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The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamic characteristics of mechanical face seals with liquid-lubricated inclined elliptical grooves.

The steady-state and perturbation Reynolds control equations of liquid films were established. The film pressure and the liquid film dynamic coefficients were obtained, impacts of groove structures on the liquid film dynamic characteristic coefficients were analyzed.

The analysis results indicate that the axial dynamic stiffness and damping coefficients of the liquid film seal with inclined elliptical grooves are far greater than those of the angular directions. Furthermore, the dynamic stiffness coefficient of the liquid film with the nonclosed inclined elliptical grooves is higher than those with the closed grooves, whereas the dynamic damping coefficient of the liquid film is lower.

The effects of inclined elliptical groove structures on the dynamic characteristics of the liquid film seal are investigated. The results presented are expected to enrich the theoretical basis of optimizing the dynamic performance of liquid film seals with textures.

This paper assesses to what extent the workplace union power has been built under the Professional Union Leader and Organizer Program (PULOP) in China in the local community-based private workplaces. Data obtained from in-depth interviews with union leaders, rank-and-file members, and data from documentary sources are deployed. Findings show that, for the purpose of stabilizing labor-management relations in these community-based workplaces, the PULOP attempts to reinforce implementation of existing labor law and regulations regarding wages and working conditions by organizing community-based private employers. However, without workers’ support from the bottom up, the power of the newly established workplace union associations are rather precarious. The PULOP union leaders are still distant to the organized workplaces and to the workers at these workplaces; and the organized employers are still reluctant or even hostile towards PULOP activities. The paper, therefore, concludes by drawing out the implications of the finding that, without genuine worker participation in union formation and operation processes, the administrative power held by the union bureaucracies cannot be effectively translated into workplace union power via the PULOP initiative.

Rare earths are essential materials for many high-tech industries critical to both economic development and national defense. China, the world's dominant supplier of rare earths, has recently been imposing stricter controls over its production and export. The purpose of this paper is to examine the domestic roots of the changes in China's rare earth industry production and exports in its three-decade rise to the current global monopoly.

This paper adopts the historical institutionalism approach to analyze the trajectory of industry and trade development. The author analyzes data collected from government whitepapers and reputed scholarly and news sources.

This paper argues that the Chinese rare earth industry has gone through three periods of development, in which the state attempted to control the market and industry through reformulating rules and institutions to achieve state goals. Domestic state institutions, combined with macroeconomic environment and state governance strategy shaped the three-decade experience of rare earth industry and trade development in China.

This paper builds on existing findings about Chinese state regulations to provide a novel analytical framework to analyze the role of the state in industry and trade development in the rare earth industry. The focus on a single strategic industry seldom studied in the current literature also provides ample empirical value to further scholarly understanding about this industry.

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.

This chapter looks into China's experiences with embracing new steering instruments to promote social stability, with particular reference to the protection of households involved in city regeneration projects. During the closing years of the twentieth century, China experienced a fundamental transition, from a planned mode of urban regeneration to a new pattern that emphasised the involvement of the market. Under the planned regime, households affected by regeneration projects were provided with new apartments and temporary housing, all financed by the local government. Economic incentives were rarely employed to encourage households to resettle, as resettlement was seen as a civil obligation. The new approach, featuring marketisation, however, requires the affected households to pay for their new houses using monetary compensation and subsidies from the local governments. The local governments are strongly motivated to save such costs and thus provide limited compensation, and consequently complaints from the affected households have continued to grow (Peerenboom & He, 2009).

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Chinese Central Government’s plan to alleviate brain drain, called the Thousand Talents Plan, has been glocalized by three major local governments: Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong.

The lens of glocalization pays special attention to the impact of local reactions to global forces. Materials from the Recruitment Program of Global Experts for three major cases were examined for glocal characteristics. An analysis of each case was carried out to compare the strategies and implementations to explore the individual glocalizations and larger national similarities.

The findings show that each of the localities has distinct regional variations in their strategies: Shanghai utilized its economic prowess, Tianjin focused on clustering experts, and Guangdong maximized its geographic proximity to Hong Kong. At the same time, all three policies were still rooted in human capital development theory, with a keen emphasis to attracting migrants with greater propensity for staying long term in China.

The study of brain drain is important because it is a problem that plagues communities around the world, especially non-western societies. While China’s tactics to combat brain drain have been examined, the consideration of glocalization in the cases of Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong have not been carried out.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of cultural diplomacy to explore and explain the role and function of the Confucius Institution project and its implications for understanding of China's soft power projection.

This paper first presents the theories of soft power and cultural diplomacy as an analytic framework. It then delineates an interpretative illustration of the CI project as a platform for China's cultural diplomacy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the CI project's implications for understanding of China's soft power projection.

The paper argues that the Confucius Institute project can be understood as a form of cultural diplomacy that is state‐sponsored and university‐piloted, a joint effort to gain China a more sympathetic global reception. As such, the Confucius Institution project involves a complex of soft power techniques. However, it is not entirely representative of soft power capability, because the problems embedded in the project and in the wider society run counter to the Chinese government's efforts to increase the Confucius Institutions’ attractiveness and popularity.

This article sheds light on Chinese universities in the role of “unofficial cultural diplomats.” On this topic, further research may need to explore more fundamental issues that bear far‐reaching significance and impact, i.e. the mechanics of Chinese university involvement in Confucius Institutes. Interesting questions arising from this study may help open up a wider spectrum of research topics for understanding the university‐state relationship, cross‐border higher education, as well as the possibilities and limits of educational globalization. At this stage, this article serves as a start to move scholarship in that direction.

How can governments and survivors prepare for and manage natural disasters? Post-disaster reconstruction researchers advocate that community involvement is needed to help survivors recover effectively. This study aims to propose that cooperative goals between government officials and survivors develop guanxi relationships and constructive controversy wherein survivors voice their opinions to aid disaster recovery.

The authors adopted the critical incident technique (CIT), which has proved especially useful for studying complex issues, as well as site-intensive research for interviews and participant observation. After developing a local reputation and rapport by working in a residential resettlement area for two months, an author used the CIT to ask 118 survivors of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to describe specific incidents when they interacted with government officials about recovery issues and then to rate survey items that measure independent and dependent variables.

Results, including structural equation analyses, support the reasoning that cooperative goals between government and survivors facilitate guanxi and constructive controversy, which in turn produced effective disaster recovery, as indicated by survivors’ social support, satisfaction, reduced stress and beliefs that government officials led effectively.

The data are self-reported and subject to biases and may not be accurate.

In addition to developing theoretical understanding, the results can have important practical implications for strengthening relationships and constructive controversy between government and survivors.

Results suggest that communities have practical ways to prepare for disasters. Structuring cooperative goals among survivors, encouraging guanxi relationships, and training in constructive controversy should promote effective recovery from natural disasters.

The paper develops theory and research on how leaders can promote community involvement for effective disaster management. The paper proposes that high-quality interpersonal relationships, also referred to guanxi, and the open-minded discussion of opposing ideas, labeled constructive controversy, are major components of effective community involvement. The paper adds to the literature by empirically documenting the utility of the Western-developed theory of cooperation and competition and the concept of constructive controversy for understanding the effectiveness of government leadership for disaster recovery in China.