Comparative grand corruption and protection pacts among elites: the cases of Ao Man Long in Macao and Hui Si-Yan in Hong Kong

Although Transparency International has consistently ranked the governments of both the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR), both under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), much higher on the clean governance scale than the PRC itself, the reality is that the two special administrative regions witnessed two prominent cases of political corruption comparable to the mainland corruption. These were the Ao Man Long case in Macao and the Rafael Hui Si-yan scandal in Hong Kong. This paper examines the two cases of political corruption in both Macao and Hong Kong and makes comparisons and contrasts between them. It argues that individual greed contributed to the two cases of high-level bureaucratic (grand) corruption in Macao and Hong Kong, implying that institutional safeguards against corruption, such as the establishment of anti-corruption commissions, and the scrutiny of the mass media, are by no means adequate. In other words, institutional mechanisms against corruption in the HKSAR and MSAR do have loopholes that need to be plugged. Moreover, protection pacts between a minority of government officials and the business elites can be formed because of their close personal connections, strengthening the possibility of grand corruption.     

This is your afterlife: gender,slavery, and televisual subjection

In 1957 Arries Ann Ward, who was formerly enslaved, appeared on the classic television interview-entertainment program, This Is Your Life. Despite Ward’s practices of refusal, the rare interview enacts an idealization of black female servitude and indebted obligation through performances of affection and racial benevolence. Ward’s appearance effectively works to resolve national crisis produced by widespread images of civil-rights protest and counterinsurgent violence, reifying discourses of American exceptionalism in Cold War context.     

两岸投资争端解决机制的制度创新及其完善

投资争端解决机制是《海峡两岸投资保障和促进协议》（简称《两岸投资协议》）中体现两岸特色的重要制度创新之一。相较于传统双边投资协议中的投资争端解决机制而言,两岸投资争端解决机制除了引入两岸私人投资争端解决方式,还规定了投资者与投资所在地一方投资争端的协调、协处和调解等多元化机制,实现了单方规定的协议化和国际实践的两岸化,从而有效降低了两岸投资争端的“泛政治化”风险。未来,应进一步完善两岸投资补偿争端的调解程序,确保调解协议的法律约束力和执行力。     

Decentralisation,socio-territoriality and the exercise of indigenous self-governance in Bolivia

This article analyses the ‘indigenous autonomy’ being constructed in two dozen Bolivian municipalities and territories, in accordance with the 2009 Constitution. It finds that Bolivia’s 1994 decentralisation reforms, which created the country’s system of municipalities, are central to understanding the contemporary implementation of indigenous autonomy. Some indigenous people view as favourable the representative and material gains achieved by municipalisation, which helps explain why more majority-indigenous communities have not yet chosen the new option of indigenous autonomy. However, the new legal framework also limits indigenous self-governance, because territorial delimitations of the country’s municipalities are generally inconsistent with indigenous peoples’ ancestral territories. The new institutions of self-governance are legally obligated to include discrete legislative, executive and administrative functions, reflecting not indigenous norms but a municipal structure of liberal design. This study illustrates the way that indigenous self-determination may encounter obstacles where indigenous territorial jurisdictions must coincide with contemporary boundaries of colonial origins, rather than with pre-colonial territories.     

恩格斯对《资本论》的十大贡献——纪念恩格斯诞辰200周年

恩格斯对《资本论》的贡献主要有10个方面:和马克思共同制定的唯物史观成为指导《资本论》创作的"总的结果";无私帮助马克思,为《资本论》的创作提供多种形式的物质支持;为《资本论》的创作提供材料,和马克思切磋《资本论》的一些理论观点;对《资本论》第一卷第一版的结构提出意见建议,推动了第一卷结构的优化;评论、宣传《资本论》,扩大其影响,推动其通俗化;修订出版《资本论》第一卷德文第三版、第四版,形成了《资本论》第一卷最权威的原文版本;编辑出版《资本论》第二卷、第三卷,使《资本论》理论部分三卷成为一个整体,并筹划第四卷的整理出版;校订《资本论》第一卷英文版并在出版中"负全部责任",扩大了《资本论》在英语世界的影响;驳斥资产阶级经济学家的攻击,在斗争中捍卫《资本论》;对《资本论》第三卷作出增补,丰富发展《资本论》的有关理论。     

Erzählungen des Kindes‐ und Erwachsenenschutzes: Eine Anwendung und Erweiterung des Narrative Policy Frameworks

The Child and Adult Protection Authorities (KESB) have been the subject of controversial discussion since their establishment in 2013. The reform of the Guardianship Law provided for an institutional shift away from local guardianship authorities to regional specialist authorities. This article uses the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to examine the history of today’s controversy, simultaneously proposing an analytic strengthening of said framework. Previous NPF studies summarize policy actors into opponents and proponents. As a result, we do not know whether different actors use different narratives. We therefore separate the expert from the MP discourse. The analysis shows that the experts' arguments for a new institutional arrangement and a person‐oriented narrative dominated, which put the fundamental rights of the persons affected by guardianship measures up front. The study contributes to the understanding of the current controversy, in which a person‐oriented narrative seems to be dominant again, directed against the new authorities.     

弱人工智能时代的劳动价值论与劳动制度

随着弱人工智能时代的到来,物质生产与非物质生产全面自动化。这个正在生成的社会现实意味着经典劳动价值论“一切价值均来自人类劳动”的命题必须被重新思考。笔者以为,弱人工智能应被视为介于人与物之间的特殊劳动者。这样才能解释弱人工智能时代的价值创造问题。从这个角度出发,将弱人工智能视为物或工具就是一种未经反思的意识形态,其建构方向是资本原则与弱人工智能结合的永续生产模式。因此,只有强调并确立弱人工智能的劳动者地位,才能有效破除资本原则对社会发展模式的控制,将弱人工智能强大的生产能力服务于人类自由发展的目的。     

Socio-economic determinants of the family history of pulmonary tuberculosis patients in Pakistan

This article aims to assess the role of important socio-economic factors in the family history of tuberculosis patients in Pakistan. Data were collected from 269 patients, and a logistic regression was used to determine the association between risk factors and the vicious circle of TB. Results of the logistic model show that significant risk factors associated with TB history in patients were education, household size, house structure, rooms in the home, room ventilation, monthly income, income food sufficiency, smoking, diabetes, and heart disease. The current TB control programme needs to formulate strategies to target specific risk factors and poverty reduction simultaneously to break the vicious circle of tuberculosis.     

Remoteness as a gendered construct

This article explores the potential of using children’s perceptions of distance to reflect a gendered understanding of remoteness. Data collected from 1,549 children in Tanzania concerning their perceptions of remoteness in relation to accessibility of school, health care, and water resources were analysed in reference to their impact on school attendance and performance. Gendered variability in perceived distances to services by children may indicate that remoteness is as much of a social issue as it is a geographic phenomenon, in that girls perceive distance and time between home and destination to be further than boys who travel approximately the same distance.