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The emphasis on cultural connectivity in China's growing presence and involvement in Southeast Asia highlights the importance China places on people-to-people exchanges as part of its global engagement strategy.The remarkable ascension of China over the recent decades has precipitated a proliferation of anti-China sentiments, particularly galvanized within the crucible of a 'discourse war' with Western powers, as expressed in the latter's 'China threat' narrative.In response to such challenges, China has made substantial investments in cultural diplomacy, to augment its soft power through orchestrated global outreach initiatives.This article examines Chinese cultural diplomacy in the realm of entertainment, specifically 'The Melody of Spring: Transnational Spring Festival Gala' hosted in Nanning, Guangxi, and disseminated globally each Chinese New Year.Against the legacy of China-Indonesia bilateral relations as well as Indonesia's treatment of its Chinese minority, this study explores China's cultural diplomacy and soft power in contemporary Indonesia. Through the case study of the 'Transnational Spring Festival Gala', this article posits that China's cultural dissemination as an instrument of soft power has yielded little influence on the Indonesian public and has limited impact on the formation of a transnational imagined community.

After more than a decade of deliberations, ASEAN leaders agreed on 11 November 2022 in principle to admit Timor-Leste as the eleventh member of the regional organization and to grant Timor-Leste observer status to attend all ASEAN meetings. Timor-Leste has demonstrated positive developmental progress, and fact-finding missions across the three ASEAN Community pillars have returned generally optimistic results.Timor-Leste has put in place institutional structures and implementing agencies for advancing cooperation with ASEAN. It is also moving towards harmonizing its laws with ASEAN instruments. However, its capacity remains in question due to a lack of substantive knowledge and technical expertise among government officials, as well as inadequate infrastructure, logistics and facilities for hosting ASEAN meetings.Strengthening human capital will be a top priority for Timor-Leste. This includes not only enhancing its personnel's knowledge and technical expertise on ASEAN processes and procedures but also skills such as English language proficiency and negotiation. Coordinated capacity-building assistance from ASEAN and dialogue partners will be important. These efforts must also be met with economic diversification and growth of its nascent private sector.Apart from bridging gaps, ASEAN needs to grapple with its reservations that Timor-Leste's economic limitations may slow down the realization of the ASEAN Economic Community. There are also concerns that Timor-Leste's membership may entrench differences within the bloc, particularly with regard to geopolitical issues, and dilute the organization's effectiveness or further complicate the consensus-based decision-making process.

This paper discusses Chinese President Xi Jinping's flagship global initiatives' normative implications for the world order.It argues that the Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative (GSI) and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), which are key pillars of China's proposal to build a community of common destiny for mankind, are driven by Beijing's desire to cultivate authority in the international system.Analysing the speeches by Chinese leaders, policy documents, media and analytical discourse in China, along with policy decisions, this study provides an assessment of the Chinese leadership's worldview. It places the launch of GDI, GSI and GCI within this context, before detailing the elements of each initiative and offering a critical analysis.This study concludes that through GDI, GSI and GCI, the Chinese leadership hopes to shape an external environment that not only ensures regime security but is also favourable to China's development and security interests. In doing so, however, it is reshaping key norms of global governance towards a fundamentally illiberal direction.

Power and empowerment are critical topics for social change. This handbook maps out ways that people can collectively engage with, influence, and change systems that affect their lives, particularly the systems that maintain inequality and oppression. It includes in-depth examinations of a variety of approaches to building and exercising community power in local organizations, institutions, and settings. Each chapter examines a particular approach, critically engaging with contemporary research on how and when collective action can be most effective at producing change within communities and societal systems. By examining a range of approaches in diverse contexts, this book provides new insights for scholars, practitioners, and engaged resident-leaders aiming to be more precise, strategic, and innovative in their efforts to build and sustain community power. It is the ideal resource for those working with community groups to build more just and equitable systems.

