Chinese Representation Research Articles

The influence of China in AI governance through standardisation

Artificial intelligence systems (AIS) are subject to technical standardisation. Technical standards are primarily developed within standard developing organisations (SDOs) traditionally operating under consensus-based, community- and largely industry-driven processes. Governments are increasingly interested in technical standards’ development, accentuating the political dimension of standardisation. This article explores the contribution of technical standardisation to the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) and asks whose views are being implemented in the development of non-state rules for AI. The article, based on empirical research, focuses on the changing governance structure of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Overall, the discussion offers an overview of the existing geopolitics in AI-related standardisation and contributes to the scholarship on AI and digital governance by exploring the role of technical standardisation as a tool in AI governance. The research finds an increasing Chinese representation in international standardisation and argues that the political use of standardisation can lead to China establishing its own vision of digital governance. Consequently, the article suggest that China is using participation in recognised SDOs to legitimate its vision for digital governance calling for a re-examination of standardisation considering its implications for democracy and the protection of human rights.

Chinese representations of EU trade actorness

Chinese representations of EU trade actorness

Making sense of the European Union: Chinese representations

Making sense of the European Union: Chinese representations

2000년대 초 대만발 ‘중국풍(中国风)’ 음악의 중국 재현

이 글은 중국풍 음악 열풍의 근원지라 할 수 있는 ‘대만’이라는 공간과 중국풍 음악 열풍의 출발점이 되는 ‘2000년대 초’라는 시간에 주목한다. 최종적으로는 주요 중국풍 음악에 대한 텍스트 분석을 통해 중국풍 음악 속 중국 재현 양상과 그 이면에 존재하는 정치적, 문화적 이데올로기를 찾는 데 목적이 있다.BR 중국풍 음악이란 2000년대 초 대만 가요계를 중심으로 창작된 서구의 팝 장르를 운용함과 동시에 중국 전통문화적 요소를 담고 있는 곡들을 지칭한다. 2000년대 초 대만 내부에서 탈중국화에 대한 반발로 형성된 ‘탈대만화’ 여론은 중국풍 음악이 만들어질 수 있는 밑거름으로 작용했고, 당시 몰락의 국면으로 접어들고 있던 대만의 음악산업은 중국풍 음악의 현실적 창작 동기가 되었다. 음반 판매 저조로 위기에 직면한 대만 음악산업은 위기 타개를 위해 중국 시장으로의 진출을 모색하게 되었고, 중국인들의 감성을 자극하기 위해 전략적으로 선택된 것이 바로 중국풍 음악이었다. 마침 이때 중국은 거대 음악 소비시장 부상했고, 이는 대만발 중국풍 음악이 시장에 안착할 수 있는 토대가 되었다.BR 『상하이1943』, 「무단장」등의 노래는 기억 속 장소로서의 중국을 묘사했다. 다수의 작품에서 중국 대중의 요구에 영합하기 위한 중국 흉내내기의 흔적을 볼 수 있었다. 내 구역 은 베이징 발음 따라하기, 경극, 원숭이 흉내내기 등으로 중국의 대중들에게 친근하게 다가갈 수 있었고, 신악단의 베이징의 하룻밤 등의 곡은 경극의 창법을 흉내내어 중국 대중들에게 어필하였다. 「용의후예」와 「개새영웅」에서는 민족주의를 소환하여 중국인과 전 세계에 퍼져 있는 화인 디아스포라로 하여금 민족 자긍심을 느끼게 하여 중화민족의 단결을 촉구했다. 「중국어」의 경우 양안 관계의 정치적 이슈로 떠오르기도 했다.BR 2016년 차이잉원(蔡英文)이 다시금 정권을 탈환한 이래, 대만에서는 다시 한번 탈중국화 정책을 강력하게 전개하여 양안 관계는 현재 최악의 상황으로 치닫고 있다. 2000년대 초에 대만을 시작으로 중화권을 강타한 중국풍 음악은 정치적으로 양안의 상황이 불안정 함에도 불구하고, 최근까지도 각종 미디어에서 소환되어 전체 중화권 대중문화계에서 영향력을 발휘하고 있다. 양안 관계가 어떠하다는 것은 정치적인 것으로만 확인할 수 있는 것이다. 정치적 관계의 긴장에도 불구하고 비정치적인 문화 영역에서는 꾸준히 교류가 있음을 우리는 중화권에서의 중국풍 음악 열풍을 통해 확인할 수 있다.

