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The aim of this article is two-fold. First, it offers a unique account of San Min, the prototype of the current Chinese educational principle proposed by Yan Fu (1854–1921) that aimed at improving people’s physical, intellectual and moral capacities. This system of educational thinking has received only marginal attention in Anglophone research literature. Second, given the influence of Yan Fu’s interpretation and promulgation of Herbert Spencer’s educational philosophy during that period, it investigates the extent to which San Min is derived from Spencer’s educational thought (the “Spencerian Triad”). This article focusses on how Yan Fu adapted the ideas of San Min from Spencer’s account.

This article considers Yan Fu’s principle of San Min in relation to Spencer’s educational triad through a close reading and comparison of key primary texts (including Yan Fu’s original writing). It explores the similarities and differences between each account of education’s goals and its proposed means of attainment.

Yan Fu’s principle of San Min is shown to have been adapted from the Spencerian Triad. However, using the theory of Social Organism, Yan Fu re-interpreted Spencer’s individual liberty as liberty for the nation. While Spencer’s goal was to empower individuals, Yan Fu aimed to serve collective independence, wealth and power.

This article addresses oversights concerning San Min’s Western origins in the Spencerian Triad and its influence on Chinese education under Yan Fu’s sway. It is significant because San Min is still at the core of the current Chinese educational policy.

The main aim of this paper is to establish a reasonable and scientific evaluation index system to assess the high quality and full employment (HQaFE).

This paper uses a novel Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) multi-criteria framework to evaluate the quality and quantity of employment, wherein the integrated weights of attributes are determined by the combined the Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) and entropy approaches.

Firstly, the gap in the Yangtze River Delta in employment quality is narrowing year by year; secondly, employment skills as well as employment supply and demand are the primary indicators that determine the HQaFE; finally, the evaluation scores are clearly hierarchical, in the order of Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui.

A scientific and reasonable evaluation index system is constructed. A novel CRITIC-entropy-TOPSIS evaluation is proposed to make the results more objective. Some policy recommendations that can promote the achievement of HQaFE are proposed.

The China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, hereafter) has reenergized the Silk Road concept, with most literature focusing on the political and economic effects of the BRI. While certain aspects of the Digital Silk Road (DSR), digital component of BRI, have been researched, much less focus has been placed on the technological development, tech transfer and information diffusion aspects of the BRI. The aim of this study is to investigate the opportunities, issues and critiques that have arisen as a result of the Belt and Road Initiative’s implications on innovation, knowledge transfer and dissemination.

Research in its nature is descriptive. Literature reviews are a significant part of the development of a field. Therefore, secondary sources were considered.

The literature and the study have highlighted several opportunities, problems and criticism that decision-makers and the relevant agencies and institutions should take into account when deciding how to move forward with BRI and its digital component DSR.

This paper contributes to the research literature on BRI and its subset DSR’s impacts on innovation, knowledge transfer and information diffusion. In fact, the DSR’s primary aim is to strengthen international cooperation in the digital economy. Furthermore, digital platforms now play a significant role in global trade, emphasizing the necessity of DSR.

There is consensus among scholars on how political institutional imprinting interprets the unique management and practice phenomenon of Chinese enterprises. However, little scholarly attention has been given to the different political institutional imprints that shape firms’ internationalization. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how communist and market logic political institutional imprintings influence firms’ initial ownership strategies in outward foreign direct investment.

Based on the propensity score matching difference in difference method and a sample of 464 foreign investments from 2009 to 2020 for 310 Chinese private firms.

The results show that private firms with market logic political institutional imprintings tend to adopt higher ownership and vice versa. As institutional differences increase, private firms with market logic imprintings are more risk-taking and adopt higher ownership, whereas private firms with communist imprintings are more conservative and choose lower ownership. When diplomatic relations are friendlier, private firms with market logic imprintings prefer higher ownership to grasp business opportunities and vice versa.