Understanding human behaviour, thoughts, and emotional expressions can be challenging in the global context. Due to cultural differences, the study of psychology cannot be de-contextualised. This calls for unearthing of the explanatory systems that exist in Africa to understand and account for behaviour, emotions, and cognition of Africans. This call is addressed through the emergence of African Psychology (AP) or Indigenous Psychology in Africa (IPA) as a legitimate science of human experience. This Element discusses the motivations for AP, centrality of culture, demarcations of AP, and the different strands within AP. It highlights issues related to African philosophy, African cultural anthropology, African philosophy of science, and suitable methodological approaches for AP research. It also discusses some selected theoretical contributions and applications of AP. The Element concludes that AP researchers and practitioners need to pursue interdisciplinarity and avoid meaningless rejection of good ideas from other cultural settings.

One Health emerges from the contingent scientific, social, and political realities of environmentalism. The concept mixes the land, sea, and sky with geopolitics on the global stages of the United Nations and World Health Organization. It inspires new investment in conservation and public health, motivates interdisciplinary collaboration, and in practice implicates green economies and animal law as well. This Element does not tackle all of this but attempts to situate One Health in the catastrophe of COVID-19; a socio-ecological upheaval prophetic of the inevitable next pandemic evolving from planetary climate crisis of our own making. One Health Environmentalism argues that humanity's future depends upon extending an olive branch to biotic communities, by being less speciesist and less blind to the rights in nature.

All children deserve access to the conditions and opportunities needed to thrive, including unbiased accessible healthcare and high-quality learning opportunities; safe, toxin-free communities and stable housing; access to nutritious meals; and secure, warm, available, and loving caregivers. Historic and contemporary injustices in US society have created inequities in opportunity and access to resources for Black, Latine, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native, and other children of color, children with disabilities, children in poverty, and other marginalized children; these have contributed to stark disparities across child development outcomes. This Element overviews inequities in economic, educational, and health systems through historical and contemporary perspectives and describes how these inequities impact children and families. Solutions to address these inequities are considered for a fairer US society, starting with its youngest residents, where all families have what they need to thrive. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Information for Sustainable Development is a landmark publication that examines the perspectives, challenges and progress towards achieving the targets of the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs), through the lens of information science. Written by an author team with extensive experience in the research and practice of information and sustainability, the book provides a thorough introduction to the SDGs and the impact of information, data, people and society on measuring performance and assessing progress in achieving the SDG goals.Split into four distinct sections, the book provides an introduction to the landscape for information, data and metadata in the context of the SDGs, before exploring key topics such as: (1) how metadata is used in measuring progress and success, and the challenges and complexities of calculation methods and the interpretation of data; (2) digital literacy and the digital divide across different countries and regions, and how critical information skills are in achieving success in the SDGs; (3) specific human and social challenges associated with the SDGs; (4) education for sustainable development and the role of environmental literacy; (5) examination of the research and development in the information sector around green libraries, climate change and sustainability, including a proposed research and training framework for future information science research.

Learning is critical for our capacity to govern the environment and adapt proactively to complex and emerging environmental issues. Yet, underlying barriers can challenge our capacity for learning in environmental governance. As a result, we often fail to adequately understand pressing environmental problems or produce innovative and effective solutions. This Element synthesizes insights from extensive academic and applied research on learning around the world to inform both research and practice. We distill the social and structural features of governance to help researchers and practitioners better understand, diagnose, and support learning and more adaptive responses to environmental problems.

Ethics involves examining values and identifying what is good, right, and justified - and why. Diverse values and ethical issues run through healthcare improvement, but they are not always recognised or given the attention they need. While much effort goes into understanding whether intervention X effectively leads to change Y, questions such as 'is X ethically acceptable?', 'does Y count as an improvement?', 'should Y be prioritised?', and 'if so, why?' are sometimes neglected. This Element demonstrates the ethical considerations and rich array of values that inevitably underpin both the goals of healthcare improvement (what aspects of quality or what kinds of good are pursued) and how improvement work is undertaken. It outlines an agenda for improvement ethics with the aim of helping those involved in healthcare improvement to reflect on and discuss ethical aspects of their work more explicitly and rigorously. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

"In Germany and China, leading international relations expert Andreas Fulda looks critically at the increasingly interdependent relationship between the two countries. Drawing on examples from politics, industry, the development and technology sectors and culture, the book explores how successive governments from Helmut Schmidt to Angela Merkel have pursued ever-closer ties to China in the interests of short term economic gain. Fulda explores the danger of this increasing co-dependency not just for Germany, but for Europe and the international world order"--