Chinese Academics Research Articles

Tianxia: The Threefold Connotation, Vehicle of Language, and Journey to Reestablishment

Abstract Tianxia 天下 has recently become a buzzword in Chinese academia. The word’s threefold connotation in relation to geographical, political, and international systems needs to be analyzed to illustrate its different meanings. These three meanings were centered around China in the self-sufficient traditional Chinese civilization; however, they all need reinterpretation in the current age of globalization. Reinterpreting tianxia requires an appropriate vehicle of language: weak and regressive language, early modern language that has undergone transformation, and pretentious usage cannot effectively reinterpret tianxia. A non-literati, nonpolitical approach to linguistic expression is necessary to avoid the corruption of language and reinterpret the word from a universal perspective. The principal matter to be addressed in reinterpreting tianxia is its notion in relationship to nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Merely reinterpreting the best intentions of tianxia is insufficiently convincing for the concept in the age of globalization. How tianxia is elucidated through the lens of the individual, state, and international world determines the reliability and credibility of the interpretation.

진변한 24국 위치 비정

Some records, including the record of the Han(韓傳) in the Samkukji(三國志), lists the national names of the 24 countries of Jinhan(辰韓) and Byeonhan(弁韓). The records show the reality of the countries that first occurred in Gyeongsang-Do today. In this respect, it is very basic and important historically to determine where the countries were located. This work h as b een attempted by several s cholars, but opinions a re o ften d ifferent f or e ach scholar, and not much research has been conducted recently. This article reviewed the locations of all the 24 countries of Jinhan and Byeonhan. First, the author grasped the meaning of the order in which the names of the countries were recorded and the scope of the country's location, and reviewed the relics of the Samhan (三韓) period in Gyeongsang-Do, which can be said to be traces of these countries. After that, identified the pronunciation of the national name at that time through research on Chinese character phonology and compared it with the place names recorded in the Samguksagi (三國史記). If further research on the pronunciation of ancient Chinese characters is conducted and more relics from the Samhan Period are found, the opinion could be revised. In this respect, it is only a result made at today's academic stage. However, this study is meaningful in that it attempted to determine the location of the 24 countries of Jinhan and Byeonhan based on archaeological excavations conducted until recently and the achievements of Chinese character phonology in Chinese academia.

Pursuing and playing the academic game: a duoethnographic perspective on two early career academics’ publishing experiences in China

ABSTRACT Whilst the impact of the ‘publish or perish’ adage has received considerable attention from academics in the West, it remains under-researched in non-Western contexts, such as China. We address this gap by examining our lived experiences of navigating Chinese academia and academic publishing in the form of a duoethnographic collaborative self-study. We utilise the concept of precarious privilege in order to tease out a third space between publish or perish. Accordingly, we identity three over-arching themes related to academic publishing in China, which coalesce around the notion of academia as a ‘game’ with hidden rules. These themes are pursuing, playing and paying. Through our dialogues, we highlight our precarious privilege as early-career academics in China, yet also draw attention to how the logics and rules of the academic ‘game’ provide us with the tools we need to survive and thrive within academia.

Revisiting property transfer theory: English law and Chinese law compared

AbstractThe relationship between a conveyance's validity and its underlying contract has been a classic but unsettled topic for comparative private lawyers over the past three decades. This paper attempts to add positivist and normative observations drawn from property transfer theories and practices in English and Chinese law. A jurisdiction adopting an ‘intent plus’ model does not necessarily recognise a separate intent to convey distinct from the intent in the underlying contract, as exemplified by Chinese law, while a jurisdiction adopting the ‘intent alone’ model does not necessarily deny the separate intent to convey, as exemplified by English law. One advantage for a jurisdiction that takes the separatist approach is its flexibility, so that it can still choose between pure causality, pure abstraction, or context-based abstraction at a later stage. Recent developments show that English and Chinese law are moving towards this approach. As to whether flaws in the underlying contract infect the validity of the conveyance, the English position depends on vitiating factors, whereas the mainstream Chinese judgments tend to be pro-causal. Justifications favouring causality provided in the English and Chinese academia are different, though neither can stand up to scrutiny. The detecting opportunity argument submitted in this paper helps to justify abstraction.

