Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

China's Ineffective Water Pollution Policy: An Issue Of Enforcement, Taili Ni

Outstanding Student Work in Asian Studies

China faces an immense water crisis characterized by serious water pollution and water scarcity. The country’s rapid economic development over the past decades occurred without the restrictions of environmental protection standards. In the past twenty years, China has made great strides towards environmental protection, including developing one of the world’s most comprehensive set of environmental laws. However, the condition of China’s water continues to devolve as issues of enforcement prevent environmental law from becoming reality. This enforcement gap is the primary issue in China’s environmental policy. Prioritization of the economy over the environment, decentralization of enforcement power, powerless NGOs and …

Making Sense Of The Distrust Of The Chinese Government In Light Of China’S Successes In Economic Modernization, Rachel L. Neuhauser

Honors College Theses

This paper explores the contrast of China’s spectacular economic development and the low scores of trust for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy among the Chinese people. The sharp contrast may reflect flaws in the shaping of de facto authority of the Chinese government. The de facto authority is examined in connection to the notion of the Mandate of Heaven from the Confucian tradition. The severe imbalance of economic growth and lack of political reform is discussed against the backgrounds of the domestic and international political circumstances. This paper argues that, in spite of the phenomenal economic development of the …

Of Minds, Morals, And Methods: Combining Moral Meteorology And Disaster Relief In Historiography Of China’S Disaster Management, Wee Kiat Lim

CMP Research

In this working paper, I argue that disaster management in high Qing period can be better understood by simultaneously considering the historiographies of how governing elites understood disasters at the metaphysical level and the administration of disaster relief. During High Qing late imperial China, the regime encountered rapid changes in population, economy, and environment. Following how environmental historian Mark Elvin describes the prevalent ideology that guided Chinese governing elites on implicating human conduct with the manifestation of disasters as “moral meteorology”, I link it to the granary system so as to underscore how these two related but separate streams of …

On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What are the economic, social and political effects when previously isolated villages are opened to the outside world? Scholars from different traditions expect different sorts of positive or negative affects to occur. Rural China presents an ideal environment to study this question empirically. Villages within rural China are in the process of being opened to the outside world in different forms, such as through being connected by road, the investment of agribusiness, or urbanization. Moreover this opening is being driven and shaped by different actors, including local residents, government and businesses. The different ways and actors that this opening occurs …

Contemporary Daoist Tangki Practice, Margaret Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since 1979, China has seen a renaissance of indigenous belief systems, including Daoist tangki spirit-medium practice. Tangki traditions have Neolithic roots. The founding myth is of a man who magically battled flood demons to save China. In imperial times, ordinary people, disenfranchised by the state religion and pawns of dynastic wars, created a soteriology of self-empowerment. Ordinary people would transform through spirit pos-session into warrior gods who would save the community. Millennia-old tangki traditions have diffused into the modern Chinese quotidian. With a remote Central Committee of the Communist Party recalling distant emperors, village temples, many led by tangkis, have …

Leon Sun, Linda Hanes

International Faculty Researchers

Living and working in two countries provided a cultural contrast that has greatly inspired and influenced the art and design of Yuanliang (Leon) Sun, an associate professor of art at Western Michigan University.

A Tribute To T. H. Tsien, Eugene W. Wu

Journal of East Asian Libraries

No abstract provided.

Theravada Buddhism, Identity, And Cultural Continuity In Jinghong, Xishuangbanna, James H. Granderson

Student Publications

This ethnographic field study focuses upon the relationship between the urban Jinghong and surrounding rural Dai population of lay people, as well as a few individuals from other ethnic groups, and Theravada Buddhism. Specifically, I observed how Theravada Buddhism and Dai ethnic culture are continued through the monastic system and the lay community that supports that system. I also observed how individuals balance living modern and urban lifestyles while also incorporating Theravada Buddhism into their daily lives. Both of these involved observing the relationship between Theravada monastics in city and rural temples and common people in daily life, as well …

An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Does Asia have a distinct policy style? If so, what does it look like, and why does it take the shape it does? This article argues that in the newly reinvigorated emphasis of policy studies on policy instruments and their design lies the basis of an analysis of a dominant policy style in the Asian region, with significant implications for understanding the roles played by specific kinds of policy capacities. There is a distinctly Asian policy style based on a specific pattern of policy capacities and governance modes. In this style, a failure to garner initial policy legitimacy in the …

State Political Identity And Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis Of Governance Modes In Vegetable Retail In Urban China, Qian Forrest Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

A government's political identity is a key factor in meta-governance; it powerfully shapes a government's policy aims and implementation preferences at the most abstract level and forms a stable governance mode. Dissonance between a pre-existing governance mode and the government's evolved political identity will lead to governance failures and pose political challenges to the government. In the case of vegetable retail in Shanghai, the neoliberal developmental state transformed the hierarchical governance into market governance; but as it evolves into a corporatist welfare state, market imperfections come to be perceived as governance failures, and the government responds by reintroducing hierarchical measures.

