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The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of Zhuang shamanic narrative songs at three festivals to explore how and why a narrative song genre that originated with Zhuang shamans is separated from shamanic ritual contexts and re-contextualized at festivals under the cultural policies instigated by the People’s Republic of China in the post-socialist era.

The research is based on a review of publications on Zhuang performance art and fieldwork data collected in southwestern Guangxi, China.

The de-construction of Zhuang shamanic narrative song melodies dates back to the late nineteenth century, when southwestern Guangxi literati used the melodies to compose popular songs. By the 1950s, the religious elements of these narrative songs had already been obfuscated, leading Chinese scholars to select them as representative of Zhuang performance arts. Since the enactment of China’s Intangible Culture Heritage (ICH) Law in the early twenty-first century, local Zhuang elites have re-constructed and re-introduced shamanic elements to narrative songs as they are performed at festivals as a means to further highlight the ethnic characteristics of the Zhuang people.

The paper provides detailed documentation of three cases of the restoration of shamanic elements to narrative songs sung by the Zhuang people. However, the research is limited to one community, inviting comparison with other cases, both inside and outside China, of how ICH policies impact grass-roots cultural practices.

With the analysis of the causes of corruption, this study aims to investigate specific anti-corruption measures that can be implemented to reform the political system and the social climate of China.

This study examines 97 severe corruption cases of high-ranking officials in China, which occurred between 2012 and 2015. As this insinuates that both institutional and social corruption are major problems in China, the analysis delves into multiple facts of corruption, including different types, four primary underlying causes, and suggestions regarding the implementation of three significant governmental shifts that focus on investigation, prevention tactics and legal regulations.

China’s corruption is not only individual-based but also it has developed into institutional corruption and social corruption. Besides human nature and instinct, the causes of corruption can be organised into four categories, namely, social customs, social transitions, institutional designs and institutional operations. For the removed high-ranking officials, the formation of interest chains was an important underlying cause behind their corruption.

This study makes a significant contribution to the literature because this study provides a well-rounded approach to a complex issue by highlighting the significance of democracy and the rule of law as ways to regulate human behaviour to combat future corruption.

This chapter highlights why, with the current situation in a VUCA world, governments should consider to ‘leave alone’ the educational policy for the prosperity of special education. One possible way is that governments should let the ‘economic invisible hand’ take on the arrangement of inclusive education and proceed without interference to induce educational competition and the effectiveness of inclusive education.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of a pedagogy of aspiration – a focus on dreams, visions, and values in fundamental business education. The paper focusses on issues of motivation and creativity in a global and multi-cultural milieu. Business education is often viewed as fundamentally about rational and analytical thinking, but creativity and innovation are also central. Due to information technology and globalization, they may be even more fundamental to business success than ever before. Both educators and managers can benefit from thinking about creativity and innovation in this context, since both are responding to the same business trends, and developing the same people.

Since business fundamentals should reflect business realities, global trends in information and communications technology and mass migration brought on by information and communications technology are explored, and their relevance to the imagination and creativity is developed. Educational innovations in motivation and aspirational capacity are explained, and their relevance to fundamental business education is postulated.

Tapping into the imagination is a source of motivation and creativity. What would appear to be very minimal social-psychological interventions have had significant positive effects on educational achievement. Those same techniques may be useful in teaching the fundamentals of business, and may have the added benefit instilling of a holistic and ethical perspective on the part of students.

The paper brings together threads of research in globalization, information and communications technology, the imagination and creativity, and motivation from a psychological and anthropological standpoint, and suggests applying that research in teaching the fundamentals of business and business ethics.

On the background of China’s turn to a market economy and a consumer-driven society, the purpose of this paper is to recount the fortunes of the age-old religion of the Naxi people and their farmer-priests, the dongba.

Detailed ethnography, including participant observation, the collection of life histories and interviews.