Brokered Dependency, Authoritarian Malepistemization, and Spectacularized Postcoloniality: Reflections on Chinese Academia

This paper calls for a paradigm shift in studying academic dependency, toward the paradigm of brokered dependency. Using Chinese academia as an example, I demonstrate how the neocolonial condition of academic dependency is always mediated through blockage-brokerage mechanisms. The two most salient blockage-brokerage mechanisms of dependency in the Chinese context are linguistic barrier and authoritarian malepistemization, and the effects of the latter consist of three layers: institutional, informational, and incorporational. On top of their domestic impacts, those mechanisms jointly exacerbate spectacularized postcoloniality in anglophone-hegemonic global academic publishing. The paradigm of brokered dependency not only represents a more nuanced approach to the study of academic dependency, but also underscores the fact that the dismantling of the neocolonial condition cannot be conceived and pursued in isolation from comprehending and confronting the authoritarian condition, especially when the latter pertains under the disguise of anticolonialism.

Rethinking Dependency and Knowledge Production Amid China’s Rise

There remains a serious lack of a comprehensive examination of academic dependency, decolonization, and indigenization in China and East Asia. Our special issue is intended to fill this gap by situating this issue in the Chinese context, thanks to China’s extraordinary leaps in its economy and higher education and enhanced indigenizing movements. In particular, we hope to open a new dialog on the dynamic relationship between the rise of China, academic (and other) dependency, and global knowledge production. Our findings show that China’s rise complicates and enriches our understanding of dependency. For instance, despite the state-orchestrated indigenization in Chinese academia and China’s potential role as a new global hub of knowledge production, its academia, especially social science, is still highly dependent upon the Western academic center for ideas and recognition. This is partly exemplified by the fact that Chinese universities attach great importance to Western-acknowledged academic excellence through the global university rankings. However, we argue that the existing academic dependency theory fails to capture and explain this complex situation. In so doing, we call for a paradigm shift in rethinking academic dependency by placing it in the multilayered and multi-domain dependency circumstances and conditions. In advancing this agenda, we advocate a field-grounded and cross-disciplinary approach.

Titles in Chinese Literature from Academic Monthly 學術月刊 (Issues 1–12, 2021)

The Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture is pleased to feature select titles from Academic Monthly, a journal highly regarded in Chinese academia. Since its founding in Shanghai in January 1957, Academic Monthly has taken a prominent role in advancing research in China's humanities and social sciences. It publishes research articles in all disciplines of humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, literature, history, economics, politics and law, and others. It has won numerous awards at the national level and is a five-time winner of the Chinese Government Award of Publication for Journals. It is a core journal in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) and is also listed as an authoritative academic journal by other indexing centers in China.

Translanguaging as sociolinguistic infrastructuring to foster epistemic justice in international Chinese-medium-instruction degree programs in China

Abstract While extensive studies have been devoted to English-medium-instruction programs as a major strategy of internationalization, there is a paucity of research on the content-and-language learning experiences of international students enrolled in non-English-medium-instruction programs in the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on the notions of translanguaging and sociolinguistic infrastructuring, the present study investigates translanguaging among instructors and international students in Chinese-medium-instruction (CMI) postgraduate programs in the humanities and social sciences departments in a top university in China. Content analysis of student and instructor interviews reveals that despite the monolingual language policy that governs the medium of instruction for international degree programs at the institutional level, translanguaging serves as sociolinguistic infrastructuring to support some international students’ active participation in knowledge construction, as well as to negotiate tensions imposed by epistemic injustice inherent in disciplinary histories in Chinese academia and the enacted CMI curricula. It is argued that, as a defining feature of translanguaging, sociolinguistic infrastructuring highlights the agentive role of both teachers and international students, who coordinate and navigate distributed and diverse material-semiotic conditions, which can be used to foster a decolonial space for knowledge construction in CMI programs. Pedagogical and curriculum design implications are discussed at the end of the article.

