This book adopts an integrative research framework that primarily combines industrial and discourse analysis to investigate the company Milkyway Image, drawing upon literature that studies film studios and the practices of film production, distribution, and reception. The history of the Hong Kong-based film production company Milkyway Image from its founding in 1996 to the present exemplifies the metamorphosis of the post-return Hong Kong film industry to an era characterised by Hong Kong’s integration into a Chinese national context and the transnationalisation of world cinema. It shows that contemporary Hong Kong cinema’s transition resists a monolithic chronicle and instead represents a narrative combining the perspectives of different interest groups and a complex process of compliance and resistance, negotiation and contestation. The meaning of Milkyway’s films shifts as they are circulated across cultures and viewed within diverse frameworks, and our understanding of Hong Kong cinema is subject to varying contexts and historical configurations. For researchers in film and media studies and those who have a general interest in Hong Kong cinema, Asian cinema, or contemporary film culture, this book reveals how a variety of industry and cultural bodies have become co-creators of meaning for a film production house, and how the company operates as a co-creator of the discourse that surrounds it.
Dissatisfaction with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an indicator of a country’s development or a population’s wellbeing led to the development of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). The GPI is an aggregate index of over 20 economic, social and environmental indicators, and accounts for both the welfare benefits of economic growth, and the social and environmental costs which accompany that economic growth. The result is better information about the level of welfare or well-being of a country’s population. This book measures the GPI of Hong Kong and Singapore from 1968 to 2010. It finds that for both countries, economic output (as measured by the GDP) has grown more than welfare (as measured by the GPI), but important differences are also found. In Hong Kong, the GPI has grown for the whole period under consideration, while in Singapore the GPI has stalled from 1993. This is in line with most countries and is explained by the "threshold hypothesis" which states that beyond a certain level of economic development the benefits of further economic growth are outweighed by even higher environmental and social costs. The book argues that the growth of Hong Kong’s GPI is due to its favourable relationship with China and in particular its ability to export low-wage jobs and polluting industries, rather than successful domestic policies. A stalling or shrinking GPI calls for alternative policies than the growth economy promoted by neoclassical economists, and the book explores an alternative model, that of the Steady State Economy (SSE).
This innovative book uses the lens of cultural history to examine the development of medicine in Qing dynasty China. Focusing on the specialty of "medicine for women"(fuke), Yi-Li Wu explores the material and ideological issues associated with childbearing in the late imperial period. She draws on a rich array of medical writings that circulated in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century China to analyze the points of convergence and contention that shaped people's views of women's reproductive diseases. These points of contention touched on fundamental issues: How different were women's bodies from men's? What drugs were best for promoting conception and preventing miscarriage? Was childbirth inherently dangerous? And who was best qualified to judge? Wu shows that late imperial medicine approached these questions with a new, positive perspective.
From 1978 through the turn of the century, China was transformed from a state-owned economy into a predominantly private economy. This fundamental change took place under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has been ideologically and politically predisposed to suppress private ownership. In Dancing with the Devil, Yi-min Lin explains how and why such a paradoxical reality came about. He shows that private ownership became a necessary evil for the CCP because the public sector was increasingly unable to address two essential concerns for regime survival: employment and revenue. Focusing on political actors as major change agents, Lin examines how their self-interested behavior led to the decline of public ownership in the context of China's evolving demographics and fiscal system. The constraints and incentives associated with these factors help explain CCP leaders' initial decision to allow limited private economic activities at the outset of reform. They also shed light on the ballooning opportunism among lower officials, which undermined the vitality of public enterprises. Furthermore, they hold a key to understanding the timing of the massive privatization in the late 1990s, as well as its tempo and spread thereafter. Dancing with the Devil illustrates how the driving forces developed and played out in these intertwined episodes of the story. In so doing, it offers new insights into the mechanisms of China's economic transformation and enriches theories of institutional change.
