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The research examines the role of market expansion and international labor division in the British Industrial Revolution from the perspective of globalization. The research shows that British cotton textile output in pieces grew 275 times from the 1770s to the mid-1850s and documents that such growth would never have happened without a vast overseas market for the supply of raw cotton and the sale of products. The paper argues that the continuous and dramatic expansion of overseas markets allowed the British cotton industry to expand greatly without hitting the ceiling of marginal returns, leading not only to the great expansion of production, but also to technological and institutional innovations, and that international labor division made it possible for the industry to import ample amounts of raw cotton and export large amounts of cotton textiles. In contrast, foreign demand for Chinese cotton textiles increased significantly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but accounted for only 0.3% of production capacity, which was too little to lift the law of diminishing marginal returns and to induce either technological or institutional changes. As a result, only Smithian growths could be achieved through optimal resource utilization and specialization in production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the question of how theorisation of the social construction of childhood can be applied across cultural contexts, taking China and Britain as examples. The paper draws on collaborative dialogue between scholars from the People's Republic of China and Britain, and literatures from both Anglophone and Mandarin sources. It takes forward emergent work on theorising childhood from diverse global perspectives by focusing on the institutionalisation of childhood in these countries, with particular reference to language, conceptualisation and legal frameworks relating to chronological age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at social mobility in China and Britain. It explores whether the rapid economic development in China in the last thirty years has brought its mobility closer to that in Britain. It also examines the effects of China's household registration system (hukou) on people's mobility chances. Using national representative surveys in the two countries, we found a convergence in total mobility in the two countries but higher levels of inequality in China in terms of relative mobility. Chinese women faced the greatest disadvantages. The prime driver for social inequality in China was the hukou system. Rural people in China had very limited opportunities for education but even those who had similar levels of education were still very much hampered by the hukou penalty in trying to gain access to advantaged positions. Both societies are highly unequal but China has an additional barrier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China and Britain have contrasting images in the official and unofficial Syrian media. By analysing relevant news stories, this study reveals that China's involvement in the Syrian crisis as covered by the Syrian media is usually limited to governmental affairs, while Britain's involvement covered by the Syrian media, especially the "revolutionary" outlet, figures in a relatively wider range of diverse nongovernmental happenings including activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the media. Most importantly, the study finds that the "revolutionary" outlet Enab Baladi is apt to present Chinese involvement as negative, but presents British involvement as positive, while the government-backed news agency SANA portrays a completely positive image of China and a fundamentally negative image of Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framing the eleven essays in this special double issue, this introduction opens a discussion, continued throughout the issue, on the pervasive impulse toward and elastic meaning of the ideal of paradise which was of particular interest to nineteenth-century British and American artists. It describes the arc of the issue, which is organized into three parts: on British art, American art, and architectural projects. It is bracketed by an essay that looks back to the influence of Renaissance Florence on nineteenth-century British and Americans and a postscript on paradisiacal themes in the work of two contemporary British and American artists. The genesis of this special issue is the 2016 symposium Picturing Paradise in Nineteenth Century British and American Art: Past, Lost, Regained organized by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]