Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rolling The Dice In Macau, Dustin Wright

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It has been almost a decade now since China regained control of Macau, but the city’s present and future crops up in news coverage much less than Hong Kong, another reclaimed colony. We’re delighted, then, to be able to run this piece about Macau from someone who has been spending time there, meditating on not only whether or not Macau is democratizing but also how Macau’s relationship to the mainland and the world is changing its economy and society. For those interested in background information on Macau, see the reading list that follows the piece.

Sitting in a hip dessert …

On The Web: Images Of China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China Beat readers looking for cool “new” desktop pictures for their computers might want to think old. More and more archives are digitalizing their collections of photographs and making them available online, so now finding that perfect snapshot of Old Beijing or the Great Wall couldn’t be easier. Here are just a couple of the many websites out there, and some sample photos that we found by searching for topics like “Shanghai” and “China.”

1. Friend of the blog Jeremy Friedlein (Program Director, CET Shanghai) pointed us to Life magazine photos available on Google Images. Adding “source:life” in the search …

China Behind The Headlines: Xu Zhiyong, Susan Jakes

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Earlier this year, a graduate of his country’s most prestigious law school with an impressive record of public service, a comfortable academic post at a major university, and a political office he’d won in a trailblazing election summarized his life’s mission for a local newspaper. “I strive to be a worthy citizen, a member of a group of people who promote the progress of the nation,” he told the reporter. “I want to make people believe in ideals and in justice and help them see that there is hope for change.”

Like a more well-known community organizer, Xu Zhiyong has …

Filthy Fiction: The Writings Of Zhu Wen, Julia Lovell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Chinese fiction of the 1990s was not short on shock value. If we think of the decade’s cultural tone being set by Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 command to unleash commercial forces, then the years that followed proved rich in works that would have done the old man proud. Quick off the mark was Jia Pingwa, who triumphantly became one of the earliest, most notorious cases of a serious writer surrendering to lurid populism, with his 1993 novel, The Ruined Capital (Feidu): a best-selling, soft-pornographic tale of a male writer’s travails through the corruption of contemporary China. Things were not looking much …

Nebraska Wins First Round In Republican River Dispute, J. David Aiken

Cornhusker Economics

On June 30, 2009 an arbitrator recommended that Nebraska be required to pay Kansas $10,000 for violating the Republican River Settlement, after Kansas had originally requested $72 million in damages. This newsletter explores the significance of the arbitrator’s decision.

In Case You Missed It: Cambridge Companion To Modern Chinese Culture, Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For scholars of China who are interested in modernity, the looming question seems to be, is ‘modernity’ a valid and useful analytical category for describing, explaining, and understanding China? And if so, how should modernity and its attendant conceptual apparatuses be deployed in investigations of China’s various aspects, historical, political, cultural, and so on? In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture, editor Kam Louie and a distinguished list of contributors seek to explore China within its particular modern contexts and clarify the idea of ‘modernity’ by using historical and contemporary cases.

In his introduction Louie writes, “At first glance, …

Readings For August 3

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. An important story emerged this weekend in the blogosphere: Chinese legal scholar Xu Zhiyong was taken from his home by police last Wednesday and has not been seen since. From Evan Osnos at The New Yorker:

Xu might not have reached Marshall status yet, but he is as close as China gets to a public-interest icon. He teaches law at the Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications. He has also run the Open Constitution Initiative, a legal aid and research organization that worked on many of China’s path-breaking cases. He and his colleagues had investigated the Sanlu milk scandal, …

Intersections Of Place, Time, And Entertainment In Rural Nebraska In The Late 19th And Early 20th Centuries, Rebecca A. Buller

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As newcomers developed Nebraska settlements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they began to shape the space. This study explores the intersections of place, time, and entertainment in rural Nebraska from the beginning of European American settlement in the late 19th century to the end of the Great Depression. Through such examinations, we can better understand the historical geographies of individual and collective human experience. With such knowledge, we can then recognize how entertainment reflected social life, sense of place, place attachment, and the intricacies and larger scale trends of race, ethnicity, gender, age, class, nationality, and religion. …

Understanding Spatial Welfare Impacts Of A Grain Ethanol Plant, Justin Van Wart, Richard K. Perrin

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

This study inquires into the spatial welfare impacts of a grain ethanol plant established in an area with a beef feeding industry. Beef feeders, corn farmers, and the ethanol plant interact with each other simultaneously in a dynamic market situation. To date, there are no studies which simultaneously analyze the welfare impacts of an ethanol enterprise on the three major players affected by the existence of a plant. In this market situation, some interesting phenomena have been noted which raise some intriguing questions. Why do plants sell ethanol byproduct feed at prices below corn price, even though studies show the …

