Search

Hands-off data-driven learning is a data-based, student-oriented learning model characterized by inquiry and discovery. English context vocabulary teaching is the key to English teaching in colleges and an important indicator to evaluate the quality and level of college English teaching, which is a language teaching paradigm focusing on the language environment. Combining the two approaches can give students a more realistic, practical, and meaningful language learning experience. This paper analyzes the vocabulary learning level of two non-English major undergraduate classes at Southwest University of Political Science and Law before and after the application of the context experiment. The positive effect of context vocabulary teaching in the control groups is verified by comparing and analyzing the influence of context teaching based on hands-off data-driven learning on their scores and learning results between the experimental and control groups. It shows that the combination of context in English vocabulary teaching with hands-off data-driven learning can help to improve students' ability to understand, absorb, and apply English vocabulary.

This paper provides a detailed introduction to the structures and practice of ideological and political education in Chinese universities. It draws on a thematic analysis of documents from the Chinese Communist Party and State sources, and data from 24 in-depth interviews with managers of ideological and political education, teaching staff, student counsellors and students from three universities. This paper shows how ideological and political education in Chinese universities has developed into an institutionalized system. It reveals how the practices of ideological and political education institutionalize patriotism as appropriate ideological perspectives for students. It offers empirical evidence of the party-led structures, formal teaching and varied activities that together make up ideological and political education in Chinese universities.

Recent years, research on curriculum-based ideological and political education has been one of hotspots in the field of higher education in China. Using both literature analysis software of CiteSpace and VOSviewer, visual analysis and information collection have been carried out on 429 papers of Chinese curriculum-based ideological and political education from 2014 to 2021, so as to find out the research focuses and evolution in this field and then to predict the trend in the future. The results are that the hotspots of ideological and political research focus on the definition of its connotation, construction value, and the exploration of practical paths. Furthermore, current research frontiers including "ideological and political elements", "talent cultivation", "college physical education (PE)" and "core socialist values" reflect that the current study focuses on the exploration of practical paths. It is expected that education mechanism, teaching practice research and multidisciplinary research will become the main trends of curriculum-based ideological and political education in China in future.

In this paper, through a personal narrative discourse, I explore the influence and the contribution of my cross-cultural study experience in China on my development as a young researcher. Through the Chinese academic culture, I learned some best practices that I consider essential for the blossoming and development of a student. Nonetheless, I also face some challenges such as language problems, communication with teachers, and even with classmates. Despite the issue of language and cultural disparities that were significant upon my arrival, I have managed to adapt and learn from Chinese society, teachers, and students. Also, the challenges that I had to overcome were not comparable to the knowledge acquired, and the rich experience that I have accumulated throughout the years spent in China. Through this personal narrative discourse, the different metaphors used to depict our academic life experience in China can enable the reader to have a kind of educative outlook.

Moral education is a core component of ideological and political courses in primary and secondary schools and universities in China, and also an important part of contemporary Chinese Marxist educational theory and practice. In Chinese senior high schools, the main curriculum and platform for moral education is ideological and political courses. The "Ideological and Political Curriculum Standards for General Senior High Schools (2017 Edition, 2020 Revised)" issued by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China explicitly includes a course on logical thinking in the ideological and political curriculum in general senior high schools, strengthening the importance of logic in moral education there. In this paper, the authors explain the necessity of intensifying logic training for contemporary Chinese teenagers, introduce and interpret the relevant contents in the "Ideological and Political Curriculum Standards for General Senior High Schools (2017 Edition, 2020 Revised)," and put forward some theoretical suggestions on how to conduct teaching on the subject of logic.

Comments on the authenticity and editorial procedures in the introduction to the Chinese book version of the Tiananmen Papers that illuminate an understanding of Chinese politics. Discrepancies between the Chinese and the English versions; Definition of authenticity; Faulty editorial policies and processes.

