politics and to contextualise their territorial positionality within Chinese digital territory and global digital territories. Through the examination of #BeijingSurgery# and BeijingTogether, the article highlights: the importance of digital territorial positionality for both activists and the digital places and spaces used for contentious politics; that within systems of digital spatial governance, deletion and displacement can be effective strategies of repressive governance with wide‐ranging displacement effects; and that while digital displacement is not necessarily the ending point of contentious politics, the re‐production of activist spatialities is more difficult when the authority being protested against governs the digital territory used for protest. This paper conceptualises digital displacement as: a way through which the digital, dynamic and fragile spatialities of contentious politics can be examined; a way to understand China's digital territorialization project; and as a geographic critique of censorship. Digital displacement is conceptualised through the ethnographic research conducted in Beijing and examines efforts to contest the forced eviction of migrants from Beijing in 2017. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese cultural conservatism used to participate in shaping the course of modernization to a large extent. In this paper, I aim to describe a hidden lineage of Chinese cultural conservatism of the twentieth century that is still alive and appears to be more and more influential in mainland China. Relying on several ideas developed by Neo-Confucians of the early twentieth century, Gan Yang's paper in 2007 represented a contemporary revival of Chinese cultural conservatism. More importantly, in recent years, this kind of revival of conservative discourse went through another big change, which not only matters to the self-underpinning of the legitimate basis of the current regime, but also combined with the political conservations related to the Hong Kong protest of 2019–2020 explains why this country is so ideologically different from the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Term limit changes are significantly linked to political instability in Africa. Yet, it is ignored as an issue in the trilateral cooperation between European Union (EU), China and Africa. Indeed, a central question that could face both the EU and China over term limits in Africa is the extent to which it is legitimate for them to take action against attempts to violate term limits. This paper is an attempt to consider joint EU and China influence on African politics from the perspective of term limits. Why and how have/should EU and China respond to term limits? How can a trilateral cooperation between EU, China and Africa help institutionalize the respect of term limits? With the help of qualitative and quantitative data from official communiqués, events, and reports, the paper considers term limits as major political issue EU, China and Africa must care about given that it is a major factor of State fragility and political instability. It finds that a grounded trilateral policy framework on term limits is not only possible in an EU-China-Africa cooperation, but can strengthen democratic institutions in the continent and reflect the genuine commitment of the EU and China to promote sustainable democracy and political stability in Africa. If the EU and China want sustainable development of Africa, then the issue of presidential term limits must be significantly addressed within a trilateral cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, scholars have proposed the notion of "world anthropologies" to expose the pluralistic nature of anthropology, and to counter the colonial legacy embedded in knowledge production. This paper discusses how anthropological knowledge in and of China contributes to, is distant from, and challenges, such intellectual movement at both intellectual and institutional levels. First, unlike Western anthropology which shifts from colonialism to liberalism and then to postcolonialism, anthropology in China began with a progressive agenda of anti-colonialism, and then leaned toward liberalism. In the context of China's rise, "China" has been further embroiled in a puzzle of imperialism. This reversed ideological tendency contributes to the disorientation of the critical energy in anthropology focused on China. Second, just as China has taken an active role in the competition for education and research in a globalized, yet uneven academia through discipline construction, anthropology in the West, particularly the United States, has become provincialized in terms of its intellectual agendas. Many of the younger generation of Chinese anthropologists have become stuck in the disjuncture, struggling to channel their critical energy through engaged scholarship, both within and beyond academic institutions. The epistemic politics in and of China, at both the intellectual and institutional levels, reveals that the post-socialist condition deserves to be reference points in world anthropologies. If decolonization posits treating plural standpoints as equal, then being counted in the decolonizing efforts necessitates subscribing to the dominant framework. Thus, more attention to the post-socialist condition, and ultimately the pluralization of the reference points of political potency, should truly pluralize, and ultimately decolonize, anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper uncovers two publications of Quesnay's Despotisme de la Chine, which are apparently the first translations in German of any work of Quesnay. They were published in the late 1760s in Greifswald, then under Swedish rule, and their translator, Dähnert, managed to remove most traces of Quesnay's despotism. While the French infatuation with China is the topic of innumerable works, the Sinophilia of Germany and Sweden has been less studied1 and is illustrated with these publications. The paper suggests that Physiocracy and Despotisme de la Chine had a direct influence on the 1772 coup of Gustav III. [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]

