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This paper presents findings from an investigation of nature-based practices, from the perspectives of 10 academics/educators from six nations. Participants engaged in a focus group exploring the prevalence and inclusion of nature in social work practice and education. While the study focused on individual members' experiences and perspectives, the findings highlight important context-specific factors for including nature within social work to reconnect humans with nature for health, well-being, healing, and justice. An Integrative Environmental Model for social work is proposed to assist future practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands upon a hitherto underexplored finding by Rich and Banerjee's 2015 model which finds that Taiwan has done comparatively better with non-democracies in Africa. The paper proposes that democratisation makes an African state more responsive to domestic economic imperatives and thus more likely to form relations with the demographically and economically larger People's Republic of China because of the prospective trade, aid and investment gains to be made once such a switch is affected. Seven case studies conducted over the 2001–2018 period yield results which are in line with this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the role of Taiwanese psychiatrists in turning neurasthenia into a culture-specific disease in the late twentieth century. It first delineates the shift in both explanatory models of psychoneuroses and patient population in post-World War II Taiwan. Neurasthenia became a focus of international attention in the 1970s and 1980s with the advance of cultural psychiatry, and, as China was closed to the outside world, Taiwanese psychiatrists were influential in framing the cultural meaning of neurasthenia. With the rise of post-socialist China, Taiwan lost its status as a key laboratory of Chinese studies. This paper argues that the history of neurasthenia during the period was closely associated with the professional development and national identity of Taiwanese psychiatrists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After their defeat in the Chinese civil war, in 1949 the exiled Kuomintang (KMT) government fled to Taiwan and endeavoured to educate the baby-boomer generation on the island to become ‘true Chinese’. Geography education was one of the fundamental vehicles used by the KMT to construct a Chinese identity and to create a longing for a Chinese motherland. This paper explores the ways in which a KMT-versioned ‘sense of place’ was constructed in elementary education during the period between 1945 and 1968, and investigates how the concepts of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ were introduced and presented in school textbooks. By examining the geographic knowledge taught in Taiwan’s elementary schools (both through the content of textbooks and the design of the curriculum), this paper investigates how the foundations of a China-centric identity were laid, and also the ways in which a Chinese homeland was constructed through geography education. However, in the process of reinforcing a sense of Chinese-ness, the relationship between the island and its inhabitants was sacrificed. The island became distant, insignificant and absent in school education and was turned into a meaningless flatscape. This paper argues that the rise of Taiwanese awareness in the 1990s has proven that an arbitrary construction of an inauthentic Chinese identity is both problematic and unsustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of public support for war among non-Western and non-major powers (NWNM) states are distinctive from United States foreign military operations. First, these wars often intrude on subjects' direct livelihood. Second, great powers' intervention can drastically alter the outcome of these wars. These factors have not been examined extensively in the war support literature. We fill this gap by spearheading several hypotheses of war support unique to NWNM countries. Through an original and representative survey experiment on a hypothetical military conflict between China and Taiwan, our analysis yields that the information about the United States coming to Taiwan's defense in an armed conflict with China drives up war support by around 7% among the citizenry, although such information does not make the Taiwanese population more tolerant of combat casualties. In addition, perception of military training increases public support for war significantly. The findings suggest that the study of NWNM states could contribute to the war support literature from different perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do people risk their lives fighting in wars? This article looks beyond group grievance and material benefits to add another psychological mechanism explaining why people choose to fight or not to fight – perceived collective action. An individual is much more likely to fight when they perceive that others will also fight. Contrary to the expectations of social identity theory and social pressure theory, the effect of perceived collective action is stronger among those who have a weaker national identity because they are more likely to rationally calculate the chance of winning by accounting for others' decisions. To mitigate the endogeneity in post-conflict cross-sectional surveys, we conduct a survey experiment (n = 1,001) in Taiwan manipulating perceptions of others' willingness to fight in a potential China–Taiwan military conflict. Experimental evidence supports the hypotheses that perceived collective action works only on weak Taiwanese identifiers. The result holds in robustness checks and in another nationally representative survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This corpus-based study examines the widely-used discourse marker well in Chinese-speaking learners' speech and compares its frequencies in native speaker data and Swedish learners. While Swedish learners overuse well, Chinese-speaking learners (predominantly at the upper-intermediate level) significantly underuse it. The positions and functions of well are further examined using a functional framework. One-fourth of the Chinese-speaking learners who use well manipulate its positions in utterances in a similar way to native speakers. In terms of functions, well is employed for speech management much more frequently than for attitudinal purposes. The greater use of the former does not generally create negative effects, but the under-representation of the latter may suggest that Chinese-speaking learners sound too direct in