Copyright of International Journal of Sino-Western Studies is the property of Sanovan Press, Nordic Forum of Sino-Western Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the institutional changes in China's journalism reforms. These reforms involve the introduction of market forces into news operations without a fundamental change in the communist political system. Situated in this macro environment, journalists, as entrepreneurial actors, transform the internal tensions in the existing journalism institution into resources for carrying out their improvised and innovative practices. By doing so, they reconfigure the institutional space of the party-press system and create a unique dynamic of center versus periphery and front versus back regions in China's party press. Although the paper is based on an observational field study in China, it is written to present a more general argument on the institutional significance of journalistic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great deal of research has addressed the tension between economic globalization and local cultural identity, and the tension between convergence in global policy objectives and divergence in local practices, but research has not explored the impact of the complex interactions between these tensions on an individual university, especially in relation to university autonomy. This paper attempts to bridge this gap. Based on a case study of Tsinghua University in China, this paper explores the university's role in three interrelated processes: the incorporation of international experience into higher education, in order to respond to economic globalization; the reinforcement of political education, as a means of preserving the state-prescribed cultural identity; and the quest for autonomy, to facilitate the university's move towards world-class status. Tensions raised by the interaction of these processes will also be discussed. This paper concludes by applying the concept of "glocalization"--i.e., "thinking and acting both globally and locally"--as a means of understanding the complex interrelations of global, national, and local factors that inform the translation of global imperatives into local realities in the context of Tsinghua. (Contains 1 note.)

As two major powers that are willing to lead the design and evolution of the global climate regime, the EU and China have maintained a dialogue on climate change and biodiversity while clashing over other economic and political issues. This paper investigates EU-China relations in the global climate regime by briefly analysing three main areas that are key for the global green transition: standardization, green taxonomy, and the renewables sector. The paper claims that EU-China relations in the global climate regime develop within the dialectical collaboration-competition nexus, showing moments of consensus as well as contention between the two major powers in the three selected cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article employs economic and political theory to elucidate a novel approach by which China seeks to gain military advantages through a technological surge. It specifically posits that Beijing intends to expedite economic efficiency by investing in advanced technologies. Simultaneously, the military-civil fusion strategy enables Beijing to rapidly and efficiently convert this technological investment into military applications, thus modernizing its armed forces. In response, the United States should counter this strategy by impeding China's modernization endeavors. To be more precise, it can target China's military-civil fusion strategy by disrupting technology development through limitations on supply chains and imposing sanctions on companies. This paper contributes to the existing body of research on this subject by suggesting that the United States should enhance its own military-civil fusion strategy by strengthening the pathways for translating technology into military applications. Additionally, this paper pre-scribes ways for the operational force to tackle this challenge by expediting research, development, and the application of key dual-use technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to discuss China's behavior in the developing world through the lens of the domestic model of governance. It does so by seeking analogies between three forms of Beijing's political approaches in domestic affairs: generating enthusiasm through slogan politics and promised incentives, informal networks, and coordinated development in China-led multilateralism with Africa and Central and Eastern Europe. By discussing the domestic-foreign policy nexus, the paper introduces the concept of China's vertical multilateralism. Finally, by broaching a new theoretical understanding, the paper decodes China's behavior in the regions mentioned above and provides an alternative model for understanding China's foreign policy in the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The devastating earthquake of 2015 in Nepal overwhelmed the Nepal government, which resulted in the government seeking help from the international community. The call from the Nepal government was responded to quickly by many countries. While the government accepted the help from far countries, the Nepal government rejected the humanitarian aid offered by Taiwan saying that Nepal only takes such aid from its neighboring countries. This paper examines the reasons behind the aid rejection of Taiwan by Nepal and tries to answer what could have happened if it was accepted. Though Nepal is one of the Least Developed countries, even during the disaster time, the aid was rejected. The paper concludes that, even during the most crucial time, there is politics in accepting aid. Nepal's rejection of Taiwan's aid was because of the pressure to obey the diplomatic relation with China, as Nepal is dependent on China but not on Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) universities are important bases for science and technology research and play a critical role in China’s National Innovation System. Based on the Web of Science (WoS), this article analyzes the statistics of paper published by MIIT universities and universities from across China including MIIT universities. The results are as follows: (1) Both the MIIT universities and universities nationwide in China have increased their international academic publications, and MIIT have shown a greater increase for the past decade. (2) In terms of U-I-G interaction, for UG relations, the Tug value of MIIT universities has remained stable, while that of universities in China has become declined. For UI relations, the Tui value of both MIIT universities and universities in China has shown steady growth. For UIG relations, MIIT universities have a greater synergistic effect of Triple Helix relationship than universities in China. (3) For more details in seven MIIT universities, universities elected into “Project 985”, including HIT, BUAA, BIT and NPU, have published more papers, and been more synergistic with government and industry (UIG relations) than other three universities, including NUAA, NUST and HEU. Based on the empirical results, we discuss our findings, and make certain suggestions regarding policy incentives, reasonable administrative system and U-I-G interaction mode, which is significant not only for Chinese universities but also for universities in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "China Is Unhappy" that made the list of best sellers not so long ago is blowing like an icy wind in spring and is poisoning the nation's mental state as though laden with a virus of unhappiness. Those who are most susceptible to it are groups of underage persons with mentalities that are still fragile and young people who have just come of age. The author argues in favor of a healthy, liberal nationalism that can defend China's interests, and suggests that the book "China Is Unhappy" is a more dangerous book than the 1996 best-seller "China Can Say No"--by some of the same authors--because unlike the first book the more recent volume is capable of mobilizing people to action.

