Chinese Beliefs Research Articles

A family-oriented treatment program for youths with ketamine abuse and their caregivers: a pilot study in Taiwan.

ObjectiveThe abuse of ketamine by youths has grown into a serious public health issue. However, a reliable and efficient treatment has still not been found for youths who abuse ketamine. This pilot study investigated the effects of a family-oriented treatment program for ketamine-using youths and their caregivers.MethodsTo carry out this study, 42 youths with ketamine use (mean age 16.6±1.1 years) who were referred to take part in a 10-week treatment program based on motivational enhancement principles were selected, as were their principal caregivers (mean age 46.4±7.1 years), who were similarly referred to take part in a 10-week training program for parenting skills. The study had the youths complete the Chinese Craving Beliefs Questionnaire, the Adolescents’ Behavior problem Scale, and the Family APGAR both immediately before and after the program. Likewise, the youths’ caregivers completed the Family APGAR, the 12-item version of the Chinese Health Questionnaire, and the Parenting Stress Index.ResultsOf the 42 youth–caregiver pairs that took part in this study, 37 (88%) completed the 10-week program and both sets of assessments. After the treatment, the participating youths’ substance cravings declined (t=3.88, P<0.001), while family function, as perceived by the participating caregivers, significantly increased (t=2.22, P=0.033). The improvement in caregivers’ perceptions of family function were positively related to the improvement of the caregivers’ health status (r=−0.36, P=0.022).ConclusionAccording to its results, this pilot study submits that family-oriented treatment programs may be considered a potentially effective treatment option for youths who abuse ketamine. Additional studies with larger sample sizes, as well as longer follow-up periods, are necessary to verify whether this type of treatment also prevents youths using ketamine from relapsing.

Negotiating the meaning of filial piety in The Guasha Treatment

Abstract In the field of contemporary Chinese cinema, the theme of filial piety has served as a key concept for a large number of Chinese-language films, covering various genres from melodrama to martial arts. Through a detailed narrative analysis of the cultural practices and identity politics in the filmic text, this article examines the way in which the traditional value of filial piety finds its powerful and subtle expression in Xiaolong Zheng’s lesser-known film The Guasha Treatment (2001), centring on Chinese family life in the United States. The theme of filial piety is particularly important for this film because it is situated at the centre of cross-cultural encounters and conflict. The film thus can be seen as an attempt to present how Chinese cultural beliefs, practices and products can generate problems when transplanted into an American setting. As such, it not only foregrounds the family and filial piety, but also addresses the issue of the western reception of Chinese culture and the experience of the Chinese diaspora.

Parental beliefs on children's play: comparison among mainland Chinese, Chinese immigrants in the USA, and European-Americans

The current study surveyed parental play beliefs among the three groups of parents: the mainland Chinese, Chinese immigrants in the USA, and European-Americans. Limited comparison studies on parental play beliefs were previously reported for these three populations in the literature. Two measures, the Chinese child-rearing ideology and parental play beliefs scale, were used in this study. Responses from 144 responses were collected. The mainland Chinese parents reported similar scores both in the Chinese child-rearing ideology and in play beliefs as to the European-American parents. Surprisingly, the Chinese immigrant parents reported the highest scores in the Chinese child-rearing ideology and the lowest scores in the parental play beliefs among the three groups. This indicated that the surveyed Chinese immigrant parents held more traditional Chinese child-rearing ideology and were less positive towards children's play.

Posttraumatic Coping and Distress

The current body of knowledge related to trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is primarily based on research conducted in Western nations. Thus, Western clinicians and researchers may know little about whether people from non-Western societies have similar reactions or symptom manifestations to specific traumatic events. Traditional Chinese health beliefs with their roots in Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism influence illness perception and affect coping behaviors of Chinese exposed to traumatic events. This article discusses compatible and incompatible aspects of the traditional Chinese health beliefs with Western beliefs about PTSD and examines how culture-based motivations may possibly impact emotional responses to traumatic events between American and Chinese cultures. This article also reviews the literature on the prevalence and applications of Western diagnostic criteria and measures of PTSD in contemporary Chinese populations and proposes suggestions for developing a culturally sensitive framework for clinical management of Chinese trauma survivors.