Comparing China's 2006 and 2015 Africa policies, this article reveals how China's political discourse has become more confident, practical, and depoliticised. In particular, this paper shows how education is allocated, promised, and embedded in China's 'shared' agenda, which is centred on development co-operation and mutual learning. It then reflects on the extent to which China may move towards traditional donors. This paper concludes that, despite fragmented convergences in the discourse and an increased recognition of a Chinese model, China maintains its distinctive role and position in the post-2015 era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study calls for greater scholarly engagement with the generational experiences of the socialist working class in China. Through an analysis of collective actions in response to the reform of state-owned enterprises at the turn of the century, the paper divides the Chinese socialist working class into the Revolution Generation and the Transition Generation. Amid the restructuring of the state sector, workers from the Revolution Generation exhibited a proclivity for civic activism and petitions, while the Transition Generation, though grappling with unemployment, largely refrained from public dissent, instead expressing sentiments of bewilderment and resignation. The study illustrates how the differing lived experiences of two working-class generations played a pivotal role in shaping their interpretation of grievances and contention repertoire. The article underscores the significance of generational perspectives in gaining insight into the destiny of the Chinese working class, advocating for the integration of such perspectives into the broader fields of deindustrialization and labor studies. [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]

Although heritage in the digital age and heritage digitisation have received increasing scholarly attention, critical reflection on new media heritage politics as individuals, communities and institutions transmit heritage remains an unexplored area. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the representation of Chinese Nüshu (literally women's scripts) on new media platforms, paying particular attention to the centralised nature of Chinese AHD and its decentralisation through digital, democratic grassroots practices on heritage new media. Using a mixed-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative techniques, this study conducted a digital ethnography on several Nüshu social media communities from 2017 to 2022 and more than fifty in-depth interviews with twenty-three Nüshu stakeholders including official and unofficial transmitters, local officials, heritage experts, and local residence. The study finds dynamic negotiations in terms of cultural (re)production, power transformation, actors' empowerment, and identity construction between the local authorised heritage discourse (AHD) and folk heritage discourse on new media. Furthermore, as a form of decentralisation of local AHD, the study demonstrates the presence of digital heritage democratisation in China through new media. However, this creates the potential for new discursive hegemony in folk heritage society. Recently, short-form content's popularity has rapidly risen; the study reveals the complex politics of 'positivity' in relation to the representation of heritage on short-form video platforms in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Why do provincial governments change policy, even when those policies have proven successful? This paper explores a debate regarding the determinants of provincial policy choice and the degree of discretion provinces are permitted in this area. It does so by scrutinizing the shift in Guizhou's development policy from a poverty reduction orientation to a wholehearted pursuit of economic growth, urbanization and industrialization. In contrast to those who argue that central experience, prospects for promotion or local conditions are key factors explaining policy choice, the paper concludes that Guizhou's shift in policy had more to do with the backgrounds and experiences of top provincial leaders. The result has implications for our understanding of central–local relations and local government decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The weaponization of racialized imagery has been a common feature of geopolitical contestation in contemporary history. The paper critically examines the historical genesis of Sinophobic narratives, which have been common features of the big power geopolitical contestation in the Pacific. The globalization of capitalism in the nineteenth century and the West's attempts to penetrate the Chinese market and exploitation of its resources led to tension, skirmishes and wars. The myth of racial European superiority and corresponding inferiority of the Chinese was weaponized as an ideological justification for colonial domination, exploitation of cheap labour and appropriation of China's resources and wealth. In recent years, the Sinophobic paranoia has been exacerbated by China's Belt and Road initiative, a strategy at global economic