How China’s New Silk Road Threatens European Trade

For all the promises of mutually beneficial cooperation, Chinese policy documents about the New Silk Road, also called ‘One Belt, One Road’, mostly testify to a strong ambition to unlock foreign markets and support domestic firms in taking on foreign competitors. This confirms China’s shift from defensive mercantilism, which aims to protect the home market, towards offensive mercantilism, which seeks to gain market shares abroad. In a context of global economic stagnation, this comes as a major challenge to Europe. As China’s market share grows spectacularly in countries along the New Silk Road, key European member states have both lost market shares and even seen their exports shrink in absolute terms.     

Just the Two of Us? Civil Conflicts,Pro-State Militants,and the Violence Premium

Quantitative literature discussing violence in civil conflicts tends towards a typical model of engagement between governments and revolutionaries. Whilst recent work has shown the significant impact of multiple anti-government groups, a further feature remains understudied—the role of pro-state militants. This article theorizes a “violence premium” when such groups arise, which leads to all connected groups devoting greater energy to conflict than they would in isolation. Employing duration analysis and data from The Troubles in Northern Ireland, where Republicans act as revolutionary insurgents, Loyalists as pro-state militants, and the British Army as government forces, the violence premium is empirically confirmed. Both Loyalists and Republicans deviate from their underlying strategies to attack more frequently when violence by their rivals increases, with Republicans and the British Army engaging in the same way. An extended analysis, accounting for the status of the victim, shows that the violence premium resulting from interaction between Loyalists and Republicans targeted only the civilian population of Northern Ireland, elucidating the sectarian component of The Troubles. These results show that including all conflict parties and considering how they are linked are important features in studies that aim to determine the net level of violence in civil conflicts.     

Memory and forgetting: examining the treatment of traumatic historical memory in Grave of the Fireflies and The Wind Rises

Within Japanese popular culture, manga and anime have played a significant role in mediating responses to the outcome of the Pacific War. Miyazaki Hayao's (possibly) final feature-length film, The Wind Rises, has been an important addition to the preceding body of popular media ‘texts’ that raise such themes. This article aims to address the question of how far cinematic animation can reasonably be obliged to follow the kinds of historiographical concerns that inevitably arise when engaging with Japan's militarist past. To answer this question, considerable space is devoted to examining the historical context of what others have done in the post-war period and integrate that commentary into an analysis of how the works of Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao fit amongst a succession of creative works that have been co-opted in the reshaping of historical perceptions of the Japanese at war amongst the Japanese themselves. This will also require some incidental discussion of methodological issues that arise when dealing with such cases as vehicles for understanding transformations in historical consciousness. Ultimately it is argued that Miyazaki does indeed make an important contribution to the commentary on the Japanese war experience, although it must, perhaps unavoidably, be on highly personal terms so far as The Wind Rises is concerned.     

欧盟东扩与俄罗斯的对外经济贸易取向

在 90年代 ,通过东西欧经济一体化和对俄共同战略 ,欧盟已成功地把中东欧候选国和俄罗斯纳入欧盟的国际分工体系 ,并将最终把它们融入欧洲的政治和法律体系。欧盟东扩不仅使俄罗斯的对外贸易地理方向明显偏向西欧 ,而且使俄罗斯成为欧盟原材料和燃料的主要提供者。东扩后的欧盟将与俄罗斯拥有漫长的共同边界 ,从而使双方经贸关系更加密切 ,这无疑会成为 2 1世纪制约中俄贸易发展的一个重要因素。只有早日形成以产业内贸易为主体的贸易格局 ,中俄贸易才有可能取得较快的发展。     

当代社会学视野下的消费

日常生活世界一个最深刻的社会变迁,在于人们和物品之间的关系发生了根本性的变化:随着物品从生产资料转变为消费品,人们也从生产关系中的某一类主体(所有者或劳动者),转变成为一个消费者。消费社会学由于关注到了消费过程诸环节中突生性社会机制和社会力量所具有的社会后果,其相对的学科优势和合法性是明显的。     