Chinese pediatrician beliefs about counseling and medications for parents who smoke: a survey in southern China.

BackgroundPediatricians play an important role in promoting smoking cessation among the parents of young children as more behavioral counseling and cessation treatment are made available in the Chinese healthcare system. However, beliefs about the effectiveness of these interventions can influence pediatricians’ recommendations to their patients. This study examined pediatricians’ beliefs regarding effectiveness of counseling and medications for smoking cessation.MethodsA cross-sectional survey of pediatricians was conducted in thirteen conveniently selected southern Chinese hospitals, during September to December 2013. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. We used chi square tests and multinomial logistic regression analysis to identify factors associated with beliefs regarding effectiveness of counseling and medications for smoking cessation.ResultsBeliefs of the respondents (504/550; 92% response rate) were divided regarding the effectiveness of counseling and medications for smoking cessation. Sixty percent believed that physician counseling is effective for smoking cessation; 53% believed pharmacological products (or medications) are effective. Factors that were associated with positive beliefs towards the effectiveness of counseling included: believing about the professional responsibility to discuss smoking cessation, being confident in discussing smoking cessation or SHS exposure reduction with patients’ parents, believing that health professionals should routinely ask about their patients smoking habits, believing that health professionals should routinely advise their smoking patients to quit smoking, possessing adequate knowledge in quitting smoking, and being able to assess smokers different stages of readiness to quit. Most of the above factors were also associated with the belief that medication is effective for smoking cessation.ConclusionsA substantial proportion of Chinese pediatricians believed that cessation counseling and medications are not effective, which is not supported by current evidence in the field. Several factors including individual, practice level and health system level characteristics were associated with their belief. Training efforts are needed to influence pediatricians’ beliefs regarding the effectiveness of cessation counseling and medications.

Caregiving Experience for Children with Intellectual Disabilities among Parents in a Developing Area in China.

By utilizing grounded theory methodology, this study attempted to fill a gap whereby little research explored family caregiving perspectives in China where public support is insufficient and familial responsibility is highly valued. Data were collected through the qualitative methods of interviews and observations among a purposive sample of 15 parents of children with intellectual disabilities in central China. The central idea emerging from the data encompassed five broad categories of caregiving experiences: (i) unavoidable caregiving responsibility and (ii) uncertain future as the greatest worries which are the perception towards the recipient; (iii) compromising quality of life and (iv) positive roles of caregiving tasks which focus on the self; and (v) community support which is the perceived support from the external system. A recursive relationship existed among these categories. Chinese culture and traditional beliefs dominated throughout these issues. The implications and limitations of this study were discussed.

The interactions of CSR, self-congruity and purchase intention among Chinese consumers

This research aimed to identify the influence of Chinese consumers' beliefs about dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on self-congruity and their purchase intentions in the fashion industry. We examined the relationship between four dimensions of CSR (i.e., economic, legal, ethical, philanthropic) and purchase intention and hypothesised that basic responsibilities such as economic and legal responsibility affected purchase intention directly, while high-level responsibilities such as ethical and philanthropic responsibility affected purchase intention through the mediation of self-congruity. The results of our online survey supported our hypotheses. This finding implies that consumers' self-concept is closely related to the higher-level CSR dimensions and less related to the basic duties of companies such as their economic and legal responsibility. We confirmed that fashion companies' ethical responsibility and philanthropic responsibility could be more influential when it was self-congruous. We found that ethical responsibility is a relatively weak dimension in influencing purchase intention compared with other CSR dimensions. Based on this result, we suggest several implications for companies interested in the Chinese market.

Young Chinese children's beliefs about the implications of subtypes of social withdrawal: A first look at social avoidance.