and technological supremacy to counter the West's dominance. This competition for global hegemony is played out in various parts of the world and the Pacific included. The paper critically discusses various historical factors associated with Sinophobia in the context of the USA, France and Australia and how these have influenced these countries' contemporary approaches to Chinese expansionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prevalence of work teams in organizations, how newcomers become integrated into teams remains an understudied area. Drawing on research related to indirect social resources, in this paper we employ a social network perspective to examine how close teammates' friendship centrality can facilitate newcomers' adjustment by fostering the newcomers' own social capital in teams and promoting their subsequent task performance. Furthermore, our model incorporates institutionalized socialization tactics and political skill as two contingencies that can further strengthen the positive effects of indirect social resources on newcomers' adjustment. In a time‐lagged study using multiple sources of data, we found good support for our hypotheses. Specifically, close teammates' friendship centrality was positively related to newcomers' task performance through the mediating effect of newcomers' own friendship centrality in teams. The two moderators further strengthened this indirect effect. Overall, this study highlights the importance of "making the right friends" to facilitate newcomer adjustment into teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of citizenship education witnessed an expanding body of literature looking at the case of China. Yet citizenship with broad conceptual terrain often refers to different things in the literature. This paper foregrounds the common core of the essentially contested concept of citizenship and considers citizenship conception as discourse. By engaging with and drawing evidence from extant literature, this paper critically examines citizenship in the academic and related official and social discourses. It discloses the discursive conformity among the academic, official, and social discourses of citizenship in mainland China and discusses the politics beneath the conformity. It suggests that the fundamental values of liberty and equality constitutive of the common core of citizenship should not be lost but localized to serve as the conceptual and analytical compass in the contestation of citizenship and citizenship education discourses in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent theoretical advancements in geographies of religion have reconceptualised secularisation as a multi‐scaled, grounded process of place‐making that reconciles the "agent‐in‐place" with large, institutional differentiation and fragmentation. This paper contributes to this re‐theorisation by examining the context of urban regeneration in which macro‐ and meso‐scaled secularisation is performed, negotiated and contested at the scale of the local community. The empirical research focuses on state‐enforced secularisation imposed on the ancestral temple of a lineage village during the urban regeneration project in Guangzhou, China. This paper considers the resistance conducted by local villagers to defend the sacredness and authority of their ancestral temple and to reclaim their own space from the totalising party‐state. We suggest that the effect of secularisation at the micro‐scale implies the formation of new religiosities as new legitimising religious thoughts and discourses of the sacred arose within villagers' embodied practices of resistance. This paper therefore highlights both secularisation and re‐sacralisation as scalar constructs that mutually interact at different scales. This paper examines how secularisation and re‐sacralisation manifest at different scales through a case study of China's ancestral temple in Guangzhou. It highlights the contested and hybrid nature of secularisation and re‐sacralisation and regards them both as multi‐scalar and situated constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insofar as the production of space is intimately bound up with the bodily senses, it would be reasonable to posit that the politics of space is also at the same time a politics of the senses. In this context, the theoretical remit of this paper is to extend our analysis of the role of the senses in theorising a visceral politics of urban exclusion. Using the case study of a middle-class neighbourhood or xiaoqu in Shanghai, the paper interrogates how class-based sensory 'othering' is deployed to preserve and regulate the socio-metabolic environment of the neighbourhood sensorium and justify urban exclusion. Such revanchist (sensory) urbanism, however, is irreducible to the cultural politics of neoliberalism, but also deeply implicated in actually existing metabolic inequalities in contemporary urban China. In particular, those whose metabolic needs are devalued are often stigmatised and cast as 'sensorial others' with repulsive sensory and metabolic bodily practices that are at odds with the urban middle-class. By bringing together critical literature on sensory urbanism and urban metabolism, a key contribution of this paper is to advance the theorisation of visceral micro-politics of urban exclusion that is experienced and 'sensed' through everyday metabolic inequalities in urban China. [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]