If one puts together "China Is Unhappy" and the book "China Can Say No" of 13 years ago, one is quite likely to get the impression that "China's nationalism is heating up." "China does not wish to lead anyone, and should only think of leading itself"--those are the words printed on the back cover of "China Can Say No," whereas the book "China Is Unhappy," which was hotly debated in the spring of 2009, clearly states that China should have big international goals, "the first of which is to suppress the bad and support the good in this world, and the second of which is to administer more and greater resources than China currently has for the well-being of the world's people." Taken from the popular magazine "Oriental Outlook Weekly," this article features interviews with two of the authors of the best-selling book "China Is Unhappy," as well as an interview with Xu Jilin, one of China's most prominent liberal scholars, reflecting the wide range of opinions on the rise of China and its implications for the world.

To accelerate the development of the ethnic minority regions and cultivate ethnic minority talent, the state has successively implemented policies of setting up the Tibet Class and the Xinjiang Class in institutions of higher learning in China's interior regions ("neidi"), enabling some of the finest young students among the ethnic minorities to enter colleges and universities in China's interior region and obtain an education. Where the institutions of higher education are concerned, comprehensively implementing the Party's policies for ethnic minorities and providing ethnic minority students with a good ideological/political education are matters of important strategic significance, but such work inevitably presents difficulties. This paper begins by describing the importance of the work of providing ethnic minority students with an ideological/political education, then explores the characteristics of today's ethnic minority students, and, finally, proposes ways of conducting quality ideological/political education for ethnic minority students. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

One of the environments in which political science faculty most directly face issues of community, communities, and politics is when they find themselves teaching in programs abroad. The rigors of international teaching force faculty to confront issues of community identity, assumptions about political orientation, and presumptions about how communities interact that often remain unstated or unexplored at home institutions in the United States. In this paper, we will explore these matters based on our experiences teaching in the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies during the late 1990s. The Hopkins-Nanjing Center brings together Chinese and international (mainly American) graduate students in a unique living-learning environment. Chinese students take graduate-level course work in political science, American history, economics, and ESL in English from visiting American faculty members, while international students take analogous classes in Chinese from faculty at Nanjing University. Faculty and students are housed in the Center's residential wing, where Chinese and international students are paired together as roommates. We discuss the unusual pedagogy involved in teaching Chinese students in the program (who are extremely bright and motivated, but usually lack substantive and methodological backgrounds in political science); the opportunities for extracurricular education afforded by the Center's living-learning facility; and describe our experiences interacting with our Chinese faculty counterparts. (Contains 24 notes.)

