Suchergebnisse

The Chinese central government has recognized that village&ndash ; government networks are promising for the sustainable development of rural villages. Though many local governments tend to deploy various hands-on or hand-off governance tools to influence the sustainable development of village-governance networks, the number of villages successfully achieving &ldquo ; good governance&rdquo ; is still rare. Therefore, this study empirically elaborates on the application of three classic tools of governance networks, analyzing how leaders of local government and village communities influence the effectiveness of these tools. The data were collected by snowball interviews, careful observations, and documentary analysis in Xiaonan village, a representatively successful case of rural-village governance networks in China. We detected that governance tools are often inadequately used and under-development in Chinese rural-village governance networks, accompanying a strong interaction between the effectiveness of tools and leadership. Excellent leadership is necessary for a successful rural-village governance network and its scaling-up.

"In August 1966, a 14-year-old boy in Beijing is thrust into violence and chaos as Mao Ze-dong's Cultural Revolution begins to blaze across China. In this riveting memoir, Wei Yang Chao now tells his story--how rebels attacked and publicly humiliated his family, upended his education, and sent out into a the country rendered unrecognizable by violence and radical ideology. At first he is swept up by the Red Guards but finds himself at the center of a bloody revolution. After mass rallies at Tiananmen Square, he witnesses attacks on teachers and professors, and the disintegration of his parents' lives as tolerance and freedom begin to crumble he finds himself cast into exile"--Amazon.com

The article examines temporary extramarital cohabitation arrangements between low-wage Chinese female migrants and their male counterparts in Singapore, a phenomenon which is widely referred to by the migrants as becoming a "temporary couple" or "teaming up to have a life." In the simulated
households, the men usually shoulder most of the daily expenses for both members, while the women are expected to take care of the men's intimate needs and most of the housework. The vast majority of the women involved in such arrangements are married and migrated for work on their own. This
article, based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2019, explores how these women perform and understand such temporary intimacies. I first demonstrate that the women enter the relationships as a reaction to the institutional setup that places them in a suspended status, in
which they are treated as nothing more than temporary labourers. I then illustrate how the women put the relationship in a state of suspension: they instrumentalize it as a means to maximize savings, and mark it out as a short-term exception that will end abruptly once they leave Singapore.
The structurally imposed and self-inflicted conditions of suspension limit the women's agency to an ambiguous private domain that is away from both work and home. Drawing on my long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this article deploys the notion of suspension as a guiding concept to unravel the
tensions and moral anxieties that the women experience with their temporary intimacies.

Non-medical costs, including costs associated with carers, travel, food and accommodation for family members who care for older people during their medical visits, can constitute a substantial part of total healthcare costs, especially for older people. Using data from the 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey, this study examines the effects of such non-medical costs on catastrophic health payments and health payment-induced poverty among older people in China. Results indicate that non-medical costs account for approximately 18 per cent of total inpatient costs. The percentage is highest for those in the lowest economic brackets. Rural populations are more likely than urban populations to incur catastrophic health payments and suffer from health payment-induced poverty. Non-medical costs increase the chances of older people incurring catastrophic health payments and suffering from health payment-induced poverty. These findings suggest that policymakers should look to develop new policies that facilitate reimbursement of non-medical costs, particularly for the rural population. (China Q/GIGA)

AbstractNon-medical costs, including costs associated with carers, travel, food and accommodation for family members who care for older people during their medical visits, can constitute a substantial part of total healthcare costs, especially for older people. Using data from the 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey, this study examines the effects of such non-medical costs on catastrophic health payments and health payment-induced poverty among older people in China. Results indicate that non-medical costs account for approximately 18 per cent of total inpatient costs. The percentage is highest for those in the lowest economic brackets. Rural populations are more likely than urban populations to incur catastrophic health payments and suffer from health payment-induced poverty. Non-medical costs increase the chances of older people incurring catastrophic health payments and suffering from health payment-induced poverty. These findings suggest that policymakers should look to develop new policies that facilitate reimbursement of non-medical costs, particularly for the rural population.

