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Focuses on business investments by Singaporean Chinese in Mainland China vis‐à‐vis the impact of the knowledge of the Chinese language, culture etc. on business success. The literature has shown four critical factors namely culture, guanxi, negotiation and communication as important facilitators for business investments in China. Chinese language, however, further moderates their influence on business investments. To explore the association between the Chinese language and the four critical factors, a sample t‐test was conducted. Additionally, the profile of Singaporean business investors in Mainland China was surveyed. The research provices insights for Singaporean and global business investors who are looking at Mainland China as a potential business opportunity.

This paper aims to explore the changing pedagogic discourses in China today, using the current wave of English curriculum innovation as a focused case. Given the cross-cultural nature of foreign language education, the change in the English as a foreign language curriculum in China has served as a fertile ground for different pedagogical ideas to emerge and to cross. The new English curriculum in China has endorsed a more communicative and humanistic view of language teaching, encouraging teachers to adopt a task-based approach to organize their classroom teaching. The new English curriculum has aroused a heated debate among Chinese scholars on the suitability of such a Western curriculum idea in the Chinese educational context on the basis of its relation to the Confucian tradition of education, the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context of China and the danger of post-colonialist imposition.

A critique is conducted on the three areas of controversies by situating the debate in the larger context of the cross-cultural understanding of the Chinese pedagogic discourse in the process of globalization and internationalization.

It is important for China to resist the homogenizing effect of globalization and internationalization in the area of curriculum development; however, being defensive and protective of one’s own and dismissive of others has not been and should not be the attitude of Chinese curriculum reform. The evolution of Chinese pedagogy is not only a result of Western influence but also a result of social change in the process of industrialization (Cheng, 2011). Global trends and national traditions should not be taken as extremes in an incompatible and irreconcilable dichotomy.

The three areas of debates on the new English curriculum can serve as a good lens into the evolving curriculum discourses in China. They reflect the cultural–historical, contextual and critical considerations among Chinese educational scholars in the national curriculum innovation efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of individual factors on the transfer of human resource management (HRM) knowledge in Chinese subsidiaries of multinational corporations, and to explore the relationships between individual factors and introduce the concept of joint effect‐integrated capability.

Based on the notion that certain factors can affect knowledge transfer (KT), this paper examines the effect of four factors, i.e. cultural difference and adaptability, language and communication, working relationship, and motivation and willingness, on the transfer of HRM knowledge. The paper is based on an empirical study of 22 individual HR professionals from 21 Chinese subsidiaries. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews conducted between January and April 2004 and an exploratory data analysis was carried out with the assistance of Nvivo software.

The study has found that Chinese HR managers have the ability of all four factors to facilitate the transfer of HRM knowledge. The findings further suggest that integrated capability‐joint effect could be generated from the four factors and affect the transfer process jointly. When the capability is positive, it facilitates the transfer. Conversely, when the capability is negative, it impedes the transfer.

The findings not only extend the understanding of the effect of single factor on KT, but also the interrelationship between individual factors, their joint effect‐integrated capability and the transfer process.

Existing research has concentrated on studying the effect of single factor on KT, knowledge management by and large. There is little research investigating the correlations between individual factors. This paper addresses this gap and introduces the concept of joint effect, integrated capability.

With the continuous development of intelligent technologies, knowledge graph, the backbone of artificial intelligence, has attracted much attention from both academic and industrial communities due to its powerful capability of knowledge representation and reasoning. Besides, knowledge graph has been widely applied in different kinds of applications, such as semantic search, question answering, knowledge management, and so on. In recent years, knowledge graph techniques in China are also developing rapidly and different Chinese knowledge graphs have been built to support various applications. Under the background of “One Belt One Road (OBOR)” initiative, cooperating with the countries along OBOR on studying knowledge graph techniques and applications will greatly promote the development of artificial intelligence. At the same time, the accumulated experience of China on developing knowledge graph is also a good reference. Thus, in this chapter, the authors mainly introduce the development of Chinese knowledge graphs and their applications. The authors first describe the background of OBOR, and then introduce the concept of knowledge graph and three typical Chinese knowledge graphs, including Zhishi.me, CN-DBpedia, and XLORE. Finally, the authors demonstrate several applications of Chinese knowledge graphs.

Textbook content and curricula are artifacts that can serve as indicators of social contexts and societal values. In this chapter, we use qualitative and quantitative content analysis to examine the content of Chinese language arts textbooks for basic education during a period of curriculum reform in China at the start of the 21st century. Given the important role of the Chinese language arts in the socialization of students into official societal values, this study seeks to provide insight into the nature of the official world view in China and addresses the societal ambivalence between global vs. national/local and traditional knowledge vs. Western/contemporary knowledge. We find that there is a slight increase in themes that reflect contemporary global concerns such as creativity and social justice. We also find that, in the face of the globalizing cultural influences of the new millennium, there is a sustained emphasis on the role of the Chinese language curriculum in the transmission of traditional Chinese cultural values and on the cultivation in Chinese students of an appreciation of their rich cultural traditions.

This paper seeks to provide an understanding of the relationship between the management control policy of emerging economy (EE) firms and the knowledge transfer with the acquired firm, as well as the mechanism by which specific management control policy facilitates knowledge transfer with the acquired firms.

Employing an organizational learning theory, this paper examines the knowledge transfer from acquired firms to acquiring EE firms through multiple-case study of three EE firms.