The goal of this study was to examine young Chinese children's beliefs about the implications of different subtypes of social withdrawal (e.g., shyness, unsociability), including for the first time, social avoidance. Participants were 133 children in kindergarten (n=58, Mage =70.85months) and grade 1 (n=75, Mage =83.49 months). Children were presented with vignettes describing hypothetical peers displaying shy, unsociable, avoidant, and socially competent behaviours and were then asked a series of questions to assess their beliefs about the implications of these different behaviours. Young children made distinctions between social withdrawal subtypes in terms of underlying motivations and emotions. Children also appeared to hold differential beliefs about the implications of different forms of social withdrawal: Of note, they anticipated that socially avoidant peers would experience the most negative outcomes. These findings provide some of the first evidence to suggest that social avoidance represents a distinct form of social withdrawal among young Chinese children. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of distinguishing between different subtypes of social withdrawal in Chinese culture.

Speaking up for Superstition: A Note on the Ethics of Chinese Popular Belief

Most Chinese religious practice and belief in times past, and even throughout much of the Chinese world today, falls into the still current category of superstition. Assessing the ethical notions that tend to obtain within this vast area of religious life is not easy, but it needs to be done for practical reasons, not least because the legal consequences of moral actions arising from the body of beliefs concerned are starting to come before courts outside China itself. Once the assumptions of a very different worldview affirming the existence of an unseen spirit world are taken into account, the deeds of believers in this worldview can be discussed from the point of view of ethics. Philosophers might do well to pay more attention to this topic.

Hong Kong Chinese women's lay beliefs about cervical cancer causation and prevention.

This study aimed to seek insights into Chinese women's lay beliefs about cervical cancer causal attributions and prevention. Twenty-three new immigrant adult women from Mainland China and thirty-five Hong Kong adult women underwent semi-structured in-depth interviews. Interviews were audio taped, transcribed and analyzed using a Grounded Theory approach. This study generated three foci: causal beliefs about cervical cancer, perceived risk of cervical cancer, and beliefs about cervical cancer prevention. Personal risky practices, contaminated food and environment pollution were perceived as the primary causes of cervical cancer. New immigrant women more likely attributed cervical cancer to external factors. Most participants perceived cervical cancer as an important common fatal female cancer with increased risk/prevalence. Many participants, particularly new immigrant women participants, expressed helplessness about cervical cancer prevention due to lack of knowledge of prevention, it being perceived as beyond individual control. Many new immigrant participants had never undergone regular cervical screening while almost all Hong Kong participants had done so. Some Chinese women hold pessimistic beliefs about cervical cancer prevention with inadequate knowledge about risk factors. Future cervical cancer prevention programs should provide more information and include capacity building to increase Chinese women's knowledge and self-efficacy towards cervical cancer prevention.

Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China.

For the last several decades, Chinese society has experienced transformative changes. How are these changes understood among Chinese people? To examine this question, Part 1 in this research solicited folk beliefs of cultural change from a group of Chinese participants in an open-ended format, and the generated folk beliefs were rated by another group of participants in Part 2 to gage each belief's level of agreement. Part 3 plotted the folk beliefs retained in Part 2 using the Google Ngram Viewer in order to infer the amount of intellectual interests that each belief has received cross-temporarily. These analyses suggested a few themes in Chinese folk beliefs of cultural change (1) rising perceived importance of materialism and individualism in understanding contemporary Chinese culture and Chinese psychology relative to those of the past (2) rising perceived importance of freedom, democracy and human rights and (3) enduring perceived importance of family relations and friendship as well as patriotism. Interestingly, findings from Parts 2 and 3 diverged somewhat, illuminating possible divergence between folk beliefs and intellectual interests especially for issues related to heritage of Confucianism.