An Empirical Study Of What Governmental Processes Ordinary People Really Want In South Korea, Gang-Hoon Kim

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Many scholars have suggested that South Korea is one of the most successful democracies in Asia. Because of the successful development of democracy, it can be inferred that citizens should be happy with their political system and the government’s policy outputs. However, evidence indicates that ordinary Koreans are dissatisfied with government and politicians as well as their democratic system. If this evidence is true, why are ordinary people distrustful of and dissatisfied with the government, politicians, and their democracy? Regarding this concern, two dominant perspectives - policy matters and process matters - have increasingly been put into question. Conventional wisdom …

The Role Of The Peer Group In Adolescence: Effects On Internalizing And Externalizing Symptoms, Glen J. Veed

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An adolescent’s peer group has been theorized to influence the development of psychopathology. However, little research has examined the adolescent peer group using information obtained directly from peers in a longitudinal framework. Research has also been limited on peer group influence on the development of internalizing disorders. The study used Social Network Analysis to examine self-reported anxiety, depression, aggression, and delinquency in the fall and spring of one school year for students in a rural high school. In addition to examining the effect of the peer group on individual reports of psychopathology, the strength of this relation was compared to …

On The Road Again: Photo Students Search For The "Real" Nebraska, Bruce Thorson

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Student Media

"Migrant Mother," a photograph by Dorothea Lange that showed a mother struggling to survive with her three children in a lean-to in a migrant camp, became the iconic picture that symbolized the Great Depression in the 1930s. Today, our nation's economy has fallen to a historic level not seen since that traumatic period. Financial and housing markets and automakers have crumbled; unemployment has soared. This national recession has touched every American, including those who live in Nebraska.

The objective of this project is to produce photographs, audio slideshows and video that document how this economic upheaval has affected Nebraskans. We …

A Few Reading Recommendations

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. The new Journal of Current Chinese Affairs is out—and all its articles are available for free in PDF at its website. Those of possible interest to CB readers include:

“Beijing Bubble, Beijing Bust: Inequality, Trade, and Capital Inflow into China” (by James K. Galbraith, Sara Hsu, Wenjie Zhang); “Realpolitik Dynamics and Image Construction in the Russia-China Relationship: Forging a Strategic Partnership?” (by Maria Raquel Freire, Carmen Amado Mendes); “The Regulation of Religious Affairs in Taiwan: From State Control to Laisser-faire?” (by André Laliberté); “Nationalism to Go – Coke Commercials between Lifestyle and Political Myth” (available only in German, by …

Kabul Times (July-Sep, 1965), Afghanistan

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection

Kabul Times, July - September, 1965

The Urumchi Unrest Revisited, James Millward

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The violence in Xinjiang took place almost a month ago, but it continues to generate interesting commentary (see, for example, this thoughtful essay by Pallavi Aiyar). The early July events have also recently had two reverberations in Australia, as Jia Zhangke and two other Chinese filmmakers pulled out of a Melbourne film festival where a documentary expected to present a sympathetic view of one of the people Beijing blames for the unrest was to be shown, and then hackers attacked the festival’s website to protest that film’s inclusion in the line-up. In light of this, we asked James Millward, a …

Making An Acre Decision For 2009, Bradley D. Lubben

Cornhusker Economics

The initial sign-up period for 2009 farm commodity programs and the choice between the new ACRE (Average Crop Revenue Election) program and the existing DCP (Direct and Counter-Cyclical Payment) program is quickly winding down. But as the current August 14 deadline approaches, producers know more and more about the potential safety net provided under the ACRE program, and have a better opportunity to analyze the economics of choosing ACRE versus the DCP program before visiting their USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) office.

Race And Espionage, Sam Goffman

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The fact that China and the US spy on each other should come as no surprise to anybody. Each country is nervous about the other, and espionage, though it is surely not conducted with the same vigor as during the Cold War, is still an important part of interactions between states.

What’s interesting about Chinese espionage operations in the US, however, is that they appear to involve strong racial and nationalist overtones. The Soviet Union tended to appeal to ideology, or simply offer money or other types of benefits to its agents; China, it seems, is mainly going after overseas …

Brought To You By The People’S Republic Of The Onion, Haiyan Lee

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

America’s finest news source The Onion has a new owner! Since last week, readers have been bombarded with the good tiding, from the modified masthead, logo, and tagline, to news headlines, editorials, audio and video clips, and ads, lots of ads. The new owner goes by the appetizing name of Yu Wan Mei 鱼完美 Amalgamated Salvage Fisheries and Polymer Injection Group, supposedly a Chinese conglomerate from the inland province of Sichuan. The corporation specializes in fish by-products salvaged from the “ocean’s bounty.” Some of its finer samples are “Broiled Shark Gums,” “Multi-Flavor Variety Pack Of Pickled Fish Cloaca,” “Lightning Power …

Kabul Times (Jan - Mar, 1965), Afghanistan

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection

Kabul Times from January to March 1965.

