Globalization and regulatory change: The interplay of laws and technologies in E-commerce in Southeast Asia

Electronic commerce has brought about business and technological changes globally, and these global changes have given rise to major legal reforms across nations. In the fast-changing global digital economy, states need strategies to maintain competitiveness of their markets while simultaneously ensuring the secure and effective use of technologies involved in conducting electronic transactions. This paper examines how the use and recognition of electronic signatures are regulated in Southeast Asia – the region that has shown the most significant growth in global e-commerce in past few years. Based on a comparative analysis of the laws of four representative ASEAN member states – namely Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam, this paper argues that there is a regional trend towards adopting more liberal and technology-neutral standards for electronic signatures. Electronic signature regulation in Southeast Asia is now built upon limited technological neutrality (or the so-called “two-tiered” approach) as a shared regulatory understanding, but this approach is operationalized differently in each state due to distinctive national contexts. Within the common legal framework, each state has developed its own system of control and management with respect to higher-level signatures (using advanced technologies). The principle of technological neutrality, a concept originally developed for the regulation of technologies in response to the liberalization of telecommunications market, has been the central theme of discussions on the e-transactions policy-making scene. As the author shows, in the process through which states localize the global standards of technological neutrality, ASEAN as a vehicle of regulatory change has played an essential role in translating this principle to the national context.     

China's new regulatory regime tailored for the sharing economy: The case of Uber under Chinese local government regulation in comparison to the EU,US, and the UK

Although Uber's arrival in China has resulted in disruptive competition for incumbent taxi companies, it offers an attractive alternative in China's supply-demand-imbalanced urban passenger transport system. China's regulatory regime for Uber has evolved in three stages: from the regulatory vacuum prior to 2015 to its official legalization in 2015–2016, and the enactment of numerous local regulations in 2016, with specific and more demanding requirements for Uber. This policy is a part of the Chinese approach to the gradual liberalization of the urban passenger transport market. Policymakers should consider ‘fair competition’ as the guiding principle to balance the interests of sharing firms and incumbent service providers, as well as between different sharing firms. The core value of this principle lies in the benefits it provides for consumers and the way it engenders a pro-competitive market environment. The labor protection arrangements for sharing firms’ laborers should be more flexible and diversified. In order to recognize whether an Uber-Driver is an employee or independent contractor, a new standard taking into account a range of factors should be established through collective negotiations between the participants of the sharing economy, and dialogues between members of the judiciary, academics, and the policymakers. Further, consumer protection law and personal data protection provisions should apply when sharing firms misuse their distinctive algorithmic management model to compete unfairly to the detriment of consumers and other users. Ex ante regulatory measures designed to protect the personal data of users should be introduced for deployment in the context of the sharing economy. When enforcing these rules, a balance should be struck ensuring free data flow that is essential to sharing firms’ innovation and competition, and the need to ensure the level of data security required to underpin a well-functioning sharing society.     

In their own eyes: an empirical examination of police self-legitimacy

In their paper Beyond Procedural Justice, Bottoms and Tankebe specified two interrelated dimensions of legitimacy: audience legitimacy and self-legitimacy. Criminologists have given considerable attention to audience legitimacy, but police officers’ belief in their own legitimacy remains understudied. This paper extends Bottoms and Tankebe’s theory and reports findings on some of its key propositions, using survey data from a UK police force. Three key findings emerge. First, contrary to previous studies, feelings of recognition by supervisors and clientele did not predict self-legitimacy; self-legitimacy was found to depend on feelings of peer recognition and acceptance. Second, self-legitimacy predicted officers’ commitment to external procedural justice but not their moral orientations towards crime victims. Finally, perceived police effectiveness but not supervisor recognition – that is, internal procedural justice – was the key predictor both of external procedural justice and of normative orientations towards crime victims. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Arts Entrepreneurship in China: Exploring the Professional Career Development Model for Chinese Emerging Western Classical Musicians

Artists’ career management has become an urgent topic in the scholarship of arts administration and the creative economy in many Western countries. Although Chinese creative and cultural industries have also experienced significant attention and growth, the worklife experiences of Chinese cultural workers are rarely discussed in the international academic literature. Addressing that gap, this study investigates artistic careers and professional development of a small sample of emerging Western classical musicians in a Chinese second-tier city. We found similar patterns in career portfolios and strategies of career entrepreneurship between Western and Chinese musicians, although differing career opportunities and explicit career strategies seem related to local context.     

Large-scale concordance study for 16 autosomal STRs analyzed with PowerPlex ESI17 and NGM SElect

This study aimed at identifying the frequency of kit-dependent discordances and genetic specialties in STR DNA typing, which is particularly important for the interpretation of DNA profiles as well as national and international database searches. We analyzed a total of 27′510 buccal swabs with the PowerPlex ESI 17 and NGM SElect amplification kits and documented discordances and other anomalies. We found kit-dependent full dropouts to be the most frequent events, most of which were associated with the NGM SElect kit. The total kit-dependent discordance rate determined in this study amounts to 0.74%. With this dataset, we also provide dropout rates, which can be used to estimate silent allele frequencies for 16 common STR loci amplified with the PowerPlex ESI17 and NGM SElect amplification kits.     

双创背景下基于技能型人才培养需求的计算机信息管理专业教学有效性研究

在“双创”背景下,社会对技能型人才需求增加,高职院校应以此为契机对专业进行调整以适应社会变化。实践性和创新性较强的计算机信息管理专业的教学改革迫在眉睫。通过对专业定位、实践环节设计、课程体系调整等对计算机信息管理专业教学提出改革建议,提高教学的有效性。     

Transitional narratives of identity among ethnic minority youth gangs in Denmark: from collectivism to individualism

Current literature often depicts the street cultures of ethnic minority youth as forms of collective cultural resistance to experiences of marginalization from mainstream society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in 2014 with 23 young men attached to a rehabilitation centre for criminal offenders in Denmark, this article focuses on ethnic minority youth who desist from such street culture and their former gang life, criminality and drug use and how they describe this shift within their narratives. More specifically, we show how this shift can to some extent be characterized by a move from collective to more individualistic self-narratives re-articulating broader individualistic discourses existing in contemporary society. Among these more individualistic self-narratives, we find extensive reference to ideas of self-responsibility and also individual pragmatic interpretations of Islam. Such re-articulations can be seen as a way to create feelings of agency in severely disempowering circumstances.     

治理结构、运行机制、与政府关系: 非营利组织有效性分析--浙江省义乌市玩具行业协会个案

非营利组织的治理结构、运行机制、与政府关系对于非营利组织的发展特别重要.行业协会是非营利组织的一种形态.通过分析浙江省义乌市玩具行业协会个案,运用制度变迁和合作博弈理论,剖析协会的治理结构、运行机制、与政府关系,探讨非营利组织的有效性.     

试论加入WTO后少数民族法的调整

WTO规则的适用及成员方对少数民族自治地区法律、政府及其权力等方面的关注,说明少数民族地区法律、法规与WTO规则存在冲突,少数民族法应按照WTO规则的精神进行调整和完善。