scholarly journals Adaptation and Sinicization: Contemporary Religious Policy of the CPC Leadership

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 88-105
Author(s):  
A. V. Lomanov
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Socialist Society ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Balanced Approach ◽  
The One ◽  
Main Components

The article examines the key stages in the evolution of the ideological and political approaches of the CPC leadership to religious activity since the beginning of the 21st century. The main points of the study were the Chinese interpretations of the problems of “adaptation to a socialist society” and “Sinicization.” The author tries to identify the relationship between continuity and innovation in the religious policy of the Chinese authorities, taking into account the historical context of the ongoing changes and responses from religious circles. Based on the methods of discourse analysis, an attempt has been made to demonstrate multi-faceted complexity of the problem of “Sinicization” and to outline the contours of all-embracing balanced approach to the study of this topic. The fi rst part of the article examines the foundations of the policy of directing religion towards “conformity to socialist society” formulated under Jiang Zemin. The second part analyzes the main components of Xi Jinping’s concept of “Sinicization” of religions. Chinese believers are encouraged to interpret religious dogmas in accordance with the requirements of social progress and in the spirit of conformity with the best traditions of Chinese culture. The article examines the main directions of “Sinicization” adopted by offi cially recognized religions, covering the spheres of doctrine and liturgical practice, practical work with believers, and training programs for clergy. It is emphasized that the one-sided reduction of “Sinicization” to the state-sponsored policy of “repression” prevents researchers from looking deeper into historical and cultural aspects of the problem. It is concluded that “Sinicization” of religions will help to prevent socio-political marginalization of religions in the course of deep transformations of modern China.

The Bible and Christian Poetry in Modern China

2021 ◽  
pp. 346-362
Author(s):  
Guangqi Rong ◽  
Zhaohui Bao
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One

With the arrival of Christianity and the translation of the Bible in China, Chinese culture and society have experienced tremendous transformation. On the one hand, the Chinese Bible, Chinese Union Version (CUV) in particular, influences modern Chinese poets in that they learn from the Bible words, images, imagination, stories, and narrative modes different from traditional literature; on the other hand, it affects them spiritually, with concepts of life, world, and values from the Bible. This essay looks at the above relationship between the Chinese Bible and Christian poetry in People’s Republic of China. Many Chinese poets in the twentieth century have indispensable dialogues with Christianity in their writing, particularly the Bible, which endows Chinese modern literature with unique life experience and world imagination. From modern to contemporary times, Chinese Christian literature has gradually improved, from the initial superficial influence of the Bible to the internalized life experience, thus leading to a profound artistry that gains respect in the public sphere.

Chinese cinematography in Russia in the context of “One Belt, One Road” initiative

Neophilology ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 90-95
Author(s):  
Liwei Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Culture History ◽  
One Belt One Road ◽  
Rational Combination ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Main Components

In this study we consider Chinese cinema in Russia distribution condition. It is proved that a serious stimulus for the development of cinematography in the People's Republic of China was a rational combination of commercial tools in the production of films with the solution of serious image problems for China, that modern Chinese cinematography has acquired another extremely important load – it has become an important media instrument of “soft power” for the dissemination abroad of information about Chinese culture, history and politics, as well as for the formation of a positive image of China, creating a trust relationship to Chinese civilization and nation. For Russia, as a country located along the “One Belt, One Road”, cooperation with China is especially valuable. The study substantiates that the interaction of the two countries in the field of cinematography is one of the main components of maintaining good – neighborly relations. It has been established during the conducted study that Chinese films actively participate in the international film festival in Russia, winning various awards, since February 1935, when at the First Moscow International Film Festival (or the Soviet Film Festival in Moscow) the social drama “Song of the Fishermen” directed by Cai Chusheng received an incentive prize of the festival jury. It was the first international prize in the history of Chinese cinema.

Monotheism in Isaiah

2020 ◽  
pp. 218-248
Author(s):  
Matthias Albani
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Crisis Situation ◽  
Catalytic Function ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One ◽  
Religious Crisis

The monotheistic confession in Isa 40–48 is best understood against the historical context of Israel’s political and religious crisis situation in the final years of Neo-Babylonian rule. According to Deutero-Isaiah, Yhwh is unique and incomparable because he alone truly predicts the “future” (Isa 41:22–29)—currently the triumph of Cyrus—which will lead to Israel’s liberation from Babylonian captivity (Isa 45). This prediction is directed against the Babylonian deities’ claim to possess the power of destiny and the future, predominantly against Bel-Marduk, to whom both Nabonidus and his opponents appeal in their various political assertions regarding Cyrus. According to the Babylonian conviction, Bel-Marduk has the universal divine power, who, on the one hand, directs the course of the stars and thus determines the astral omens and, on the other hand, directs the course of history (cf. Cyrus Cylinder). As an antithesis, however, Deutero-Isaiah proclaims Yhwh as the sovereign divine creator and leader of the courses of the stars in heaven as well as the course of history on earth (Isa 45:12–13). Moreover, the conflict between Nabonidus and the Marduk priesthood over the question of the highest divine power (Sîn versus Marduk) may have had a kind of “catalytic” function in Deutero-Isaiah’s formulation of the monotheistic confession.

