Doing business in Yabaolu Market,Beijing: (inter-)ethnic entrepreneurship,trust and friendship between Caucasian and Chinese traders

ABSTRACT

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in China and Georgia, this article traces the origins and describes current practices of post-Soviet tourist trading in Yabaolu Market in Beijing. While traders from across the Caucasus visit Yabaolu, my focus is on Georgian traders who today perceive themselves as biznesmeny. Focusing on a typical trade visit, the article explores the role of ethnic and kinship ties in the organization of this trade. It questions the notion of ethnic entrepreneurship and the idea that ethnic cooperation itself may serve a basis of trust and underpin traders’ activities. Instead, the article illustrates how enduring transnational linkages are built on other forms of reliability and reputation. These are framed in the lexicon of friendship, as well as kinship and pseudo-kinship vocabulary, and facilitate commercial transactions between traders of different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds in an environment where state regulation and legal law enforcement are almost absent.     

Gramsci, Machiavelli and International Relations

The paper begins by expressing some doubts about how Gramsci has been appropriated by the so-called 'Italian School' of International Relations/International Political Economy (IR/IPE). Particularly questionable is the attempt to 'internationalise' his concepts of 'civil society' and 'hegemony', whose respective meanings are sometimes extended beyond Gramscian usage. Also dubious is the tendency to assume that his conceptual framework supports a counter-discourse within IR/IPE that contradicts the 'realist' mainstream. In his political ideas, Gramsci was as much a child of Machiavelli as of Marx, and he praised the Florentine for developing a progressive or 'transformative' realism in opposition to the conventional type of realism that seeks only to 'manage' the status quo. This interpretation of Gramsci as a kind of realist is defended by highlighting three 'Machiavellian' aspects of his thought: (a) his contempt for abstract ideals of justice or democracy, (b) his hostility to 'vague and purely ideological' (his words) internationalism; and (c) his surprising (for a supposed Marxist) doubts about the prospects for a non-coercive and egalitarian society. In conclusion, it is pointed out that Gramsci helps us to illustrate a tension at the heart of Marxism: that between utopianism and realism. Because of his admiration for Machiavelli, he eventually betrayed second thoughts about Marx's vision of a world without borders or conflict. His idea of transformative realism, rather than his concept of hegemony, should perhaps be seen as his chief contribution to IR/IPE.     

国际法律秩序与中国的和平发展

本文试图围绕中国的和平发展与和平崛起,就中国融入国际体制这样一个热点问题,从国际法律秩序的角度谈一点个人见解。从法律的角度考察,国际体制可以归结为国际法律秩序。当代的国际法律秩序,主要包括共存法与合作法两大部分。一个国家,不论它是主动还是被动、情愿还是不情愿,都生活在这个国际法律秩序中。中国的明智选择是,顺应时代潮流,融入主流社会,借助国际法维护自身利益,同时促进国际社会的和平与发展;主动参与国际规则的制定,在国际规则中体现本国的意愿和利益;在承认和尊重现状的前提下致力于改进和完善现行国际法律秩序。实践证明,改革开放以来的中国正是实践了这样一种战略选择,这也成为中国实现和平崛起的坚实基础。     

论数据使用保护的国际知识产权制度

商业组织在全球范围内使用数据获得法律保护是数据经济进一步发展的基石。对数据使用的知识产权保护意味着保护“数据”的各种外在呈现形式,尤其是数据集合。数据经营者对数据经济的贡献、数据主权和数字人权带来的现实障碍提出了迫切要求。以德国、美国和日本为代表的主要国家对数据使用保护进行的知识产权立法为数据跨境流动相关制度研究提供了基础。世界贸易组织、世界知识产权组织以及欧盟对数据使用提供了现实保护,但是现有国际法律制度无法对大量存在的非独创性数据集合提供充分保护。其原因包括各国发展水平不一致、数据主权和个人数据保护受到更多关注、国际法碎片化发展趋势等。对此,应在数据相关制度和实践中坚持促进数据使用为指导原则;在TRIPs体系内构建非独创性数据集合制度,该制度在保护数据集合专有权的同时应注重平衡个人数据保护、数据主权和公众信息获取权。立足中国参与全球数据治理现状,中国应在著作权法体系下构建非独创性数据集合有限排他权,并完善相关立法和实施以促进跨境数据流动。     

