Suchergebnisse

This paper examines television portrayals of the West in contemporary China, focusing on an emerging non-victimistic media discourse on modern Western history. The analysis is contextualized within the wider sociopolitical dynamics of a rising nationalism and increased space for negotiation among the different groupings of Chinese elites. The paper falls into three parts. The first investigates the discursive features of a television documentary text that constructs a fresh, positive image of the West. The second discusses critiques of the series from the perspectives of a liberal, pro-market right and anti-capitalist new left. The third part extends the analysis to the social context of the mainstream pragmatic nationalism that has risen to prominence in recent decades. The paper concludes with a discussion on tensions within differing views of the West, and a critical assessment of the fresh, non-moralistic account of the Western road to modernity.

This article examines the discursive reconfiguration of the social stratification order in reforming China. Applying the two notions of metadiscourse and entextualization from the natural history of discourse (NHD) perspective (Silverstein & Urban 1996), I argue that the missing link between the discursive and the social is forged through the metadiscourses (Urban 1996) originated by the top leaders of the Communist Party of China, and that their ongoing entextualizations play a crucial role in establishing the stratificational status quo. They set the tone for dismantling the pre-reform hierarchical pattern and constructing an evolving system in light of the growing market economy. The analysis of their entextualizations is based on period texts (1978–2008), primarily speeches of the three party leaders Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Combining the discursive insights of critical discourse theory and the NHD perspective, this study intends to break new ground in applying the NHD approach to analyzing the reforming Chinese state socialism where social stratification is necessarily subject to ongoing transformations.

Moral entrepreneurs have been defined as activists who devote considerable time to influencing people to change their values to a particular value system (Becker, 1963; Posner, 1999). Yurtsever (2003) built a measurement model of the moral personality of entrepreneurs,
called the Moral Entrepreneur's Personality (MEP) through an intensive study of members of two nonprofit organizations as well as students, professors, and staff members from two universities. Creating Public Awareness, Resistance, Anticipating Threats, and Mobilizing Power have been identified
as the four dimension components of the MEP.In the present study the aim was to examine the generalizability of the MEP measurement model in a Chinese context through a large-scale survey of top managers of Chinese corporations.

We use the tools of transaction cost politics (TCP) developed from transaction cost economics and economic analysis, to analyze the business relationship building between the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), the largest and most successful foreign bank in China, and the Chinese government between 1949 and 1978. We demonstrate the value of the TCP-based approach to evaluating the specialized governance structure of commitment built on mutual dependency. In particular, we identify several transaction attributes that give rise to hazards: transaction uncertainty, the role of the government in the economy, and the strength of the supporting coalition. Our analysis also confirms that commitment built on the mutual dependency between the international company and the local authorities and between the international company's home country authorities and the local authorities did reduce the company's transaction costs by guarding against the local authorities' opportunism.

AbstractDespite a growing body of literature on the study of the Western media's portrayal of China, little attention has been paid to the structures underlying the representation of China. This essay aims to address this issue through an in-depth analysis of a British television documentary series, Roads to Xanadu (1990). It focuses on dominant perspectives constructed in the series by analysing documentary narrative as a mode of realising discourse. The essay argues that underlying the representation is a technological view of society. Shifting between realpolitik industrialism and liberal democratic humanism, the series attempts to arrive at a unified and unifying version of 'progress' through a modernist discourse.

China's participation in the global economy has brought about a new professional group — Chinese professionals working for foreign businesses (waiqi). Focusing on the linguistic practice of a group of waiqi professionals in Beijing, this study compares their speech with that of professionals working for state-owned enterprises. Both groups are natives of Beijing. Based on quantitative analysis of three Beijing Mandarin features and a tone feature revealing an influence from non-Mainland Mandarin varieties, the study shows that the waiqi group overwhelmingly used the non-local features much more frequently than the state professionals. It is argued that the waiqi professionals' speech cannot be described simply as speaking a more standard variety of Putonghua. They are constructing a cosmopolitan Mandarin style through selectively combining features from both regional and global sources. This non-local style of Mandarin does not strictly conform to the standard of Putonghua. Explanations for the differential practice of the two groups are sought through differences in the linguistic markets in which they participate. This study demonstrates that the traditional territorially-based approach to sociolinguistic variation on a local–standard dimension is inadequate in examining practices that employ linguistic resources from both local and supra-local sources.