certain contexts. The paper concludes by considering pedagogical implications for different first languages and proficiency levels and their possible applications to the instruction of well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before implementing the self-monitoring model programme of the Basel Convention in the Asia, Taiwan has conducted a comprehensive 4-year follow-up project to visit the govern- mental authorities and waste-disposal facilities in the countries that import waste from Taiwan. A total of nine treatment facilities, six of which are reported in this paper, and the five countries where the plants are located were visited in 2001-2002. France, Belgium and Finland primarily handled polychlorinated biphenyl capacitors, steel mill dust and metal waste. The United States accepted metal sludge, mainly electroplating sludge, from Taiwan. Waste printed circuit boards, waste wires and cables, and a mixture of waste metals and electronics were the major items exported to China. Relatively speaking, most treatment plants for hazardous waste paid close attention to environmental management, such as pollution control and monitoring, site zoning, system management regarding occupational safety and hygiene, data management, permits application, and image promotion. Under the tight restrictions formulated by the central environment agency, waste treatment plants in China managed the environmental issues seriously. For example, one of the treatment plants had ISO 14001 certification. It is believed that with continuous implementation of regulations, more improvement is foreseeable. Meanwhile, Taiwan and China should also continuously enhance their collaboration regarding the transboundary management of hazardous waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that enthusiastic responses to personal good news are associated with positive relationship qualities, whereas more muted or ambivalent responses tend to have negative effects on relationships. This process, called capitalization, has been studied almost exclusively in Western cultures. The present research examined capitalization in three East Asian cultural groups (Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), as well as in the United States. Whereas enthusiastic responses were associated with positive relationship outcomes in all groups, muted and critical responses showed significant moderation by culture. In three North American samples, these responses were negatively associated with relationship qualities. However, muted and critical responses revealed strong and positive correlations with relationship outcomes in Mainland China, non-significant associations in Hong Kong, and significant negative (but still weaker than in North America) associations in Taiwan. These findings point to the importance of examining relationship processes in the context of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's ruling Nationalist government saw the Second World War as an opportunity to shape the postwar world in China's favour. However, existing studies have often focused on China's plans on territorial arrangements in East Asia. This article examines how Nationalist China imagined and attempted to improve the postwar status of the Chinese diaspora in host countries. During the war, Nationalist China envisaged the removal of discriminatory treatment against the Chinese diaspora and planned to advocate racial equality. However, this equality was often intended to be parity with white people and Japanese rather than other Asians. Some Chinese officials even claimed that the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia should receive preferential treatment, which resonated with their perceptions that Chinese were superior to other Asians. As atrocities against Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia after the war mounted, China was forced to concentrate on saving their lives and assets. At the Asian Relations Conference, held in India in March–April 1947, Chinese delegates defended the Chinese diaspora against sceptical delegates of Southeast Asian nations. Although the conference delegates reached an agreement on treating foreign migrants in each country fairly, the Chinese diaspora still found itself in a precarious position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether China will become democratic is an interesting question with significant practical implications. This paper draws on the experiences of other Confucian societies (mainly Taiwan and South Korea) to show that it will be very difficult for China to become democratic anytime soon. Basically, in a Confucian society, people live in collectivities with stringent hierarchical structures. Such a feature is not conducive to democratization. In the cases of Taiwan an South Korea, cultural change, the emergence of a pluralistic social order following economic development, and foreign influence may have all contributed to their transition to democracy; however, more important is the quasi-pluralistic social order -- namely, ethnic and national identity cleavages in Taiwan and regionalism in South Korea in clearing the hurdle placed by the Confucian culture, Unfortunately, in China, no ready-made quasi-pluralistic social order exists, and other factors conductive to democratization may not be forthcoming soon, rendering the prospect of democratic transition in the foreseeable future quite bleak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To find the productive implications beyond ‘Weber fever’, a contested theme of ‘the Confucian ethic and economic development’, this article attempts to first examine the dual context in which Weber’s works were introduced before 1949, then to scrutinize the interpretations and evaluations of Weber’s work in the 1980s. Besides, an overview of the Chinese translations of Weber’s work and influential introductory materials is also necessary to understand the reception of Weber. While the reception among early Chinese sociologists before 1949 was separated by the division of disciplines, the reinvention of Weber during the 1980s appeared in at least three different forms in Taiwan and mainland China. Both Taiwanese and Chinese sociologists played crucial roles in establishing Weber as a social theorist of modernity, respectively resisted the Americanized Weber and developed a particular image of Weber in Chinese-speaking academic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although waste quantification and projection are important data for waste management, the reliability of their results is difficult to verify. The present study attempted to identify the best waste