Between 2012 and 2014 we posted a number of articles on contemporary affairs without giving them volume and issue numbers or dates. Often the date can be determined from internal evidence in the article, but sometimes not. We have decided retrospectively to list all of them as Volume 10, Issue 54 with a date of 2012 with the understanding that all were published between 2012 and 2014.

スティーブン・ローチ（Stephen Roach）は、日本で起きた3月11日の地震が世界経済に与える影響について、のんびり構えていてはいけないと警告する。彼が批判する視点、つまり世界経済における近年の日本経済の地位低下――世界における輸出とGDPで日本がシェアを落としていることや中国の台頭、そして成長が見込まれる重要な工業製品のなかで日本でしか生産できないものが少ない――にもとづく「狭い視点」の概要を説明したのち、ローチはこの観点から導かれる次のような「表面的な」結論を受け入れるべきでないとする。彼が批判する結論とは、日本は「すでに重要な役割を果たさなくなっており」、東日本大震災とその余波が世界経済にもたらす混乱は「一時的なもの」で「小さい」というものだ。

This article inquires into the ideological circumstances behind Wang Mang's 王莽 seizure of power, to examine how he built legitimacy at every stage of his career, by establishing a political and symbolic continuum between the role of the minister and that of the sovereign, rather than suddenly wresting power from the Liu clan. His classical learning in general and his references to Zhougong 周公 in particular were fundamental to the success of the process, which took place in three important stages: first, the offering of a white pheasant to the court; second, the bestowal of “Nine Conferrals” 九錫, and third, the composition of “Wang Mang's declaration” 莽誥. However, although the Classics constituted common references for Wang Mang and the scholars supporting him, the Classics were also used by some opponents objecting to the concentration of power in the hands of Wang Mang.

This study traces the origins and development of the concept of Li 理 (Pattern) in early Chinese Cosmology, locating its foundation in the root metaphor derived from the natural lines or veins along which a block of jade can be split by a skilled artisan. From this relatively concrete image, li comes to eventually represent in Daoist cosmology the more abstract quality of the natural patterns or structures within the universe along which all phenomena move and interact with one another without the interference of human beings. After examining how early Confucian works emphasize the more abstract and derivative qualities of order and structure, we see that the likely Yangist authors in the Lüshi chunqiu return to the original metaphor of veins in jade but, instead, apply this to the veins through which the qi circulates through the human body.

We then see how this metaphor is expanded beyond the human body in the classical Daoist texts to come to represent the natural guidelines both within all phenomena and those that guide their movements within the cosmos. Within phenomena these include such varied things as the structures for the generation and expression of emotions within human beings as well as the natural lines along which the butcher's chopper passes in order to cleave oxen. In Daoist inner cultivation literature it is these patterns with which sages accord so that their spontaneous actions are completely in harmony with the greater forces of the cosmos. Only after long practice of the apophatic contemplative methods that include concentrating on one breathing and emptying out the normal contents of consciousness can the sage be able to accomplish this goal of “taking no action yet leaving nothing undone.” Thus the concept of li as these natural guidelines comes to serve as an explanation for why this classical Daoist dictum is effective in the world.

Finally, the Huainanzi contains the most sophisticated and sustained usages of the concept of li as the natural patterns and guidelines in the cosmos arguing that complying with them is the key to a genuinely contented life.

With the establishment of the treaty ports in 1842, contact between China and the Western world intensified. In Shanghai, the most extensive exchange of knowledge and ideas took place between the missionaries of the London Missionary Society and their Chinese assistants. By working and translating for the missionaries, these traditionally educated men gained intimate insights into the West and Western learning and established close personal relationships with the missionaries. But in the process, they also became outcasts, as working for Westerners was viewed critically by their contemporaries. This article sets out to analyse the way in which Jiang Dunfu 蔣敦復 (1808–1867) and Wang Tao 王韜 (1828–1897) processed and accommodated these cosmopolitan experiences in Shanghai in their prose autobiographies.