Everyday heritaging: Sino-Muslim literacy adaptation and alienation

Abstract What we in this article describe as “Sino-Muslim heritage literacies” have existed in China for as long as there have been Muslims in the region (since the 7th century according to the best evidence). The community’s religious and heritage literacy practices can incorporate a systematic Arabic representation of Chinese, systems of Chinese characters representing Arabic pronunciation, and more contemporary digitalised manifestations of heritage literacy in everyday life. Using a social practice approach to literacy, this paper reports on multi-generational interviews, artefact collection, and ethnographic observations with two families in Xi’an (Shaanxi, China) to explore how heritage literacy practices maintain a presence in Sino-Muslim life through traditional systems of community and religious education and contemporary social and material networks. We discuss what these empirical cases reveal about literacies in Sino-Muslim religious life, with respect to how heritage is adapted or diminished across generations. We also argue that it is crucial to situate Sino-Muslim heritage literacy in spaces beyond rigid and state-defined ethnic and religious discourses which tend to confine the identity of Sino-Muslims into officially designated categories. Doing so, we contend, has useful theoretical and methodological import, and can shed light on inquiry about heritage literacy in other minority settings.

1920-30년대 상해 공공조계 행정 체계의 변화

The Mixed Court and Extra-Settlement Road in Shanghai International Settlement show us that there was no strict restriction or limitation of influence of the administration of International Settlement, since it could easily bypass physical boundary of the settlement, or even limitation for settlement administration. However, this system faced critical challenge from 1925, when foreign police of the International Settlement fired upon Chinese protesters.BR The Shanghai Chamber of Commerce almost immediately addressed their 13 demands, including unconditional and complete return of the Shanghai Mixed Court, though western ambassadors at pekin legation quarter did not agreed this. nevertheless, in Shanghai, the Shanghai Municipal Council tried to make common interest between westerners and prominent Chinese. BR At last from 1927, the Shanghai Mixed Court was abolished, and the Shanghai Provisional Court replaced it. The new court maitained many previous regulations and customs, and the influence of the police of the International Settlement still could not be ignored. However, Chinese people in and around the Settlement continued to demand their representation in settlement administration, and therefore, the present administrative system had no other way but to change itself.BR The construction of extra-settlement roads and administration of the SMC upon extra-settlement road areas were still continued in 1920s. SMC sent its police to maintain order in those areas, and took special taxes for supplying water or electricity. But the Chinese local government in Chapei area strengthened its influences in the same areas, by sending their own police forces and supplying their own city infrastructure. The Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, including in their 13 demands, requested to complete ban of constructing new extra-settlement road and return already built extra-settlement road. SMC tried to maintain status quo to defend their own interest, but they actually had no any counter-measure.BR Finally in July 1931 the SMC and the Shanghai local government made an provisional agreement that the local government take full right to police the areas and supply city infrastructure, while the SMC could send their police. Nevertheless, with the Japanese consul’s disagree, this agreement never accepted, and the whole matter was delayed until the Sino-Japanese war started.BR In result, after the May Thirtieth Movement, the existing administrative system of the Shanghai International Settlement was inevitably transformed into totally different form. It had to accept the Chinese representation in the SMC, while abandoned its influences in the Mixed Court and in the extra-settlement road areas.

Chinese media representations of tongzhi (2009–2019)

Recent years have witnessed an increasing academic interest in Chinese homosexuality; however, linguistic-oriented research on this topic is scant and multimodal inquiry on it is even rarer. To address the gap, this article conducts a discourse analysis of how tongzhi in mainland China are represented by news media. Specifically, we examine both linguistic and visual representations of tongzhi by utilizing two influential English-language newspapers in mainland China published between 2009 and 2019. Our data consist of 221 news articles totaling 117,407 words; 44 of the articles are accompanied with pictures. Methodologically, we draw on Halliday’s transitivity structure coupled with van Leeuwen’s classification of social actors. Our findings reveal that Chinese tongzhi are mainly represented in a negative fashion, and that there is little positive news representation of this invisible community. In addition, socio-cultural factors contributing to media representations of Chinese tongzhi are considered.

