While it is widely believed that bribery is ubiquitous among Asian firms, few studies have offered systematic evidence of such activities, and the dynamics of bribery in Asian firms have not been well understood. The research reported here used World Business Environment Survey data to examine some distinct characteristics of bribery in Asian firms and to empirically test 10 hypotheses on determinants of bribery. We find that firm characteristics such as firm size, growth rate, and corporate governance are important determinants (...) of bribery activities at the firm level, and that Asian firms are more likely to bribe when faced with fierce market competition, corrupted court systems, convoluted licensing requirements, nontransparent interpretation of laws and regulations, inefficient government service delivery, and high taxes. (shrink)

The existing literature often assumes that the target of global interstate economic competition is the overseas market, that is, the markets in third, export-destination countries. However, in many countries, domestic industries compete fiercely for domestic market share with imports from other countries. Such import competition creates policy diffusion between a country and its import-competitor countries. Such policy diffusion can be observed in policy areas that affect production costs of domestic industries. We focus on import competition’s effect on social welfare policies (...) in developing countries and test our theory in two broad types of policies: social insurance spending and progressive social spending. We find strong evidence for import-competition-induced policy diffusion in both policy areas. Moreover, in the case of social insurance, the effect of policy diffusion is mediated by the strength of labor, suggesting that strong labor is more capable of blocking welfare retrenchment policies. (shrink)

美學大師蔣勳用文字，在時間裡的俯仰自得，找回東方最美的事物 東方美學即將再崛起，我們都要重新做好東方的文化功課 ★藝術、自然、摯友，蔣勳談東方美學，談美麗心事 ★精采收錄蔣勳水墨油畫創作，以及東方經典美術作品 ★天地、隔水、錦眉、畫心，裝幀再現長卷的荒涼與繁華 東方美學其實是生命的領悟， 領悟能夠永續，才是來日方長，領悟能夠傳承，才是天長地久。 東方美學是在漫長的歲月裡領悟了時間的意義， 領悟了生命是一個圓，周而復始。 ——蔣勳 他在文人山水畫思考時間的過去與未來，他在古典詩詞中找回不遙遠的傳唱歌聲，他在蟲痕鳥跡獸足之中看到天地大美，他在縱谷春秋之中聆聽長卷跋尾餘音裊裊。美學大師蔣勳重新思考東方美學的特殊意義，在連續不斷的心的 收藏印記中，回歸自然、溫文爾雅，在可有也可無之間，綻放最美麗的光亮。 留白、長卷、水墨、跋尾等東方美學元素，在這個全球化的時代靈光乍現，卻也內斂含蓄。也許是時候回頭省思屬於這個時代的東方美學。東方美學若要重新崛起，我們都應該從頭開始，重新做好自己的功課，迎接屬於東方的文 藝復興。.

本书论述了宋代哲学的本质特征,并对各个流派及其代表人物的哲学体系进行了具体剖析。.

Lun Xun's collected anti-Confucianist writings.

This paper expands upon the work by Wang (Proceedings of TARK, pp. 493–512, 2017) who proposes a new framework based on quantifier-free predicate language extended by a new bundled modality \(\exists x\Box \) and axiomatizes the logic over S5 frames. This paper first gives complete axiomatizations of the logics over K, D, T, 4, S4 frames with increasing domains and constant domains, respectively. The systems w.r.t. constant domains feature infinitely many additional rules defined inductively than systems w.r.t. increasing domains. In (...) the second part of the paper, we show that these rules are admissible in the systems without them by providing a general strategy for proving completeness theorems for the logics without these rules over constant domain models (also increasing domain models). (shrink)

This study chooses Chinese athletes as the research object and constructs the overall network of its social support network and discussion network. From the micro-, meso-, and macrolevels of the social network structure, the structure and characteristics of the athlete’s overall social network are analyzed. Through research, we found that there is embeddedness, that is, the relevance, between society support networks, between society discussion networks, and between society support networks and society discussion networks. At the same time, in the athletes’ (...) social support network and social discussion network, some athletes have no contact with other players; they have no “power” in the group as well, so it is difficult to obtain network resources. We also found that there are small-world characteristics in the social network of Chinese professional athletes. The above findings will provide a deeper understanding of the peculiarities of athlete groups and have certain practical significance for improving athletes’ daily training and life management conditions. (shrink)