quantification methods using e-waste quantification studies of mainland China as case studies. Large discrepancies in the predicted amounts of e-waste generated were found no matter whether the same or different methods of estimation are used. Moreover, even when agreements between studies were found, the agreed figures were not necessarily the correct figures. However, since without hindsight it is not possible to tell whether a projection figure is accurate, the convergence rule and a prudent approach to counting on studies conducted with meticulous scientific procedures should be adopted. Two worrying trends are noted. First, the transparency of data collection and computation methods in these studies was not high; second, irresponsible citation practices were found to have already spread to academic studies. As a result, leading organizations in the academic community should consider establishing a platform devoted to the reporting of false or dubious citations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares and explores forms of ‘public’ participation in the development of bioethical governance of human embryonic stem cell research (hESR) in four Asian societies, and in doing so it contributes to the wider discussions on expertise and public inclusion. The article aims to add nuance to the concept of ‘public consultation’ by focusing on the contested meanings and relationships through which public roles and public debates are defined. The analysis seeks to go beyond a straightforward comparison by interpreting public discussions of hESR as being influenced by both local conditions and interconnected global science institutions. An adequate understanding of the public participation in debates on science requires the analysis of (a) particular reasons for scientific issues to require public discussion; (b) pressures of transnational forces; (c) variability of publics relevant to bioethical regulation; and, (d) the effects of institutionalization of bioethics. This study uses data from fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2010 in four Asian countries. Most of the interviews were conducted in the local languages and concerned various kinds of public participation in bioethics activities, as well as the views of stem cell scientists on the need to involve the public in discussions on the acceptability of their research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article utilizes Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach as a theoretical framework to demonstrate how news translators ideologically construe solidarity in translated newspaper commentaries about the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signing between Taiwan and China. Using a corpus of 26 Chinese commentaries from the Liberty Times in Taiwan and their English translations from the Taipei Times as data, this article (1) compares the context models, together with relevant ideological forces, constructed by the news translators and the original writers and (2) investigates how contextual variations guide the translators to make inter-subjective positioning shifts through engagement resources. The results reveal that the shifts identified in the translated headlines and arguments (including the change in dialogic nature and the notable addition of dialogically expansive expressions) were performed by the translators to establish presumably appropriate solidarity relations (i.e. tolerance-based solidarity) and to align the writers and the potentially diverse target audience, at whom the translated pieces are aimed. In this way, the translators can achieve the goals of translating commentaries while adequately responding to the pro-independence ideology of the Taipei Times and the professional ideology of the news translators as media practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Given the changes of the modern family, this study seeks to compare the ways in which television dramas of four East Asian societies, namely Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan, represent the family and family relationships. By analysing their similarities and differences, the study attempts to explore changes of family in these supposedly Confucian East Asian societies. Three analytic categories were proposed: the structure and form of the family as represented in dramas; family relationships; individuality and the family. The study found that the historical trajectories of East Asian countries are articulated in the different familial representations across the television dramas of the countries in the region surveyed. The common assumption that all East Asian countries have the same model of the Confucian family therefore needs to be re-examined along the more specific national conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study focused on durational cues (i.e., syllable duration, pause duration, and syllable onset intervals (SOIs)) at discourse boundaries in two dialects of Mandarin, Taiwan and Mainland varieties. Speech was elicited by having 18 participants describe events in The Pear Story film. Recorded data were transcribed, labeled, and segmented into clauses. Discourse boundary indices were used to label discourse disjuncture levels. Results showed that the scope of lengthening included both the final and the penultimate syllables. Pause was a robust but optional indicator for discourse boundaries, and Taiwan Mandarin preferred unfilled over filled ones, while the Mainland variety did not show such strong preferences. Discourse hierarchy corresponded consistently with occurrences of pauses and duration of SOIs, within which pause was the main contributor. Higher discourse levels were more likely to be accompanied by pauses, and were indicated by longer pauses and SOIs. Syllable duration only played a secondary role in indicating discourse disjuncture size when pause was absent. When there was an accompanying pause, Mainland Mandarin relied solely on it to indicate discourse hierarchy, while Taiwan Mandarin used both syllable and pause duration, a dialectal difference that seemed to be rhythm-related. By shortening the degree of lengthening in the boundary syllable and lengthening the following pause at the same time, Taiwan Mandarin increased the absolute and relative duration of pause and maximized its role in indicating discourse hierarchy. The results of this study implied that the use of pause in discourse disjuncture demarcation was more of a language-specific choice while its role in discourse hierarchy encoding is more language-universal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International Relations (IR) needs