Background: International collaboration (IC) is essential for the advance of stem cell research, a field characterized by marked asymmetries in knowledge and capacity between nations. China is emerging as a global leader in the stem cell field. However, knowledge on the extent and characteristics of IC in stem cell science, particularly China’s collaboration with developed economies, is lacking. Methods and Findings: We provide a scientometric analysis of the China–Canada collaboration in stem cell research, placing this in the context of other leading producers in the field. We analyze stem cell research published from 2006 to 2010 from the Scopus database, using co-authored papers as a proxy for collaboration. We examine IC levels, collaboration preferences, scientific impact, the collaborating institutions in China and Canada, areas of mutual interest, and funding sources. Our analysis shows rapid global expansion of the field with 48% increase in papers from 2006 to 2010. China now ranks second globally after the United States. China has the lowest IC rate of countries examined, while Canada has one of the highest. China–Canada collaboration is rising steadily, more than doubling during 2006–2010. China–Canada collaboration enhances impact compared to papers authored solely by China-based researchers This difference remained significant even when comparing only papers published in English. Conclusions: While China is increasingly courted in IC by developed countries as a partner in stem cell research, it is clear that it has reached its status in the field largely through domestic publications. Nevertheless, IC enhances the impact of stem cell research in China, and in the field in general. This study establishes an objective baseline for comparison with future studies, setting the stage for in-depth exploration of the dynamics and genesis of IC in stem cell research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the implications of China's ascension as a global power and analyzes whether China's rise presents opportunities or threats to the international community. It explores China's economic growth, military expansion, and increasing influence in global affairs. The article delves into the potential economic benefits for other nations through trade and investment opportunities, while also discussing concerns regarding China's assertive foreign policies and human rights issues. The paper highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of China's rise, acknowledging both the potential benefits and challenges it poses. Ultimately, the abstract calls for a balanced and cooperative approach in engaging with China to harness opportunities and address potential threats for a stable and prosperous global order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Google Trends is a popular data source that has been utilized in hundreds of studies across various fields, including information technology, business, economics, healthcare, and political science. While several previous research has addressed sampling error issues, this article focuses on the measurement errors resulting from changes in Google Trends' data collection method. By examining key phrases such as 'covid-19,' 'decoupling China,' and 'debt trap diplomacy,' this article reveals that, after 2022 when the data collection method was updated, Google Trends generates search results for terms that were not yet coined or yields too few results. These 'strange' search results indicate the presence of measurement errors in Google Trends data. Scholars are advised to validate the contents of Google Trends data through additional steps. In particular, authors in fields like business, economics, and healthcare are encouraged to replicate their research conducted before 2022 to assess the forecasting errors arising from the new data sets retrieved after that period. [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]

In the past two decades, scholars in China and beyond have vigorously demonstrated that the just war discourse is integral to classical Confucianism and that the classical Confucian idea of "punitive expedition" can be best understood in terms of humanitarian intervention. The sceptics, however, claim that in describing the ancient sage‐king's bloodless punitive expeditions, what classical Confucians really had in mind was not so much to endorse morally justified forms of aggressive war but to highlight the paramount importance of the ruler's moral self‐cultivation and benevolent government. This paper examines closely the disagreement between the two positions and offers a more historically grounded justification for the just war interpretation of classical Confucianism. It pays special attention to the importance of ritual order in classical Confucian political theory and discusses how the Warring States political circumstances led thinkers such as Mencius and Xunzi to shift their attention from ritual order to the well‐being of the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data sources systematically tracking government activity such as budgets and bill hearings, the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory literature has demonstrated that policy processes in both democracies and nondemocracies feature long periods of stasis interrupted by dramatic changes. However, there is a lack of research that systematically examines China's policy process. In response, this article introduces a new dataset drawn from China State Council Gazettes from 1980 to 2019 to measure policy punctuations and agenda diversity in China. We find that punctuations in China's policy process are more intense than those in democracies. The findings further show that China's policy process features more positive punctuations than negative punctuations. We also find an overall increasing trend of agenda diversity and a pattern of alternation between agenda expansion and concentration across the forty years analyzed in this paper. These findings provide new long-term evidence regarding patterns of policy stability and change in the Chinese context and contribute to our understanding of China's politics of attention and its linkage with information inefficiency and survival politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China-ROK boundary disputes in the Yellow Sea and the associated fishing conflict are often neglected in the rich body of literature on China's maritime disputes. This article examines the question of why and how China has persistently pursued a de-escalatory posture in the Yellow Sea in the past decade despite having considerably hardened its posture in the East and South China Seas. I argue that the high stakes China has in its bilateral ties with South Korea create strong incentives for Beijing to deescalate maritime controversies whereas the absence of broad-based hawkish pressure at home creates a permissive domestic political climate for Beijing to pursue de-escalation. This paper also evaluates conditions that may facilitate a hardening Chinese position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guest Editorial: Crossing the river by feeling the stones - Alternative imaginaries of China and Southeast Asia in contemporary contexts The second aspect is to uncover alternative imaginaries and responses of the Chinese government's official development discourses such as the BRI in Southeast Asia with historically informed perspectives in examining current and future China-Southeast Asia relations as China repositions itself. On 27 February 2021, I The Economist i published a briefing titled "Tea and Tributaries", stating 'in no region is China's influence felt more strongly than in Southeast Asia', noting that historically Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam were important tributaries to imperial China ( I The Economist i , 2021). Indeed, the balancing act of engaging China and United States fruitfully is ASEAN's bread and butter business, which highlights situating China relationally with other major powers in the alternative imaginaries of China in Southeast Asia. [Extracted from the article]