This study not only identifies the net effect of political institutional imprinting on private firms’ initial ownership strategy but also investigates the different moderating effects of current institutional forces to respond to the call for research on bringing history back into international business research and the fit between imprinting and the environment.

This paper aims to offer insight into how strategies within the accounting profession, which has been becoming more global, might be changed by the recent outbreak of the Second Cold War between the West and the Rest of the World.

We explore the strategies of those who called themselves “Confucian accountants” in China, a country which has recently discouraged its state-owned enterprises from using the services of the Big 4. We do this by employing qualitative research methods, including reflexive photo interviews, in which Big-4 accountants, recognised as the most Westernised accounting actors in China, and Confucian accountants are asked to take and explain photographs representing their professional lives. Bourdieu’s notions of “economy of practices” and “vision-of-division strategy” are drawn upon to understand who the Confucian accountants are and what they do strategically in their pursuit of a higher revenue stream and improved social standing in the Chinese social space.

The homegrown Confucian accountants share cultural-cognitive characteristics with neighbouring social actors, such as their clients and government officials, who have been inculcated with Confucianism and the state’s cultural confidence policy in pursuit of a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics”. Those accountants try to enhance their social standing and revenue stream by strategically demonstrating their difference from Big-4 accountants. For this purpose, they wear Confucian clothes, have Confucian props in their office, employ Confucian phrases in their everyday conversations, use Confucian business cards and construct and maintain guanxi with government officials and clients.

This paper is the first attempt to explore Confucian accountants’ strategies for increasing their revenue and social standing at the start of the Second Cold War.

Previous studies have reached inconsistent conclusions on foreign direct investment (FDI) technology spillovers and corporate innovation. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the technological spillover effects of FDI from the microperspective of firm linkages induced by geographic distance. Further analysis is conducted on the impact and mechanism of this spillover on the innovation quality of Chinese enterprises. The conclusions drawn from this paper can guide Chinese enterprises' foreign capital utilization and innovation strategy choices.

Using the data of China's A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019, this paper explores the role of FDI technology spillover in enterprise innovation quality through a two-way fixed-effect model. The robustness of the results is proven by substituting variables, adding industry fixed effects and excluding high-profit groups, and further using the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method to alleviate the empirical endogeneity problem.

These findings indicate that FDI technology spillover based on geographic proximity has a positive impact on the innovation quality of Chinese enterprises. However, there are different impacts for different types of enterprises. FDI technology spillover has a positive impact on the innovation quality of non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), while it has no effect on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and large enterprises. The authors also find that the degree of financing constraints and R&D investment are important transmission mechanisms between FDI technology spillover and enterprise innovation quality.

This study ignores industry characteristics when considering foreign enterprises around Chinese enterprises. In fact, technology spillover effects differ across industries. When the authors matched microdata to regions, only the provincial level was considered. Therefore, there is still room for further research. In future research, the authors should consider industry characteristics and group foreign enterprises and Chinese enterprises in the same industry and in different industries to explore industry differences in technology spillover. In addition, when matching corporate data to regions, the authors can match to the city level and draw city-level conclusions.

This study is different from previous studies that focus on the quantity of enterprise innovation or innovation output. The authors focus on the role of technological spillovers in the quality of Chinese enterprise innovation, enriching research in the field of enterprise innovation quality. In addition, the current FDI technology spillover indicators are technically difficult to measure at the micro level. The authors draw inspiration from the theory of the geographical structure of financial supply and combine the creation methods of macro and micro indicators in existing articles in other fields. The authors ingeniously construct a new FDI technical spillover indicator. This indicator combines the commonly used regional FDI technology spillover with the geographic proximity of enterprises at the microlevel by constructing an interaction term between the two. This indicator not only alleviates the endogeneity problem to a certain extent but also has implications for future research in the field of FDI technology spillovers at the micro level.

