Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Tale Of Two Superpowers: Nigeria And China Relations, Faouziatou Aboudou Kabassi

Master's Theses

The study discusses the historical development of the Sino-Nigerian bilateral relations. The paper provides a detailed view of china's FDI in Nigeria and the diverse challenges faced by the oil rich country to develop its own economy through NEEDS as a result of china's economic power. China’s partnership with Nigeria is ideally for economic growth but practically poisonous to Nigeria’s development goals as China is solely pursuing its own interest and diverting its partner from working toward its NEEDS goal. A deep investigation of the relations should be reviewed for both countries. This will be needed to produce vital economic …

International Order After The Financial Crisis, Harold James

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

How is international order built, and how is it legitimate, in a world in which political and economic foundations are rapidly shifting? What are the consequences of the rise of major new powers for the structure and the functioning of the international system? Great wars or great financial crises have in the past led to disorientation about the moral foundations of society, domestically and internationally. The paper examines parallels with the Great Depression, and in particular the weakening of multilateralism and of small political units, and the strengthening of large powers with hegemonic claims. The paper then turns to an …

The Balance Of Power, Public Goods, And The Lost Art Of Grand Strategy: American Policy Toward The Persian Gulf And Rising Asia In The 21st Century, Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leverett

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

An important driver of relative decline in America’s international standing is the failure of its political elites to define reality-based foreign policy goals and to relate the diplomatic, economic, and military means at Washington’s disposal to realizing them—the essence of “grand strategy.” For several decades, American policy has been pulled in opposite directions by two competing models of grand strategy. In one—the leadership model—America maximizes its international standing by adroitly managing regional and global power balances and promoting the processes of economic liberalization known collectively as globalization. In the second model—the transformation model—America seeks not to manage power balances but …

White Snake, Black Snake Folk Narrative Meets Master Narrative In Qing Dynasty Sichuanese Cross-Stitch Medallions, Cory Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

The cross-stitch medallion in figure 1 was collected by my grandmother, Katherine Willmott, in the early 1920s when she was a missionary in Renshow, Sichuan Province, West China. Many years after I inherited it, I learned that it depicts a folk narrative called “White Snake; Black Snake” that was traditionally performed both on stage in the legitimate theaters and in Chinese shadow puppet dramas (Highbaugh n/d:6).

The story may be summarized as follows: There were two female snakes, White Snake and Black Snake, who were inseparable friends. They both changed into beautiful young women. White Snake got married and bore …

Setting The Agenda: Asia And Latin America In The 21st Century, Ariel C. Armony

Center for Latin American Studies Publications

Latin America and Asia are among the world’s fastest growing regions. Trade between Asia and Latin American and Caribbean countries has risen dramatically in recent years. It is undeniable that Asia now plays a formidable role in the economic development of the region. This publication emerges out of the University of Miami’s 2012 “Asia and Latin America in the 21^st Century” conference, where leaders from academic, policy, business, and media communities from around the world convened to address the macroeconomic trends, trade relations, and sociopolitical trends that have emerged as the links between Asia and Latin America strengthen. Organized …

The Impact Of Related Party Sales By Listed Chinese Firms On Earnings Informativeness And Analysts Forecasts, Jiwei Wang, Hongqi Yuan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a random sample of 140 of China's listed firms, we show an adverse impact of related party (RP) sales of goods and services on the usefulness of accounting earnings to investors and on the quality of earnings forecasts by financial analysts. Consistent with the contention that RP sales may violate the arm's-length assumption of regular transactions and consequently impair the representational faithfulness and verifiability of accounting data, we find that earnings of firms engaged in RP sales are at least 33% less informative after controlling for factors known to affect earnings informativeness. We also find that financial analysts are …

Global Health Governance: Analyzing China, India, And Japan As Global Health Aid Donors, Ann Florini, Karthik Nachiappan, Tikki Pang, Christine Pilcavage

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Development assistance is a significant mechanism by which major countries exercise influence in the global health arena. Of the major Asian powers, Japan has long provided significant funding, while China and India have primarily been recipients but are beginning to increase their funding roles. This article examines the amounts, channels, modes, disease allocations and the geographic focuses of their foreign health aid, and delineates the institutional structures that govern the formulation and implementation of foreign health aid policy in each of these countries, to explore what influence China, India, and Japan have and may develop in the global health arena. …

