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This is an account of the 'middleman' role Hong Kong has played in China's Open Door Policy. It explains the paradoxical situation by which Hong Kong's role as intermediary in China's commodity trade is becoming more prominent in spite of the fact that since the development of the Open Door Policy in 1979 China has established many direct diplomatic, commercial and transportation links with the outside world. The book makes an important contribution to understanding China's various phases of economic reform and its interactions with global economic markets. Moreover, its arrival is timely, given the forced isolation of China after the events in Tiananmen Square in June 1989 as well as the fact that few years remain before Hong Kong ceases to be a British colony to become part of China. Dr Sung predicts that China's demands on Hong Kong's capacity as intermediary will increase dramatically when this happens.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, modern Chinese intellectuals, reformers, revolutionaries, leftist journalists, and idealistic youth had often crossed the increasing gap between the city and the countryside, which made the act of “going to the countryside” a distinctively modern experience and a continuous practice in China. Such a spatial crossing eventually culminated in the socialist state program of “down to the villages” movements during the 1960s and 1970s. What, then, was the special significance of “going to the countryside” before that era? Going to the Countryside deals with the cultural representations and practices of this practice between 1915 and 1965, ...
During World War I, Britain and France imported workers from their colonies to labor behind the front lines. The single largest group of support labor came not from imperial colonies, however, but from China. Xu Guoqi tells the remarkable story of the 140,000 Chinese men recruited for the Allied war effort. These laborers, mostly illiterate peasants from north China, came voluntarily and worked in Europe longer than any other group. Xu explores China’s reasons for sending its citizens to help the British and French (and, later, the Americans), the backgrounds of the workers, their difficult transit to Europe—across the Pacific, through Canada, and over the Atlantic—and their experience...
"The Rural Modern" by historian Kate Merkel-Hess is the first book to discuss the importance of rural China in the nation s efforts to define itself as modern in the twentieth century. Discussions of modernization efforts in twentieth-century China have usually focused on modernity s manifestations from ironworks to banking to dancehalls in China s cities. As a result, the Communist peasant revolution appears to be a historical break. But Merkel-Hess shows that the countryside was crucial for reformers in Republican China, much before the peasant revolution of the communist period. Reformers hoped that, once the rural masses were educated enough to realize how China had been taken advantage ...
This book is a collection of texts on one of China's boldest social experiments in recent years: the rural reconstruction project in Bishan. The Bishan Project (2011-2016) was a rural reconstruction project in a small village Bishan, Anhui Province, China. The writings describe and criticize the social problems caused by China’s over-loading urbanization process and starts a a contemporary agrarianism and agritopianism discourse to resist the modernism and developmentalism doctrine which dominated China for more than a century, answering a global desire for the theory and action of the alternative social solution for today’s environmental and political crises.This practical utopian commune project ran for 6 years and caused a national debate on rural issues in China, when it was invited to be exhibited and presented abroad. This collection of writing will be of interest to artists, China scholars, architects, and the cultural community at large.
Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world today. In China, a country with a vast array of regional and local vernaculars, how was this “common language” forged? How did people learn to speak Mandarin? And what does a focus on speech instead of script reveal about Chinese language and history? This book traces the surprising social history of China’s spoken standard, from its creation as the national language of the early Republic in 1913 to its journey into postwar Taiwan to its reconfiguration as the common language of the People’s Republic after 1949. Janet Y. Chen examines the process of linguistic change from multiple perspectives, emphasizing the experienc...
This book with 24 essays will appeal to local and international readers interested in Hong Kong. The latter include the international financial and business community, researchers in Asian Studies, journalists and educated tourists. Published by City University of Hong Kong Press. 香港城市大學出版社出版。
This book critically assesses the implementation of the "one country, two systems" in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) from the political, judicial, legal, economic and societal dimensions. The author contends that there has been a gradual process of mainlandization of the HKSAR, meaning that Hong Kong is increasingly economically dependent on the People's Republic of China (PRC), politically deferent to the central government on the scope and pace of democratic reforms, socially more patriotic toward the motherland and more prone to media self-censorship, and judicially more vulnerable to the interpretation of the Basic Law by the National People's Congress. This book aim...
The word ‘reflect’ appears in curriculum documents, in texts, in proposals, and in plans. No proposal appears complete without the word. To reflect is evidently a good thing, but what does it mean? It is not just being reasonable. Without a grasp of what it means to reflect how is it possible to implement the proposals and plans? This book tackles the problem of what it is to reflect. In doing so it examines the importance of reflection for a flourishing human being and its place in two major areas of human thought and education—science and ethics. Science is essentially a reflective activity and the teaching and development of science must acknowledge this. The acquisition and practic...
This book addresses why China is going into space and provides up- to-date information on all aspects of the Chinese Space Program in terms of launch vehicles, launch sites and infrastructure, crew vehicles for space exploration, satellite applications and scientific exploration capabilities. Beyond mere capabilities, it is important to understand how Chinese aerospace leaders think, how they make decisions, and what their ultimate goal is during their space endeavors. What are Chinese intentions in space? To what extent does culture and ethics influence Chinese strategic decision-making within the highest levels of the aerospace industrial complex? This book examines these questions and offers four potential scenarios on where the Chinese space program is headed based on this new perspective of understanding China’s space goals. This book is not only required reading for policy makers and military leaders in the US government, but also for the general population, students, and professionals interested in truly understanding the reasons behind what the Chinese are doing in space.