International Finance and the Developing World: The Next Twenty Years

international finance, capital flows, development

Re-thinking the incrementalist thesis in China: a reflection on the development of the minimum standard of living scheme in urban and rural areas

Many commentators contend that the Chinese government adopted an incremental approach to welfare policy reform because its leaders lacked an overall blueprint for it, allowing initiatives to be implemented only after lengthy experimentation. While this perspective has provided an essential account of the implementation and changes of some welfare programmes, it has inadequately addressed the slow progress in rural areas' welfare programmes and the different welfare entitlements for rural and urban residents. Further investigation is therefore required to resolve these anomalies. Using the minimum standard of living scheme (MSLS) as a case example, this article illustrates how the Chinese government's legitimacy needs, during different stages of its economic reforms, have been the principal motivation for the implementation of such schemes. The introduction of an urban MSLS in 1997 aimed to reduce laid-off workers' dissatisfaction following the government's reforms of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The implementation of a rural MSLS in 2007 was intended principally to minimise conflicts between land-losing farmers and local officials after widespread rural riots. These MSLSs are also minimal and stigmatising public-assistance schemes that fulfil the dual objective of securing a stable political environment for economic reform and maintaining poor people's work ethic for China's mixed economy

Food-related Yangsheng short videos among the retired population in Shanghai

Despite an emerging and significant impact upon daily life, health, and self-care in China, the popularity of smartphone-based short videos (duan shipin短视频) has not yet drawn enough attention from either anthropological study or the study of Medical Humanities. The research of this chapter is part of an ongoing long-term (Feb 2018–June 2019) ethnographic research among the retired population in Shanghai, with a specific focus on the use of short videos and their influence and potential for influence upon everyday health and self-care. Along with this development in digital technology, there is an ever-growing and ever-richening visual language among the elderly in mainland China. Given the challenges that China faces with its ageing population and the breakdown of the family as the unit of care, understanding what sorts of clips are more likely to be watched and understood and circulated, and why, becomes critical. This chapter argues that how the combination of the topic, the viewer, the properties of the clip itself, and how they interact requires greater investment from the field of health-related communication

Influence factor of Chinese elders' wealth management behaviour: an empirical study

The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the influential demographic variables of elders’ wealth management behaviour. Purpose sampling for 122 older consumers (aged over 65) who participate in wealth management programme with instrument, was conducted in April 2007 in China (Taiwan area). Regression was performed for the data analysis. The results showed gender, educational background, and living location being key factors affecting elder consumers’ wealth-management behaviours, including consumers’ familiarity with financial products/services, sources of professional information, sources of word-of-mouth information, investment intention, and investment confidence. The main contributions of this not only include enhancing existing literature concerning wealth management, marketing, and elder behaviours (especially for clarifying how the controversial factors work), but unveiling elders’ behaviour tendency in such a blooming emerging market. Practical implications to bank marketers are also given

Social policy, state legitimacy and strategic actors: governmentality and counter-conduct in authoritarian regime

Far from acting defensively to preserve the social relations and red ideologies that originally gave it power, the Chinese Communist Party is leading a social and economic transformation that could be expected to lead to direct challenges to its authority. The surprising degree of change in the Chinese socio-economic transformation and the fact that this transformation has been going on for forty years now and has not yet resulted in fundamental challenges subverting its rule have inspired my study. The overarching theoretical enquiry in my dissertation resonates with one of the most important theoretical questions in political sociology: how does the state maintain compliance from the governed in periods of rapid social and economic transformation, and how does the logic of its governmentality change along with its priorities? My work is built on the Weberian and Gramscian tradition of understanding state rule and highlights the individual’s rationale of “believing” and “consent”, but also takes account of the Foucaudian “governmentality” the state uses to maintain its rule and investigates the underlined rationality. Empirically, I take advantage of the pension changes among China’s social welfare reforms, decipher a two-way story of statecraft in authoritarian regimes and explore whether there may be room for cognitional counter-conduct from the public. My work demonstrates that the Chinese state works through benefit allocation, propaganda, experimentation with policy and many other approaches, in order to shape public expectations and justify its rule. However, the state’s well-designed statecraft needs to enable individuals to make sense of their experience and must resonate with their “common sense”. Individuals can update their knowledge from personal interest, information from government policies, signals from current society (their peers) to decide whether to stay loyal or choose non-compliance. In a situation when active counter-conduct such as resistance is not possible, individuals may choose cognitional rebellion and falsify their public compliance

Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China: From the cultural to the digital revolution in Shanghai

