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This study investigated a new attributional phenomenon in a brand scandal setting in which consumers tend to blame the top management of a brand, even though it was the frontline parties that caused the scandal. The authors termed this phenomenon upward blame attribution (UBA), shedding light on whether consumers in a host country indicate a higher UBA for a multinational (vs domestic) brand scandal, which in turn reinforces their revenge and impairs their reconciliation reactions, and whether these effects are contingent on consumer animosity.

Two experimental studies were conducted with real and fictitious brand/product and country stimuli with 1,399 Chinese participants.

Both studies verified UBA and found that Chinese consumers' UBA is higher for multinational (vs domestic) brand scandals, which drives their stronger desire for revenge and weaker desire for reconciliation. Moreover, consumers with high (vs low) animosity toward a multinational brand's home country reported a higher UBA for the multinational (vs domestic) brand scandal, which in turn reinforces their desire for revenge and impairs their desire for reconciliation.

The study provides new insights into host-country consumers' more severe UBA and responses toward multinational versus domestic brand scandals and the amplifying role of consumer animosity in these processes. It also has implications for mitigating host-country consumers' UBA and negative responses to multinational brand scandals.

This study contributes to the blame attribution literature by verifying consumers' UBA and the country-of-origin (COO) literature by revealing host-country consumers' higher UBA, stronger revenge desire and weaker reconcile desire toward multinational (vs domestic) brand scandals. It extends the knowledge regarding consumers' blame attributions toward the top management of a multinational (vs domestic) brand in scandals and the impact of such attributions.

China’s swift economic rise, as symbolized by the first Chinese Olympics and by surpassing Japan to become the world’s second largest economy despite the recent global financial meltdown, has been accompanied by a transformation of Chinese foreign policy behavior. After spending the last decade emphasizing China’s “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development,” Beijing has begun to expound its policy preferences and territorial claims more forthrightly, even assertively. The purpose of this chapter will be to consider the origins, consequences, and likely future of the new Chinese foreign policy in the wake of the leadership transition at the 18th Party Congress in 2012 and the 12th National People’s Congress in 2013.

Using the methodologies of text mining, this paper examines the implications of US and Chinese policies on bilateral trade. Official speeches by political leaders of the U.S. and China on the issues of trade were collected and analytically examined for US-China gaps in major foreign policies, such as bilateral trade and the Belt and Road Initiative. In this paper, a term frequency-inverse document frequency word cloud, a network similarities index, machine learning-processed latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), and structural equivalence are applied to examine the meanings of the speeches. The main arguments in this paper are as follows. First, the document similarity between the speeches of Chinese and US leaders appears to be completely different. Also, while the documents from Chinese leaders are considerably similar, the documents from US leaders differ by far. Secondly, LDA topic analysis indicates that China concentrates more on international and collaborative relationships, while the U.S. has more focus on domestic and economic interests. Third, from a word hierarchy analysis, the basic words used by American and Chinese leaders are also completely different. Agriculture, farmers, automobiles, and negotiations are the basic words for American leaders, but for Chinese leaders, the basic words are planning, markets, and education.

This study examines a new type of corruption that has not previously been studied but that significantly affects the world. Traditionally, corruption has referred to individuals or organizations that bribe state officials. The author examines a phenomenon in which the briber is actually the government of a country that bribes the rest of the world in order to gain influence and propose a framework to explain it.

A multi-case qualitative method is used to compile and analyze evidences and develop my arguments. Specifically, the author compiles information on and analyzes the Confucius Institutes, the training of future foreign leaders, influencing the influencers, the Thousand Talents Plan, the Belt and Road Initiative and foreign aid.

The findings reveal the existence of state-sponsored bribery of the world.

State-sponsored bribery is a threat to the world. Recognizing it is the first step to curb it. Reducing the bribery by China's state will benefit the world and China.

State-sponsored bribery is originally defined and documented. A framework about the motivations and capabilities of state-sponsored bribery is proposed, the effects of and responses to such a bribery are reviewed, and policies to curb it are suggested.

The aim of this paper is reviewing the discipline development course of the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics and recognising the changes of its development and its historic mission in the new stage will be beneficial to the construction of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics from the perspective of doctrinal history.

In this paper from the aspect of discipline formation and development, the history of China’s socialist political economy has experienced two stages: emergence and formation (the first stage) and steady development (the second stage). It has explored new research fields and improved the quality of research levels. However, the role of studying the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics has not been fully played regarding satisfying the needs of constructing socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics.

In this study when the construction of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics entered a new era, the study of the history of socialist political economy also entered a new stage, showing new features in terms of research objectives, principles, scale and methods.

Therefore, the research on the history of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics should be highly emphasised, and the focus on serving the construction of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics should be its historic mission and core task. Also, researchers should pay attention to changing ideas, laying a good foundation, highlighting key points, building platforms and broadening horizons.