Locating TWAIL Scholarship in China

AbstractThis paper opens a scholarly discourse about Chinese scholars’ engagement with TWAIL (Third World Approach to International Law). This paper shows that Chinese international law scholars and TWAIL align in their resistance to Eurocentrism in international law, while they differ in their attitude towards whether to refrain from “national allegories” and criticize international law as a state-centric invention. A state-centric approach means that mainstream Chinese international lawyers tend to adopt a pragmatic attitude towards international law, employing it as a strategic weapon. During the course of this inquiry, this paper also observes a critical strand in Chinese academics – mostly outside of the international law discipline, and within the disciplines of history and philosophy – that is dedicated to redeeming China's subjectivity and history, which may be useful to understand Chinese critical spirit.

AI ethics with Chinese characteristics? Concerns and preferred solutions in Chinese academia

Since Chinese scholars are playing an increasingly important role in shaping the national landscape of discussion on AI ethics, understanding their ethical concerns and preferred solutions is essential for global cooperation on governance of AI. This article, therefore, provides the first elaborated analysis on the discourse on AI ethics in Chinese academia, via a systematic literature review. This article has three main objectives. (1) to identify the most discussed ethical issues of AI in Chinese academia and those being left out (the question of “what”); (2) to analyze the solutions proposed and preferred by Chinese scholars (the question of “how”); and (3) to map out whose voices are dominating and whose are in the marginal (the question of “who”). Findings suggest that in terms of short-term implications, Chinese scholars’ concerns over AI resemble predominantly the content of international ethical guidelines. Yet in terms of long-term implications, there are some significant differences needed to be further addressed in a cultural context. Further, among a wide range of solution proposals, Chinese scholars seem to prefer strong-binding regulations to those weak ethical guidelines. In addition, this article also found that the Chinese academic discourse was dominated by male scholars and those who are from elite universities, which arguably is not a unique phenomenon in China.

The Impact of Internet Use on the Happiness of Chinese Civil Servants: A Mediation Analysis Based on Self-Rated Health.

With the rapid socioeconomic development of China, studies related to Internet use and civil servants’ happiness have become a research hotspot in Chinese academia. This study empirically analysed the impact of Internet use on the happiness of Chinese civil servants using a sample of 3793 civil servants in Hunan Province, China. It showed that Internet use significantly enhanced the subjective well-being of Chinese civil servants. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis revealed significant heterogeneity in the effect of the Internet on civil servants’ happiness, which varied across civil service groups with different education and gender. Moreover, the effect of Internet use on the happiness of the male and better educated civil servant groups was more pronounced than in the female and less educated civil servant groups. Additionally, mediation analysis revealed that Internet use and the happiness of civil servants were not linear, with health having a significant mediating effect. This indicates that Internet use helps civil servants maintain good health, and thereby enhances the happiness of civil servants. In addition, we also use a propensity score matching model (PSM) to address the endogeneity problem due to sample selectivity bias. The results show that the estimates are more robust after eliminating sample selectivity bias. The effect of Internet use on civil servants’ subjective well-being would be underestimated if the sample selectivity bias is not removed.

“Dig Deep and Reach Wide”: The Changing Politics of the Chinese Communist Party's Consultative Information System

AbstractSince the early 2010s, a low-profile “dig deep and reach wide” campaign led by local Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committees has unprecedently institutionalized and embedded academic opinions into the regimes’ decision-making processes. This research aims to deepen the existing understanding of the intricate relationship between players in the CCP's decision-making process by analysing the Party's deliberation on scholarly opinions through an academic lens. It argues that the local Party committees’ incentives to incorporate academic opinions into their information channels are not only a reaction to the central CCP's increasing need to “reach wide” for high-quality and critical policy proposals but are also a move to seek political endorsement from the central authorities. This process has transformed government–academic relations in China from a patron-client model to one of increasing interdependence in which Chinese academia has become increasingly attuned to the thinking and needs of the CCP.