Trump's earlier statements about China and the US losing out on trade primed his supporters for the "China virus" narratives that epitomized Trump's references to the COVID-19 pandemic. Keywords: Trump; China; victimhood; nationalism EN Trump China victimhood nationalism 882 889 8 10/04/22 20221001 NES 221001 This paper analyses the deployment of victimhood nationalism towards China by Donald Trump during his two presidential campaigns and presidency. [Extracted from the article]

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]

This paper argues that the BRICS are status quo powers concerning two core norms of the international society: sovereignty and hierarchy, what conditions both the scope and depth of their security cooperation. On the one hand, this enables cooperation, as they can use the group to protect these norms and reinforce state control on transnational flows. In addition, this facilitates the formation of ties among foreign policy and bureaucratic elites across the BRICS who share a preference for protecting these norms. On the other hand, the importance attached to these norms constrains cooperation: differences of regime type are associated to higher levels of distrust; and intragroup power asymmetries raise fears of potential unequal agreements. The paper then applies these ideas to indicate the potential for cooperation on anti‐drug and cybersecurity policies. On the one hand, different regime types and power inequalities are likely to hinder cooperation. On the other hand, interests from foreign policy, political and bureaucratic elites in protecting norms, as well as in increasing state control on transnational flows and expand repression against new threats are likely to facilitate cooperation. Without an adequate governance, surveillance systems could deteriorate into espionage or restriction of political and civil liberties, especially in a context of authoritarian or proto‐authoritarian governments in the largest BRICS. Furthermore, technological asymmetries between China and the other BRICS are likely to produce agreements in which a few of the BRICS might struggle even to consume cybersecurity technologies, let alone to produce them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the decision-making process of the Yangtze-to-Huai Water Transfer Project (YHWTP) in China to explore how governments at various levels and the public respond to spatial and jurisdictional ambiguities inherent in the incomplete decentralization of water governance. Through participatory observations, semi-structured interviews and investigation of historical records of the project, we examine scalar strategies adopted by various groups at different stages. We find that within China's regionally decentralized authoritarian regime under centralized regulation, the scalar configurations as a result of the scalar strategies produce material consequence in the planning, designing and construction of inter-basin transfer projects. The use of such strategies transforms the existing scalar configuration, which provides a basis for further changes in the power structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including rising cultural marketplace of the China's early reform era, 1978–1989; cultural officials working at provincial and municipal levels; and intensity of political scrutiny.

A 2016 review of literature about automation, algorithms and politics identified China as the foremost area in which further research was needed because of the size of its population, the potential for Chinese algorithmic manipulation in the politics of other countries, and the frequency of exportation of Chinese software and hardware. This paper contributes to the small body of knowledge on the first point (domestic automation and opinion manipulation) and presents the first piece of research into the second (international automation and opinion manipulation). Findings are based on an analysis of 1.5 million comments on official political information posts on Weibo and 1.1 million posts using hashtags associated with China and Chinese politics on Twitter. In line with previous research, little evidence of automation was found on Weibo. In contrast, a large amount of automation was found on Twitter. However, contrary to expectations and previous news reports, no evidence was found of pro-Chinese-state automation on Twitter. Automation on Twitter was associated with anti-Chinese-state perspectives and published in simplified Mandarin, presumably aimed at diasporic Chinese and mainland users who 'jump the wall' to access blocked platforms. These users come to Twitter seeking more diverse information and an online public sphere but instead they find an information environment in which a small number of anti-Chinese-state voices are attempting to use automation to dominate discourse. Our understanding of public conversation on Twitter in Mandarin is extremely limited and, thus, this paper advances the understanding of political communication on social media. [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]