If we want to understand contemporary China, the key is through understanding the older generation. This is the generation in China whose life courses almost perfectly synchronised with the emergence and growth of the ‘New China’ under the rule of the Communist Party (1949). People in their 70s and 80s have double the life expectancy of their parents’ generation. The current oldest generation in Shanghai was born in a time when the average household could not afford electric lights, but today they can turn their lights off via their smartphone apps. Based on 16-month ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, Ageing with Smartphones in Urban China tackles the intersection between the ‘two revolutions’ experienced by the older generation in Shanghai: the contemporary smartphone-based digital revolution and the earlier communist revolutions. We find that we can only explain the smartphone revolution if we first appreciate the long-term consequences of these people’s experiences during the communist revolutions. The context of this book is a wide range of dramatic social transformations in China, from the Cultural Revolution to the individualism and Confucianism in Digital China. Supported by detailed ethnographic material, the observations and analyses provide a panoramic view of the social landscape of contemporary China, including topics such as the digital and everyday life, ageing and healthcare, intergenerational relations and family development, community building and grassroots organizations, collective memories and political attitudes among ordinary Chinese people

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Corporate Social Responsibility Practices: America and China

This study examines the cross-cultural similarities and differences of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices between leading America companies and leading Chinese companies. It pays particular attention to the why, what, how and where of CSR practices and discovers how these companies manage and localize their efforts through the comparison of corporate websites. Utilizing corporate websites to perform a content analysis, fifty of the top American Fortune 500 businesses were analyzed. The results from the fifty American Fortune 500 companies were then compared to twenty-three top Chinese Fortune 50 companies. The codebook elements that were used to compare CSR practices between America and China revealed few similarities and many differences. Through analyzing corporate websites, the results of this study revealed that leading American companies are more advanced in recording and publicizing CSR efforts than leading Chinese companies

The Examination on Mobile Banking’s Use Behavior of Retired Chinese in Shaoxing

This study aims to determine the factors that affect how retired Chinese customers use mobile banking. The conceptual framework focuses on the relationship between perceived usefulness, trust, pricing value, user satisfaction, behavioral intention and use behavior of mobile banking applications. The researcher employed quantitative method to distribute questionnaires to 450 retired Chinese in Shaoxing, who have been using the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), China Construction Bank (CCB), and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)’s mobile banking applications. The nonprobability sample includes judgmental, quota, convenience sampling. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) were used for data analysis, including model fit analysis, reliability and construct validity. The results show that perceived usefulness, pricing value, trust, and user satisfaction have significant impacts on behavioral intention, and perceived usefulness has a significant impact on user satisfaction, while behavioral intention has a significant impact on user behavior. Six hypotheses were accepted to fulfill research objectives. Therefore, mobile banking application development needs to pay more attention to the perceived usefulness, pricing value, trust, behavioral intention, and user satisfaction aspects of the research and development efforts

Contemporary U.S. Expatriate Artists in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico: Challenges of Transnationalism and Acculturation

The purpose of this interpretive qualitative study was to explore the transnational lives of contemporary U.S. expatriate artists living in San Miguel de Allende, a colonial town in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, and the effect that location and the acculturation process have in their artistic production. The focus of this study was on U.S. expatriate artists living in San Miguel de Allende and how their transnational lifestyle influenced their artistic production, their integration into the local community, and their relationship with other Mexican and international artists living in San Miguel de Allende. Two research questions structured this qualitative study: (a) How do the contemporary U.S. expatriate artists living in Mexico make sense of their transnational lives and experiences? (b) How does the intercultural contact influence their artistic expressions and body of work? Nine participants were selected utilizing the snowball sampling technique and were interviewed through open-ended questions. The analysis of the data revealed five themes that are presented and related to the research questions and professional literature. The study found that the U.S. expatriate artists were able to live comfortably in both cultures and identified the social network factor as the most common connecting thread that wove through all of the participants’ comments. The constant influx of international artists mixed with the local art community provided the unique setting for the intercultural exchange of ideas and experiences that influenced the artistic perspectives of the U.S. expatriate artists. This study specifically helps to fill in a void regarding knowledge and available scholarly research and literature on the perspective of contemporary U.S. expatriate artists in San Miguel de Allende. The findings of this study not only confirmed earlier studies but also contributes to the expanding field of transnationalism and acculturation. This study provides multilayered perspectives of the expatriate artists in keeping their familial and cultural links to their homeland through social networking and digital media ICT technology. The digital media ICT network allowed the artists to produce and distribute their work in a transnational global context unlike the traditional productions that occur in the context of the same time and space