Zheng Xiaoyun`s Theory of Cultural Identity

This article is an analysis of the theory of cultural identity by Zheng Xiaoyun, a distinguished Chinese philosopher. His theory of cultural identity presented here gives a new perspective to the study of cultural identity. Zheng Xiaoyun's work The Theory of Cultural Identity has won recognition with Chinese academia and has been widely cited there, yet it is little known abroad, Russian academic thought included. Zheng Xiaoyun investigates the relations between cultural and national identities, stating that culture revolves around cultural identity. He comes to the conclusion that cultural and national identities are determined by the cultural development of individuals and society in general (horizontal determination) as well as by the global identity coming into being (vertical determination). His novel ideas and insights add to the academic discussion of the problems of identity. The comparison of Zheng Xiaoyun’s ideas and the theories of Russian and foreign researchers shows notable distinctions: western authors tend to look into psychological aspects of identity, Russian research focuses on its cultural dimension, whereas in China maintaining one’s cultural identity in a changing world is the key problem of identity research. In his works Zheng Xiaoyun studies the functionilg of cultural identity in an alias language environment and explores how strong national identity and values determine the life of a group. Key topics in Chinese identity research today, such as regional identity and Asian identity, call for an in-depth analysis of national and cultural identity and tap from the works of Zheng Xiaoyun. The comparative analysis has proved that his ideas on determining the foundations, mechanisms and types of cultural identity corresponds with other academic traditions. However, Zheng Xiaoyun’s study outlined in this article brings about novel structural approaches to the analysis of the dynamics of identity creation. Following on from the principles of historicity and objectivity, the philosopher develops the basic prerequisites for combining structural and cognitive approaches in studies of modern national and global identities.

Factors affecting faculty conformity in South China universities.

Based on social contagion theory, this study examines the mediating role of formalization of organizational structure between organizational identification and faculty conformity. It also analyzes the moderating role of conflict management style between organizational identification and faculty conformity, and formalization of organizational structure and faculty conformity in universities in Hunan province, China. Convenience sampling was employed to select the subjects, and 1,024 Chinese faculty members including teaching staff and administrative staff were surveyed online with the questionnaire consist of organizational identification scale, organizational formalization scale, conflict management style scale, and faculty conformity scale. 1,000 valid respondents were collected and SPSS was used to analyze the data through descriptive analysis, analysis of variance, correlation analysis, and hierarchical multiple regression. The results showed that faculty members’ organizational identification had a positive effect on faculty conformity; formalization of organizational structure partially mediated the relationship between organizational identification and faculty conformity; and conflict management style positively moderated the relationship between organizational identification and faculty conformity and between formalization of organizational structure and faculty conformity. University administrators are often the initiators of conformity as they are responsible for formulating internal regulations. Therefore, they must monitor and coordinate workplace conflicts, resolve and guide faculty conformity, promote individual faculty members’ self-improvement, and foster steady organizational development.

Sustainable Development of Mastery Goals and Innovative Behavior: Evidence from Chinese Faculty Members

It is well-acknowledged that organizational sustainability largely depends on employees’ innovative behavior, which is the same case with higher education institutions. This study aimed to explore the characteristics of and relationships between faculty members’ mastery goals and innovative behavior under the framework of achievement goal theory in the research context. Results from an anonymous questionnaire survey of 621 Chinese faculty members revealed a four-dimensional structure of mastery goals (task-approach goals, task-avoidance goals, learning-approach goals, and learning-avoidance goals) and a five-dimensional structure of innovative research behavior (opportunity exploration, generativity, formative investigation, championing, and application). The faculty members reported a high level of mastery goals for research and a moderate level of innovative research behavior respectively. Male faculty scored higher on opportunity exploration, formative investigation, championing, and application than their female counterparts. Innovative research behavior showed significantly positive associations with task-approach goals, negative associations with learning-approach goals, and no significant association with mastery-avoidance goals except the positive link of learning-avoidance goals to championing. These results have implications for understanding faculty research motivations and behaviors and effectively stimulating their innovativeness in research for sustainable development of higher education institutions.

For Those Who Played: Representing Indigenous Music in The Complete Works of Zhuang Xueben

This essay investigates a certain type of archival photographs – photographic records of music and performing scenes – included in The Complete Works of Zhuang Xueben, published by Zhonghua Book Company in 2009. Born in 1909 and died in 1984, Zhuang has widely been recognized as a pioneering figure of documentary photography and visual anthropology in China, whose photographic and written records of indigenous groups in Xikang (now parts of Tibet Autonomous Region and Sichuan Province) have won him significant reputation throughout the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China eras. The Complete Works contains more than 3,200 photographs he took during his several ethnological fieldworks between 1934 to the 1950s, involving indigenous people belonging to Tibetan, Qiang, Hui and Tu ethnicities. The purpose of sorting out and re-organizing the music-themed photographs in The Complete Works is to respond to recent debates among Chinese academics over Zhuang Xueben’s photography. It uses music iconography as its method of analysis, guiding the reader to grasp the “rhythms” embedded in these “musical images”.