How Modern India Looks At Its Premodernity, Ananya Vajpeyi

Ananya Vajpeyi

No abstract provided.

Bringing Agriculture Back In: The Central Place Of Agrarian Change In Rural China Studies, Qian Forrest Zhang, Carlos Oya, Jingzhong Ye

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Since the mid-2000s, rural development and politics in China has entered a new phase that revolves around what the central government calls ‘agricultural modernization’. Transforming the once-dominant smallholding, family-based agriculture has become a focal point of the government's programme of rural rejuvenation, where a range of economic changes unleashed by urbanization and industrialization also converge. We argue that in this new context, agrarian change has become the key vantage point from which to study rural China. We review key contributions of the papers in this special issue and highlight their insights on rural differentiation, land politics and rural livelihoods. We …

Class Differentiation In Rural China: Dynamics Of Accumulation, Commodification And State Intervention, Forrest Qian Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper develops a classification of the emerging agrarian class positions in China today. Using an instrument based on rural households' combination of market positions in four markets – land, labour, means of production and product – I identify five agrarian classes: the capitalist employer class, the petty‐bourgeois class of commercial farmers, two labouring classes of dual‐employment households and wage workers, and subsistence peasants. This classification is then used as a heuristic device to organize the empirical analysis that examines how dynamics of agrarian change drive class differentiation in rural China. For the capitalist employer class, the analysis focuses on …

China’S Digital Landscape: Breaking Barriers To Innovation, Srinivas K. Reddy, Zack Zheng Wang, Deckie He Dong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

When e-commerce giant Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014, its market capitalisation rocketed to roughly US$219 billion - a sum greater than any record previously set by its American contemporaries, Facebook, eBay and Amazon. It was a historic event that led many to believe that China’s digital economy was echoing the Middle Kingdom’s own meteoric rise onto the world-stage. China ranks high in digital connectivity. In 2015, almost half of the country’s population, or 649 million people, were online. It’s fast-growing Internet economy generates about US$100 billion annually and is predicted to reach US$277 …

In Defense Of The Spratly Islands: The Philippines' Bilateral Defense Policy Against A Looming China, Eric S. Cruz

International Studies Capstone Research Papers

This research paper examines how China’s encroachment of the Spratly Islands has forced the Philippines to increase their dependency on bilateral defense agreements with the United States. Beginning with the significance of the Asia – Pacific in the 21^st century and its key waterway, the South China Sea, this paper examines the Spratly Island dispute beginning in 1995 and continuing to present. Both China’s actions in claiming territory and the Philippines’ strategy of intensifying their ties with the U.S. are detailed throughout. The Philippines have found it essential to take such actions as Chinese aggression has increased since 1995, …

The Girl With The Peanut Necklace: Experiences Of Infertility And In Vitro Fertilization In China, Ruoxi Yu

Student Work

A 2014-2015 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Ruoxi Yu (Berkeley College '15) for her essay submitted to the Department of Anthropology, “The Girl with the Peanut Necklace: Experiences of Infertility and in vitro Fertilization in China.” (Marcia Inhorn, William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology, advisor; Susan Brownell, Professor of Anthropology at USML, secondary reader.)

Ruoxi Yu’s essay, “The Girl with the Peanut Necklace: Experiences of Infertility and in vitro Fertilization in China,” situates original research within the history of the one-child birth control policy and the tension between the …

Getting Through The Hard Times Together? Chinese Workers And Unions Respond To The Economic Crisis, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this response for labor representation? Drawing on literature on post-socialist labor and union democracy, I argue that economic crisis affects not just labor – capital and labor – state relations, but also the relationship between union representatives and workers. Such a dynamic is highlighted by an empirical account of the divergent activities of workers and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) unions in China following the economic crisis of 2008. While the union responded to mass unemployment with an administrative and policy-oriented strategy, workers took to …

The Future Of Sino-Russian Cooperation: A Rough Road Ahead, Cassidy Henry

Ex-Patt Magazine

After spending two semesters on the Chinese-Russian border, Henry reflects on the future of Sino-Russian relations and whether the West should worry.

In Search Of Autonomy: Nepal As A Wedge State Between India And China, Sagar Rijal

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Traditional International Relations (IR) theories consign small states to the reactive roles of "bargaining, bandwagoning or buffering." Small states are deemed to be inherently vulnerable, forever concerned with their mere survival. However, the present global system of states is characterized by numerous smaller states, many of which are not only surviving but also thriving in both economically and politically spheres.

To unravel this anomaly, this study proposes a theory of wedge states as a separate category of small states, which are compelled to deep engagement with two or more rival powers simultaneously. The study analyzes a case of a typical …

China's Yuan: Asia's Future Anchor Currency?, Hwee Kwan Chow

Research Collection School Of Economics

The yuan is becoming more widely used in pricing and settling intra-regional trade and investment. Asian currencies' movements are likely to shift more in tandem with the yuan, leading to it becoming one of Asia's lead currencies. Singapore is now the world's second-most- important offshore yuan trading hub after Hong Kong.