This paper provides the first systematic study of how minimum wage policies in China affect firm employment over the 2000-2007 periods. Using a novel dataset of minimum wage regulations across more than 2,800 counties matched with firm-level data, we investigate both the effect of the minimum wage and its policy enforcement tightening in 2004. A dynamic panel (difference GMM) estimator is combined with a “neighbor-pairs-approach” to control for unobservable heterogeneity common to “border counties” that are subject to different minimum wage changes. We show that minimum wage increases have a significant negative impact on employment, with an estimated elasticity of -0.1. Furthermore, we find a heterogeneous effect of the minimum wage on employment which depends on the firm's wage level. Specifically, the minimum wage has a greater negative impact on employment in low-wage firms than in high-wage firms. Our results are robust for different treatment groups, sample attrition correction, and placebo tests.
Zhenwu, or the Perfected Warrior, is one of the few Chinese Deities that can rightfully claim a countrywide devotion. Religious specialists, lay devotees, the state machine, and the cultural industry all participated, both collaboratively and competitively, in the evolution of this devotional movement. This book centres on the development and transformation of the godhead of Zhenwu, as well as the devotional movement focused on him. Organised chronologically on the development of the Zhenwu worship in Daoist rituals, state religion, and popular practices, it looks at the changes in the way Zhenwu was perceived, and the historical context in which those changes took place. The author investigates the complicated means by which various social and political groups contested with each other in appropriating cultural-religious symbols. The question at the core of the book is how, in a given historical context, human agents and social institutions shape the religious world to which they profess devotion. The work offers a holistic approach to religion in a period of Chinese history when central, local, official, clerical and popular power are constantly negotiating and reshaping established values.
This title was first published in 2002: This study of the Chinese electric power industry examines the ownership and the restructuring of the industry. The reform of the electric power industry is also seen as part of the wider economic development that has been taking place in China, thus providing fresh perspectives on the changes taking place in both the economy and society more generally. Presenting a wealth of extensive research on the subject, the book elucidates the power struggle between political and bureaucratic elite and explains the sensitive and volatile relationship between the central and provincial government against an increasingly complex global background.
Yi Hwang (1501-1570), better known by his pen name T'oegye, is generally considered Korea's preeminent Neo-Confucian scholar. The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning is his final masterpiece, a distillation of the learning and practice of a lifetime, and one of the most important works of Korean Neo-Confucianism. In it he crystallized the essence of Neo-Confucian philosophy and spiritual practice in ten brief chapters that begin with the grand vision of the universe and conclude with a description of a well-lived day. In To Become a Sage, Michael Kalton supplements a superb translation of this pivotal text with useful commentary that will greatly enhance its value and interest to the lay reader. The Ten Diagrams is the first complete primary text of Korean Neo-Confucianism to be translated into English. Korea's Yi Dynasty (1392-1910), the only East Asian regime founded exclusively under Neo-Confucian auspices, was unique in its allegiance to the orthodox Ch'eng Chu school, predominant in China, Korea, and Japan. Although the Ten Diagrams is a relatively short work, it fully presents the entire vision of Neo-Confucianism as framed in that school. Kalton provides a brief history of Neo-Confucianism in China and Korea as well as commentary that includes extensive passages from T'oegye's voluminous personal correspondence. These annotations expand the meaning distilled in each chapter. They help the uninitiated reader understand the basic elements of the complex Ch'eng Chu school of Neo-Confucianism, while enabling the scholar to distinguish characteristic aspects of Korean Neo-Confucianism as presented in the thought of the nation's leading philosopher of the time.
BOOK DESCRIPTION Although dreams have been studied in great depth about this most influential classic Chinese fiction, the study of all the dreams as a sequence and in relation to their structural functions in the allegory is undertaken for the first time in this book. Major topics include: Dream Sequence as the Narrative Framework; The Co-existence of Dream and Reality; Discourse on Love: Daguanyuan and Its Literary Lineage; Medieval Allegory: Its Origin and Its Representation; Dream as Representation of Allegory: The Roman de la Rose and Honglou meng. THE AUTHOR Jeannie Jinsheng Yi earned her Ph.D. degree in Asian Studies from Washington University. Author of several books in both English and Chinese, she has been writing extensively on topics related to China and Asia.
