Some cadres receive promotions, whereas others do not. This study explores the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) personnel control over the central state-owned enterprise (SOE) leaders from the Hu era to the Xi era. An analysis of the résumés and careers of SOE leaders reveals that the CCP has established a dual-track system to manage enterprises with different functions. This system employs two types of incentives: promotion incentives for leaders of eldest-son enterprises associated with national security, and salary incentives for leaders of other enterprises. Through the dual-track system, the CCP aims to influence the career trajectories of SOE leaders and address conflicts of interest in the principal-agent relationship. This study also investigates the individual characteristics of SOE leaders, including their political qualifications, professional qualifications and ages. The results indicate a tendency towards specialization and institutionalization in central-enterprise leaders, even during the Xi era.

In the middle of the nineteenth century in cities and towns across North India a popular craze for the sitar drove untold numbers of amateur enthusiasts to seek instruction in Hindustani raga music from the only available source: the Muslim hereditary professional performers known as ustads. A long record of statements excoriating the ustads has generally been dismissed by contemporary scholars as colonially inspired propaganda that served a Hindu identitarian vision of music reform and institution-building for the incipient nation. This article accesses a collection of Urdu-language music instruction texts produced between 1863 and 1915 to offer a contrasting interpretation: the depiction of ustads as ignorant, ill-mannered, and addicted is propounded first and foremost by Muslim authors unconcerned with nationalism, but invested in opening the Hindustani music tradition to the uninitiated amateur. Close readings of narrative anecdotes from these texts alongside the 1910 and 1914 Marathi-language works of famed scholar and music reformer Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860–1936) reveal a continuity of concerns across language, region, and religious community. Bhatkhande and the earlier Urdu authors share not only their frustration with the half-trained and ill-behaved ‘fly-by-night’ ustad, but also their reverence for the masterful ustads whose reputations were threatened by the unchecked presence of charlatans in their midst.

This article examines the little-known experiences of children born of Chinese mothers and Japanese fathers who had consensual relationships during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War in China, with a specific focus on those who migrated to Japan after 1972. To understand how and why they—in their own words—“returned” to their “homeland,” this article analyzes historical circumstances as well as Sino-Japanese children’s experiences, identities, and belonging in comparison with other groups of “children born of war” in different historical and geopolitical settings. Their long-neglected stories point to a missing part in narratives of the 8-year war.

This note critically examines the tendency of some international human rights treaty bodies to uncritically conflate sex tourism with human trafficking. Through analysis of concluding observations from the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the note reveals a troubling pattern of equating these phenomena without adequate conceptual differentiation. While acknowledging that sex tourism can involve trafficking when the constitutive elements of the Palermo Protocol’s definition are satisfied – namely the act, means, and purpose requirements – this note argues that the wholesale characterization of sex tourism as trafficking is both conceptually inaccurate and potentially harmful. This conflation risks eliding the agency of individuals who make difficult but deliberate choices to participate in sex tourism, particularly women from the Global South.

On what basis may the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) exercise its jurisdiction over States that have withdrawn from the Rome Statute? Is it enough that the alleged crimes occurred before the State withdrew from the treaty? When acting proprio motu, does the Prosecutor have to seek authorization from a Pre-Trial Chamber before they are allowed to proceed with the criminal investigation post-State withdrawal? This issue has received only cursory attention from the ICC and the academic community but the lack of clarity around the Court’s post-withdrawal jurisdiction is a serious concern, and not only for States that have withdrawn their membership (such as the Philippines). It is important because, as things stand, and given what the Court has said so far, States parties cannot be sure of the parameters of the Court’s temporal jurisdiction, nor of the legal effects of a State’s withdrawal.