The English language freely borrows words from many languages; this is a process which has been well documented by several studies, particularly in the field of contact linguistics. However, an investigation into the massive influence that the widespread, popular, and global use of the Internet has had on the development of language calls for consistent and frequent empirical enquiry. The rapid growth in the number and diversity of Internet users from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and the increasing popularity and influence of Asian cultures and languages on the English language, is currently occurring at an unprecedented level. This study employs several data collection methods to demonstrate the arbitrary transnational journey of a few selected culinary terms that showcase the flexible adaptation and creation processes through which these new additions to the English language have passed. We do this by using two common culinary terms, both of which have been adapted to describe Asian dishes, as an example.

This paper compares how ancient Chinese sources discussed the causes and treatment of ailments suffered by the elite. It focuses on the Zuozhuan account of the long-term illness of Duke Ping of Jin (r. 557–532 B.C.E.) but contextualizes this passage by introducing as well other examples of stories—found in transmitted literature as well as in recently excavated manuscripts—about sick rulers who consulted with a sage in search of a cure for their troubles. The Zuozhuan passage is also viewed in the light of the Yin shu, an excavated text written on bamboo strips that is concerned with the treatment of elite ailments. A comparison of the two sources suggests that the claim in the Zuozhuan that Duke Ping's illness was “incurable” was not simply based on the medical knowledge and practices of the day.

Shanghai Chinese (Shanghainese; 上海话) is a Wu dialect (ISO 639-3; code: wuu) spoken in the city of Shanghai (CN-31), one of the four municipalities in the People's Republic of China. Over the last century, the dialect has been heavily influenced by neighbouring dialects spoken in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, such as Jianghuai Mandarin (江淮官话), the Suzhou Wu dialect (吴语苏州话), and the Ningbo Wu dialect (吴语宁波话), in addition to two other, more distant dialects, Cantonese (广东话) and Northern Mandarin (北方官话). Most native speakers of Shanghai Chinese are in fact descendants of immigrants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces who moved to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. More recently, the position of Shanghai Chinese has been eroded with the influx of immigrants from other parts of the country and the widespread adoption of Standard Chinese.

Our paper conceptualizes and highlights the role of the supply chains in China's product recall problems. We raise questions about the interrelationships of the focal manufacturer and the supplier firms and the consequences of these relationships. We address some of the causes of the current situation, including a discussion of deep supply chains, the importance of relationships, the role of trust and the impact of cultural misunderstandings. We suggest many future research questions to further understand how the supply chain can cause or deter product recalls.

The Hmu language is spoken by approximately 1,250,000 people who reside in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture (黔东南苗族侗族自治州), Guizhou Province (贵州省), the People's Republic of China (Wang & Mao 1995: 3–4; Lewis, Simons & Fenning 2016).

The economic and market reforms in China have given rise to firms with three distinct types of ownership: state-owned enterprises, private domestic enterprises, and foreign-invested firms. The three studies reported in this paper addressed the questions of whether organizational culture varies among firms with different ownership structures and whether it relates to firm performance or employee attitudes as it has been observed in US firms. The first study employed an inductive approach to identify culture dimensions and found five common dimensions across these different types of firms. In the second study, we derived an empirical taxonomy of four organizational culture types involving different configurations of the five organizational culture dimensions, and found a systematic relationship between these culture types and a measure of perceived firm performance. The third study confirmed the relationship between organizational culture types and middle manager attitudes. Suggestions are offered for future research building on the organizational culture dimensions and culture types introduced in these studies.

Existing literature on China's urbanization focuses primarily on the expansion of cities and towns, with little attention being paid to urban renewals. The wasteful use of urban land has conventionally been attributed to the ambiguous definition and ineffective protection of property rights. This study examines recent practices in urban redevelopment in Guangzhou – a site chosen by the central authorities to pilot urban renewals (sanjiu gaizao). The research identifies a local practice in which institutional changes are made not in the delineation of land property rights but instead in the redistribution of the benefits to be made from land redevelopment. Current users of the land are offered a share of the land conveyance income previously monopolized by the state as an incentive to encourage them to engage in urban renewal. Land-use intensity and efficiency have increased, along with social exclusion and marginalization. Research findings cast doubt over the perceived notion that the uniform and unambiguous definition of property rights is the prerequisite for improved land-use efficiency and call for a critical evaluation of the current urban renewal policies that completely ignore the interests of the migrant population who outnumber local residents by a large margin.