scholarly journals Blending Myth and Modernity in the Global Chinese Cinema: The Hong Kong Action Hero in Zhang Yimou-Directed Hero

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Dhruba Karki
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Martial Arts ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Body Art ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Chinese Cinema ◽  
Chinese Empire ◽  
Action Hero

 Zhang Yimou’s Hero presents an action hero, yet in a slightly different cinematic mode than that of Stephen Chow-directed Shaolin Soccer to blend myth and modernity. In Yimou’s martial arts cinema, Jet Li-starred Nameless hero uses martial arts to combat the king’s adversaries, including Donnie Yen-starred Long Sky, Maggie Cheung-starred Flying Snow and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai-starred Broken Sword in the service to the Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 207 BC). The warrior hero’s indigenous body art helps the Qin Dynasty transform the smaller warring kingdoms into a powerful Chinese Empire, a strong foundation of modern China with economic and military superpower. Like their western counterparts, including T1000 and Neo, the Hong Kong action heroes, such as the warrior hero and the Qin King have been refashioned in the Hollywood controlled twentieth-century popular culture. Different from their Hollywood counterparts in actions, the Hong Kong action heroes in Hero primarily use their trained bodies and martial skills to promote the Chinese civilization, an adaptation of the Hollywood tradition of technologized machine body. Reworking of myth and archetype in Nameless’s service to the Qin Dynasty and the emperor’s mission to incept the Chinese Empire, the Hong Kong action heroes appear on screen, a blend of tradition and modernity. The film industry’s projection of the Chinese history with the legendary action heroes, including Nameless soldier and the Qin King globalizes the indigenous Chinese culture by using modern electronic digital technology, a resonance of the western technological advancement.

Russian experience in assessing informal employment indicators and their compliance with SDG indicators

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Elena Zarova ◽  
Dr Konstantin Laykam ◽  
Elvira Dubravskaya ◽  
Sergey Musikhin
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Informal Employment ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The One ◽  
Main Components

This article describes on the one hand statistical methods for assessing informal employment based on the requirements as set by international standards. On the other hand it describes the potential of integrating various data sources to generate informal employment statistics. With as example official statistics of the Russian Federation, the authors show the features of applying the requirements of international standards. Methods are proposed for assessing informal employment in the formal sector of the economy, i.e. in enterprises that submit employment reports to the National Statistical Office. This phenomenon appears in the employment situation of many countries. However, there is no uniformity between countries in how they evaluate the application of the international standards in such assessment exercises. A theoretical model of informal employment is developed and validated based on statistical data published by international organizations. The validation focuses on assessing the causal relationships between informal employment indicators and the main components of the sustainable development goals. This analysis contributes to coordinated decisions on regulating informal employment and ensuring the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Area Studies and Desire: Towards a Genealogy

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Hye-Joon Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Western Area ◽  
The World ◽  
38Th Parallel ◽  
The One

Area studies, as a newly fashionable field of academic research, needs to recognize its less likely precedents if it is going to secure for itself a fresh start. The question of “desire” is relevant here because it indicates the less value-free aspects in its genealogy. As shown in Emma Bovary's embellished representation of Paris at her provincial home, an understanding of an area often reflects the particular needs and desires of the one who understands that area. Such restricted and restricting views of an area repeats itself outside the world of literary fictions, as is shown by the example of Guizot's picture of Europe in which his own country is given a privileged place as the very center of Western civilization itself. An instructive case showing the thin line between the projected desire of one who strives to know a geographical area and the scientific purity of the labor itself is further offered by Napoleon Bonaparte's heavy reliance on Orientalist scholarship in his invasion of Egypt. Moving further east from Egypt to China, we witness the denigrating remarks on China made by the great German thinkers of the past century, Hegel and Weber. Although their characterization of Chinese culture could find echoes in unbiased empirical research, they reveal all the same the trace of Europeans' desire to affirm their superiority over the supposedly inferior and false civilization of the East. Similarly, the Americans who divided the Korean peninsular at the 38th Parallel, with unquestioning confidence in their knowledge of the area and in the justice of their action, rightfully deserve their place in the tradition of Western area studies of serving the needs to dominate, control and exploit an objectified overseas territory. He assumed that words had kept their meaning, that desires still pointed in a single direction, and that ideas retained their logic; and he ignored the fact that the world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys. From these elements, however, genealogy retrieves an indispensable restraint: it must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history—in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in different roles. — Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (Foucault 139–40).