The Sino-U.S. relations tumbled during the Trump Administration. The talk of decoupling permeated the decision-making circle in Washington D.C. Many factors have contributed to the free fall. The roles Congress has played are undoubtedly one of them. Based on the new institutionalist approach, this study provides three analyses of recent China-related legislative activities. First, the historical analysis of legislative data illustrates a surge in congressional activism on China-related legislative activities. Second, the content analysis reveals some of the triggers in the deterioration of bilateral relations in recent years. Third, the political analysis of the critical congressional players and the structures and procedures Congress created provides some insight into the domestic and political logic of the congressional crusade against China. Finally, the paper ends with assessing the impact of the surge in Congressional activism on the new Biden Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern citizenship is Western-centric, featuring Weberianism and Marshallianism as core paradigms. That orthodox view obscures the diversity of citizenship. Over the past three decades, three trends in citizenship studies have challenged this 'orthodox consensus': the diversification of the subjects and contents of citizenship rights; 'citizenship after Orientalism', which advocates bringing oriental societies into citizenship studies; and 'acts of citizenship', which shifts the core of citizenship from rights to acts. Sharing 'de-Westernism' as a goal, these approaches promote the study of citizenship from a wider range of perspectives. The Chinese experience of citizenship shows that de-Westernism needs to be taken further. We need to adopt even more diverse perspectives to further de-Westernise and enrich our understanding of citizenship. In this paper, 'contextualism' and the 'tree of citizenship' are advocated as more strongly de-Westernised perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying relative-age effect theory to China, we examine the political career development of municipal party secretaries. Our analysis presented in this paper provides substantial evidence in favour of those who were older in their cohort at school, i.e., those who were born in October and November are more likely than those who were born in June or July to be advanced to a party leadership position in an earlier time. This research fills in a gap in the field of RAE from a comparative perspective, and it also provides insights into long-term effects of relative age in China's increasingly competitive political careers that challenge the conventional wisdom in political science literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provided are the full texts of the teaching outlines for each of the five new political courses established by the Chinese Ministry of Education in the secondary school grades. Also included are articles from a new Chinese journal "Teaching of Secondary School Politics Course." (RM)

