Xinjiang on My Mind

I don't often get the chance to travel to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, one of China's wildest and most exotic provinces. It's a special place, and I was fortunate enough to have lived there for six months several years ago, when I worked for a Chinese oil company.     

Dazed and Confused in Academia

Recently, Joe, a foreign English teacher in China, said to me, "I feel dazed and disoriented; my students here are unusually quiet,I can't tell if they understand my lessons."His plight is not surprising. Many foreign ESL (English as a second language) instruc-tors often feel confused when they first step into a Chinese classroom. Chinese ESL students are different because their mindset is not Western.     

Pleasant Pedaling

<正>I like to ride a bicycle in Beijing. But in the last 10 years automobile traffic has increased noticeably. When I go to Hohhot to stay with friends, I’ve noticed more cars on the streets. Bicycles are no longer the prima-     

Why All the Hard Work?

<正>The stereotype of the hard working Chinese has been around for a long time in the West. As early a 1894, Arthur Smith, a missionary who spent 54 years in China, wrote book introducing the hard-working Chinese people to Americans. In his book Chinese Characteristics, Smith wrote about the dili     

Regulatory Styles,Motivational Postures and Nursing Home Compliance*

Using Kagan and Scholz (1984) typology of regulatory noncompliance, this study examined the perceptions of regulators and of regulatees toward the regulatory encounter to predict subsequent compliance with nursing home quality of care standards. Appraisals of both regulators and regulatees were not driven by motivational analyses of each other's actions, but rather by assessments of performance and social group identity. The regulators saw nursing homes in terms of one evaluative dimension ranging from responsible and not in need of intervention through to irresponsible and needing intervention. The corresponding reactions of nursing home managers involved seeing the regulators as cooperative and sympathetic through to police-like and coercive. On both sides of the regulatory encounter, criticism and reactions to criticism swamped nuanced analyses of motivational underpinnings and rational decision models in explaining compliance. The motivational complexity underlying the Kagan and Scholz typology was, however, apparent in the self-reported motivational postures of managers toward the regulatory process. The postures of managerial accommodation and capture to the regulatory culture were associated with compliance. Over time, resisters to the new regulatory regime became more compliant, particularly those whom inspectors judged as best left alone to adjust. In contrast were managers whose response to the regulatory process was disengagement. Their organizations experienced deterioration in compliance. The study fails to find that certain kinds of regulatory strategies such as deterrence, education and persuasion work better than others across the sample or with specific groups. Extant models focus excessively on how to play the regulatory game without recognizing the potential for players dropping out of the game. Understanding reasons for disengagement and processes for reengagement are fundamental to the application of behavioral decision theory models to the regulatory context.     

Higher Education Loans and Tax Evasion: A Response to Perceived Unfairness

Australian higher education funding policy has been a contentious and emotionally charged topic on the political agenda since the introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). Under HECS, students have options either to pay upfront or defer payment. This article examines the implications for the Australian Taxation Office, which has responsibility for debt collection among students who defer HECS payments. Results show that HECS debt undermines tax compliance directly, and indirectly through perceived injustice. The path model demonstrates how perceptions of government policy can shape cooperation with government in other spheres.     

Responsive Regulation and Taxation: Introduction

The implementation of responsive regulation in taxation means influencing the community's commitment to pay tax through respectful treatment, through attending to resistance and reforming faulty processes, through fairly directed and fully explained disapproval of non-compliant behavior, through preparedness to administer sanctions, and capacity to follow through to escalate regulatory intervention in the face of continuing non-compliance. Responsive regulation and regulatory formalism are pitted against each other in this issue on responsive regulation and taxation. Normative and explanatory arguments in favor of responsive regulation are explored by data collected in taxation contexts; and institutional obstacles are identified that limit effective implementation.     

Avoiding Another ‘Squatter in Downing Street’ Controversy: The Need to Improve the Caretaker Conventions before the 2015 General Election

In the UK the rules governing caretaker situations have historically been underspecified. The UK's constitutional traditions, such as prime ministerial discretion to time elections and its two‐party system, have in the past limited the frequency and duration of caretaker periods. However, the recently lengthened election timetable, new constraints on the executive introduced by the Fixed‐term Parliaments Act (2011), and a decline in the dominance of the two largest parties are raising the risk that the UK will experience caretaker periods more often and for longer stretches of time. In this paper, we offer an analysis of the UK's current caretaker provisions and conclude that the existing conventions are insufficiently detailed and can render such periods problematic and controversy‐prone. Important lessons, we suggest, can be learned from reforms in other Westminster systems, and from the caretaker rules of other countries.     

Looking at Landscapes

<正>Chinese paintings are difficult for Westerners to understand and appreciate. Part of the problem lies in the fact that philosophical paradigms for Chinese aesthetics are based in Taoist and Confucian thought.     

Crazy About English

<正>Long ago,Confucius (551-479 B.C.) warned Chinese authorities it would be impossible to govern the country without creating clear language policies. He knew,as modern sociolinguists know,language exists as a social phenomenon. Language is political. Although someone may unconsciously choose his or her linguistic code,each person’s choice of language creates both intentional and unintentional identity.