Understanding the Institutional Variation in China’s Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs): the complex interplay of domestic and international influences

This article explores the domestic and international factors that influence the strength of investment protection and liberalization provisions embedded in China’s bilateral investment treaties (BITs). It hypothesizes that China is more likely to sign stringent BITs following the leadership’s implementation of major reform initiatives; when the partner country possesses strong democratic institutions that not only allow domestic interest groups with strong interests in legalization to press for their policy preferences, but also reduce the leaders’ aversion to signing highly legalistic international agreements that bind their behavior; when divergent diplomatic interests render informal negotiations a less viable means of dispute resolution. Statistical analyses of the stringency of the key provisions included in 71 Chinese BITs signed between 1982 and 2011 lend substantial support to the above hypotheses.     

试论党校图书馆的改革方向

文章阐述了数字图书馆是党校图书馆进入信息时代的必然选择,党校图书馆应加快数字化和网络化的建设,注重高素质管理者的培养,开发网络信息资源,更好地的服务于社会。     

求真务实大力推进劳教管理工作改革

山东的劳动教养工作自1956年创立以来,始终坚定不移地走特色发展之路。1984年12月,司法部在山东召开了全国劳动教养工作经验交流会,对山东省第一劳教所实行规范化政治、文化、技术教育,努力把劳教所办成教育人、挽救人、造就人的特殊学校的做法和经验给予了充分肯定,并在全国范     

中国社会的发展战略和前景:从提升生活质量走向增进社会质量

今天的中国社会,主导的理念正由求温饱转向追求更高的生活质量。用社会质量的视角去考察中国社会经济保障、社会信任、社会融合、社会参与等方面的状况,会发现我们正处于一个充满风险的时代;而社会政策则是增进社会质量的有效手段。通过对生活质量理论、人类安全理论、社会质量理论的对比分析可见,由于社会质量理论以追求社会和谐为目标,力主通过社会建设的过程把全体民众包容进去,运用政策的手段来改善民生、增进社会融合,从而化解中国社会不断增大的内在张力,因此这一理论是我们分析中国社会发展与转型问题不可或缺的理论范式。     

Knowledge/Power/Resistance

Francis Bacon’s famous metaphor that knowledge is power has been the intellectual springboard for many scholars to offer misleading observations about the inordinate authority and power of knowledge. Among the important implications that Bacon derives from his metaphor is the assertion that individuals provided with experimental skills and practical knowledge are those most entitled to hold executive office, rather than the aristocracy of blood. In this essay, we critically analyze Michel Foucault’s ambivalent version of the closeness of knowledge, power and authority.     

Multilateral versus Bilateral and Regional Trade Liberalization: explaining China's pursuit of free trade agreements (FTAs)

In recent years, at the same time it has pursued multilateral trade negotiations via membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has embraced a regional approach to trade liberalization by negotiating a number of bilateral or regional free trade agreements (FTAs) with its trading partners. This paper examines China's increasingly active FTA diplomacy and seeks to explain China's motives for pursuing expanded FTAs. Specifically, this paper argues that while China's FTA activism reflects considerations about enhancing China's influence in the Asia–Pacific region, capturing the economic gains of FTA participation, and minimizing the trade and investment diversion resulting from the competitive dynamics of regional trade liberalization, the move toward expanded FTAs is also consistent with the desire to create alternative bargaining forums over trade issues that could help to stabilize expectations as well as the need to use FTAs to control the pace of trade liberalization so as to accommodate protectionist pressure emanating from domestic interest groups. In particular, this paper highlights the impact of domestic politics on China's FTA negotiations through a detailed discussion of how pressure from protectionist seeking interests influences the scope and depth of China's FTAs.     

Neo-liberalization and Incorporation in Advanced Newly Industrialized Countries: A View from South Korea

Historically closely associated with interventionist growth strategies, the demise of corporatism was widely predicted as neo-liberalism became the dominant economic paradigm from the late 1970s. The experience of social dialogue and social pacts in continental Europe during the 1980s and 90s, however, suggests that corporatism may have found a new economic purpose in the era of neo-liberalism. Similarly, in the developing world, the intellectual aversion to government accommodation of 'special interest groups' that accompanied the early phase of economic liberalization has given way to a more sophisticated appreciation of the economic advantages of social compromise. Using the case of South Korea, a country that recently established a social pact in support of its economic liberalization drive, this paper seeks to extend our knowledge about the compatibility between neo-liberalism and incorporation. The results contribute to the wider debate about the possibilities of diverse patterns of government–business–labour relations under 'actually existing' neo-liberalism. As one of the most advanced and successful newly industrialized countries, South Korea shares structural–institutional affinities with both advanced and developing societies. Hence, it represents an intermediate case of relevance to both the mature European and 'third wave' democracies.     

中国城市社会空间研究进展

我国学者对城市社会空间的研究自1980年代开始兴起,1990年代以来逐渐展开。关于城市社会空间分异的研究集中在对北京、上海等重点城市的社会空间进行点式的研究和考察;城市化和人口的变动情况是我国城市研究者关注的热点之一,学者们对于城市居民迁居行为的特征、因素和机制等的探讨已经比较深入和广泛;近年来,我国关于城市贫困群体和贫困空间的研究得到了较大的发展,但对于更深层次的贫困产生机制和应对措施的论证有待深入;针对特定群体的城市生活质量研究主要集中在城市老人和农民工生活质量的研究。