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Academic contention occurs when research evidence is amenable to more than one interpretation. China has a long tradition of Shang Que (商榷), in which authors argue for their preferred interpretation. The modern form of this tradition is the Shang Que article, which often takes the form of research papers in Chinese-language journals and which tends to be question-oriented. Shang Que articles usually take the views of a particular author or article as the focus of independent and complete criticism by another, independent, academic. This paper explains the role of Shang Que articles in Chinese scholarship and their influence on international academia.

A bibliometric analysis was used to explore the characteristics and evolution of Chinese Shang Que articles using 30,577 articles published between 1979 and 2018. Microsoft Excel and Gephi were used for data analysis and visualization.

Findings suggest a decline in the number of Shang Que articles and an increase in the number of co-authors. Shang Que articles remained particularly prominent in Philosophy and Humanities and Social Sciences, where they focused on local issues such as classical Chinese, the Sinicization of Marxism and Chinese literature. This suggests that the number of Shang Que articles is related to the degree of internationalization of a research field.

Shang Que articles, which have been influenced by academic paradigms in English, are a fusion of China's Shang Que tradition and of the modern academic system. Through considering Shang Que articles, this paper explores the benefits of local academic traditions in non-English-speaking cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the alternative accounts produced by Green Earth Volunteers (GEV), a Chinese environmental non-governmental organisation, over a 10-year period in the context of their campaign to create visibilities about hydroelectric dam projects along the Chang Jiang.

Drawing on conceptions of the human–nature relationship, including those evident in ancient Chinese philosophy and mythology, and the Chinese way of viewing and resolving conflict, this paper offers an interpretive analysis of the alternative accounts of GEV in terms of their form and content.

In terms of their content, the alternative accounts reflect elements of interrelated thinking, being underpinned by a recognition of the relationship between humans and nature, which is evident in Confucianism, Taoism and ancient Chinese mythology. The strategies adopted by GEV are a non-confrontational but feasible way to promote their ecological beliefs in the Chinese context.

The study suggests that social and environmental accounting (SEA) in developing countries is steeped in local cultural and philosophical traditions that need to be considered and incorporated into the design of alternative accounts.

The study contributes to the very limited literature that offers qualitative analyses of SEA in developing countries.

Restaurants’ outdoor signage plays an irreplaceable role in attracting potential diners, as it conveys important functional and symbolic meanings of the businesses. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of typographic design elements of outdoor signage on consumers’ perceptions of authenticity. This study also tests the linkage between authenticity and willingness to dine, as well as the moderating effect of frequency of dining in ethnic restaurants on the relationship.

Using a 2 (simplified vs traditional Chinese characters) × 2 (calligraphy vs computer font) × 2 (vertical vs horizontal text flow) between-subject design, the authors did two experiments with 786 Chinese diners. Restaurant authenticity and willingness to dine are dependent variables, and openness to ethnic cuisine is the control variable.

Display characters and text flow significantly affect restaurant authenticity. Furthermore, the results of this study demonstrate that display characters interact with typeface to influence restaurant authenticity. Consumers’ perceived authenticity significantly increases their willingness to dine. The frequency of dining in ethnic restaurants moderates the relationship between restaurant authenticity and willingness to dine.

Ethnic restaurateurs should pay attention to the outdoor signage design, as it affects potential consumers’ authenticity perceptions. Specifically, in Mainland China, traditional Chinese characters and vertical text direction increase potential consumers’ authenticity perceptions.

This study extends the semiotic theory and applies the cue–judgment–behavior model in the hospitality literature. This study also provides new understanding of authenticity by identifying the influence of typographic design on authenticity, which confirms the semiotic theory that certain semiotic cues affect consumers’ judgments.

The purpose of this study is to identify the consumption intention of Baba Nyonya Peranakan ethnic food among the youth generation by examining the effect of media influence and curiosity.

A causal study through the quantitative method is applied. This study focused on the youth generation, and a total of 219 valid responses were used for hypothesis testing using Statistical Package for Social Sciences and SmartPLS software. Purposive sampling, under non-probability sampling, was used. The data were collected through an online survey. The survey link was disseminated mainly on social media groups.

All of the hypotheses were found to be statistically significant. Media influence was found to directly and indirectly influence the consumption intention of Baba Nyonya ethnic food through attitude and curiosity. The involved stakeholders could also be more alert and improve the strategic planning based on the research finding that can stimulate more interest among consumers, benefiting the national gastronomy heritage tourism development.

The integration of biculturalism is rooted in knowledge about food, media coverage about food and food for social events that influence the formation of national food identity. Baba Nyonya food brings a unique identity with mixed heritage and culture, combined ingredients and recipes between two majority races of Malay and Chinese. However, exposure to ethnic food is lacking and causes the youth generation to unaware and not interested to try ethnic food. This study initiates to examine the effect of media influence and curiosity as food promotion via social media potentially to influence and lead to increased consumption of ethnic food.