‘Asian fail’: Chinese Canadian men talk about race, masculinity, and the nerd stereotype

Popular representations of Asians – and especially Asian men – often stereotype them as nerds. Drawing on qualitative field studies of Chinese Canadians' beliefs about ‘authentic’ identity and of an urban ‘nerd-culture scene,’ this article examines the perceived nerdiness of Asians. Membership Categorization Analysis is used as a framework to analyze two Chinese Canadian men's self-categorizing discourses. One embraces his nerdiness but is ambivalent about his racial/ethnic identity; the other is comfortable being categorized as Asian but distances himself from what he describes as the ‘typical’ nerdy Asian male. Although orientations to their presumptive categorization as Chinese or Asian differ, both design their self-presentations to manage inferences made about them. We argue that Canadian multiculturalism complicates these processes by discursively transforming racial difference into ‘cultural diversity’. This produces systematic errors in categorization, leading to inaccurate inferences of cultural competences or stereotypes social attributes from perceptions of physical difference. Under these conditions, the linking of nerds and Asians not only constrains individual life projects but can function as the ‘benign discourse’ that hides a racial subtext, reproducing historic, anti-Asian stereotypes in a seemingly neutral guise.

‘Doing some things’ in the Xi Jinping era: the United Nations as China's venue of choice

A more powerful China under the seemingly confident leadership of President Xi Jinping has committed to a more activist global policy. In particular, this commitment has influenced Beijing's policy towards UN peacekeeping operations, with a long-awaited decision to add combat forces to the engineering troops and police and medical units that have been features of its past contribution. In addition, Beijing has doubled the size of its contribution to the UN peace operations budget. This article explains why the UN is a key venue for China to demonstrate its ‘responsible Great Power’ status and expressed willingness to provide global public goods. The main explanatory factors relate to the UN's institutional design, which accords special status to China even as it represents a global order that promotes the sovereign equality of states. Moreover, there are complementarities between dominant Chinese beliefs and interests, and those contained within the UN system. Especially important in this latter regard are the links that China has tried to establish between peacebuilding and development assistance with the aim of strengthening the capacity of states. China projects development support as a contribution both to humanitarian need and to the harmonization of conflict-ridden societies. The Chinese leadership has also spoken of its willingness to contribute to peacemaking through stepping up its efforts at mediation. However, such a move will require much deeper commitment than China has demonstrated in the past and runs the risk of taking China into controversial areas of policy it has hitherto worked to avoid.

Traditional Chinese medicine, health beliefs and glaucoma awareness: implications for UK practice

Changes in the UK population have heightened the need for the provision of culturally competent care. Recent population estimates suggest China provides the most migrants to the UK. This and the reported high incidence of glaucoma in the Chinese population signify the need for practitioners to be culturally aware of the health needs of this patient group. This article reviews the prevalence of glaucoma and the influence of traditional Chinese medicine on the health beliefs of the Chinese population living in the UK, and discusses how cultural awareness can facilitate the provision of culturally centred, individualised patient care.

Exploring the Paths for the Popularization of Marxism With New Media in China

The popularization of Marxism is a major political and academic topic in China. It has attracted a lot of Chinese scholars’ attention in recent years because of its association with the stability of the Chinese society, the establishment of harmonious society in China, and the construction of the Chinese core values and belief of its people. The new social media of Internet and mobile technology have played important roles in the popularization of Marxism and become the dominant position in promoting it. This paper explores the popularization and dissemination processes of Marxism in China and the various ways of being utilized to popularize Marxism with new media.

In Search of the Origin of the Enumeration of Hell-kings in an Early Medieval Chinese Buddhist Scripture: Why did King Bimbis?ra become Yama after his Disastrous Defeat in Battle in the Wen diyu jing ???? (‘S?tra on Questions on Hells’)?

The idea of a purgatorial journey to the Ten Kings of the Ten Hells is a distinctive feature of funerals and ancestral worship in Chinese Buddhism and Chinese popular religions. In Indian Buddhism ideas emerged of chief deities presiding over others in a few of many heavens and of various hells with different tortures governed by Yama and his messengers, yet the idea that each hell was governed by a ‘king’ is not found in early Indian Buddhist sources. This article examines what is probably the earliest enumeration of hell-kings, in the S?tra on Questions on Hells. This very early example derives from an extraordinary story about how King Bimbis?ra and his eighteen ministers became Yama and kings of eighteen hells after a disastrous defeat in battle. My analysis will illustrate how this account was probably consciously formulated by an author familiar with two sources: (i) the story of the Buddha’s concern about the fate of his followers in the Shenisha jing (????; Janavasabha Sutta), and (ii) the popular Chinese belief in sacrificial cults of ‘defeated armies and dead generals’.