An important new cultural study of the Cold War, Guolin Yi’s The Media and Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963–1972 analyzes how the media in both countries shaped public perceptions of the changing relations between China and the United States in the decade prior to Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing. This book offers the first systematic study of Cankao Xiaoxi (Reference News), an internal Chinese newspaper that carried relatively objective stories the Xinhua News Agency translated from world news media for circulation among Communist cadres. As the main channel for the cadres to learn about the outside world, this newspaper provides a window into China’s evolving foreign policy, including the reception of signals from the Nixon administration. Yi compares this internal communications channel with the public accounts contained in the more widely circulated newspaper People’s Daily, a chief propaganda outlet of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) directed at its own people and China watchers all over the world. A third level of communication emerges in classified CCP instructions and government documents. By approaching the Chinese communication system on three levels—internal, public, and classified—Yi’s analysis demonstrates how people at different positions in the political hierarchy accessed varying types of information, allowing him to chart the development of Beijing’s approach to the U.S. government. In a corresponding analysis of the defining features of American reporting on China, Yi considers the impact of government-media relationships in the United States during the Cold War. Alongside prominent magazines and newspapers, particularly the New York Times and the Washington Post in their differing coverage of key events, Yi discusses television networks, which proved vital for promoting the success of Ping-Pong Diplomacy and the impact of Nixon’s visit in 1972. With its comparative study of news outlets in the two countries, The Media and Sino-American Rapprochement, 1963–1972 presents a thorough and comprehensive perspective on the role of the media in influencing domestic Chinese and American public opinion during a critical decade.
The first-ever comprehensive analysis of its kind in any western language, this unique volume provides a social art history of Yungang: a 5th-century rock-cut court cave complex, UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of the greatest Buddhist monuments of all time. Yungang asks why, when, and under what circumstances this impressive cave sanctuary was made, and who played significant roles at various stages. Recent economic changes in China including the expansion of roads have led to unprecedented numbers of objects being unearthed on site and near the cave-chapels. Archaeological discoveries in 2010 have shed significant new light on the architectural configuration of monasteries in the capital and the functions of different sections of the cave complex, as well as monastic life within it. For the first time, it is possible to reconstruct where the monks lived and translated sacred literary texts, and to fully understand that freestanding monasteries are an important component of the rock-cut cave complex. Illustrated throughout with remarkable full-colour photographs, this re-examination of the cave-chapels, which brings together previous scholarship, primary documentation, and more than a decade of first-hand field research, will not only fill in the gaps in our knowledge about Yungang, but also raise, and perhaps answer, new questions in art history.
The division between the scholar-gentry class and the “people” was an enduring theme of the traditional Chinese agrarian-bureaucratic state. Twentieth-century elites recast this as a division between intellectuals and peasants and made the confrontation between the writing/intellectual self and the peasant “other” a central concern of literature. The author argues that, in the process, they created the “peasantry,” the downtrodden rural masses represented as proper objects of political action and shifting ideological agendas. Throughout this transition, language or discourse has been not only a weapon of struggle but the center of controversy and contention. Because of this primacy of language, the author’s main approach is the close reading or, rather, re-reading of significant narrative fictions from four literary generations to demonstrate how historical, ideological, and cultural issues are absorbed, articulated, and debated within the text. Three chapters each focus on one representative author. The fiction of Lu Xun (1881-1936), which initiated the literary preoccupation with the victimized peasant, is also about the identity crisis of the intellectual. Zhao Shuli (1906-1970), upheld by the Communist Party as a model “peasant writer,” tragically exemplifies in his career the inherent contradictions of such an assigned role. In the post-Mao era, Gao Xiaosheng (1928—) uses the ironic play of language to present a more ambiguous peasant while deflating intellectual pretensions. The chapter on the last of the four “generations” examines several texts by Mo Yan (1956—), Han Shaogong (1952—), and Wang Anyi (1954—) as examples of “root-searching” fiction from the mid-1980’s. While reaching back into the past, this fiction is paradoxically also experimental in technique: the encounter with the peasant leads to questions about the self-construction of the intellectual and the nature of narrative representation itself. Throughout, the focus is on texts in which some sort of representation or stand-in of the writer/intellectual self is present—as character, as witness, as center of consciousness, or as first-person or obtrusive narrator. Each story catches the writer in a self-reflective mode, the confrontation with the peasant “other” providing a theater for acting out varying dramas of identity, power, ideology, political engagement, and self-representation.