This paper focuses on governance in higher education in China. It sees that governance as distinctive on the world scale and the potential source of distinctiveness in other domains of higher education. By taking an historical approach, reviewing relevant literature and drawing on empirical research on governance at one leading research university, the paper discusses system organisation, government–university relations and the role of the Communist Party (CCP), centralisation and devolution, institutional leadership, interior governance, academic freedom and responsibility, and the relevance of collegial norms. It concludes that the party-state and Chinese higher education will need to find a Way in governance that leads into a fuller space for plural knowledges, ideas and approaches. This would advance both indigenous and global knowledge, so helping global society to also find its Way.

Naming practices reflect culture, language and identity considerations. This study aims to explore Chinese American naming choices, revealing nuanced and complex linguistic, cultural and pragmatic considerations for teachers of literacy.

The authors interviewed Chinese parents who are now living with their school-aged children in the USA on the naming choices of their students. By using content analysis, this study found patterns and themes from the interview data.

The findings of this study suggest Chinese parents named their US school-aged children by taking into consideration of both Mandarin and English linguistic features, traditional and pop culture and the transnational identity of their children.

The findings of this study can help teachers and teacher educators better understand the naming traditions of Chinese American families and connect these traditions to literacy instruction in the classroom. This study proposes practical suggestions suitable for both monolingual and multilingual students to explore all children’s names and help build inclusive, culturally sustaining classrooms.

This study focuses on the use of guanxi by African returnees from China in Africa. It explains how returnees understood and leveraged guanxi to collaborate with Chinese partners.

This study uses semi-structured interviews to document how guanxi is increasingly extending beyond Chinese borders. It focuses on Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania and analyzes the returnees' mobilization of guanxi in Sino–African business contexts.

African returnees play an increasingly important role in guanxi internationalization in Africa. Returnees' understanding of guanxi is shaped by their African traditions and their Chinese experiences, creating their new cultural capital and a dynamic Sino–African business mindset.

This paper reveals an emerging shift in the business mindset among African returnees once initiated in guanxi. In addition, guanxi is increasingly practiced by African organizations.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between ethical self-fashioning and citizenship practices in the ongoing revival of “Chinese Traditional Culture” pursued in tandem by the party-state and by private actors in present-day China.

Adopting an anthropological approach, the author draws from three sets of resources: (1) research literature on China’s political history and key texts of early Chinese thought, (2) contemporary state discourses on citizen formation, and (3) participant observation notes and interviews with organizers and followers of the Wu-Wei School (a pseudonym). The author conducts a textual analysis of primary and secondary literature and a critical discourse analysis of the ethnographic data and examines emerging themes.

Firstly, the author identifies a crucial dimension in the historical and cultural roots of Chinese citizenship practices: an enduring conception that binds individual ethical self-improvement with socio-political flourishing. Secondly, examining contemporary state discourses on “citizen quality” and “reviving China’s outstanding traditional culture”, the author showcases how party-state authorities call on individuals to self-reform for national rejuvenation. Thirdly, the author investigates how members of the Wu-Wei School construe their individual pursuits of ethical self-improvement as significant for societal progress.

Based on these findings, the author demonstrates the ways in which autochthonous conceptions of Chinese citizenship give a central place to private acts of self-fashioning. The author argues that the entanglement between individual ethics and citizenship practices constitutes a crucial but largely understudied dimension of Chinese citizenship.

The goal is to explore the role of international education in a developing country's nation building in a mostly indigenous process.

This study reviews China's history of international education set in the larger context of different nation building tasks in the past two centuries.

The unique case of China with dramatic ups and downs in national fortunes in the past two hundred years serves to show that an open attitude to and an active engagement in international education are contributing factors for national prosperity. The case of China also serves to show that a self-determined agenda is of paramount importance in international education as a tool for nation building.

Few studies so far have paid attention to the specific relationship between the internationalization of higher education and nation building, so the topic of the paper is an important one and a necessary addition to the existing literature. What has been the role of international education in China's national transformation? What contributions has international education made to China's achievement of nation building goals at different stages of this transformation process? What implications can other developing nations draw from China's case with regard to the role of international education in nation building? These are the questions the researchers hope to answer in this study.

The research in this paper aims to investigate the development of Library and Information Science in Chinese universities. Specifically, it focuses on understanding the spatial and temporal aspects of subject knowledge output and providing a more comprehensive explanation of the imbalance in subject research.

This study applies the bibliometric method to analyze 131,112 papers published by 51 universities in mainland China from 1977 to 2021, as recorded in the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI). The study classifies the evolution trends of the discipline and quantifies the published article data of the universities using the index of published articles. Additionally, it examines the development status, structural situation, influencing factors and prospects of universities in different categories and regions.

The field of Library and Information Science is gaining momentum in Chinese universities, but there are significant differences in its development. While the relative gap among universities in a regional context is diminishing, the absolute gap in the category perspective is increasing. The development of Library and Information Science is influenced by various factors, including the academic environment, geographical position, scientific research projects and academic traditions. The uneven development of the discipline is maintained in the short term.

This paper proposes a new quantitative index of discipline development, the university publication index. This index allows for an examination of the temporal and spatial trends of discipline development using domestic universities as the subject of research. The paper presents an overview of discipline development through four aspects: academic participation practice, discipline governance mechanisms, education and teaching systems and discourse construction within the discipline. The theoretical support provided by this study can help facilitate innovative development in the discipline.