Cultural differences in self and affect through drawings of personal experiences

The present studies examined whether and how individuals from the East and West would express themselves differently in their drawings of personal success and failure. Across two studies, Euro‐Canadian and Chinese participants drew a picture depicting their personal success versus failure in the past (Study 1) or future (Study 2). Compared to the Chinese, Euro‐Canadians were more likely to express high‐arousal positive and negative affect in their drawings of personal success and failure, respectively. Replicating previous research, Euro‐Canadians also depicted a bigger “self” and were more likely to draw a face on their “self” in their drawings. Together, these findings not only demonstrated cultural differences in Euro‐Canadian and Chinese representations of their self and affective responses to personal success and failure but also suggested that pictorial representations of emotionally rich personal events can be an indirect, informative, and engaging tool for assessing cultural influences on one’s self and feelings.

“A sense of life”: the abstruse language of taste in Chinese culture

ABSTRACT This article examines the Chinese language of taste – characterized by abstruseness and obscurity – based on ethnographic investigation, and the reading of historical sources on tea drinking. terms such as qi and yun have long been applied to tea within Chinese culture, and the ideas that underlie them are rooted in basic understandings of food, politics, cosmology, and esthetics. They manifest notions concerning the integration of humans with objects, body with mind, and gustatory appreciation with esthetic perception. I illustrate how the abstruse expression for the taste of tea continues to be in practice in contemporary Chinese society. In addition, I demonstrate how this abstruseness of “taste” is also present in cross-sensorial contexts, namely in Chinese representations of the olfactory, auditory and visual. I argue that such abstruse expression incorporates emotional, esthetic and creative interpretation, and shows an affective rather than taxonomic understanding of the world.

Geographical separation and ethnic origin influence the human gut microbial composition: a meta-analysis from a Malaysian perspective.

Ethnicity is consistently reported as a strong determinant of human gut microbiota. However, the bulk of these studies are from Western countries, where microbiota variations are mainly driven by relatively recent migration events. Malaysia is a multicultural society, but differences in gut microbiota persist across ethnicities. We hypothesized that migrant ethnic groups continue to share fundamental gut traits with the population in the country of origin due to shared cultural practices despite subsequent geographical separation. To test this hypothesis, the 16S rRNA gene amplicons from 16 studies comprising three major ethnic groups in Malaysia were analysed, covering 636 Chinese, 248 Indian and 123 Malay individuals from four countries (China, India, Indonesia and Malaysia). A confounder-adjusted permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) detected a significant association between ethnicity and the gut microbiota (PERMANOVA R 2=0.005, pseudo-F=2.643, P=0.001). A sparse partial least squares – discriminant analysis model trained using the gut microbiota of individuals from China, India and Indonesia (representation of Chinese, Indian and Malay ethnic group, respectively) showed a better-than-random performance in classifying Malaysian of Chinese descent, although the performance for Indian and Malay were modest (true prediction rate, Chinese=0.60, Indian=0.49, Malay=0.44). Separately, differential abundance analysis singled out Ligilactobacillus as being elevated in Indians. We postulate that despite the strong influence of geographical factors on the gut microbiota, cultural similarity due to a shared ethnic origin drives the presence of a shared gut microbiota composition. The interplay of these factors will likely depend on the circumstances of particular groups of migrants.

Modeling multi-prototype Chinese word representation learning for word similarity

The word similarity task is used to calculate the similarity of any pair of words, and is a basic technology of natural language processing (NLP). The existing method is based on word embedding, which fails to capture polysemy and is greatly influenced by the quality of the corpus. In this paper, we propose a multi-prototype Chinese word representation model (MP-CWR) for word similarity based on synonym knowledge base, including knowledge representation module and word similarity module. For the first module, we propose a dual attention to combine semantic information for jointly learning word knowledge representation. The MP-CWR model utilizes the synonyms as prior knowledge to supplement the relationship between words, which is helpful to solve the challenge of semantic expression due to insufficient data. As for the word similarity module, we propose a multi-prototype representation for each word. Then we calculate and fuse the conceptual similarity of two words to obtain the final result. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of our model on three public data sets with other baseline models. In addition, the experiments also prove the stability and scalability of our MP-CWR model under different corpora.