This accessible and practical shortform book details the properties and advantages of high-performance pre-engineered steel-concrete composite beams (HPCBs) for improving the sustainability of construction techniques. It also explains the analysis methods for testing HPCB systems. The authors describe a new HPCB system that has been developed to reduce the input of raw materials and embodied CO2 commonly associated with heavily loaded and long-spanned industrial buildings (which predominately comprise reinforced concrete) and improve the sustainability of the construction process. They provide several resources throughout to facilitate adoption by professionals. Design equations derived from Eurocode 4 approach for ultimate limit state and serviceability limit state and worked examples are included throughout. The authors discuss the feasibility for both materials and the full-scale beams and CO2 reduction methods, including use of recycled concrete aggregate, ground granulated blast-furnace and silica fume to replace natural coarse aggregates and Ordinary Portland Cement. Guidance for testing HPCBs—including setup, test procedure and data collection and interpretation—is also given. The authors also elaborate on recommendations for finite element analysis for HPCBs. Design examples are appended to illustrate typical current practice using a 12 × 12 m grid floor with live load of 15 kPa. Various considerations for different parameters such as fire resistance are discussed. Finally, the authors present a case study of a recently completed industrial building in Singapore to quantify the benefits of using HPCBs over reinforced concrete and conventional composite construction. Structural engineering professionals, whose work relates to long-span and heavy-loading industrial or commercial buildings, will benefit from the detailed guidance and focus on practical applications provided throughout this book. Post-graduate students of advanced steel and composite structures will also benefit from these descriptions.
With applications throughout the social sciences, culture and psychology is a rapidly growing field that has experienced a surge in publications over the last decade. From this proliferation of books, chapters, and journal articles, exciting developments have emerged in the relationship of culture to cognitive processes, human development, psychopathology, social behavior, organizational behavior, neuroscience, language, marketing, and other topics. In recognition of this exponential growth, Advances in Culture and Psychology is the first annual series to offer state-of-the-art reviews of scholarly research in the growing field of culture and psychology. The Advances in Culture and Psychology series is: * Developing an intellectual home for culture and psychology research programs * Fostering bridges and connections among cultural scholars from across the discipline * Creating a premier outlet for culture and psychology research * Publishing articles that reflect the theoretical, methodological, and epistemological diversity in the study of culture and psychology * Enhancing the collective identity of the culture and psychology field Comprising chapters from internationally renowned culture scholars and representing diversity in the theory and study of culture within psychology, Advances in Culture and Psychology is an ideal resource for research programs and academics throughout the psychology community.
A beautifully illustrated, interdisciplinary look at the ceremonies and protocols of the dynastic court of Joseon Korea Recording State Rites in Words and Images provides an engaging and in-depth exploration of the large corpus of court statutes compiled during the Joseon dynasty of Korea. The term uigwe, commonly translated as “royal protocols,” is the name given to the collection of nearly four thousand books that were commissioned and written to document the customs, rituals, rules, protocols, and ceremonial practices of the Joseon dynasty. In this generously illustrated book, Yi Song-mi introduces readers to the rich and varied documentary tradition embodied in the uigwe, sharing invaluable insights into time-honored court customs through text and images and analyzing changes in ritual practice over time. The first comprehensive study of its kind in English, Recording State Rites in Words and Images presents groundbreaking research that opens a window on Korean history and art and will serve as an inspiration to students, scholars, and anyone interested in topics such as dynastic customs, court artists, and bookmaking. Published in association with the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art at Princeton University
This book uses a system-based approach to decipher and organize the concepts and conclusions relevant for creating and capturing value in business. It develops a scientific theory based on systems science and logical reasoning that is commonly employed in mathematics and natural science. The resulting new theory focuses on the organizational nature of the world and the organic and holistic feature of human organizations and their interactions. To this end, this book identifies a few axioms, instead of empirical discoveries, on which it reliably constructs the entire theory.
This book is the first monograph in the field of uniqueness theory of meromorphic functions dealing with conditions under which there is the unique function satisfying given hypotheses. Developed by R. Nevanlinna, a Finnish mathematician, early in the 1920's, research in the field has developed rapidly over the past three decades with a great deal of fruitful results. This book systematically summarizes the most important results in the field, including many of the authors' own previously unpublished results. In addition, useful skills and simple proofs are introduced. This book is suitable for higher level and graduate students who have a basic grounding in complex analysis, but will also appeal to researchers in mathematics.