Information and communication technologies occupy a central position in the Covid-19 pandemic. Public response has been deemed extremely important, with social media platforms playing a key role in both institutional and bottom-up information sharing processes. The emerging field of platform studies has shown that platforms increasingly influence how society works; however, such studies often adopt a highly Western-centric approach. By focusing on Twitter and Weibo use in the early stages of the pandemic, the paper presents an exploratory study that comparatively explores the role of the two platforms for both Western and Chinese publics. Our findings indicate that during the Covid-19 outbreak, Weibo worked as a propaganda tool to unite the Chinese people and promote public policies under the control of the government and the guidance of the mainstream media. Twitter functioned more like a public discourse platform open to personal expression, often showing the influence of defined partisan political discourses. We argue that the participatory dynamics characterizing Weibo and Twitter conversations at the outbreak of the pandemic at least partially mirrored the different 'platforms societies' currently developing in China and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a corpus-based critical discourse study of the representations of the National Congresses of the Communist Party of China (NCCPC) in China Daily (CD) and The New York Times (NYT) in the past two decades. It is found that the shared keywords in the CD corpus and NYT corpus tend to suggest different discursive constructions of the same event in different social-political contexts. The different representations of the NCCPC can be revealed in the three types of discourse-historical discursive strategies (referential or nomination strategies, predicational strategies, and perspectivation strategies). CD prefers to construct the NCCPC as important political events and brand China's political system, China's contribution to world stability and prosperity in reporting the events. By contrast, NYT tends to construct them as events of power transfer and point towards criticisms of China's political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the foreign direct investment (FDI) literature, studies show that investors prefer low-risk host states. However, the research focuses on investors from developed country democracies, such as the United States, ignoring the rise of China, an authoritarian developing country that engages in public and private investment. This paper investigates Chinese state and private FDI in 127 developing countries from 2003 to 2017 to determine the effects of political risk on FDI. We find that, as with US FDI, low-risk developing countries attract more Chinese state FDI, except in the case of natural resource investment, where Chinese investors appear to disregard risk concerns. For Chinese private FDI, on the other hand, political institutions seem to play no significant role, but political affiliations matter. Our work suggests that similarities between US and Chinese state FDI are increasing, while the investment strategies of Chinese private and state firms appear to be growing farther apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender norms, roles and relations differentially affect women, men, and non-binary individuals' vulnerability to disease. Outbreak response measures also have immediate and long-term gendered effects. However, gender-based analysis of outbreaks and responses is limited by lack of data and little integration of feminist analysis within global health scholarship. Recognising these barriers, this paper applies a gender matrix methodology, grounded in feminist political economy approaches, to evaluate the gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and response in four case studies: China, Hong Kong, Canada, and the UK. Through a rapid scoping of documentation of the gendered effects of the outbreak, it applies the matrix framework to analyse findings, identifying common themes across the case studies: financial discrimination, crisis in care, and unequal risks and secondary effects. Results point to transnational structural conditions which put women on the front lines of the pandemic at work and at home while denying them health, economic and personal security – effects that are exacerbated where racism and other forms of discrimination intersect with gender inequities. Given that women and people living at the intersections of multiple inequities are made additionally vulnerable by pandemic responses, intersectional feminist responses should be prioritised at the beginning of any crises. [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]

Disease prevention and health care delivery, areas traditionally governed by the nation state and local communities, are increasingly being inhabited by ‘mobile sovereigns’ who carry a global currency of prevention strategies and treatments grounded in the universal standards of scientific evidence. Drawing on ethnographic evidence from research conducted on HIV in southwest China, this paper examines the impact of evidence-based science on the effectiveness of global health programming. It interrogates the intentions of global health partnerships and how the balance of power waged between those with money, science, and technical expertise, and those seeking assistance and resources, influences global health programming. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates the disconnect between the demand for a system of universal standards developed on the basis of scientific evidence and an appreciation for the local context, which shapes the way these standards should be modified for effective implementation of global health programs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Political budget cycles in democracies have been extensively analyzed, but few studies of non-democracies exist. This paper explores political budget cycles in China's provinces. Using data from Chinese provinces from 1980 to 2006, the analysis finds that the effects of a provincial leader's tenure on political budget cycles are minimal, implying a weak causal relationship between spending composition and a politician's time in office at the provincial level. However, there exists a national coordinated cycle associated with the timing of the National Congress of the Communist