democratising. Currently, IR theorising remains under the hegemony of a singular worldview ('warre of all against all') with a singular logic ('conversion or discipline') for all actors and activities. This top-down, state-centric and exclusivist approach is fundamentally anti-democratic for a field of inquiry and practice crowded with multiple worlds. The Humanities, we propose, will help to mitigate these totalitarian tendencies by expressing and examining what hegemonic IR cannot but must: that is, a richness of being in global life. We present Ang Lee's Lust/ Caution (2007) as an example. If seen as an allegory for Taiwan-China relations, this film shifts attention from the national security state, a defining concern for hegemonic IR, to the transnational solidarities that bind peoples and societies despite inter-state conflicts, thereby offering a way out of the statist impasse that incarcerates the region. This approach extends beyond recent calls for a 'linguistic' or 'artistic' turn in IR. Culture, we argue, can serve as a method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article attempts to evaluate China's military developments in recent years and explore the implications of its military advancements. The emphasis will be on the potential impact of China's current military growth on the USA and Taiwan. What are the unique features of China's recent enhancement of its military capability? Does China's military expansion signal a power transition for a US-dominated international system? What is the US policy to deal with a rising China? Finally, to what extent is Taiwan prepared to meet China's new military challenges? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article compares the changes that have occurred in the industrial relations systems in Taiwan and China. In order to compete in a globalizing world, the governments of both countries have promoted political and economic reforms. The establishment of trade unions in Taiwan has begun after the country's democratic transformation in the 1990s. In China, unilateral employer activities in industrial relations were allowed when the state has decentralized the business sector.

An accurate and reliable measure of preferences on the independence-unification issue is indispensable to the study of Taiwanese politics. In the foreseeable future the study of Taiwanese politics and the cross-Strait relations will continue to focus on Taiwanese preferences on the independence-unification issue. These preferences, however, are neither readily identifiable nor easily defined. For many people, it might be a simple and a straightforward choice between for or against Taiwan's independence, but others are less decisive because their preferences are conditional on factors such as China's military threat, the USA security commitment to Taiwan, and China's prospects of becoming democratic and prosperous. In this article I devise a new measure of people's preferences regarding this issue. I show that a large percentage of the people in Taiwan can agree simultaneously to unite with China if China becomes modernized and democratic and to declare independence if China will not use force and peace can be maintained. Because independence and unification are not necessarily mutually exclusive alternatives, this empirical finding questions the appropriateness of the traditional six-point scale one- dimensional representation of Taiwanese preferences on the independence-unification issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent political developments on Taiwan seem to suggest that the issues of ethnic identity and the island's future relationship with China are divisive and polarized. Employing the concept of 'political generation', this study examines six waves of survey data collected through personal interviews. The findings indicate that the ethnic identity of Taiwanese citizens has experienced significant change between 1994 and 2002. Many citizens, especially the younger generations, have increasingly moved away from a Chinese identity in favor of a dual identity, considering themselves to be both Chinese and Taiwanese. Unlike the polarized image painted by the island's politicians, it appears that there is convergence towards this identity across different generations. On the issue of Taiwan's future relations with China, maintaining the status quo with any future action left undetermined is the preferred policy position for younger islanders with the island's eventual unification with China being the favored stand for first generation respondents. Because the third and fourth generations combined have become the largest age cohort in the Taiwanese population, their similar identity and policy preference will have decisive effects on Taipei's current and future domestic and foreign policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The security dilemma, first coined by John Hen in 1950, has come to explain why states that do not seek to harm one another can still end up in competition and war. Its very essence is one of tragedy. The security dilemma has been expounded since by a number of authors, and in this article I examine one such development; Jack Snyder's definition of the security dilemma, being applicable where one state requires the insecurity of another. I label this a state-induced security dilemma. I argue that in order for this to be an accurate expansion of the security dilemma, the essence of tragedy must be retained. I suggest that with some refinement Snyder's definition does extend the application of the security dilemma and raises important questions regarding the dilemma's mitigation and escape. I have used the relationship between China and Taiwan to elucidate the utility of the state-induced security dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the changes in Taiwan's importation of film from China from to explore the changes in the relationships between changes in the relations of the two Chinese societies. Historical and political backgrounds of the two societies; Description of the media culture in the decade beginning 1987; Phases of the relationship of the two societies.

The article discusses the relationship between the government of Hong Kong, China and the press. It mentions the aspects concerning Hong Kong's political communication. It explores the role of the Government Information Service (GIS) in the government news' production and distribution, as well as its interaction with the press and its response to the existing political transition. It adds that the Hong Kong press is mostly scathingly vital of Taiwan and mainland China, but British rule's legitimacy is beyond challenge.