Bias in social interactions and emergence of extremism in complex social networks

Emergence of extremism in social networks is among the most appealing topics of opinion dynamics in computational sociophysics in recent decades. Most of the existing studies presume that the initial existence of certain groups of opinion extremities and the intrinsic stubbornness in individuals' characteristics are the key factors allowing the tenacity or even prevalence of such extreme opinions. We propose a modification to the consensus making in bounded-confidence models where two interacting individuals holding not so different opinions tend to reach a consensus by adopting an intermediate opinion of their previous ones. We show that if individuals make biased compromises, extremism may still arise without a need of an explicit classification of extremists and their associated characteristics. With such biased consensus making, several clusters of diversified opinions are gradually formed up in a general trend of shifting toward the extreme opinions close to the two ends of the opinion range, which may allow extremism communities to emerge and moderate views to be dwindled. Furthermore, we assume stronger compromise bias near opinion extremes. It is found that such a case allows moderate opinions a greater chance to survive compared to that of the case where the bias extent is universal across the opinion space. As to the extreme opinion holders' lower tolerances toward different opinions, which arguably may exist in many real-life social systems, they significantly decrease the size of extreme opinion communities rather than helping them to prevail. Brief discussions are presented on the significance and implications of these observations in real-life social systems.Ministry of Education (MOE)National Research Foundation (NRF)Accepted versionThe research was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under Contract No. MOE2016-T2-1-119, Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program, and Tsinghua-Foshan Innovation Special Fund (TFISF). The work was also partially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Sichuan University (Grant No. YJ201933), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2019TQ0217), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC; Grant Nos. U1736212 and 61572334). This work was also partially supported by the Future Resilient Systems Project-Stage II at the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC), which was funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF)

Credit risk analysis of Chinese companies by applying the CAFÉ Approach

It is known that the current Credit Rating in financial markets of China is facing at least three problems: 1) the rating is falsely high; 2) the differentiation of credit rating is insufficient; and 3) the poor performance of predicting early warning, thus we must consider how to create a reasonable new credit risk analysis approach to deal with issues for financial markets in China for those listed companies’ performance. This report shows that by using a new method called the “Hologram approach” as a tool, we are able to establish a so-called “CAFÉ Risk Analysis System” (in short, “CAFÉ Approach”, or “CAFÉ”) to resolve three issues for credit rating in China. In particular, the main goal in this paper is to give a comprehensive report for credit risk assessments for eight selected list companies by applying our “CAFÉ” from different industry sectors against actual market performance with the time period from the past one to three years through our one-by-one interpretation for event screening and true occurrence and related events. In this way, we show how “CAFÉ” is able to resolve current three major problems of “rating is falsely high, the differentiation of credit rating grades is insufficient, and the poor performance of predicting early warning” in the current credit market in China’s financial industry in practice

Maoism in the Cultural Revolution: A Political Religion?”

in Robert Mallett, John Tortorice and Roger Griffin, ed., The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics: Essays in Honour of Professor Stanley G. Payne (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008)

JAPAN AND THE GREAT WAR

East Asia, and particularly Japan, is often omitted from both popular and academic accounts of the First World War. This is evident not just in the Western historiography of the conflict, but also in the Chinese and Japanese histories of the war. Yet, if the First World War is to be truly understood as a ‘world war’, it has to be seen in its global context. The events in the East Asian theatre and the ways in which the conflict profoundly influenced its political, economic and socials histories in both the domestic and international spheres therefore have to be looked at and analyzed accordingly. This is particularly relevant because, as specific memories of the conflict have receded into time, the orthodox factual and ethical foundations of the Western interpretation of the war are crumbling on different fronts and the stress on the military aspects alone is broadening out; thus new aspects of the conflagration can now be identified. Both Japan’s experience within the war and its observations of the impact that the conflict had others were major catalysts for change and that its effects went beyond merely the further expansion of Japanese political and military influence in continental East Asia. The conflict, for example, provided a major stimulus to the Japanese economy by creating fresh export markets and forcing the country to establish new import-substitution industries, in areas such as chemicals and optics, to make up for the loss of trade with Germany. In doing so, it also stimulated the rise of a credit boom that would mean that Japan entered the inter-war period with an over-extended and unstable banking system. In the realm of governance, Japan was faced with the question of how it should respond to the great expansion of state activity that the war had precipitated in Europe in regard to both economy and society. Then there was the challenge in the world of ideas where the Bolshevik Revolution and the Allied victory brought it with cries for democracy and greater labour rights at home (even to the extent of calls for female suffrage) and internationalism abroad. In order to look at some of these issues, nine scholars who are experts on Japanese and Asian history have come together as a working group to look at various aspects of the Japanese experience during and after the First World War. The topics covered are original and include innovative methodological approaches. In overall terms, the working group members have focused their attention on the way in which Japan and the Great Powers responded to the extension of hostilities to East Asia, as well as how the war influenced the evolution of social and economic policy within Japan and its empire. Il progetto di ricerca - del quale questo volume è il primo risultato - è stato concepito e coordinato da O. Frattolillo e ha coinvolto studiosi che sono comunemente ritenuti sulla scena accademica internazionale tra i massimi esperti sul tema (Frederic Dickinson, Kevin Doak, Naraoka Sochi, Ono Keishi, Xu Guoqi, Antony Best et al.)