Rural China In Transition: Changes And Transformations In China’S Agriculture And Rural Sector, John A. Donaldson, Forrest Q. Zhang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Agribusiness companies operating in China are transacting in various forms with small agricultural producers, and in doing so, transforming the household-based agriculture in rural China. We argue that the presence of these distinct forms and the diverging relations between agribusiness and producers show the central importance of China’s collective land rights. China’s unique system of land rights – featuring collective ownership but individualized usage rights – has acted as a powerful force in shaping interactions between agribusiness and direct producers. It provides farmers a source of economic income as well as political bargaining power – albeit to various degrees – …

China And India: Globalization With Different Paths, Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, Satish K. Kolluri, Pan Zhen

Global Asia Journal

This occasional paper has three essays written by professors from Pace University and Nanjing Normal University that address a host of structural challenges facing China and India in pursuit of sustainable development in the early twenty-first century. Pan Zhen gives a critical overview of China’s economic policies, and finds the top-down development model to be fraught with tensions. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee argues that the ability of China to pursue sustainable growth and social betterment is largely contingent upon many circumstantial factors, especially the negative attributes of globalization and the rise of domestic discontents. Satish K. Kolluri shifts the focus of …

On The Effectiveness Of Housing Purchase Restriction Policy In China: A Difference In Difference Approach, Jerry X. Cao, Bihong Huang, Rose Neng Lai

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The Chinese government imposed the purchase restriction policy to rein in the housing bubble in 2010. Using a two-stage difference-in-difference approach and a comprehensive dataset covering the real estate markets across 70 cities, we find that the policy triggered substantial decline in the property price and transaction volume. Cities having higher reliance on real estate sector for fiscal revenue and economic growth experienced greater decline in housing prices following the policy implementation. However, the policy had no measurable effects on the nationwide construction boom, hinting the ineffectiveness of the policy to correct the housing bubble.

Japan's Food Security Issues: A Geopolitical Challenge For Africa And East Asia?, Thomas Feldhoff

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio is remarkably low compared to other industrialized nations. Growing world population, food, water, and energy shortages in combination with climate change and the rising competition for the world’s limited resources are the transnational dimensions of food and nutrition security related risks that are already affecting Japan. This paper analyzes the development and institutional context of Japanese policies related to its food security, particularly in relation to its commitments to support developing countries and to promote food security in Africa. One dimension of particular interest is the Japanese engagement in large-scale land investments in Africa. ProSAVANA, Japan’s …

Evaluating Job Training In Two Chinese Cities, Benu Bidani, Chor-Ching Goh, Niels-Hugo Blunch, Christopher J. O'Leary

Christopher J. O'Leary

Recent years have seen a surge in the evidence on the impacts of active labor market programs for numerous countries. However, little evidence has been presented on the effectiveness of such programs in China. Recent economic reforms, associated massive lay-offs, and accompanying public retraining programs make China fertile ground for rigorous impact evaluations. This study evaluates retraining programs for laid-off workers in the cities of Shenyang and Wuhan using a comparison group design. To our knowledge, this is the first evaluation of its kind in China. The evidence suggests that retraining helped workers find jobs in Wuhan, but had little …

The Role Of Great Powers In China's Grand Strategy, Lukas Danner

Lukas K. Danner

No abstract provided.

Increasing Environmental Performance In A Context Of Low Governmental Enforcement: Evidence From China, Mary Alice Haddad

Mary Alice Haddad

China's Maritime Strategic Agenda, Christopher Rahman

Chris Rahman

Just what’s China up to at sea? To casual observers, including a burgeoning legion of journalists, commentators and bloggers, China seems set on a path to becoming a major force on the world’s oceans, developing bluewater naval power with which to protect the Chinese state’s expanding economic ties to far-flung corners of the world and project political and even strategic influence. Such observers rightly note the rapid growth in China’s international seaborne trade, its shipping and shipbuilding sectors, and its marine economy and maritime interests in general. China’s naval developments over the past decade have been widely commented on, especially …

Ballistic Missiles In China's Anti-Taiwan Blockade Strategy, Christopher Rahman

Chris Rahman

No abstract provided.

Reputation Building Through Failure, Huan Wang, Yi Zhang

Research Collection School Of Economics

In China, many entrepreneurs receive strong supports each time their business fails. This contradicts existing literature and differs from rare revival elsewhere. The major explanation lies in China’s unfriendly and unstable policy environments, due to which business failure per se cannot discern competence. Therefore, entrepreneurs failing because of policy shocks have the incentive for extra efforts to build reputation of competence and trustworthiness. This mechanism prepares a pool of seasoned entrepreneurs who can help alleviate damages of not only policy shocks, but also such system shocks as business cycle and sector upgrading, and therefore makes the economy more adaptable.