Women’S Entry Into Self-Employment In Urban China: The Role Of Family In Creating Gendered Mobility Patterns, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan

Qian Forrest ZHANG

How did family characteristics affect women and men differently in self-employment participation in urban China? Analyses of national data show dual marriage penalties for women. Marketization made married women more vulnerable to lay-offs from state-sector jobs; their likelihood of being pushed into unskilled self-employment surpassed that of any other groups. The revitalized patriarchal family tradition favored men in family businesses and resulted in their higher rates of entering entrepreneurial self-employment. Married women who had the education to pursue entrepreneurial self-employment were constrained by family responsibilities to state-sector jobs for access to family services, and had much lower rates in entering …

Ant Tribe, Yan Zhao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"Ant Tribe" describes the post-80s generation university graduates who live together in poor conditions without Social security in communities around China's major metropolises. They dream of a better life in big cities but struggle with low-paying jobs. These struggling "elites" have become the fourth weak Social group, after peasants, migrant workers and unemployed people. The reason why these college graduates are compared to ants is that they are like ants: clever, hardworking, politically weak and living in groups.

The real world is always different from the ideal world of the "Ant Tribe" in China. They often lose their purposes in …

Inspired Living, Gongke Li

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Inspired Living is a juxtaposition of old and new, contemplating the shift of values in contemporary China.

Patriotism used to be one of the key values in the Chinese people's minds, but those values have changed dramatically. Fewer people are thinking about or talking about patriotism, like sacrificing for the country or serving the people. In reality, getting rich and spending money to purchase all kinds of products, either absolute necessities or unnecessary luxuries, has become the key value of many Chinese people.

The images used in this project are all found and come from various sources, including books and …

The Regime Legitimacy Of One-China: How The Vatican Can Make China Whole Again, Jonathan David Bradley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Currently, the sovereign state of Vatican City does not formally recognize the People's Republic of China. Nor does the Vatican recognize the Chinese Communist Party as the legitimate regime over China. Instead the Vatican recognizes the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan. There are 23 countries in the world who share the Vatican's legitimization of the Republic of Taiwan. The largest concentration of those countries is in heavily Catholic Central America. This thesis looks at the dynamics of the Sino-Vatican relationship in three areas: political tension management of the Chinese people by the CCP, improved relations between the …

Angry Youth: Patriotic Education And The New Chinese Nationalism, Rachel Gary

Honors Program Theses

No abstract provided.

Un-Obtainium: The Quest For Rare Earth Elements, Brahm Heyman

International Political Economy Theses

The 17 "rare earth elements" are essential for the development of new technologies. Over the last several decades, China has established a virtual monopoly on the rare earth industry, producing over 97% of the world's current demand. This was achieved by effectively undercutting other producers who stopped competing in this market. In 2010, in an effort to bolster its domestic market, China decided to reduce the amount of rare earth elements that it would export. This situation can be used to consider China's relations with the rest of the world from two perspectives. (1) The realist perspective views China's actions …

Sociological Perspectives On Ethnicity And Education In China: Views From Chinese And English Literatures, Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, Emily C. Hannum, Chunping Lu

Emily C. Hannum

This paper reviews Chinese- and English-language literature on ethnic minorities and education in China. Six major research topics emerge from the Chinese-language research: (1) Marxism and ethnic minority education; (2) patriotism and national unity in education for ethnic minority students; (3) multicultural education; (4) determinants of ethnic differences in education; (5) school facilities and teacher quality; and (6) preferential / affirmative action policies. Four research themes are identified from the English-language literature: (1) policy overviews; (2) education and ethnic identity; (3) incentives and disincentives for buy-in to the education system; and (4) educational stratification. The majority of quantitative research from …

Women’S Entry Into Self-Employment In Urban China: The Role Of Family In Creating Gendered Mobility Patterns, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How did family characteristics affect women and men differently in self-employment participation in urban China? Analyses of national data show dual marriage penalties for women. Marketization made married women more vulnerable to lay-offs from state-sector jobs; their likelihood of being pushed into unskilled self-employment surpassed that of any other groups. The revitalized patriarchal family tradition favored men in family businesses and resulted in their higher rates of entering entrepreneurial self-employment. Married women who had the education to pursue entrepreneurial self-employment were constrained by family responsibilities to state-sector jobs for access to family services, and had much lower rates in entering …

Building Effective Business Relationships In China, Roy Y. J. Chua

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

China’s ways of doing business are becoming more Westernized. But non-Chinese executives still must work hard at building trust in relationships with their Chinese business partners.