The might of the tourist industry dominates the changes in the profession of the dongba priests, from a faith-based practice to a tourist-driven service; aided by a confluence of interests of relevant stakeholders: the Chinese state, the provincial governments, the Naxi elite. At the core is the transformation, in Chinese terms, from a superstitious religion to culture heritage.

Like all case studies and common to ethnographic-based research, the small scale of the research poses questions of generalizability.

Shedding light on a little known aspect of the world’s largest economy is of high relevance to business and management scholars.

The transformation of the dongba demonstrates how major societal changes that happen within a couple of decades affect a society and its economy and a central career track within it.

The case study testifies to the encounter of a major modern industry: tourism, with an archaic religion in a remote corner of China, and the transformation of the latter as result.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the natural disaster damage of Sichuan province and provide suggestions to prevent or decrease the loss owing to the natural disaster.

The disaster loss system of Sichuan is regarded as a grey system. Five evaluation indicators are selected such as the number of deaths, total affected area, collapsed houses, damaged houses, and the direct economic losses. Grey fixed-weight clustering approach is applied in the cluster analysis. In order to reduce the impact of human factors, grey correlation analysis method is applied to calculate the weights of grey fixed-weight clustering.

The results of this paper indicate that the frequency of occurrence of major natural disaster in Sichuan increased since 2008. The major natural disasters occurred in 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2013. In contrast, there was almost no major disaster during 2000-2007. Minor natural disaster occurred in 2002 and 2003.

Sichuan province is one of the provinces most affected by natural disasters in China. Natural disasters have occurred frequently in Sichuan province since 2008 and pose serious threats to life and property safety. They have become an important restricting factor for economic and social development. In order to prevent or decrease the effects of natural disasters, effective measures should be taken to protect the environment.

This paper first normalizes the raw sequence, calculates the weight, and then establishes the grey cluster model. A new method is applied to determine the weight when evaluating natural disaster damage.

China's controversial one-child policy has been blamed for creating an ageing population, a generation of employees without siblings and a 4-2-1 family structure that places eldercare responsibility, primarily on women. Current understanding of how this affects contemporary employees' work–life interface is lacking. This study examined the moderating roles of family structure and gender in the relationships between work–life conflict (WLC), job satisfaction and career aspiration for university academics.

Online and self-administered surveys were used to collect data, which involved 420 academic staff in three Chinese research universities.

Our results revealed that WLC is positively related to career aspiration, and this relationship is stronger for academics with siblings and, within the only-children group, significantly stronger for women than for men. WLC is also negatively related to job satisfaction, and this relationship is stronger for only-children academics.

Results were limited by a cross-sectional sample of modest size. Nevertheless, this study contributes to the understanding of gender roles and changing family structure in the work–life interface of Chinese academics.

Our findings have implications for both universities seeking to improve staff well-being and for wider society. A number of support mechanisms are proposed to enhance the ability of only children, especially women, to operate as effective members of the labour market.

Our results showed that only-children academics face a unique set of difficulties across career and family domains, which have been previously neglected in literature.

This study aimed to determine whether the brand image of fast-food restaurants moderates the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty among Chilean customers.

The study was conducted using a structural equation modeling approach and involved a sample of 1,000 fast-food customers who were surveyed through nonprobabilistic sampling with a questionnaire consisting of 21 items. The instrument underwent validation by a panel of experts, and the results obtained were processed using the statistical software Smart PLS4. Convergent validity, discriminant validity and the structural model were tested to assess the acceptance or rejection of the proposed hypotheses.

The results of the research indicate that product quality, service quality and physical environment are crucial factors influencing customer satisfaction and shaping customer loyalty. However, it was found that brand image does not moderate the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty in fast-food consumption.

The present study contributes to the field of knowledge on fast-food consumption behavior and unveils findings that help fill knowledge gaps regarding the influence of restaurant brand image on the relationship between satisfaction and consumption loyalty. Thus, it demonstrates that, for certain customers, the brand becomes an irrelevant factor for their consumption loyalty as long as the restaurant offers product quality, excellent service and a pleasant physical environment.