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Because of the growing competition and challenges within the global business environment, understanding performance management has become essential to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as they have traditionally dominated the Chinese economy. In recognition of the limited studies with a specific focus on Chinese family SMEs, this study modelled and tested performance management by analysing four factors and eighteen indicators using structural equation modelling (SEM) and back-propagation neural network (BPNN). Secondary data from the Chinese Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR) database were collected for this study. The results provide a better understanding of the proposed relationships between these variables through a review of their impact and correlations. This study suggested that four factors, including financial performance, external environment, internal environment, and enterprise development potential, will significantly impact performance management.

International students undergo both language and academic culture shocks in their study in destination countries such as the UK, the US and Australia. However, most of the research on international students tends to adopt a deficit discourse when portraying this group of students. This research is a response to the call of researchers in the field for a paradigm shift that focuses on international students’ agency and asset. Using the agency theory and Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) model as the framework, this study reports findings from a qualitative study of 22 Chinese students on 2 + 2 joint programs between an Australian university and four Chinese higher education institutions. While the in-depth interview findings support past studies about the language and academic culture shocks that international students experience, more importantly this study reveals that Chinese international students exercised agency by leveraging mainly four forms of CCW—navigational capital, linguistic capital, social capital and inspirational capital to overcome language and academic culture shocks. Chinese students’ agentic exercise reveals temporal and social nature of their agency: It is not only informed by their habitus, directed and guided by the emerging demands and future goals, but also embedded in social engagement. Implications and policy advice for program managers on both sides of the joint programs as well as for host university teaching staff are discussed.

Since 2000, a large number of Sino-foreign joint education programs have been set up. By September 2018, there were 1025 Sino-foreign joint programs at bachelor and above level. Despite the large number of joint programs and their increasing popularity, limited research has examined them. With studies that have looked into joint programs, the focus is mainly on students’ after-arrival language challenges, rather than pre-departure language preparation. This study intends to fill the research gap by examining the pre-departure English language preparation of Chinese students on Sino-Australian 2 + 2 joint programs. Twenty-two Chinese students studying at a host Australian university were interviewed to collect qualitative data. Findings show that half of the participants had mixed feelings about their language preparation. Seventeen expressed their appreciation of the effort their Chinese institutions made in improving their English proficiency for overseas study. The greatest areas of improvement according to them were English speaking and writing. However, almost the same number of participants also voiced concerns about the English preparation at their home institutions, including the low level of difficulty of most English courses, limited class hours in oral English, and IELTS-driven nature of some courses. Suggestions for improving the 2 + 2 programs are also discussed.

This research note investigates how consumers’ individual differences are associated with their attitude towards trip advice that has been curated by artificial intelligence (AI). Individual difference factors (anthropomorphic tendency, need for cognition, disillusionment toward marketing, life satisfaction) and variables such as smart phone usage were correlated with attitude towards AI-curated reviews (AAICR). A survey of 212 individuals from Taizhou, China found that anthropomorphic tendency, need for cognition, and smart phone usage were positively associated with AAICR. When controlling for the effect of need for cognition and smart phone usage, the effect of anthropomorphism on attitudes was still robust. Disillusionment toward marketing and life satisfaction were not associated with AAICR. The results contribute to the tourism literature by showing the effect of anthropomorphism on AAICR. Tourism practitioners who wish to inspire consumers with AI-curated destination reviews should target consumers with a high anthropomorphic tendency

This research examines the impact of Chinese tourists' level of entitlement (i.e., a belief they deserve more than others) on their responses to testimonials for a missed benefit. Missed benefits are destination activities which are no longer available (e.g., an annual festival). Two experiments compare how Chinese tourists react to a testimonial for a missed benefit from a satisfied tourist (vs. a local citizen). Results show that entitled tourists dislike testimonials from tourists. Non-entitled tourists have a similar preference for either endorser. The results provide important theoretical implications. First, the research introduces a new area of study to tourism researchers: missed benefits. Second, the results show how tourist entitlement negatively influences testimonial responses. Third, the malicious envy entitled tourists feel towards the tourists in the testimonial drives their negative responses. Managerial implications include showing destination marketers that Chinese tourists can have an entitled mindset. This mindset can result in envy felt toward other tourists which can explain their negative responses to marketing messages about destination activities.

