Towards a Re-Definition of Government Interpreters' Agency Against a Backdrop of Sociopolitical and Cultural Evolution

Author(s):  
Chonglong Gu

The sociopolitical and cultural evolution as a result of the Reform and Opening up in 1978, facilitated not least by the inexorable juggernaut of globalization and technological advancement, has revolutionized the way China engages domestically and interacts with the outside world. The need for more proactive diplomacy and open engagement witnessed the institutionalization of the interpreter-mediated premier's press conferences. Such a discursive event provides a vital platform for China to articulate its discourse and rebrand its image in tandem with the profound changes signaled by the Dengist reform. This chapter investigates critically how political press conference interpreting and interpreters' agency in China are impacted in relation to such dramatic transformations. It is revealed that, while interpreters are confronted with seemingly conflicting expectations, in actual practice they are often able to negotiate a way as highly competent interpreting professionals with the additional missions of advancing China's global engagement and safeguarding China's national interests.

2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Welter

The practice of Zen Buddhism in Japan, Chan Buddhism in China, and its counterparts in Korea and Vietnam bear little resemblance to the way this form of Buddhism is often characterized ideologically. The present study explores some of the premises of "moderate" Chan, which forms the basis for Chan/Zen as an institutional religion operating within the larger Buddhist world of East Asian societies. In particular, the study addresses the notion of zong in the Zongjing lu (Record of the Source Mirror), compiled by Yongming Yanshou (904-975), one of the leading representatives of "scholastic" (wenzi) Chan and a key figure in articulating the "moderate" Chan position. The study suggests how the definition of contemporary Zen orthodoxy has been dominated by representatives from the "rhetorical" Zen tradition, creating a disjuncture between our intellectual understanding of Zen and the principles guiding its actual practice.


Author(s):  
F. Haiting

Since the establishment of political culture analysis framework by Almond, it has become an important tool of political science and political analysis. The basic consensus on political culture is that a good political culture can promote political development. Many countries in transformation expect to shape their own civic culture as soon as possible to match their democratization process, but things often go against their wills. They are faced with a dilemma between traditional culture and civic culture at the very beginning of transformation. Besides, the development of political culture does not always present the simple path of traditional to modern type. Therefore, it is very necessary to reflect the principles of political culture development in combination with history and reality. From the view of Chinese scholars, political culture is neither only belief, feeling and attitude of individual, nor the ideology of a nation, but has multi-level content including ideology, value, psychology and action. This view combines the method of political culture analysis, the definition of Soviet culturology and the understanding of Chinese traditional culture. In transforming countries, the development of political culture is mainly manifested in the change and interaction of political subcultures. And at the same time, political subculture interacts with the change of social structure and political system. There are six main types of political subculture in transforming countries: political subculture of countryside and peasants, workers and migrant workers, private entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and officials, middle class and network. Through the analysis of these main types of political subculture in China after the reform and opening up, it can be concluded that political culture may present a complex path of development, and there may also be a variety of different development patterns and ideal forms.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-71
Author(s):  
Wei Miao

This article aims to unravel the gender paradigm in selected televisual, filmic and literary narratives of Chinese intellectual migration to the United States in China’s reform and opening-up era. Three texts have been selected for the way in which they render the experience of migration as a gendered experience, in terms both of the encounter with the alien place and the loss of attachment to home. This article argues that the texts under discussion reveal an emerging gender politics that in some respects departs from that detected by previous commentators across the broader genre of Chinese migration texts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-59
Author(s):  
Xu Jianqin

This article analyses the evolution of the mother–daughter relationship in China, and describes the mothering characteristics of four generations of women, which in sequence includes “foot-binding mothers”, “mothers after liberation”, “mothers after reform and opening up”, and “mothers who were only daughters”. Referring to Klein’s ideas about the mother–child relationship, especially those in her paper “Some reflections on ‘The Oresteia’ ”, the author tries to understand mothers and their impact on their daughters in these various periods of Chinese history, so as to explore the mutual influence of the mother–daughter relationship in particular, and the Chinese cultural and developmental context in general.