This comprehensive reference views China’s welfare system through a cultural-historical lens to integrate its complex story into the global study of welfare. Focusing on the mainland’s vast, mainly rural population and its long and complicated history, it analyzes rural welfare from the imperial dynasties, to the socialist planned economy under Mao Zedong, to its recent history in the current market economy. Findings from government and academics explore salient topics such as urban/rural inequity, the situation of migrant workers, change of social security system, the community development of the countryside, and the relationships of rural welfare policy with social structure, cultural background, economic development and political institution. This broad and deep knowledge gives readers the tools necessary for understanding the relationship of China’s unique and nuanced past to its prominent status in the evolving global economy. Among the book’s topics: “p> Welfare studies in the West and China Welfare practice in the period of 1840-1949 Creation of the Socialist Welfare System: socialist reformation and construction The Social Security system in rural China, 1979-1998 Re-collectivized process in welfare and economy Welfare’s political contexts: rural grass-roots democracy With its accessible, up-to-date coverage and holistic approach to its subject, Rural Welfare in China will find a diverse interested audience, including sociologists, political economists, and social policymakers.
This analysis of South Korea's development experience can present lessons for development in the 21st century. Situating the development experience of South Korea within the framework of the capability enhancing state, this volume examines the empowering institutions and policies of South Korea between 1945 and 2000.
In Traffic in Asian Women Laura Hyun Yi Kang demonstrates that the figure of "Asian women" functions as an analytic with which to understand the emergence, decline, and permutation of U.S. power/knowledge at the nexus of capitalism, state power, global governance, and knowledge production throughout the twentieth century. Kang analyzes the establishment, suppression, forgetting, and illegibility of the Japanese military "comfort system" (1932–1945) within that broader geohistorical arc. Although many have upheld the "comfort women" case as exemplary of both the past violation and the contemporary empowerment of Asian women, Kang argues that it has profoundly destabilized the imaginary unity and conceptual demarcation of the category. Kang traces how "Asian women" have been alternately distinguished and effaced as subjects of the traffic in women, sexual slavery, and violence against women. She also explores how specific modes of redress and justice were determined by several overlapping geopolitical and economic changes ranging from U.S.-guided movements of capital across Asia and the end of the Cold War to the emergence of new media technologies that facilitated the global circulation of "comfort women" stories.
Politics of the State Grid Corporation of China -- Electricity -- From the ministry to a corporation -- Overseeing SGCC: the contested regimes of central agencies -- State Grid Corporation of China -- SGCC in action: as a policy entrepreneur -- SGCC in action: as technology innovator -- SGCC in action: internationalisation
Explores the history and challenges of nuclear energy development in China, across five main areas: politics, economics, environment, technology transfer and the nuclear fuel cycle. It emphasizes the political challenges in developing a set of long-term national strategies to ensure speedy, safe and secure nuclear energy development.
During the mid-1990s, Taiwan witnessed a remarkable proliferation of historical writings and cultural movements pertaining to 'the local'. 'Place (difang)' and 'community (shequ)' became two ubiquitous terms in the lexicon of being Taiwanese. This book is a critical examination of the socio-historical condition in which the discourse of local diversity emerged and gradually permeated Taiwan's public culture. Interweaving ethnographic sensibility and theoretical insights across disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies and cultural geography the study elucidates the complex relationships between localism, nationalism and globalism. Not only is it a rare type of ethnography in Taiwan studies, this book also enriches our understanding of the increasingly significant field of East Asia (post)modernity.
The rise of China is no doubt one of the most important events in world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. Mainstream economics, especially the institutional theory of economic development based on a dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions, is highly inadequate in explaining China's rise. This book argues that only a radical reinterpretation of the history of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West (as incorrectly portrayed by the institutional theory) can fully explain China's growth miracle and why the determined rise of China is unstoppable despite its current 'backward' financial system and political institutions. Conversely, China's spectacular and rapid transformation from an impoverished agrarian society to a formidable industrial superpower sheds considerable light on the fundamental shortcomings of the institutional theory and mainstream 'blackboard' economic models, and provides more-accurate reevaluations of historical episodes such as Africa's enduring poverty trap despite radical political and economic reforms, Latin America's lost decades and frequent debt crises, 19th century Europe's great escape from the Malthusian trap, and the Industrial Revolution itself.
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