Resolving Away a China Problem: The Issue of Chinese Representation in the Singapore-Republic of China Relationship, 1965–1971

This article explores an oft-neglected episode of the Singapore-Republic of China diplomatic relationship between 1965 and 1971 – centred on the issue of Chinese representation in the United Nations. Relying on declassified archival materials from the Australian, British, and Taiwanese foreign ministries, this article illustrates the existence of repeated self-serving and opportunistic behaviour on Singapore’s part that sought to maintain the island-state’s national interests at the expense of the ROC’s interests on the Chinese representation issue. It challenges prevailing laudatory accounts of Singapore’s foreign policy of pragmatism by providing three observations. First, that the island-state’s presumption that it could separate economic and political matters at will in executing its diplomacy did not always engender optimal outcomes for itself. Second, that Singapore’s assertion of non-alignment in international issues did not prevent it from orientating its diplomacy towards facilitating outcomes to those issues that it perceived would best serve its core interests. Third, that the island-state’s professed desire to maximise its allies and minimise its adversaries did not necessarily mean that Singapore did not seek opportunities to exploit its partners’ vulnerabilities to serve its national interests.

Purple Ruins

Symbolic reconstruction of “purple ruins”—the abandoned ruins of traditional Tibetan buildings, monasteries, temples, and old manors of the aristocracy—has become one of the main topics of Tibetan Sinophone dissident writer Tsering Woeser. Her effort to preserve them not so much as testimonies of the glorious Tibetan past, but rather of the dark chapters of modern Tibetan history and as an indictment of Chinese rule in Tibet, has intensified during the last decade with the surge of commercialization and increase in mass tourism—trends that are rapidly changing the face of Tibet and the urban landscape of Lhasa. In her book Purple Ruins (Jianghong se de feixu), published in January 2017 in Taiwan, Tsering Woeser has combined a subjective perspective (poems, personal memories, interviews, etc.) with “folk tales” (minjian gushi) including legends, oral histories, and gossip, and with historical material. While reconstructing the image of both the “old” and the “new” Tibet in her book, she contests the official Chinese representations and narratives of Tibet, Tibetan history, and Tibetan culture, appropriating postcolonial theories to reinterpret Chinese imperial/colonial endeavors in Tibet from past to present. The aim of this paper is to examine how Tsering Woeser engages with the complexities of official Chinese representations of Tibet in an attempt to (re) construct the missing parts of modern Tibetan history that have been concealed or even intentionally erased by the Chinese official discourse and to (re)construct modern Tibetan identity against the background of the dominant Chinese culture and ideology.

Ecological Civilisation Discourse in Xinhua’s African Newswires: Towards a Greener Agency?

ABSTRACT How does Chinese central media represent Africa through its environmental news? This article argues that the way in which Chinese central media organisations have reported environmental issues across the African continent has altered from a reactive “charm defensive” towards the promotion of a developmental model: “Ecological Civilisation”. Based on a critical discourse analysis of headline African news published by the Xinhua News Agency, this research illustrates the emergence of this new, unexpected turn in Chinese representations of Africa, as well as highlighting the coherencies and tensions within this discourse. Questioning why this change in the emphasis of content has occurred, it investigates explanations at the macro-, mezzo-, and micro-levels of analysis, concluding that the evidence indicates that Xinhua’s content remains closely linked to the soft power goals of the Chinese Communist Party. However, the presence of risk discourses in some reports indicates that the hegemonic discourse is altering. This could potentially be the result of Xinhua’s own commercial objectives in Africa, or of the subjectivities of individual Xinhua journalists seeping into reports. This research provides significant contributions to an understanding of Chinese soft power in Africa, the ecology of Chinese media in Africa, and the development of environmental discourses.