Chinese modal particles feature prominently in Chinese people’s daily use of the language, but their pragmatic and semantic functions are elusive as commonly recognised by Chinese linguists and teachers of Chinese as a foreign language. This book originates from an extensive and intensive empirical study of the Chinese modal particle a (?), one of the most frequently used modal particles in Mandarin Chinese. In order to capture all the uses and the underlying meanings of the particle, the author transcribed the first 20 episodes, about 20 hours in length, of the popular Chinese TV drama series Kewang ‘Expectations’, which yielded a corpus data of more than 142’000 Chinese characters with a total of 1829 instances of the particle all used in meaningful communicative situations. Within its context of use, every single occurrence of the particle was analysed in terms of its pragmatic and semantic contributions to the hosting utterance. Upon this basis the core meanings were identified which were seen as constituting the modal nature of the particle.

摘要: 语气词“啊”的语义、语法和语用功能是汉语学界关注和探讨的疑难问题之一。 本文在对音像语料进行穷尽式分析的基础上提出句末语气词“啊”在疑问句中有两个基本的情态义：1）在特指问和选择问中（即非是非问中）“啊”表达说话人求知、求解的强烈愿望，即 “强愿望义”，其作用是加强疑问句的疑问功能；2）在是非问中“啊”表达说话人惊讶的情绪， 即“惊讶义”，并以此引起疑问，使“啊”所附着的句子获得疑问句的语法功能，或者说是使句子获得求答的话语功能。“强愿望义”和“惊讶义”还有它们各自的延伸义。前者的延伸义是表达言者的“强困惑义”；后者的延伸义是表达言者对事物真实性的不确定心态，即“非确定义”。文章解释了为什么“啊”的这些基本义和延伸义决定了它能出现在各种真实或非真实疑问句中，并发挥各种语法和语用和功能。 关键词：语气词，疑问句，强愿望义，惊讶义，缓语词，强调词 Abstract: Chinese modal particle ‘a’ has been one of the long debated lexical items in Chinese linguistics concerning its semantic properties and grammatic and pragmatic functions. In this exploratory empirical research, the exhaustive analysis of the video-recoded data has led to the proposal of two basic meanings for the particle. First, in non-yes-no questions (i.e. special and choice questions), the particle conveys the speaker’s strong wish to know or to be informed of what the speaker does not know. Its pragmatical function is to intensify the interrogative force of the questions it is attached to. Second, in yes-no questions, it expresses the speaker’s strong emotion of ‘surprise’, which in certain contexts will trigger the reading of an utterance as a question or render the utterance as having question force. The former ‘volitive’ meaning (the speaker’s strong wish) and the latter ‘surprisive’ meaning (the speaker’s feeling of surprise) both have their extended meaning respectively. The meaning extended from the former volitive is the feeling of ‘puzzlement’ and the extended meaning from the latter surprisive is the feeling of ‘uncertainty’. This research explained why the basic and extended semantic properties of the particle make it possible to occur in all types of genuine and non-genuine/rhetorical questions and to serve various grammatical and pragmatical functions. Key words: modal particles, questions, volitive, surprisive, down-toner, intensifier

Chinese modal particles feature prominently in Chinese people’s daily use of the language, but their pragmatic and semantic functions are elusive as commonly recognised by Chinese linguists and teachers of Chinese as a foreign language. This book originates from an extensive and intensive empirical study of the Chinese modal particle a (啊), one of the most frequently used modal particles in Mandarin Chinese. In order to capture all the uses and the underlying meanings of the particle, the author transcribed the first 20 episodes, about 20 hours in length, of the popular Chinese TV drama series Kewang ‘Expectations’, which yielded a corpus data of more than 142’000 Chinese characters with a total of 1829 instances of the particle all used in meaningful communicative situations. Within its context of use, every single occurrence of the particle was analysed in terms of its pragmatic and semantic contributions to the hosting utterance. Upon this basis the core meanings were identified which were seen as constituting the modal nature of the particle.