关于劳动美的理论反思 —— 兼论工会在职工实现劳动美价值引领中的作用

中国特色社会主义进入新时代。以"劳动美"托起"中国梦"作为时代精神的引领,正在成为我国工人阶级的思想共识和行动逻辑。劳动美本质上是劳动者基于其劳动实践而实现的美的创造,并通过各种美的劳动形式,彰显劳动者的本质力量和劳动美的价值。劳动美作为人的劳动实践活动本质属性和基本要求之一,是以真的劳动和善的劳动作为基础,是真善美在人的劳动实践中的高度统一。在美的劳动中追求劳动美,本质上是劳动的合目的性与合规律性的高度统一,是劳动实践中各种关系的内在和谐与统一。新时代,工会组织要通过开展丰富多彩的活动,团结、教育、凝聚广大职工群众坚定不移跟党走,在以"劳动美"筑就"中国梦"的伟大征程中,充分发挥主力军作用。     

Origins and evolution of Maoism in Argentina, 1968–1971

An apparently strange phenomenon in the history of ideas, Maoism was the only new ideological current to emerge in the western Hemisphere after the Second World War. With constant references to popular China, but situated in a local context, Maoism developed as a unique ideology with a particular physiognomy that was forged in the sphere of the political left. In Argentina, the principle organisations that represented it – the Communist Vanguard and the Revolutionary Communist Party – were deeply involved in the class struggles of the industrial proletariat of Córdoba. Following an explication of our understanding of the role of political ideas in labour struggles through the work of the Chilean historical sociologist Tomás Moulian, we describe two foundational phases for these parties: the organisational and ideological. We situate these in the broader context of both the historical development of the working class in Córdoba and the explosive moments of Cordobazo. From here, we assess the tensions and contradictions in these phases and discuss the impact on their efforts to become the ‘vanguard’ party of the working class, thereby showing the importance of tracing the origins and evolution of Maoism for understanding the radical labour history of Córdoba.     

Trumponomics and China-US Economic and Trade Relations

Since he took office,the new US president,Donald Trump,has unveiled his broad economic policy-now called Trumponomics.It emphasizes neoliberalism at home,less government regulations,more growth and weakening the welfare state.Internationally,Trumponomics embraces protectionism and nativism with a focus on US economic interests.Trumponomics caters to the lower-middle classes,a reflection of the country's current economic and diplomatic challenges.Trumponomics will bring uncertainty to China-US economic and trade relations.China should carefully study the policies of the Trump administration and prepare contingency plans.     

美日安全合作:从地区走向全球

美日同盟是美国维持亚太秩序的重要基石,也是日本外交政策的基轴,随着中国的崛起,美日双方已然意识到原有的同盟框架难以应对来自中国的挑战。为此,美日通过制订新的《美日防卫合作指针》,强化美日同盟,加强双方在全球范围内的安全合作。然而,美日安全合作同时也面临着质疑与否定,在美日两国内,长期以来一直存在着对美日同盟的争论。未来美日安全合作将如何发展,不仅取决于日本的安全感知,更取决于美国在国内国际新形势下将会采取的战略。由于美国新任总统特朗普一以贯之的对日负面认知,使得日本政府和国民对于特朗普的对日政策不抱期待。然而,特朗普上台后并不会撤走驻日美军,更不会让美日同盟解体,同时,商人出身的特朗普并不反对自由贸易,其反对的是无法贯彻其意志的自由贸易。因此,在特朗普总统任期中,其特有的个性和自信,将会使未来美国的对日政策打上"特式"烙印,这为美日关系的发展增加了许多不确定因素,美日同盟可能面临新的危机。     

LIP: a workers’ community facing globalization

The aim of this article is to show how at the beginning of the 1970s a community of workers in Besançon in France reacted to globalization. It deals with the culture of the working class in a French province, the level of organization of the community and how it reacted when ‘its’ factory was taken over by a multinational company. In seeking to understand this transformation and how the workers perceived it, it is crucial to investigate the changing role of the state. All these aspects will be developed in the sections below with the aim of better understanding the meaning of the strategy of workers’ resistance in the face of a change that affected the community, the sector of production, the region and, ultimately, the working class within the Western societies.