Kidney tubular-cell secretion of osteoblast growth factor is increased by kaempferol: a scientific basis for "the kidney controlling the bone" theory of Chinese medicine.

To study, at the cytological level, the basic concept of Chinese medicine that "the Kidney (Shen) controls the bone". Kaempferol was isolated form Rhizoma Drynariae (Gu Sui Bu, GSB) and at several concentrations was incubated with opossum kidney (OK) cells, osteoblasts (MC3T3 E1) and human fibroblasts (HF) at cell concentrations of 2×10(4)/mL. Opossum kidney cell-conditioned culture media with kaempferol at 70 nmol/L (70kaeOKM) and without kaempferol (0OKM) were used to stimulate MC3T3 E1 and HF proliferation. The bone morphological protein receptors I and II (BMPR I and II) in OK cells were identified by immune-fluorescence staining and Western blot analysis. Kaempferol was found to increase OK cell growth (P<0.05), but alone did not promote MC3T3 E1 or HF cell proliferation. However, although OKM by itself increased MC3T3 E1 growth by 198% (P<0.01), the 70kaeOKM further increased the growth of these cells by an additional 127% (P<0.01). It indicates that the kidney cell generates a previously unknown osteoblast growth factor (OGF) and kaempferol increases kidney cell secretion of OGF. Neither of these media had any significant effect on HF growth. Kaempferol also was found to increase the level of the BMPR II in OK cells. This lends strong support to the original idea that the Kidney has a significant influence over bone-formation, as suggested by some long-standing Chinese medical beliefs, kaempferol may also serve to stimulate kidney repair and indirectly stimulate bone formation.

Associations Among Chinese Cultural Beliefs of Adversity, Income Recovery, and Psychological Status of Wenchuan Earthquake Survivors

This research examines the associations between Chinese cultural beliefs of adversity, income recovery, and psychological status among the Wenchuan earthquake survivors. A total of 304 valid questionnaires were collected. Regression analyses indicated that positive Chinese cultural beliefs of adversity and income recovery were associated significantly with life satisfaction. The relationship between positive Chinese cultural beliefs of adversity and life satisfaction was also mediated by income recovery. The research has highlighted the importance of examining both positive and negative aspects of psychological status among disaster survivors and adopting different methods to work with different aspects of their psychological status.

Preferences on end-of-life decisions among older Chinese in Macau.

The purpose of the present study was to learn about the perspectives on end-of-life decision making among older Chinese people in Macau. A qualitative approach was used, and interviews were conducted with 18 Chinese aged 65 years or older. Four major themes were identified: (a) institutionalized care at the end of life was preferred as not to be a burden on family, (b) life-prolonging measures were not preferred, (c) funeral arrangement preferences were based on personal and religious beliefs, and (d) end-of-life decision making would be deferred to others. These themes provide an understanding of personal preferences of older Chinese on end-of-life issues, and personal preferences are always secondary to their respect toward family and medical doctors. This compliance with family and medical authority can be understood through Chinese cultural beliefs. Knowledge of cultural influences is needed for nursing professionals to deal effectively with older adults and families regarding end-of-life issues.

Individual Income Tax Compliance in China and Hong Kong: Ethics as a Facilitator

Tax compliance research has been widely conducted in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. These prior findings demonstrate that there are a number of factors, which affect an individual’s decision on tax compliance. Among these identified factors, ethics appears to be an important element in an individual’s willingness to pay taxes. In this study, we focus on China and Hong Kong because there have been very few studies on this subject matter in these two jurisdictions, as well we argue Chinese ethical values plays an important normative role. Therefore, promoting tax compliance in China and Hong Kong is not simply transplanting solutions from the West. Instead, drawing from Chinese ethical beliefs will be necessary to bring about greater tax compliance in China and Hong Kong. However, our recommendations vary slightly between the two, as each will reflect certain jurisdiction specific particularity.