(1) FDI technology spillovers are an effective way to improve the innovation quality of local enterprises, especially for non-SOEs and SMEs. Therefore, The authors suggest that in the context of dual circulation, the Chinese government should continue to open wider to the outside world and encourage foreign enterprises to invest in China. (2) In future development, managers of SOEs and large enterprises should create an innovation incentive mechanism. Moreover, they should change their vertical management structure and make full use of their policy advantages and budget advantages to increase innovation activities. In the process of acquiring technology spillovers, enterprises need to solve their own financing constraints.

First, this study solves a technical problem. It is technically difficult to measure the current FDI technical spillover indicators at the micro level. This study innovatively constructs a new FDI technology spillover indicator that combines regional FDI technology spillovers with the microperspective of the geographical proximity of enterprises. This approach not only alleviates certain endogeneity problems in the empirical evidence but also enriches relevant research in the field of technology spillover. In addition, this study focuses on the impact and mechanism of this spillover, which addresses the current research gap among previous studies that mainly focus on innovation quantity and ignore innovation quality.

This paper aims to unfold the intricate relations between private law design, the structure of organizations for collective action and cultural values and orientations that practically guide interpersonal interactions in Chinese society.

Drawing upon the Hofstede Insights National Culture survey (The Culture Compass) data and some judicial rulings in China, this paper examines the legislative development and judicial approach to settle condominium disputes to explain and address the cultural orientation for future legal reform. This paper examines how the law reflects and responds to the cultural and social variations/interactions among the stakeholders, namely, local government, developers, homeowner associations, condo owners and property management agents.

Culture plays a significant role in shaping how condominiums are governed in China. This analysis can highlight the role of cultural factors that influence the success or failure of condominium governance and suggest ways in which governance structures can be adapted to reflect the legal culture of the community better. The emphasis on social harmony, respect for authority, relationships and networks and knowledge and expertise all contribute to a unique approach to condominium governance that reflects the values and priorities of Chinese society.

While much has been written on the importance of property rights to economic development, relatively little seems to be understood about processes of change in complex property systems, particularly in China, a socialist-transforming country. Specifically, there is a lack of reliable knowledge about the intricate relations between the structure of organizations for collective action and cultural orientations that practically guide interpersonal interactions in Chinese society. The question at the heart of this research relates to the condominium rules most suitable for an emerging Chinese private property market.

This chapter traces the origin of racism and reviews the historical and contemporary debates around race and racialisation in western thought. There are persistent disagreements surrounding the origin and nature of racism. Because of the evolution of racist ideas, behaviours and institutional practices and policies, there are various views about the meaning and analytical application of racism. This chapter explores how ideas of race – understood as innate and immutable human differences that can be classified and ranked hierarchically based on race – has emerged in western history and evolved over time. It examines how this has influenced social and political practices and associated policies across the evolution of modernity. The chapter specifically discusses the Atlantic slave trade and how it shaped the historical development of race and racism within the context of colonialism. It concludes with a discussion and critical review of some of the racist systems and policies which have been enforced across different multiracial countries.

This study investigates the origins and elaboration of the managerial “unitary” frame of reference associated with Alan Fox, focusing on unionised firms: the industrial relations context, intellectual roots, elaboration, adaptation by other writers, and international applicability.

Tracing the above requirements through contemporaneous sources.

Fox’s designation of the unitary frame needs to be understood in its 1960s’ context, particularly the promotion of “productivity bargaining”, and its furthering through management training and education. Fox’s specific contribution is identified. Subsequent UK writers have underplayed the importance of the legal dimension of managerial authority, especially relevant in the US context, while other extra-economic factors bolster the managerial unitary frame in authoritarian societies such as China.

The use of Fox's neglected 1960s’ writings; tracking how Fox developed the unitary frame concept and how it was funnelled into the narrow parameters of non-unionism by subsequent writers; identifying its applicability beyond the UK (with the USA as a historical example and China as a contemporary one).