Author(s):  
Simon Deakin ◽  
David Gindis ◽  
Geoffrey M. Hodgson

Abstract In his recent book on Property, Power and Politics, Jean-Philippe Robé makes a strong case for the need to understand the legal foundations of modern capitalism. He also insists that it is important to distinguish between firms and corporations. We agree. But Robé criticizes our definition of firms in terms of legally recognized capacities on the grounds that it does not take the distinction seriously enough. He argues that firms are not legally recognized as such, as the law only knows corporations. This argument, which is capable of different interpretations, leads to the bizarre result that corporations are not firms. Using etymological and other evidence, we show that firms are treated as legally constituted business entities in both common parlance and legal discourse. The way the law defines firms and corporations, while the product of a discourse which is in many ways distinct from everyday language, has such profound implications for the way firms operate in practice that no institutional theory of the firm worthy of the name can afford to ignore it.


Author(s):  
Hongyun Han ◽  
Hui Lin

Based on the value of agricultural farm products produced by different subsectors in China, the foregoing analysis reveals the dynamic character of agricultural diversification by which, this study seeks to examine the evolutionary process of Chinese agriculture through a quantitative study of agricultural diversification at both national and provincial levels. In the initial stages of reform and opening up, the degree of agricultural diversification in the southwest was relatively high; then the center of agricultural diversification gradually moved to the southeast of China; finally, the degree of agricultural diversification in the economically developed eastern provinces was obviously higher than those in other regions in 2019. It was seen that some provinces in the eastern and central south regions moved toward increasing diversification in one direction, and other provinces changed direction, first moving toward diversification and later toward concentration or vice versa. These oscillations implied that there was a cyclic tendency of agricultural diversification along with an increase in per capita GDP. Generally speaking, the patterns of diversification differed across regions due to diversified agricultural subsectors resulting from different natural and socio-economic circumstances. In particular, in less developed regions with lower agricultural diversification levels, farming agriculture persistently dominated the leading position with relatively more resistance to modernizing trends in other aspects of agriculture. It is urgent for the Chinese government to figure out ways off reconciling agricultural productivity with environmental quality through the ecological intensification of agriculture.


Rural China ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang Liu (刘昶) ◽  
Shiqing Bao (包诗卿) ◽  
Danqing Pei (裴丹青)

The xianggu (shiitake) mushroom industry in Xixia county, Henan, emerged and initially experienced rapid growth during the reform and opening up period. It has benefited from both the rapid expansion of the food consumption market in China and the guidance and support of the local government. After thirty years of sustained expansion, the growth of the mushroom market began to slow down and competition within the industry became fierce. Facing rich and powerful mushroom dealers, individual mushroom farmers have had to bear the brunt of market fluctuations. To break the predicament of farmers’ suffering from low prices (because of the bumper harvest paradox) and to help farmers protect their interests and gain a fair share of the industry’s profits, and thus to achieve sustained and healthy development of the mushroom industry, important institutional innovations are needed. 西峡县香菇产业在改革开放时期经历了从零开始的飞速增长,这既得益于食品消费市场的迅速扩张,也得益于地方政府的引导和扶持。在经历了三十年的持续扩张后,香菇市场增速开始放缓,业内竞争压力凸显。面对财大气粗的菇行,势孤力单的个体菇农首当其冲,受到市场的挤压。要破解菇贱伤农的困局,帮助菇农保护自己的利益和分享产业的利润,并实现香菇产业的健康持续发展,就需要在产业组织和制度上进行创新。 (This article is in English.)


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Elliott Karstadt

Many scholars argue that Hobbes’s political ideas do not significantly develop between The Elements of Law (1640) and Leviathan (1651). This article seeks to challenge that assumption by studying the way in which Hobbes’s deployment of the vocabulary of ‘interest’ develops over the course of the 1640s. The article begins by showing that the vocabulary is newly important in Leviathan, before attempting a ‘Hobbesian definition’ of what is meant by the term. We end by looking at the impact that the vocabulary has on two key areas of Hobbes’s philosophy: his theory of counsel and his arguments in favour of monarchy as the best form of government. In both areas, Hobbes’s conception of ‘interests’ is shown to be of crucial importance in lending a new understanding of the political issue under consideration.


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