Party (NCCP). Two years prior to the NCCP, politicians are likely to shift public spending toward capital expenditures, such as innovation funds and capital construction, and away from current expenditures, such as agricultural subsidies. The opposite pattern occurs during the year of the NCCP, when politicians increase current expenditures, such as social expenditures and government administration, and decrease capital expenditures. The increased capital expenditures 2 years prior to the NCCP are accompanied by an increase in taxation and total aggregate spending. The empirical results indicate that provincial budget cycles are mainly driven by national policies rather than by provincial leaders' personal career incentives. Chinese leaders' fiscal behaviors are constrained by the dynamics of the national leadership transition, resulting in similar distortions to those found in the democratic countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a governmentality approach to examine the political history of human–canine relationships in the People's Republic of China, focusing on the evolution of household dog regulations in Beijing. In doing so, it ties the micropolitics of human–canine relations to transformations in political, economic, and social governance and ways of thinking about and acting on the interactions between human and nonhuman animal species. An examination of successive waves of government regulations reveals a shift from top-down authoritarian approaches to governance toward a greater recognition of (circumscribed) individual responsibility and self-governance, which is emerging under the organizing framework of "social credit." This government-managed rearrangement is contributing to the rise of new understandings of human–canine interactions as co-constitutive relationships based in citizenship rights and obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive conflicts of interest (COI) at both individual and institutional levels are identifiable in scientific research and healthcare in China, as in many other parts of the world. A prominent new case from China is He Jiankui's experiment that produced the world's first gene-edited babies and that raises numerous ethical, political, socio-cultural, and transnational questions. Serious financial and other COI were involved in He's genetic adventure. Using He's infamous experiment as a case study, this paper explores the wider issue of financial and other COI in scientific research and healthcare in China, especially institutional conflict of interest (ICOI) and policy-related COI. Taking a socio-ethical perspective, it examines China's state policies and its massive efforts to transform and commercialize scientific research, the lack of policies and oversight mechanisms for regulating COI, as well as major ethical issues arising from COI including the undermining of public trust. Some practical suggestions are offered for institutional reform and institutional development so that COI, particularly ICOI, can be avoided or more effectively managed in scientific research in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Gentrification as a state-building strategy. • Highlights the role of the territorial state in gentrification. • Draws attention to the state-society dynamics of land control. • Examines gentrification at China's rural-urban interface. • Shows comparative nuances of a gentrification theory beyond the urban Global North. This paper examines the territorial politics of gentrification at China's rural-urban interface. Drawing on empirical fieldwork in Shenzhen, it is shown that gentrification in China can be seen as a state-making strategy deployed by the government to consolidate territorial control and extend the reach of the state. Unlike conventional accounts of gentrification which assumes the universality of formal, property-based land tenure, this paper highlights how the prevalence of informality and non-privatized property rights in the post-socialist context produces distinct dynamics of gentrification and state-society interactions at the rural fringe of Chinese cities. While gentrification is often seen as a place-making strategy espoused by entrepreneurial states to attract investment and bolster consumption, it also functions as a state-building tactic for recovering and materializing land rights where property rights are uncertain, under-defined and contested. In the process, uneven patterns of direct and indirect displacement can be observed which reflected a more complex reality than the class replacement thesis commonly found in traditional gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) is one of the most important engineering institutions for Chinese engineers. The formal establishment of CAE, from its original conception in 1978 to its final birth in 1994, took almost 20 years. At present it has been in existence for two decades. Both the former decades-long emergence and the latter decades-long operation of CAE can be interpreted in terms of an interaction between expertise and politics. To understand the CAE's origins and operation, this paper will first examine how 'engineering' and 'engineer' have slightly different meanings in the historical and cultural context of China than in the West. Then it will focus on the decades-long creation of the CAE. In the 1970s, the proposal for a Chinese engineering academy was initiated by scientist and engineer members of the Chinese Academy of Science, as a result of both domestic and international influences. Through the 1980s and 90s, a few politicians jointly with those scientists and engineers made a crucial contribution to