The Sino–US trade war in political cartoons: A synthesis of semiotic, cognitive, and cultural perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-497
Author(s):  
Cun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Political Cartoons ◽  
Target Domain ◽  
Cultural Symbols ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
Trade War ◽  
The One ◽  
Charged Source ◽  
Metaphor And Metonymy

Abstract Economic globalization has resulted in more frequent trading frictions, some of which have escalated into trade wars such as the one between China and the US. Drawing on the same corpus built by Zhang and Forceville (Zhang, Cun & Charles Forceville. 2020. Metaphor and metonymy in Chinese and American political cartoons (2018–2019) about the Sino–US trade conflict. Pragmatics and Cognition 27(2). 476–501), and complementing insights of that paper, this paper investigates how the Sino–US trade war is metaphorically and metonymically constructed in 129 Chinese and American political cartoons respectively from a synthesized perspective. Based on comparative analyses, cross-cultural similarity and uniqueness in the semiotic, cognitive, and cultural aspects can be concluded as follows: (a) at the expression level, the shared dominant mode configuration pattern of metaphor and metonymy requires extra-textual knowledge to identify the target domain/concept while the source domain/vehicle concept is pinpointed through pictorial resources; (b) at the cognition level, “us” and “them” are distinctively evaluated by using the metonymy BODILY REACTION FOR EMOTION, cultural symbols, and the Great Chain metaphor. The Chinese cartoons converge on disapproving of “them” while the American cartoons converge on disapproving of “us” and diverge on conceptualizing “them”; (c) a variety of cross-cultural default scenarios are employed in the Chinese cartoons whereas the American cartoons utilize non-default scenarios influenced by only American cultures. Both aim for persuasiveness by employing emotionally charged source domains/vehicle concepts, but to different audiences.

The ‘Zen’ in the western monochrome

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-78
Author(s):  
Simon Morley
Keyword(s):  
Zen Buddhism ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The One ◽  
Contemporary Painting ◽  
The Impact

I look at the impact of Zen Buddhism on western painters during the 1950s and 1960s, focusing on the monochrome in particular, in order to create a historical context for the consideration of transcultural dialogue in relation to contemporary painting. I argue that a consideration of Zen can offer a ‘middle way’ between conceptions of the monochrome (and art in general) often hobbled by models of interpretation that function within a binary opposition between ‘literalist/sensory’ on the one hand, and ‘intellectual/non-sensory’ readings on the other.

scholarly journals CULTURAL OBSTACLE IN THE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN NATIVE SPEAKER AND NON NATIVE SPEAKER IN ENGLISH.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-215
Author(s):  
Sogimin Sogimin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
English Learner ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Cultural Aspects ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Descriptive Method ◽  
British People

This research describes the cultural obstacles in the communication oral and written between native speaker and non native speaker in English.  The obstacles of cultural is one of main obstacles in the  two peoples of communication in the different culural. The research,especially describes the one case of communication between Indonesian people and British people in the social media WhatsApp. The main data of the research is the communication transcript in the social media WhatsApp. Besides of that, the data comes from the interview with the responden.             The research is the case study of the Indonesian people and British people. The data analysis uses qualitative and descriptive method. The result of research shows the miscommunication from different cultural in English. This miscommunication not only caused of the skill of language(language competence) but also difference of cultural between of two peoples. Suggested  to the English learner that  not only learns in the languages aspects but also learns in the cultural aspects, because both of them coud not separate and interplay each others.

scholarly journals Women and Ijtihad: Towards a New Islamic Discourse

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-33
Author(s):  
Heba Raouf Ezzat
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women's Issues ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Contested Terrain ◽  
The One

A phenomenon of extreme polarization between the Islamist and the secular camps characterizes the intellectual scene regarding social, economic, and political issues in the Arab-Islamic world. This is especially true with respect to women’s issues, which are a very hotly contested terrain. Understanding this reality clearly requires a historic overview to comprehend how this polarization occurred and map the debate between supporters of “modernity and contemporality” (al-hadatha wa-l-mu‘asara) on the one hand, and supporters of “tradition and authenticity” (al-turath wal-asala) on the other. Though this is not at the heart of our research, framing it in its historical context enables us to better understand the roots and origins of the problem, in order to map the debates and foresee future courses more clearly.

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