ChinaCALL in retrospect and prospect: opening a welcome window to the World’s CALLs

This paper, while sending a welcome message to the world’s CALL communities, presents a historical and developmental review of Chinese practices of educational technologies and ChinaCALL in particular. The review covers topics including the birth and concept of ChinaCALL, ChinaCALL’s pre-CALL heritage, pre-Web ChinaCALL, ChinaCALL in the new millennium, IBOE as a case study of ChinaCALL, and ChinaCALL in prospect. Also discussed are Chinese perceptions of educational technologies occurring at the macro, the meso and ground levels. On the ground level, technology consumers are characterized in terms of pen-pencil conservatives, AV natives, AV-CALL immigrants, CALL natives and CALL standby observers.

Probing Chinese Perception on the Importance of Social Capital in Entrepreneurial Success

The link between entrepreneurship and economic growth has been established in the literature. The potency of an entrepreneurship ecosystem, driven by the role of financial capital, is now a determinant of an economy’s success. The People’s Republic of China has been successful on this expanse. However, in this conceptual study, we explicate the role social capital play in entrepreneurial venture growth. By conducting a survey on Chinese entrepreneurs, cross tabulating their categorical responses and conducting contingency table analysis, we get to illustrate how they see social capital as a facilitating factor of their entrepreneurial success. Results revealed that Chinese entrepreneurs believe that together with financial capital and government assistance, having more social capital is critical in developing start-ups, attracting more investments and acquiring a bigger market share. However, a premium is placed on technical skills and enterprise planning than personal charisma. Results were validated and augmented earlier results on Chinese perceptions on what makes entrepreneurial ventures successful.

Preprint of "Chinese perceive upward social mobility: How future mobility is influenced, but not limited by past mobility"

Perceptions of social mobility vary across countries. However, past studies have mostly focused on populations in Western developed countries. Little is known about perceptions of social mobility in non-Western developing countries. The current paper focuses on Chinese perceptions of social mobility using a large-scale nationally representative sample. We found that, overall, Chinese believed in upward social mobility. Moreover, different patterns of perceptions of social mobility were identified, which suggest that respondents experienced either upward or downward social mobility in the past, but all of them thought that they can move up in the future. Perceptions of social mobility were also linked to important socio-demographic and economic factors. We discuss these findings in relation to the Chinese economic context.

China

Institutional development supporting China’s intensive development was Janus-faced: both Beijing and local governments engaged in extremely early development of institutions to support industrial cooperation and diffusion, including an elaborate national training system and a gigantic automotive research and testing center, but put them to work serving a socialist planned economy and control by the Communist Party. Creation of institutions for industrial diffusion reflected acute Chinese perceptions of external threat and a relative dearth of natural resources. China has emerged as the world’s largest producer and consumer of automobiles, but most are assembled by foreign-dominated joint ventures. However, around 40% are designed and assembled by Chinese firms, both private and state-owned, and even many of the Sino-foreign joint ventures have developed the capacity to design, engineer, and export their own cars. China is struggling to loosen the fetters of state -ownership and to reform institutions and practices to better suit a market economy.

Sacred Images and Space of the Jesuit Churches in Beijing

This essay revisits the Jesuit churches in Beijing in order to address both the spatial engagement of Christian sacred images and the way Christian and biblical themes were narrated and perceived in the church space. It first discusses the availability of Christian iconographies and their hierarchical usage in gendered church spaces. It then demonstrates the ways the altarpieces and the trompe l’oeil murals were arranged into defined iconographic programs in the reevaluation of their architectural contexts. Through a close reading of contemporary travel writings, this essay concludes by presenting a larger picture of various types of Christian sacred images in Chinese perceptions of Christianity.

Chinese Perceptions of American Democracy: Late Qing Observers and Their Experiences with the Chinese Exclusion Act

Analysis of the writings of Kuang Qizhao and other Chinese self-strengtheners suggests that their emphasis on promoting education before democracy and continuing to endorse classical Confucianism were not signs of a retrograde kind of conservatism, but an entirely rational decision based on the actual experiences of late Qing observers of 19th Century American democracy. Observing the U.S. Congress’s passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese officials observed the real dangers of demagogue led populism without an educated, moral citizenry and the apparent importance of Christianity to creating the moral foundation for an effective modern society. For Kuang, Confucianism was equivalent to Christianity to establish that moral basis, and not a conservative desire to preserve the old social order. Kuang would pass on his thoughts to some of China’s most important reformers and officials on his return home, suggesting he and the officials he associated with had a more realistic and sophisticated understanding of American society and democracy than is currently assumed.