Search

The article has its roots in the concept of a community with a shared future for humanity, a Chinese innovation aimed at realizing the development and prosperity of human societies. This concept rests on an exploration, based in Marxism and sinicized Marxism, of how world history has evolved, and embodies six global initiatives as fundamental measures to respond to the real needs of world development at the current stage. Specifically, the Belt and Road Initiative, based on a new pattern of cooperation, strives to build a new model of common prosperity in both economic and cultural terms for countries around the world. The Global Development Initiative aims to upgrade the development agenda and formulate new guidelines for the common socio-economic development of all countries. The Global Security Initiative seeks to eliminate the old-style mentality formed by the zero-sum game thinking of the Cold War epoch, and to formulate a new conception of shared security for the international community. The Global Civilization Initiative sets out to disprove the myths of Western civilization and to develop a new concept of mutual learning between civilizations, while the Global AI Governance Initiative aims to build consensus and on that basis, to shape the common governance of scientific and technological progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa that is causing concern in Western capitals was done against the background of the abandonment or the "triage" operated by the former colonial powers on this continent after 1990. Press articles (more or less academic) in search of spectacular, prefers the "zero sum game" perspective instead of the "win-win" one. A political strategy of China in the African area would involve a sacrifice of "economic logic" in favour of "political logic", or investments made under any conditions at prices higher than market conditions would dictate at a particular moment. The analysis of China's political behaviour must avoid the spectacular and be based on facts, figures (as far as they are available and credible) and analogies (cautious) with the evolution of other emerging economies throughout contemporary history. China, which stays and invests where Western companies leave, could not have a bad image in Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa appears as part of a new Geo-strategic rivalry between the West and RP China. This rivalry is desirable to be constructive, to respect the rules of the game and above all to bring about structural transformations for the benefit of ordinary African citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000-2000 by Susan Naquin (review) God cults are not zero-sum games, and gods having strong connections and bonds with other gods have more opportunities to develop and gain new shrines and worshippers. Naquin has a short but tantalizing passage (pp. 404-408) on local painted pantheons or assemblages, and this is the kind of material that could be fruitfully focused on to understand the dynamics that make a god popular and successful. [Extracted from the article]

In the field of computer intelligence, it has always been a challenge to construct an agent model that can be adapted to various complex tasks. In recent years, based on the planning algorithm of Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS), a new idea has been proposed to solve the AI problems of two-player zero-sum games such as chess and Go. However, most of the games in the real environment rely on imperfect information, so it is impossible to directly use the normal tree search planning algorithm to construct a decision-making model. Mahjong, which is a popular multiplayer game with a long history in China, attracts great attention from AI researchers because it contains a large game state space and a lot of hidden information. In this paper, we utilize an agent learning approach that leverages deep learning, reinforcement learning, and dropout learning techniques to implement a Mahjong AI game agent. First, we improve the state transition of the tree search based on the learned MDP model, the player position variable and transition information are introduced into the tree search algorithm to construct a multiplayer search tree. Then, the model training based on a deep reinforcement learning method ensures the stable and sustainable training process of the learned MDP model. Finally, we utilize the strategy data generated by the tree search and use the dropout learning method to train the normal decision-making agent. The experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and stability performance of the agent trained by our proposed method compared with existing agents in terms of test data accuracy, tournament ranking performance, and online match performance. The agent plays against human players and acts like real humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of status in world politics has become an important research topic. This article examines China–India relations through a new framework for status dilemmas. This article, through a careful comparison of the status dilemma with other models of conflict, clarifies the logic and mechanism of status dilemmas in world politics. In particular, it differentiates between the status competition model and the status dilemma model. The status dilemma entails overestimation of the competitive nature of the status relationship and underestimation of the potential compatibility of the status goal. The article demonstrates that the China–India relationship is not always a zero-sum game, even though its competitive nature is real. Asymmetrical power and motivated reasoning contribute to misunderstanding and misperception. The power asymmetry makes India oversensitive to Chinese actions, and it makes China