Based on organizational learning theory and the results of case studies, this paper finds that the cooperation and willingness of employees in the acquired firm and language barriers are the main factors influencing the relationship between management control policy and the parent company’s knowledge transfer process.

This study sheds light on cross-border knowledge transfer to EE firms from an organizational learning perspective and broadens the understanding of post-acquisition knowledge transfer in an emerging market context.

This study suggests that the low-level management control facilitates knowledge transfer from acquired firms. This is especially true when the parent company from the EE has limited learning experience and faces substantial language barriers between itself and its acquired firm.

This paper extends existing research by exploring how low-level control of acquired firms in developed markets facilitates knowledge transfer of EE firms after cross-border acquisition. Future research can extend this line of research by examining the knowledge transfer mechanism of EE firms through qualitative and quantitative methods.

Recognising interest in the nascent “rise of China”, the purpose of this paper is to engage with the normative social science approach to comparative management, positing that it is inadequate for an enlightened view of the Chinese subject.

This paper presents a critical appraisal of extant literature, specifically Redding's The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism, by drawing resources from Fabian's epistemological critique of anthropology and Levinas' ethics to replace ontology as first philosophy, and by reference to historical studies on China's economic culture and its language.

Attention is drawn to how Redding's research subject is made an object of knowledge. In the objectification process, the subject's continuity is interrupted, its voice deprived, and its capacity for dialogue denied. This is evident in Redding's framework for analysis. Indeed, his Weberian social science template manifests a certain “imperialism of the same” and is symptomatic of much in comparative management regarding non‐western subjects. After critique, this essay then explores a supplement to Redding.

The paper proposes three principles for finding one's way out of objectification: ethics before “knowledge”, justice before “power”, and dialogue before “vision”.

The paper contributes to discourse on how comparative management must transcend its imperial social science legacy before it can find a just footing, and be born again.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how Chinese library and information science (LIS) journal articles cite works from outside the discipline (WOD) to identify the impact of knowledge import from outside the discipline on LIS development.

This paper explores the Chinese LIS’ preferences in citing WOD by employing bibliometrics and machine learning techniques.

Chinese LIS citations to WOD account for 29.69 percent of all citations, and they rise over time. Computer science, education and communication are the most frequently cited disciplines. Under the categorization of Biglan model, Chinese LIS prefers to cite WOD from soft science, applied science or nonlife science. In terms of community affiliation, the cited authors are mostly from the academic community, but rarely from the practice community. Mass media has always been a citation source that is hard to ignore. There is a strong interest of Chinese LIS in citing emerging topics.

This paper can be implemented in the reformulation of Chinese LIS knowledge system, the promotion of interdisciplinary collaboration, the development of LIS library collection and faculty advancement. It may also be used as a reference to develop strategies for the global LIS.

This paper fills the research gap in analyzing citations to WOD from Chinese LIS articles and their impacts on LIS, and recommends that Chinese LIS should emphasize on knowledge both on technology and people as well as knowledge from the practice community, cooperate with partners from other fields, thus to produce knowledge meeting the demands from library and information practice as well as users.

To promote more open discussion on translating data, this paper aims to provide a critical and reflexive evaluation of the problems and issues that the author experienced with regard to qualitative data translation.

Drawing on personal experiences of translating Chinese women's narratives into English, the author demonstrates that qualitative data translation may have linguistic, cultural and methodological problems.

Researchers and translators should recognize the linguistic and cultural differences that data translation must negotiate. It is argued here that researchers and translators should preserve and highlight cultural differences rather than resembling the dominant values of the target culture by translation. A translator is an integral part of the knowledge producing system. The roles of the translator as both an inter‐cultural communicator and a data interpreter must be acknowledged in the research process.

This paper challenges common assumptions that data translation is merely a technical problem, and that a translator could “objectively and faithfully” transfer meanings of research data from source language to target language.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how translation activities influence knowledge transfer across cultures in Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs). Although translation is recognized as a critical instrument for MNEs to enhance cross-national knowledge flow, scholars have not put much emphasis on the importance of translation in international business research.

This paper proposes a novel hierarchical framework to delineate the five major boundary-spanning functions regarding translation for knowledge transfer in China (i.e. exchanging, linking, manipulating, facilitating and intervening). Due to the paucity of relevant literature, the authors used exploratory case studies investigating two large Chinese MNEs to illustrate how individuals as boundary spanners handle the translation requirements associated with cross-cultural knowledge transmission within a MNE’s business network. The data coding approach was used to examine the assumed model.

The findings demonstrate that translators indeed play a vital role in cross-border knowledge exchanging, linking people with crucial knowledge, manipulating the flow of knowledge for protecting confidentiality, facilitating the cross-cultural interaction of various knowledge sources and intervening to prevent the occurrence of misunderstanding in MNE contexts. The authors also reveal how translators overcome the three constraints of language interpretation concerning knowledge transfer (i.e. lack of equivalence, cultural interference and ambiguity). The proposed research framework was fully supported.

The results provide insightful implications for MNEs to treat translation as a significant “re-codification” rather than a mundane task. Knowledge transfer within MNEs involves not only knowledge regarding products, technology and operations but also involves “whole organizations” including business models, organizational visions, missions and strategies.

The main value of this paper is to propose a novel model regarding the role of translation in cross-cultural knowledge transfer in China. Language is a container of contexts; the translation procedure in MNEs is actually dynamic and contingent in nature and can be seen as an act of knowledge creation per se.