Rapid demographic shifts and socio-economic changes are fuelling concerns over the inadequate supply of informal care – the most common source of care-giving for older people in China. Unmet long-term care needs, which are believed to cause numerous adverse effects on health, continue to increase. Drawing data from the 2015 wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey, this study explores the relationship between informal care provision and unmet long-term care needs among older people in China. We first examine the availability of informal care among older people with disabilities. We then analyse whether a higher intensity of informal care leads to lower unmet needs. Our findings suggest that the majority of older people with disabilities receive a low intensity of care, i.e. less than 80 hours per month. Besides, a higher intensity of informal care received could significantly lower the probabilities of unmet needs for the disabled older adults who have mainly instrumental activities of daily living limitations. Our study points out that informal care cannot address the needs of those who are struggling with multi-dimensional difficulties in their daily living. Our findings highlight a pressing need for the government to buttress the formal care provision and delivery systems to support both informal care-givers and disabled older people in China.

Over-prescription has become one major problem in China's health care sector. Incorporating interview data from hospitals in Shanghai, this paper provided empirical evidence on how the process of over-prescription was carried out in day-to-day clinical settings, and demonstrates various mechanisms that allow over-prescription to continue vigorously in the context of the Chinese health care system. In particular, this study identified four levels of incentives that over-prescription was carried out: hospital, medical department, doctors and pharmaceutical companies. Due to the insufficient funding from the government and rising operational costs, hospitals had to rely on the sales of drugs and provision of medical services to survive. This funding pressure then transferred to specific revenue targets for medical departments. A combination of incentives, including drug remunerations, bonus system, low pay and high workloads motivated over-prescription at doctor level. At pharmaceutical company level, high profits of pharmaceuticals products as well as lack of emphasis on efficacy of drugs led to under-table payments and illicit drug remunerations. The study argued that the way that the Chinese health care system operates was based on the profit-seeking principle rather than on fulfilling its social functions, and called for a systematic reform of provider incentives to eradicating the problem of over-prescription.

Abstract
Chinese cinema at the turn of the twenty-first century is replete with metaphors of travel – migration, roaming, exile, diaspora, and more recently, adventure and tourism. This article explores the allegorical uses of mobility and journey in recent New Year's comedies, as exemplified by Xu Zheng's 2012 blockbuster release Ren zai jiongtu zhi taijiong/Lost in Thailand, a film that is widely considered to have shaken up China's domestic film industry. The notion of Thailand in the film as simultaneously a commercial and spiritual destination is crucial to the matter at hand. I argue that the spatial consumption typical of travel films acquires an alternative form here, one that does not fortify but rather undermines the imagination of Chinese power in a foreign land. This form of spatiality is best understood within the generic framework of New Year's comedy, as well as the larger context of consumer culture and mass entertainment. Inquiring into the mixed tropes of comedy and melodrama, I seek to illustrate how the newly emergent tourist discourse builds upon the organizational principles of holiday-themed films, and how this particular genre and style, at times, can enable apolitical encounters with the society's collective consciousness, while critiquing the limits and conditions of China's post-socialist reality from within.

AbstractIn 2003, the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) was initiated in China to provide rural inhabitants with financial protection against health risks. The benefit package was extended to outpatient care in 2007. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey of 2009, this paper examines the relationship between the households participating in the NCMS and the level and distribution of catastrophic health payments and health payment‐induced poverty resulting from outpatient care. The study finds no significant difference in terms of catastrophic health payments and health payment‐induced poverty before and after NCMS reimbursement. The out‐of‐pocket payments (OOP) are concentrated disproportionately among the poor even after the insurance reimbursement. This heavy burden of OOP payments has become a poverty trap for the poor. This study calls for a more comprehensive insurance and effective insurance package.