Liberalization Of Taiwan’S Securities Markets: The Case Of Cross-Taiwan-Strait Listings, Wen-Yeu Wang, Christopher Chao-Hung Chen

Christopher Chao-hung CHEN

The purpose of this paper is to examine the liberalization of Taiwan’s capital market regarding cross-Taiwan-Strait listing of securities. Taiwan is in an advantageous position to compete with other Asian rivals to attract issuers and capital from China. However, the long political hostility ensures that there is little regulatory cooperation on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Assuming that the creation of a cross-strait capital market is an unstoppable trend, this paper examines from the perspective of regulatory competition several regimes that may facilitate Taiwan to overcome regulatory obstacles arising from the special Sino-Taiwan relationship. This paper argues that regulatory …

Love And Money By Parental Match-Making: Evidence From Urban Couples In China, Fali Huang, Ginger Jin, Lixin Collin Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Parental involvement in marriage matchmaking may distort the optimal spouse choice because parents are willing to substitute love for money. The rationale is that the joint income of married children can be shared among extended family members more easily than mutual attraction felt by the couple themselves, and as a result, the best spouse candidate in the parents' eyes can differ from what is optimal to the individual, even though parents are altruistic and care dearly about their children's welfare. We find supporting evidence for this prediction using a unique sample of urban couples in China in the early 1990s.

Ethical Dilemma Of Foreign Aid And China's One-Child Policy, Kip Klingman

Kip Klingman

Discussion: whether to or not to provide funds for a group in China, which provides family health clinics in the most poverty-stricken regions in China.

Income Inequality And Social Stratification: The Effect Of Market Versus State In Transitional Urban China, Qiong Wu

Masters Theses

The rise of inequality in China is one of the most serious social problems in the reform era in China. Previous studies have debated the relative importance of human capital, political capital, and other factors in determining personal income. By using a new dataset from 2006 China General Social Survey (CGSS2006), I replicate earlier tests to measure whether the market or state has more impact on incomes as a way to the competing hypotheses related to human versus political capital.

The results of the ordinary least squares regression analysis show no significance in party membership, state ownership, and work experience, …

Pure Land And The Social Order In Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation Of "Longshu’S Treatise On Pure Land", Trevor Davis

Student Work

A 2012-2013 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Trevor Davis (Saybrook College '13) for his essay submitted to the History Department, “Pure Land and the Social Order in Twelfth-Century China: An Investigation of Longshu’s Treatise on Pure Land.” (Valerie Hansen, Professor of History, advisor.)

Davis' essay makes a powerful argument about the Pure Land Buddhist Wang Rixiu's understanding of Southern Song (1127-1279) society. Although Pure Land Buddhism is often thought to be egalitarian - or at least to challenge traditional hierarchies - Trevor shows that for Wang Rixiu, an egalitarian Pure Land coexists …

Mexico's Quest In The North American Markets, Antonio Diaz Gonzalez Salas

Senior Theses and Projects

Since the 1980s Mexico has implemented various economic policies that have improved its financial system at times. All the policies have ultimately failed. Since the 1990s both Mexico and China have made progress in foreign trade with their respective trade organizations. Mexico entered the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 and China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. In spite of being a part of two different trade organizations, both countries had a significant increase on their GDP and consequently a change of focus and direction towards their internal investments to enhance their production of exports. …

Tongzhi Today, Tomorrow, Jennifer Q. Zhang

Jenn Z

This is a multi-media project composed of a research paper and short film on an emerging new identity of affluent urban Chinese men. The research paper begins with a brief background on socially accepted cultural phenomenon of pederasty and same-sex relations in dynastic China. These practices are removed and medicalized in late pre-modern China. The high-culture role of family in relation to the individual and the nation is largely due to continued loyalty toward Confucian doctrines. The struggle of urban gay men against these socio-historical factors is offset with the availability of the internet, digital resources and a digital community …

The Rise Of Agrarian Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics: Agricultural Modernization, Agribusiness And Collective Land Rights, Qian Forrest Zhang, John Andrew Donaldson

Qian Forrest ZHANG

The article discusses the agricultural transformation taking place in the rural areas of China. Details about the Chinese laws regarding rural reform and the effect they have had on rural Chinese farmers and families are included. The authors examine the expansion of agrarian capitalism in China and describe the rise of agribusiness in rural Chinese areas. The practices of Chinese agribusinesses and the Chinese land rights laws are explored. The relationships between individual farmers and agribusinesses is also examined.

