Annual Report 2011

[Excerpt] This is the Commission’s 10th Annual Report on China’s human rights and rule of law developments. As in the past, the Commission has assessed the Chinese government’s record on the basis of China’s own Constitution and laws and international human rights standards, relying on research based in large part on reports and articles published in China. As Commission research has shown this past year, Chinese officials continue to deny Chinese citizens their rights in order to preserve the Communist Party’s notion of political stability and harmony. China’s stability is in the United States’ best interest, but the Commission believes that stability will not result from repressing rights for perceived short-term gain, but only by ensuring and protecting the rights of all Chinese citizens

Annual Report

[Excerpt] The Commission is deeply concerned that some Chinese government policies designed to address growing social unrest and bolster Communist Party authority are resulting in a period of declining human rights for China’s citizens. The Commission identified limited improvements in the Chinese government’s human rights practices in 2004, but backward-stepping government decisions in 2005 and 2006 are leading the Commission to reevaluate the Chinese leadership’s commitment to additional human rights improvements in the near term. In its 2005 Annual Report, the Commission highlighted increased government restrictions on Chinese citizens who worship in state-controlled venues or write for state-controlled publications. These restrictions remain in place, and in some cases, the government has strengthened their enforcement

Digital near source accelerograms recorded by instrumental arrays in Tangshan, China. Part I (1982.7-1984.12)

The ultimate goal of earthquake hazard mitigation research is to gain sufficient understanding of the phenomena involved in an earthquake to minimize the loss of life and property resulting from such an event. In order to design safe, economical structures and facilities in seismic areas, it is necessary to understand the nature of the ground motion generated by an earthquake. This understanding can ultimately come only from the measurement of the strong ground motion resulting from actual damaging earthquakes. In order to facilitate the acquisition of strong ground motion data world-wide, an International Workshop on Strong Motion Earthquake Instrument Arrays was held in 1978 in Hawaii. Participants in the Workshop appealed to the earthquake-threatened countries of the world to undertake a concerted effort to establish strong-motion accelerograph arrays and networks. In response to the appeal of these experts in earthquake hazard mitigation, and in accord with the "China-U.S. Protocol for Scientific and Technical Cooperation in Earthquake Studies," a joint research project on strong ground motion measurement has been established in China. In the first phase of this project, from April 1981 to December 1984, 22 Kinemetrics PDR-1 Digital Event Recorders equipped with FBA-13 Force Balance Accelerometers, and 18 Kinemetrics SMA-1 Analog Accelerographs were deployed in China. Of this total, 13 PDR-1 and 3 SMA1 instruments were deployed in a surface array and a three-dimensional array in the aftershock region of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. These two arrays recorded a total of 1053 near-source accelerograms from 416 earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from ML = 1.2 to 5.7. The source-station distances ranged from 2 to 45 kilometers. Most of the records contain the complete P- and S-wave motion along with accurate absolute time. Both the volume and quality of the accelerograms are much greater than ever before obtained in China. The largest event recorded was the ML = 5.7 Lulong earthquake of October 19, 1982. Nine instruments were triggered by this event. The epicentral distance from the recording stations ranged from 5 to 41 kilometers, and the corresponding peak horizontal acceleration ranged from 0.217 to 0.008g. Accelerograms were recorded by the three-dimensional array from twenty-eight events. Measurements were made to a depth of 900 meters below the ground surface. The records obtained provide a unique source of data for the study of the propagation of seismic waves near the earth's surface. In order to make these data more useful, they will be published along with site data in a separate volume. In this report, 218 of the most significant accelerograms; are published. The data was obtained from earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from ML = 2.3 to 5.7. All of the data reproduced in this report is available on 9-track computer tape

中国の外資直接投資導入政策と成果(Ⅰ) : 30年の回顧と総括

まえがき　1. 対外開放の実験的準備期(1979～84年)における外資直接投資導入　1.1 世界政治経済に対する認識の変化と国民経済建設路線の転換　1.1.1 世界政治経済に対する認識の変化　1.1.2 新たな対外経済論の展開　1.2 改革・開放当初期における外資直接投資導入　1.2.1 外資直接投資導入管理体制の形成　1.2.2 外資直接投資導入の概況　1.2.3 外資直接投資導入に関する法的枠組の形成　1.2.4 外資直接投資導入の実

China, the G20 and the International Investment Regime

China has become a major home country for outward foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. As a result, the country is increasingly concerned with protecting its outward FDI and facilitating the operations of its firms investing abroad and creating a strong universal international investment law and policy regime. This article reviews briefly the emergence of China as an outward investor. It continues with an analysis of some policy issues related to the rise of FDI from emerging markets. A brief discussion of issues central to the future of the international investment law and policy regime follows, before focusing on several outcomes that could be pursued under China’s G20 leadership: non-binding shared principles that could outline the architecture of a universal framework on international investment; an international support program for sustainable investment facilitation; and the creation of an additional intergovernmental platform that would allow for a continued systematic intergovernmental process to discuss the range of issues related to the governance of international investment, preferably paralleled by an informal, inclusive and result-oriented consensus-building process that takes place outside intergovernmental settings

Shared Destiny

In the China Story Yearbook 2014: Shared Destiny, we take as our theme a concept emphasised by Xi Jinping, the leader of China's partystate, in October 2013 when he spoke of the People’s Republic being part of a Community of Shared Destiny, officially translated as a Community of Common Destiny. The expression featured in Chinese pronouncements from as early as 2007 when it was declared that the Mainland and Taiwan formed a Community of Shared Destiny. Addressing the issue of China’s relations with the countries that surround it at the inaugural Periphery Diplomacy Work Forum held in Beijing on 24 October 2013, Xi Jinping further developed the idea when he summed up the engagement between the People’s Republic and its neighbours by using a series of ‘Confucian-style’ one-word expressions: positive bilateral and multilateral relationships were to be based on amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness

Work precarisation and new inequalities.

In the neoliberal era, precarity has become a general condition in the life of workers. The structural precarisation of labour is a global process, which has taken place heterogeneously according to national contexts, sectors, qualifications, and labour market stratifications. This essay looks at precarity from two angles: the impact of it on migrant workers and the role of migration in the exacerbation and extension of it

Made in China Yearbook 2016: Disturbances in Heaven

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2016 was the year of the fire monkey. What better character than Sun Wukong to inspire this inaugural volume of the Made in China Yearbook? In this past year, Chinese workers and activists from all walks of life have struggled under heightened repression by the Chinese party-state, showing remarkable endurance even under these dire circumstances. Through their battles, however small or short-lived, they repeatedly challenged the message of ‘harmony’ put forward by the Chinese authorities, creating ‘disturbances’ in the imaginary heaven engineered by the party-state. All of this is nothing other than proof of the survival of the monkey spirit in Chinese society. Even when trapped under a mountain of repression, or in terrible pain due to the curse of the magic headband of state control, the monkey still manages to briefly wriggle free, reminding us that not all is well, that not everything is predictable