the founding of the CAE. Finally, the article offers an account of CAE's structure and operation during the first twenty years of its existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Xi Jinping placed poverty alleviation on the main agenda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), various means have been adopted to promote a more rational distribution of income in difficult-to-manage regions. One method used by the CCP is the posting of first secretaries to rural areas, which allows the higher levels of government to penetrate the grassroots and facilitates effective poverty alleviation. This paper is a systematic empirical study on the topic of first secretaries-in-residence. It explains the operation, effectiveness, and deficiencies of the system and seeks to enhance understanding of rural governance in China among the academic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines processes of adaptive governance and authoritarian resilience through the lens of community governance, bringing together hitherto unrelated fields of study. It argues first that adaptation has unintended consequences that can threaten stability but do not necessarily cause regime crisis. Second, it contends that the structural fault-lines of institutionalised categorical inequality, marketisation, and professionalization, along with the pathologies of Leninist authoritarianism, undermine adaptive community governance. The paper draws on qualitative research in two neighbourhoods of Shanghai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between labour and social policy is at the heart of the social question. Scholars often treat this link as either a causal relation out there or a conceptual connection in policy makers' minds. This article examines its sociotechnical materiality instead. It follows anthropologists who ask how bureaucrats practice policy and scholars of science and technology studies who explore how social and technical aspects are interrelated in knowledge processes. China studies has suggested that the minimum livelihood guarantee (dibao) was originally designed as a market-oriented response to transformations of labour such as mass layoffs, peasant proletarianisation and associated unrest but later revamped to only combat extreme poverty. Ethnographic insights into dibao policy in a village in Sichuan show how its designed links to labour were erased and transformed through different methods of bureaucratic targeting, as well as expectations about the bureaucratic ability to know. For a time, dibao was even integrated into alternative rural development projects aimed at decommodification. Studying social policy as a knowledge process uncovers how its sociotechnical links to labour reconfigure it as an answer to the social question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the prevalence of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) as an adaptive strategy for the effective management of an increasingly diverse workforce, the drivers of these customized work arrangements and why they enhance mutuality in the employment relationship are not well understood. Drawing on an integration of social cognitive theory and resource-based perspective, we address these interrelated questions by proposing and examining a moderated mediation model of antecedents and outcomes of task and career i-deals. Multi-source and multi-wave data obtained from supervisors and employees in service and manufacturing organizations were used to test our hypothesized relationships. Results of multilevel path analysis reveal that both employee approach motive and supervisor political skill relate to i-deals. Furthermore, high-commitment HR system moderates the relationship between supervisor political skill (but not employee approach motive) and i-deals such that this relationship is stronger when high-commitment HR system is high but not low. Additionally, i-deals relate to service creativity but indirectly through personal skill development suggesting a potential human capital (relative to the predominantly motivational) explanation of the performance implications of i-deals. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding and enhancing the effectiveness of negotiating and implementing i-deals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fall of Suharto in 1998 opened up a new space for the public articulation of Chinese identity in Indonesia. Since the decrees that lifted the ban on Chinese language, Mandarin classes have had an unprecedented boom. This paper reflects on this phenomenon in the geopolitical context of the economic rise of China and its promotion of soft power, as well as the market forces that reward Mandarin competency in contemporary Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberal democracy, in spite of its bad performance in many countries, is still taken to be the final human political establishment in its thinking mode and institutional framework among most political scientists. But some serious challenges are on the rise. The one I introduce here comes from ancient Chinese political tradition and is exemplified by four modern Chinese political scientists, who are all familiar with the doctrine of liberal democracy, but disagree with its thinking mode: the primacy of the politics of liberal democracy. Independently, they all put political primacy on good governing and treat it as the basis of any regime, democratic or not. This paper tries to expound this uniquely critical point on liberal democracy, and reveals its connection with the tradition of ancient China's political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]