Status And Hierarchy: A Framework For Understanding Stratification And Inequality In Today’S China, Qian Forrest Zhang

Qian Forrest ZHANG

Social hierarchies and inequality in a society are shaped by the modes of production that extract and transfer surplus among social groups. In China under socialism, the redistributive economy established a powerful tributary mode of production (TMP) that extracted surplus from rural areas to cities and from commoner producers to cadre-officials. This TMP created two fundamental hierarchies in socialist China: the urban-rural divide and the official-commoner divide, both of which were based on politically defined statuses. China’s post-socialist transition has led to both a resurgence of the traditional petty-commodity mode of production (PCMP) and the rise of a novel capitalist …

The Transformation Of Urban Vegetable Retail In China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, And Informal Markets In Shanghai, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan

Qian Forrest ZHANG

The state-monopolised system of vegetable retail in socialist urban China has transformed into a market-based system run by profit-driven actors. Publicly owned wet markets not only declined in number after the state relegated its construction to market forces, but were also thoroughly privatised, becoming venues of capital accumulation for the market operators now controlling these properties. Self-employed migrant families replaced salaried state employees in the labour force. Governments’ increased control over urban public space reduced the room for informal markets, exacerbating the scarcity of vegetable retail space. Fragmentation in the production and wholesale systems restricted modern supermarkets’ ability to establish …

On Chinese Foreign Policy: A Big Stick, An Equally Big Carrot, Hannah K. Fishman

The Macalester Review

This paper attempts to provide a framework for analyzing China's newfound assertiveness. Does a rising China pose a systemic threat to the world order, or will Beijing's rise be characterized by what policy officials refer to as a "Peaceful Rise"? This paper argues that China is "building a bigger stick and a bigger carrot" to increase its hard and soft power capabilities; however, this policy won't necessarily pose a threat. The United States must strengthen Western-central international institutions and guide Beijing into this framework if the US wants to see a "Peaceful Rise."

Maoism In South Asia: A Comparative Perspective On Ideology, Practice, And Prospects For The 21st Century, Ryan D. Nielsen

Honors Projects

The Maoists in both India and Nepal have drawn on Maoist theory to analyze their countries as semi-feudal and semi-colonial, setting the stage for Maoist revolutionary movements. The two movements differ in their historical interpretations of communist revolutions and Marxism—the Nepalese Maoists have come to reject Marxist notions of the state, while the Indian Maoists have uncritically upheld the experience of socialist states and communist revolutions. These differences in historical interpretation are intimately linked with the divergent theoretical and practical orientations of the Maoists in both countries, orientations that have emerged due to distinct material conditions that both revolutionary movements …

Globalization And Its Effects On Chinese College Students’ Perspectives On Elderly Care, Juliann Manning

Undergraduate Review

In China, the need to care for the elderly population is increasing dramatically. China’s baby boomer generation is now aging, and in great need of assistance. As a result of China’s economic reform in the 1990’s, the country has undergone a rapid process of globalization that is now changing our world. Increased geographic mobility, longevity, the one-child policy, increased job opportunities, and the change of social roles in China are all factors that have resulted in decreased availability for adult children to take care of their aging parents. Attitudes and perspectives on elderly care have developed and varied as the …

Comparison Of China And Japan’S Economic Development In The Semiconductor Industry, Rundong Ke

Senior Projects Spring 2012

While Japan marked its success in surpassing the U.S. to dominate the semiconductor industry in 1986, the Chinese semiconductor industry transformed from a small sector into a global competitor. This thesis tracks and compares the developmental histories of this industry between China and Japan and analyzes the differences in government policy, economic systems, comparative advantage and trade policy in both countries, in order to ascertain the two countries’ industrial development strategies and governments’ impacts on the semiconductor industry. This analysis finds that Japan’s development strategy targeted a knowledge- and capitalintensive industry (semiconductor industry, in this case) by providing preferential assistances …