A Reader: The 2010 Asian Games

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The PR folks for the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou have added China Beat to their mailing list, so we got their note this week about organizers’ plans to seed clouds to prevent rain during the Games. Our interest was piqued–we hadn’t heard much yet about the 2010 Asian Games. Here are a few of the things we found when we went looking…

1. As with the Olympic preparations in Beijing, there is massive construction, investment, and environmental management (not just cloud-seeding) underway in Guangzhou, according to Xinhua:

Authorities are pumping in more than 58 billion yuan (8.5 billion U.S. …

Kabul Times (Oct - Dec, 1964), Afghanistan

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection

Kabul Times, October to December, 1964.

A Cultural Symbol Passes From The Scene: Ji Xianlin, Not Michael Jackson, Timothy B. Weston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s been moving to watch the response in China to the July 11 death of renowned scholar, Ji Xianlin (1911-2009). While Ji’s unsurprising departure at the ripe old age of 98 has not brought quite the same flood tide of emotion and cultural stock taking in China as Michael Jackson’s completely unexpected death a few weeks earlier at age 50 has in the United States and around the world, the way the venerable scholar is being remembered in Beijing is nevertheless remarkable. Long lines of people wishing to pay their last respects waited for hours to gain entrance to a …

Kabul Times (Jul-Sep, 1964)

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection

Kabul Time, July thru September, 1964

Confucianism In Chinese Academia, Daniel A. Bell

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Over the last decade or so, there has been a revival of Confucianism. Popular books on Confucianism are best sellers, and official discourse from the government often expresses traditional Confucian values like harmony. What is less well known, however, is the resurgence in interest among academics in China.

Rigorous experiments by psychologists such as Peng Kaiping and Wu Shali show that there are striking cognitive differences between Chinese and Americans, with Chinese more likely to use contextual and dialectical approaches to solving problems. Psychologists Huang Guangguo and Yang Zhongfang from Taiwan and Hongkong advocate the use of traditional Chinese ideas …

Kabul Times (Apr - Jun, 1964)

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection

April - June, 1964

High Plains Ag Lab Rotations Show Fallow Still Works In Western Nebraska, Paul Burgener

Cornhusker Economics

The High Plains Ag Laboratory (HPAL) in Sidney, Nebraska is the dryland research site for the University of Nebraska located in the Panhandle. In addition to the typical small plot agriculture experiment areas, there is a significant dryland production area. There are a total of 718.5 acres in production, divided into 27 individual fields, ranging from the smallest unit at 19.7 acres to the largest at 36.7 acres. Within these fields there are presently seven different crop rotations, each with winter wheat as the base crop, including everything from the traditional wheat-fallow system to a continuous cropping system.

China Beatniks Around The Web

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

After a few weeks of vacation, China Beat is back to posting (though we considered making an 8 percent reduction in our future posts in honor of the UC furlough, we’ll just be back to business as usual). Even so, it is still summer and a few contributors have been using the time to publish in other venues.

Last Saturday, Ken Pomeranz mentioned a few of his recent publications, includingthis one at the New Left Review.

Jeff Wasserstrom recently reviewed Lisa See’s new book, Shanghai Girls for Time Asia. (We ran an interview with See this spring, which you can …

Chinese Regional Agricultural Productivity: 1994-2005, Haizhi Tong, Lilyan E. Fulginiti, Juan P. Sesmero

Lilyan E. Fulginiti Publications

Agricultural productivity growth in Chinese provinces during the 1994-2005 period is examined using two alternative approaches: a parametric stochastic frontier and a non-parametric Malmquist index. These models are suitable to the Chinese situation due to the existence of procurement prices, quotas, and other interventions that have distorted prices. Results show that there is high but declining productivity growth rates in the mid 1990’s with productivity growth decreasing in the late 1990’s but with a reversal of the trend around 1998 when growth rates start accelerating. A stochastic frontier translog production function is estimated to obtain an alternative measure of total …

Kabul Times (Jan - Mar, 1964), Afghanistan

Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection

Kabul Times from January to March, 1964

Shanghai Expo: The Us Pavilion Is On

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last November, we ran a little preview of the 2010 Shanghai Expo, pointing you to a few readings about this big “coming distraction.” Last week the US finally committed to attend the Expo, prompting a new round of Expo stories around the web.

1. It’s pretty unusual for the U.S. to land on any world list between San Marino and Andorra, but that’s its position on the Expo sign-up sheet, asreported by the AFP:

The United States signed up Friday the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, officials said, making it the last major country with diplomatic ties to China to join …