less sensitive to India's concerns. Motivated reasoning, based on historical memory and domestic politics, moreover, makes India's perception of China more negative and competitive than China's apprehension of India. The status dilemma has broad implications for power politics in the new era which suggest that policymakers should realistically evaluate the challenges of status competition while avoiding deterministic zero-sum thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the theoretical lenses of cultural gaming and paradigmatic assumptions of Eastern and Western cultures, this article looks into the interrelationships between game intentions and communication strategies. Through a thematic analysis of the Chinese traditional cultural classics from the pre-Qin (221 BCE–206 BCE) to the Republic of China (1912–1949) from the Chinese Text Project, three featured themes of water including the best and the softest, carrying boats and capsizing boats, and the most violent and the strongest have emerged in correspondence to the positive zero sum, zero sum, and negative zero sum game intentions. Thus, a water and game theory for intercultural communication has been constructed. The theory is applicable to managing intercultural communication barriers, esp. systematic misunderstanding between individuals from China and the West, between Chinese enterprises and their counterparts in other countries, and between China and other countries on various intercultural communication occasions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pak-China relations have been exemplary in the contemporary international politics. Both States have been maintaining strong ties in terms of diplomatic and military cooperation. However, the close economic cooperation has added a new dimension in the Pak-China all weather partnership. Over the years, China and Pakistan strategic cooperation has evolved at unprecedented level. In the year 2013, the Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the construction of One Belt One Road (OBOR) that aims to connect China with West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and Middle East. It is a bitter fact that, since 9/11 Pakistan has suffered in socio-political and especially in economic dimension. The regional security environment and rise of extremism and terrorism has resulted into the hampering economic development. Therefore, the CPEC project will prove to be game changer and when completed it will have deep impact on economic development of Pakistan in future. The CPEC provides an opportunity for Pakistan to stabilize its society and reshape its positive image at international level from fragile State to emerging economy in the South Asian region. The rise of China in economic sphere has been jealously seen by other developed countries while for Pakistan it has been a blessing factor. Thus, PakChina strategic partnership entered into the new phase of economic cooperation that will certainly change the dynamics of the regional politics. This paper aims to discuss the multiple dimensions of CPEC its importance for Pakistan and China along with its internal and external challenges. Moreover, economic and security perspectives will be focused in detail. To fully understand the role of CPEC as driving force of economic prosperity, this paper discusses its potential as a game changer for both China and Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dissatisfied with their relative standing in the world, China and Russia are challenging the US-dominated liberal order. Could US accommodation of their status concerns reduce conflict? The psychological rationale for status accommodation is rooted in the insights of social identity theory (SIT), which argues that persistent status denial leads lower-status groups to "lash out." Steven Ward (2017) objects that political scientists have misinterpreted SIT. In his view, impermeable group boundaries only affect individuals and do not lead to intergroup conflict. Ward's narrow critique overlooks the larger meaning and significance of SIT, which is about how frustration and anger over status barriers and unfair treatment motivate lower-status groups to challenge the status quo. Social competition is positional and zero-sum. Given the insights of SIT, Ward's recommendation that the United States demonstrate to China and Russia the futility of status competition is likely to provoke a backlash and increase the risk of military conflict. Instead, SIT implies a continuing process of status accommodation and efforts to maintain the legitimacy and stability of US leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rather than attempting to balance the environment with the economy (i.e., a zero-sum game), a theoretically better long-term approach would be to achieve harmonious development in which both the environment and the economy benefit. To provide insights into this suggestion, we analyzed the relationships between environmental quality and economic development in China through a threshold regression model based on panel data from 292 cities from 2007 to 2018. We found that the relationship between environmental quality and economic development represented a negative interaction before or after the relationship passed through a zone of temporary balance, but that attaining a high urbanization level (in this case study, 81.0%) could improve the efficiency and capital utilization rate of environmental governance and change the impact from negative to positive, thereby achieving harmonious development rather than a zero-sum game. The government should therefore take measures to increase urbanization so as to achieve more harmonious development of the environment and economy (i.e., a win–win situation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]