Using first-hand performance evaluation reports from Zhejiang province and a series of interviews, this paper provides a preliminary assessment of performance evaluation in China. Evaluation reports are examined in terms of their format, content, evaluative criteria, conclusion and the characteristics of evaluation staff. China was found to be somewhat open in terms of involving external evaluators, and minimal variance was seen in evaluation scores. China is in the early stages of measuring performance in a context where centralized governance is in place; various reform initiatives are taking shape; the boundaries of scientific evaluations and the potential usefulness of performance evaluations within its political environment are unknown. Many developing economies are in similar situations, so this paper will have relevance well beyond China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses activity theoretic analyses to investigate the role of governments in developing rural e‐commerce ecosystems and the effects of such ecosystems on poverty alleviation. On the basis of a case study of Longnan, one of the poorest regions in China, this paper reports and analyses the various actions taken by local governments in nurturing, supporting, and regulating the development of a local rural e‐commerce ecosystem and using this ecosystem to transform poverty alleviation. Our study articulates a model of poverty alleviation through e‐commerce. By documenting and theorizing the mechanisms underlying rural e‐commerce development and poverty alleviation through e‐commerce as well as governments' role in developing and sustaining them, this paper contributes to establishing a "theory of the solution" to the grand challenge of poverty alleviation both in China and globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 15 years, a set of ideas now referred to as "thinking and working politically" (TWP) has coalesced into a "second orthodoxy" about how to take context into account when implementing development interventions. This approach stresses the importance of obtaining a better understanding of the local context ("thinking politically") in order to support local actors to bring about sustainable developmental change ("working politically"). However, the evidence base to justify this new approach remains thin, despite a growing number of programmes which purport to be implementing it. Officials in development agencies struggle with putting it into practice and it is unclear how TWP differs—or not—from similar approaches, such as Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) and Doing Development Differently (DDD). This Special Issue sheds light on what TWP means in practice by examining a set of initiatives undertaken by both development partners and government departments in Nigeria, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, China and India. This overview article outlines, in brief, each of the Special Issue's four papers and then draws out five lessons—for funders and for practitioners—from across all the papers. Our five lessons are: (1) the fundamental importance of undertaking political economy analysis (PEA) to adapt programmes to their contexts; (2) the importance of having a realistic level of ambition for interventions; (3) the need to support local ownership—not just "agreement ownership" (between a donor agency and government) or local "management ownership" of the programme, but critically "driver ownership" by generating trust with the key local actors driving change; (4) the need for a more effective set of tools for measuring results in complex programmes that attempt to achieve improvements in long‐run governance; and, (5) that although the political economy of donors is often seen as a barrier to applying TWP, the articles show how much can be done with a TWP approach if the analysis takes into account the political economy of donors as well as that of the local context. We conclude with a set of operational recommendations for donors and implementors, as well as suggestions of avenues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rail links between China and Europe are typically analysed in the context of China's Belt and Road Initiative, focusing on China's economic rise and the implications for international relations. This paper argues that establishment of the China–Europe Landbridge predated the BRI and has been market‐driven, as service providers identified and responded to demand for efficient freight services along pre‐existing railway lines. Governments' role was trade facilitating, that is reducing delays and costs at border‐crossing points, rather than investing in hard infrastructure. Service providers responded by linking European and Asian value chains (e.g., in automobiles and electronic goods) and reducing costs for traders shipping between China and Europe. The Eurasian Landbridge provides a case study of servicification as a component of increased trade in the twenty‐first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xi Jinping's ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People's Republic of China (PRC) that have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015, the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu ... (decentralise, manage, and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market regulation, (2) supervision and management systems, and (3) service provision processes. By applying a case study analytical approach, this paper explores how advancements in big data contributed to these reforms aimed at centralising information in China. Combining the joint knowledge of surveillance and China studies scholarship, this paper offers evidence of big data surveillance streamlining China's fragmented intergovernmental policy system. We build on David Murakami Wood's 2017 outline of a political theory of surveillance and argue that decentralisation of data collection points and centralisation of both bureaucratic and public access to information are key components of the Party-state's regulatory governance strategy incorporating the use of big data and comprehensive surveillance. Our findings have implications for future analyses of the relationship between political organisations and surveillance within other nation-state contexts, particularly in situations where Chinese technologies and systems are being adopted and adapted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the adaptive analysis paradigm, this paper constructs an evaluation index system and an evaluation model of the level of industrial ecology of a restricted development zone from the perspective of the industrial system and of the environmental system, and studies the spatial-temporal differentiation characteristics and the driving factors of the level of industrial ecology of the restricted development zone of the Shandong Province, China, by using a variety of measurement methods. The results show that: 1) In the temporal dimension, the level of industrial ecology of the research area increased from 2005 to 2017, while in the regional dimension, it was higher in the eastern coastal areas, followed by the northwestern area and the southwestern area; 2) In the spatial dimension, from 2005 to 2017 the level of industrial ecology of the research area had a clear spatial dependence, and the regional spatial agglomeration of the restricted development zones with similar industrial ecology levels become increasingly evident; 3) On the whole, the industrial ecology level in the study area had a clear spatial differentiation pattern, as it was higher in the north and in the east and lower in the south and in the west. Moreover, its evolution model changed from a 'three-core driven model' to a 'spatial scattered mosaic distribution model', and then to a 'single-core driven model'; 4) Industrial ecology was positively correlated with economic development, foreign investment, science and technology, and negatively correlated with the government role, while industrial structure and environmental regulation failed to pass the statistical significance test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of Communism is effectively taught by the extensive use of new audiovisual and interdisciplinary tools. Inclusion of material from many disciplines besides history is necessary if the complicated and highly emotional political issues are to be handled in a thoughtful, objective presentation. (MLW)