Early Prediction of Organ Failures in Patients with Acute Pancreatitis Using Text Mining

It is of great significance to establish an assessment model for organ failures in the early stage of admission in acute pancreatitis (AP). And the clinical notes are underutilized. To predict organ failures for AP patients using early clinical notes in hospital, early text features obtained from the pretrained Chinese Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers model and attention-based LSTM were combined with early structured features (laboratory tests, vital signs, and demographic characteristics) to predict organ failures (respiratory, cardiovascular, and renal) in 12,748 AP inpatients in West China Hospital, Sichuan University, from 2008 to 2018. The text plus structured features fusion model was used to predict organ failures, compared to the baseline model with only structured features. The performance of the model with text features added is superior to the model that only includes structured features.

China's Growing Influence over the Rules of the Digital Road

executive summary: This essay examines the growing role of China in international standards-setting organizations as a window into its efforts to influence global digital governance institutions and highlights areas where the U.S. can preserve its interests in cyberspace. main argument In recent years China's international influence in shaping the digital rules of the road has increased. Evidence of the country's growing role in digital standards-setting organizations comes from increased numbers of submissions to key international technical standards bodies as well as enhanced Chinese representation in leadership positions in these bodies. This trend is evident in emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, which provide opportunities for China to lead in the formulation of new systems of standards. At the same time, it is important to avoid overstating the country's role in global digital governance. China's standards-setting influence is qualified by the caliber of its submissions and by comparison with other leading countries. policy implications • The U.S. must recognize that China is becoming a more important player in setting international standards for digital technologies, and that this trend comes with both risks and benefits. • To bolster U.S. industry participation in international standards-setting, the U.S. can provide more support for hosting international standards gatherings and for U.S. subject matter experts to participate in standards-setting forums. • International standards-setting organizations can also take steps to check undue Chinese government influence, such as by strengthening anonymous voting procedures.

Visualizing Traditional Chinese Medicine and Information Representation and Retrieval: Opportunities and Challenges in a New Era of Big Data

Visualizing Traditional Chinese Medicine and Information Representation and Retrieval: Opportunities and Challenges in a New Era of Big Data

Independent syntactic representation identified in left front-temporal cortex during Chinese sentence comprehension

It has been well established that syntactic representation is independent of semantic representation in Indo-European languages, but it is unclear whether this is the case in Chinese. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study adopted a syntactic priming paradigm to investigate the neural basis of Chinese syntactic representation. A passive sentence was preceded by either a passive or an active sentence without repeating a verb or a pattern of agent-patient animacy, thus constructing primed and unprimed sentence pairs based on sentence structure. The fMRI data were collected from 22 native Chinese speakers while they were reading the sentences. Priming-related activation suppression was found in the left temporal pole, left inferior frontal gyrus and left precentral gyrus. The results are the strongest neuroimaging evidence to date that syntactic representation is independent of semantic representation in Chinese, in line with Indo-European languages.

Chinese representation of the Oriental subjects: the Other, Displacement, Self-Orientalism

Chinese representation of the Oriental subjects: the Other, Displacement, Self-Orientalism

Western and Chinese media representation of Africa in COVID-19 news coverage

ABSTRACT In news production and dissemination, media represent communities, countries, and continents by constructing concepts, images, and identities as viewed by selected information sources. It is often assumed that foreign countries are labelled ‘Others’ by global media and misrepresented. This study aims to explore how differently Western and Chinese media source and frame events in Africa. Comparative content analysis of news coverage of COVID-19 prevention in Africa revealed that Western media used African official, African non-official, and Western non-official channels as information sources whereas Chinese media mainly used African and Chinese official sources. The result demonstrated that Western media covered events in Africa in Conflict, Negativity, Human interest, Impact, Eminence, and Novelty frames in positive, neutral, and negative tones whereas Chinese media covered mainly in Impact, Eminence and Novelty frames mostly in positive tone. Overall, the results suggest that Western media coverage of the events is not predominantly negative; and Chinese media coverage is uncommonly affirmative. The findings also suggest that sourcing shapes frames, tones, and representation of ‘Others’ by news media.