Social anxiety disorder has been widely recognised as one of the most commonly diagnosed mental disorders. Individuals with social anxiety disorder experience difficulties during social interactions that are essential in the regular functioning of daily routines; perpetually motivating research into the aetiology, maintenance and treatment methods. Traditionally, social and clinical neuroscience studies incorporated protocols testing one participant at a time. However, it has been recently suggested that such protocols are unable to directly assess social interaction performance, which can be revealed (...) by testing multiple individuals simultaneously. The principle of two-person neuroscience highlights the interpersonal aspect of social interactions that observes behaviour and brain activity from both constituents of the interaction, rather than analysing on an individual level or an individual observation of a social situation. Therefore, two-person neuroscience could be a promising direction for assessment and intervention of the social anxiety disorder. In this paper, we propose a novel paradigm which integrates two-person neuroscience in a neurofeedback protocol. Neurofeedback and interbrain synchrony, a branch of two-person neuroscience, are discussed in their own capacities for their relationship with social anxiety disorder and relevance to the paradigm. The newly proposed paradigm sets out to assess the social interaction performance using interbrain synchrony between interacting individuals, and to employ a multi-user neurofeedback protocol for intervention of the social anxiety. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reveal the underlying mechanisms that drive young adults’ participation in micro-charity.Design/methodology/approachA case study, which formed a large online ethnographic project, was conducted in which the twin methods of participatory observation and in-depth interviews were used to access the experience of a selected group (n= 60) of college students.FindingsThe present paper identifies that young adults’ participation in micro-charity is mainly driven by three underlying mechanisms: the formation of a powerful environment for the distribution of (...) awareness of obligation, creation of trust towards others in distant or weak ties and symbolic construction of collective identity with a shared commitment.Originality/valueThis paper is an exploratory work which sheds new light on charity or other social entrepreneurship development in the social media era. Specifically, the connectivity of social media and the pre-existing relationships may work well together and lead to many positive outputs, including distributing awareness of social obligation, instilling social trust and strengthening social coherence. (shrink)

Elicited imitation has gained popularity with recent interests in the quest for efficient and flexible measures of second language proficiency. Despite the surge of interests, questions remain as to what specific linguistic knowledge, skills, and strategies EI measures. To contribute to this line of inquiry, this study explored the nature of strategy use and its effect on EI performance to elucidate the constructs of EI. Twenty-four L2 learners and eight native speakers of Chinese completed an EI test of Chinese and (...) a strategy use questionnaire after the test. Qualitative analyses of the questionnaire responses revealed that participants mainly employed five types of strategies, including approach strategies, cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, communication strategies, and test-wiseness strategies. While native speakers reported the least number of strategies, higher-proficiency L2 learners reported more strategies than lower-proficiency L2 learners. We further subjected strategy use, along with participant proficiency level, item length, and item complexity level, to linear mixed-effects regression analyses. The results showed that participant proficiency level, item length, and item complexity level explained the largest test score variance; in contrast, strategy use of different types only accounted for a smaller proportion. The total number of cognitive strategies had a significant, positive effect on EI performance whereas the total number of metacognitive strategies had a significant, negative effect. These findings offer some insights into the nature of speech comprehension and production on EI and provide validity evidence for the use of EI as a language proficiency measure. (shrink)

Since the 1990s, contemporary Chinese aesthetics has radually fallen into depressions and became silence after the two heated domestic debates in the 1950s and 1980s. Nowadays it is high time for Chinese scholars to make reflections on these setbacks and frustrations. Firstly we need to clarify what are the real problems that contemporary Chinese aesthetics encounters. To be short, that is, the arrival of globalization has caused a series of profound turns from aesthetics to arts. With the further expansion and (...) penetration of globalization, theoretical aesthetic subjects and relevant problems are more salient, including the shift of contemporary aesthetic research paradigm, the basic method that we borrow western theories to interpret Chinese art works and aesthetic phenomena, the constant advancing interdisciplinary research, etc. The author’s main aim in this paper will be to explore some workable methods, which are significant to the development of the present Chinese aesthetics in this new century. (shrink)

The new coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, has resurrected a number of historical and sociological problems associated with naming and blaming collectives for the origin or transmission of infectious disease. The default example of the false accusation in 2020 has been the case of the charge of well poisoning against the Jews of Western Europe causing the pandemic of the Black Death during the fourteenth century. Equally apparent is the wide-spread accusation that Asians are collectively responsible for the spread of the present (...) pandemic. Yet querying group actions in times of pandemics is not solely one of rebutting false attributions. What happens when a collective is at fault, and how does the collective respond to the simultaneous burden of both false, stereotypical accusations and appropriate charges of culpability? The case studies here are of Ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) communities and the PRC during the 2020 outbreak of COVID-19. (shrink)