A forensic international market survey of condom lubricants and personal hygiene products using ATR-FTIR coupled to chemometrics

Condom residues may be encountered in forensic investigations as traces in sexual assault or rape cases. Casework studies have shown the value of distinguishing condom residues from other types of personal products used by women. However, up to now, there has been no investigation of their chemical variability within an international context. This work employed attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy with chemometrics to provide objective characterisation of condom lubricants and personal hygiene products from the international market. 166 samples were obtained covering five major classes of products likely to be used by women. Principal component analysis distinguished most major classes based on their spectral profiles, with subsequent support vector machine models yielding discrimination accuracies over 90%. A two-step approach was subsequently developed and enabled both classification and a discrimination accuracy of 100%. This could provide greater confidence in chemical discrimination of residues from these products when conducting investigations and help assess the origin of the chemical profile obtained. Further testing using three validation sets produced an identification accuracy of 100% for generic classes, which may allow investigative leads to be more readily obtained from recovered evidence.     

科技进步与国际人道法演进的逻辑关系

实践证明,科学技术发展是推动国际人道法进步最有力的武器之一。国际人道法的进步是指它的合理性,即合规律性与合目的性的统一;科学技术发展是推动国际人道法进步的基础,因果关系理论为我们从“合规律性”方面阐述科技发展推动国际人道法进步提供了思维视角,而二者在价值目标上的一致性说明了它们是实现人的权利和人的全面发展的重要途径。     

宗教、冲突与国际政治

对暴力的看法、评价、运用的矛盾性是世界各大宗教所固有的特征,宗教与冲突不具有因果关联性。在人类历史上,大多数宗教冲突都是打着宗教旗号,但本质上属于政治、经济利益的冲突。当今国际冲突主要表现为西方和伊斯兰极端主义之间的矛盾和斗争,其中最突出的是美国霸权主义和打着伊斯兰教旗号的国际恐怖主义的较量,而且两者具有互动特征,道高一尺,魔高一丈,对国际安全构成了严重威胁。因此,只有反恐和反霸同时并举,才能建设一个持久和平、共同繁荣的和谐世界。     

特朗普政府对朝核问题的危机管理及前景研判

2017年的朝核危机实质上是特朗普政府实施边缘政策而带来的一场危机,即,通过极限施压迫使朝鲜在战争和让步之间做出选择,以推动半岛无核化进程。然而,特朗普政府对朝核问题的危机管理因朝鲜的外交对冲、美国国内政治因素的制约以及国际合作的缺失使双方谈判陷入僵局,美国国内甚至出现是否会默认朝鲜有核的争论。若要真正推动朝鲜半岛无核化取得实质性进展,特朗普政府的现实方案仍是设定有限目标,并由联合国安理会制定可逆条款,约束美朝不信守承诺的行为,以国际社会的担保减少美朝互信缺失带来的消极影响,加快推进半岛无核化的和平进程。     

Alexander and Anastayzia: the separation and search for family among Europe’s displaced

Abstract

In 1949, the child search branch of the International Tracing Service, set up after the war by the Red Cross and the Allies, began a search for the mother of a four year old boy, born to a forced labourer and left at a hospital in Rottenmunster at 8 months old. His file records first his abandonment, then his mother's strong resistance to external pressure to sign his adoption papers. His later attempts to trace his mother is also recorded. Taken together, the records shed light on the history of Nazi slave labour, lost children, forced adoptions, exile and the search for identity that connected episodes of displacement for many DPs that ended up in Australia. This article examines this history, and also considers the role of the archive as a powerful source for both enabling and disabling the search for family in the decades following the Second World War.