TIẾP NHẬN ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA CÁC TRÀO LƯU TƯ TƯỞNG PHƯƠNG TÂY ĐỐI VỚI VĂN HỌC TRUNG QUỐC NỬA SAU THẾ KỈ XX

Upon the 90s of 20th century, in the diversification as well as ‘complexity’ of social and cultural norms, the highness of Chinese literary reform slowed down. The vibrant artistic peaks, under the influence of Western philosophical trends, gradually cooled off. It was known that enlightened spirit that shined brightly in the beginning of the reform was unlikely to replicate in all corners of secular society – a society in which successful businessmen were the main driver. Meanwhile, not going public in bookstores, in theaters, or on television means that arts remained a display item. Therefore, art was never closer to the market like this period. Literature tended to depart from the central norms into the periphery. Chinese academics in general and literature in particular, at that time, were not lagging behind the synchronic advances in the West because it was inherited from an earlier period of ideological liberalization in which researchers as well as literary authors were trained on the basics. This essay studies the reception of the influence from Western philosophical trends on Chinese literature by the second half of the 20th century with the aim of partly explaining the above phenomenon.

Examining Teacher Competencies in Content and Language Integrated Learning: Professional Profiles and Ways Forward

Despite the upsurge of research interest in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers’ professional competencies, very little evidence has been presented from the Chinese academia. To bridge this gap and understand Chinese CLIL teachers’ status quo of competencies in relation to their demographic characteristics, the present study adopted a cross-sectional quantitative survey approach and investigated the differences of linguistic competence, content competence, pedagogic competence, CLIL fundamentals, interpersonal and collaborative competence, and reflective and developmental competence in a sample of 205 CLIL teachers from Chinese higher education providers. They had dissimilar genders, language expertise, content subject specialisation, affiliations, academic degrees, educational backgrounds, years of teaching CLIL and professional titles. Inferential analyses of the data obtained from a questionnaire indicated a high heterogeneity in the sample, allowing of the description of CLIL teachers’ profiles of professional competences in accordance with their demographic factors. It is concluded that professional training and ongoing research into CLIL teachers’ needs are essential to achieve the homogeneity of competencies and that a supportive network should be established to encourage active partnership amongst CLIL teachers and educational institutions.

Review of Literature and Study on Origins of "Cold War"

The study of the origins of the Cold War has often been heavily influenced by ideology and one's own standpoint at the outset, and the "absence" of the U.S.S.R (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) in Western studies of Cold War history and its dominant position in the socialist’s side have made the issue seriously polarized. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, both Western and Chinese academics have tried to break away from the ideological influence in the academy and attempt to make a comprehensive assessment of the Cold War with a global perspective and a relatively objective view.

Language choice and academic publishing: a social-ecological perspective on languages other than English

ABSTRACT The choice of language for publishing is a topic of particular significance for scholars of languages other than English (LOTE) due to the importance of publishing in the professional language for maintaining expertise in the written academic register of the respective language. While the multilingual ability of such scholars means they can potentially publish in multiple languages (i.e. their first language, the professional language and English), the limited market for publications in LOTE greatly diminishes such opportunities and restricts career development. Informed by Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Brofenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, we explore factors that influence the choice of language for publishing among 53 Chinese academics (scholars of Russian, Japanese or Korean), and how these academics navigate the challenges of publishing in their professional language. With fieldwork conducted at 10 universities across five regions, we identify regional specificities that contribute to greater inclusiveness with regard to the status of LOTEs in academic careers. Further, we identify the productive disruptive role of returned graduates (with doctorates completed abroad) in improving the institutional ranking of journals which publish in LOTEs. Finally, we underscore the importance of protecting the investment in sophisticated linguistic proficiency attained by scholars of foreign languages.