Search results

"Heaven, earth, and man" in North China -- Managing the rivers : emperors as engineers -- Population, agriculture, and food -- Food and prices -- Provisioning Beijing -- Storing grain : granaries as solution and problem -- Markets and prices -- Famine relief : the High Qing model -- Famine relief : nineteenth-century devolution -- The "land of famine", 1900-1949 -- Rural crisis and economic change, 1900-1949 -- Food and famine under socialist rule, 1949-1990s

The ability of military alliances to deter depends on their credibility: the degree to which others believe that allies will fulfill their commitments. One way to measure credibility is to compare nations' lists of allies. The more similar those lists are, the more similar are those nations' security interests. This increases the credibility and the deterrent capability of resulting alliances and, consequently, decreases the amount of militarized conflict. In order to measure the similarity of alliance lists, one needs to account for the possibilities that countries can have multiple allies, can be indirectly linked to one another by their allies, and can be part of mutually exclusive groups of directly and indirectly related allies. Using a new measure called relational similarity, this article finds support for the credibility argument and also finds that relational similarity better explains observed patterns of conflict than existing measures.

Metadata only record ; It is argued that divergent images of community result not from inadequate knowledge or confusion of purpose, but from the location of discourse and action in the context of specific struggles and dilemmas. The study supports the view that 'struggles over resources' are also 'struggles over meaning'. Examples are drawn from Indonesia, with special reference to Central Sulawesi. It demonstrates the ways in which contests over the distribution of property are articulated in terms of competing representations of community at a range of levels and sites. It suggests that, through the exercise of 'practical political economy', particular representations of community can be used strategically to strengthen the property claims of potentially disadvantaged groups. In the policy arena, advocates for 'community based resource management' have represented communities as sites of consensus and sustainability. Though idealized, such representations have provided a vocabulary with which to defend the rights of communities vis--vis states. CAB Direct ; Available in SANREM office, FS

Famine mortality has a special interest for those interested in population history. After Malthus wroteAn Essay on the Principle of Populationin 1798, famine was viewed as an event that "checks" population growth, perhaps the inevitable consequence of overpopulation. Although demographers have recently tried to show that a single famine or demographic crisis cannot retard population growth in the long run (Watkins and Menken 1985; Bongaarts and Cain 1982), yet famine, to the extent that it exists today, still constitutes a most dramatic demographic event.

While stigma has often been implicated in the low take-up of benefits, its aetiology is not well understood. Drawing distinctions from earlier research, notably differentiating personal, social and institutional stigma, the article explores how each is related to each other and how each alone, and in concert, is framed by political and local culture. As case-studies, two of the world's largest social assistance schemes, Dibao and Wubao, are compared in a village in south central China based on ethnographic work with recipients, village cadre charged with implementing both schemes, and non-recipients. In explaining the reasons for the very different level of stigma attaching to each scheme, the article unearths processes of salience to academics and policymakers.

While the reasons for low take‐up of social assistance benefits are complex, stigma is understood to be an important factor. In this study, the proposition that financial need and social rights moderate the deterrent effect of stigma was examined with respect to China as a deviant case. Dibao, the world's largest social assistance scheme, is characterised by high take‐up but poor targeting, stigma and informal discretion in the context of rapidly declining poverty. Qualitative fieldwork reveals how the contrasting stigmas of poverty and abuse are negotiated to claim benefits and illustrates the dangers of implementing social assistance without supportive political, legal and cultural infrastructures.

Abstract. This paper is related to the study of the ion density recorded by the low altitude satellite DEMETER. In a first time there is an automatic search for ionospheric perturbations in the complete satellite data set of ion densities. Then perturbations due to known ionospheric phenomena (for example, solar activity) are eliminated as well as perturbations not above a seismic zone. In a second time, there is a search to know if each selected perturbation corresponds to a future earthquake. The earthquakes have been classified depending on their magnitude and depth. This attempt to predict earthquakes of course generates false alarms and wrong detections. The results of this statistical analysis are presented as function of various parameters. It is shown that the number of false alarms is very important, because the ionosphere has variations not only linked to the seismic activity. The number of wrong detections is also important and can be explained by the fact that the satellite is above a seismic area only a few minutes per day and we do not expect continuous perturbations from a given earthquake. The more important results of this study is that the ratio between detected earthquakes and earthquakes to be detected increases with the magnitude of the earthquakes which intuitively makes sense.

This paper discusses the processes of the educational travel of the Chinese students abroad. Based on data of the Ministry of Education of China, publications from the Chinese Internet, original articles published in the world periodicals, the reasons elucidated why the number of students leaving China changed from 2001 to 2018; describes funding sources of educational travel. Information on the contemporary preferences of Chinese students in selection of countries and study programs, aims and reasons of educational travel abroad is provided. The hard competition of the young persons after school on educational services market, expected job difficulties after graduation from national universities and influence of parents are pushing young Chinese people to consider studying abroad. Over the past 10 years, the number of Chinese citizens studying in foreign universities rates more than doubled and reached to 662.1 thousand in 2018. The aim of such migration is not only acquiring advanced western knowledge or improving foreign language skills but also getting the so-called symbolic capital, which arises after graduation from the famous foreign universities. This capital will bring tangible employment benefits and future career privileges in the Chinese companies. Therefore, currently the largest number of Chinese young people seek to become students in English speaking countries, where the concentration of the best world universities included in the top-100 of international rankings is high. The modern professional preferences of Chinese students correspond to the development trends of the China's national economy and science, and depend on the future employment and opportunity to receive the scholarships from the Government of China. ; В статье анализируются процессы, связанные с выездом китайских студентов за рубеж. На основе данных Министерства образования Китая, публикаций, находящихся в открытом доступе в сети китайского Интернета, а также научных статей, опубликованных в ведущих мировых изданиях, показано, ...