A Critique of Human Rights Protection for Suspects in the Chinese Criminal Justice System: An Examination of the Extent to which There Is and Could in Future Be Compatibility between Chinese Law and Practice and International Human Rights Norms

This paper presents a critical analysis of the current human rights protection for suspects in the criminal justice system of China, evaluating them from the view of international human rights law and practice, in particular, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(ICCPR) and European Convention of Human Rights(ECHR). The theme that runs through the paper is whether the right to fair trial is practically and adequately available to the suspect in China according to the established international standards. The hypothesis is that by addressing the distance between the Chinese system and international standards on the issue of human rights protection for suspects in the pre-trail criminal procedure, and the causes for this distance, the direction of further reform for criminal justice system will become clearer and more practical. The ultimate purpose of this paper is to consider how to handle the relationship between crime control and human rights protection, when the crime rates in China have generally been rising along with the high-speed economic development in recent years. Before outlining the performance of China, this paper considers the current understanding and interpretation of the relevant standards in ICCPR and ECHR. Extensive consideration is then given to weigh criminal procedure law and its practice in China against those international standards in a new detailed part. Taking into account the highly influential effects of China’s traditional legal culture and special social situation, the paper is devoted to investigate four most pressing issues regarding the continuing Chinese criminal justice reform on the pre-trial procedure in different chapters: guiding ideologies and basic principles, the pre-trial compulsory measures system, prevention of the use of illegal evidence obtained through torture and the right to legal counsel before trial. This comprehensive examination shows the significant progress regarding fair trial rights for suspects China has made in meeting international standards set in ICCPR, in particular the Criminal Procedure Law of 1996. The barriers and challenges that impair the criminal procedural rights for suspects and impede the proper enforcement of the existing criminal justice system to come in line with international standards are also highlighted with possible suggestions of improvements. These problems root in current social, cultural and institutional conditions under which the criminal justice system operates, including difficulties in changing the traditional ideology, the deficiencies and failure with the law itself for certain issues, the incorrect and ineffective enforcement of the law, and a severe shortage of professionally qualified judges, prosecutors, police and lawyers. As a result, the practices in human rights violation against suspects that subsequent reforms have been trying to eradicate still remain in the Chinese criminal justice system. The thesis concludes with the allegation that the introduction of some key rights into Chinese criminal justice system to provide greater protection to its suspects for preventing possible stage power abuse is a step in the right direction, but further procedural safeguards are necessary to ensure an effective rebalance of China’s criminal justice system. Apart from improving its legal system to fully comply with international human rights standard, the reform must fit within the Chinese culture and way of life. Therefore, the government must consider further actions to address and develop the cultural and social conditions of the Chinese criminal justice system

Cognitive Factors Contributing to Chinese EFL Learners’ L2 Writing Performance in Timed Essay Writing

This study investigated cognitive factors that might influence Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative essay writing in English. The factors that were explored included English (L2) language proficiency, Chinese (L1) writing ability, genre knowledge, use of writing strategies, and working memory capacity in L1 and L2. Data were collected from 136 university students who received a battery of tests in two sessions. The tests consisted of timed essay writing tasks in L1 and L2, post-writing questionnaires for genre knowledge and use of strategies in the writing process, a timed grammaticality judgment task for L2 grammar knowledge, a receptive vocabulary test and a controlled-production vocabulary test for L2 vocabulary knowledge, and working memory span tasks in L1 and L2. Quantitative analyses using correlations, paired-samples t-test, analysis of variance and multiple regression revealed that L2 language proficiency is the most important predictor of L2 writing, followed by genre knowledge and L2 writing strategies. L1 writing ability and working memory capacity have slight impact as explanatory variables for L2 writing performance in the timed essay writing task

Building Web Based Collaboration Systems in Supply Chain Management: A Conceptual Framework

Good collaboration plays an important role in effective supply chain management. The main obstacle to collaboration within a supply chain is a conflict between each enterprise’s local optimization and the chain’s global optimization. We show that in addition to relationships, trust, contract and other social factors, sharing and reallocation of payoff are critical to align the objective of each member enterprise from local optimization to global optimization. We propose collaboration systems, which take advantage of information technology in the digital economy, to set up payoff reallocation and information sharing mechanism. These systems can be used to foster solid collaboration relationships within one supply chain. We identify the system requirements and outline the Web-based systems schema. The collaboration systems have four indivisible components: measuring performance; monitoring performance and payoff re-allocation; global optimization algorithm, and reconfiguration: planning, forecasting and recommendation. The challenges, impediments and enablers to implement the proposed collaboration systems are also discussed in the paper

A Study of Product Sampling and Review of Online Digital Music

Many music retailers use online product sampling and online customer reviews to help potential buyers evaluate music on the Internet. In this study, we investigate the profiles of music consumers in the presence of the Internet, and explore how consumers use online sampling and/or online review for music evaluation. Some interesting insights into digital music evaluation are discovered and discussed in this on-going study

Virus Attack Uncertainty, Moral Hazard and Proposed Solution in Antivirus Software Market

This paper investigates the antivirus market from the perspective of social welfare and market efficiency. It analyzes the uncertainty characteristic of virus attacks and the moral hazard problem from the antivirus software vendor. It also proposes one potential solution, that is, antivirus contracting between IT users and the antivirus software vendor, to reduces the transaction cost and alleviate the moral hazard problem in the antivirus market

Peer-and-Self Assessment to Reveal the Ranking of Each Individual\u27s Contribution to a Group Project

Teamwork and virtual teamwork are becoming more and more important in IS professions. Group project assignments play an important role to train students\u27 skills in teamwork in IS education. To reduce the free-rider problem and treat each group member fairly, the instructor needs to distinguish each individual\u27s contribution to a group project. In this paper, we analyze one commonly used peer-and-self assessment application and point out its critical drawback: the deduced ranking might be wrong as some members do not tell the truth. Alternatively, we propose an effective mechanism to modify the peer-and-self assessment. Under the revised peer-and-self assessment, truth-telling is each individual\u27s dominant strategy and the instructor can effectively distinguish each member\u27s contribution to a group project. A field experiment and the associated survey are used to validate the revised self-and-peer assessment approach. Generally, the revised peer-and-self assessment is acceptable to students and it is a valid, effective, and useful tool to the instructor

An Alternative Strategy for Building Sales of Computers: Generic Advertising

Frequent upgrading and aggressive price-cutting have become standard practice in the computer sector. While necessitated in part by declining production costs and a highly competitive market, these strategies have also served to make computers more affordable, growing the size of the overall market. Recently downturns in the sales of computers motivate us to examine the impact of these strategies on overall sales growth. We find evidence to suggest that excessive upgrading and overly aggressive price-cutting can be detrimental to overall sales growth. We also find that the computer sector exhibits characteristics that suggest that generic advertising would be an effective mechanism to enhance overall sales growth