Advocating Democracy: The Role of Lawyers in Taiwan's Political Transformation

Litigation hm not been a significant strategy in Taiwan for chauenging injustice due to the use of the Civil Law tradition as a model for the Republic of China legal system and the diminished autonomy of the ROC legal profession and legal system under martial law and authoritarian rule. Individual lawyers, however, were amang the leading proponents of reform during Taiwan's recent transition to democratic rule. Furthermore, one of the significant liberaliring refonnr ushered in by the democratic transition has been the reform of the ROC legal profession. We examine the contribution of some lawyers to democratization and consider what role the reconstituted ROC legal profession may play in the political economy of Taiwan in the future.     

Perceived Sibling Relationships and Adolescent Development

Utilizing longitudinal, 3-wave data collected from multiple informants (fathers, mothers, and target children) in 374 families, the potential effects of sibling relationships on adolescent development across early and middle adolescence were investigated. Adolescents who perceived their sibling relationships more positively at Time 1 tended to have better friendships and higher self-esteem at Time 2, which, in turn, were associated with less loneliness, less depression, and fewer delinquent behaviors and less substance use at Time 3. Moreover, a bidirectional relationship was found between adolescent self-esteem and the quality of their sibling relationships, suggesting that a more positive sibling relationship helps to enhance adolescent self-esteem, and that higher adolescent self-esteem predicts a more positive sibling relationship. A bidirectional relationship was also found between adolescent sibling relationships and adolescent friendships. However, a much stronger association between adolescent sibling relationships at Time 1 and adolescent friendships at Time 2, than between adolescent friendships at Time 1 and adolescent sibling relationships at Time 2, may suggest that the quality of an earlier sibling relationship is more predictive of the quality of a later friendship for adolescents rather than the other way around.     

Reluctant policy innovation through profit concession and informality tolerance: A strategic relational view of policy entrepreneurship in China's urban redevelopment

This paper engages with the theoretical perspective of policy entrepreneurship to examine the pattern and process of policy change in the context of China's urban redevelopment. Drawing upon a strategic-relational reinterpretation of policy entrepreneurship, this paper identifies a distinctive form of reluctant policy innovation in the “three old renewals” scheme initiated in Guangzhou where profit concession and informality tolerance were practiced to create a small window of opportunity for the project of urban redevelopment to break ground. The motivation of policy entrepreneurship in the successful urban renewal projects in Guangzhou was heavily contingent upon the geographically important location of the project site and the historically incidence of hosting the 2010 Asian Games, which forced municipal government to become entrepreneurial and innovative in decision making and income redistribution in order to get things done as quickly as possible. The distinct fashion of policy innovation identified in the case of Guangzhou points to the polymorphous and dynamic nature of policy entrepreneurship and advocates a relational treatment of the strategies and motives of policy entrepreneurs embedded in concrete geographical and historical context.     

Asian perception of the EU after Brexit: the case of Taiwan

The Brexit was in general interpreted as damage to the EU image abroad. In order to understand this damage and to propose some remedies for the EU public diplomacy in Asia, the authors conducted a media analysis of mainstream newspapers between May and October 2016 and a general survey between July 2016 and February 2017 in Taiwan. Based upon this analysis and survey, the authors intended to give a picture of EU image in Taiwanese media and people’s perception after the Brexit and find out key factors shaping this image. According to them, EU was frequently reported as a reference rather than a focus in Asian media, of which a majority of reports were neither positive nor negative. Brexit did increase visibility of the EU but in a very negative way. In order to remedy this damage and promote EU image in the aftermath of Brexit, the authors proposed two approaches after an in-depth study of all of those news reports and the general survey. It is suggested that EU should continue to strengthen its bilateral relationship with Asian countries and, at the same time, adopt normative actions on the world stage.     

Educating Young Radicals: Shanghai University, 1922-1927*

Abstract

The development of the vernacular language during the New Culture Movement was only intended as a transitional stage to the goal of abolishing the Chinese language. Intellectuals such as Qian Xuantong, Lu Xun, Hu Shi, and Chen Duxiu all advocated to varying degrees the Romanization, Latinization, and abolition of the Chinese language. Chen Yinke, however, argued that the adoption of a Europeanized grammatical structure, and the borrowing of neologisms from abroad, such as Japan, altered the fundamental property of Chinese as an independent language. Reassessing the language reform of the May Fourth today, it is evident that the development of the simplified character, the vernacular language, and the pinyin did not achieve the goal of unifying the spoken and written Chinese. Instead by eliminating the classical language, the language reform removed the ability of the vernacular-speaking masses to create a literature of the written words.     

Determinants of Domestic Terrorism: An Examination of Ethnic Polarization and Economic Development

ABSTRACT

Many scholars have sought to explain why countries with ethnically heterogeneous populations experience higher levels of political violence, but these studies have produced mixed findings. Unlike most studies that use ethno-linguistic fractionalization indices to examine this relationship, we argue that ethnic polarization is a more appropriate measure to assess the role of ethnicity as a causal factor of domestic terrorism. This paper hypothesizes that high ethnic polarization influences the incidence of domestic terrorism, particularly when intervening economic factors are present. To test three hypotheses, we use negative binomial regression to model data from the Global Terrorism Dataset, World Bank, and the Reynal-Querol (RQ) ethnic polarization index of 116 countries between 1970 and 2012. Our findings show that terrorism is more likely to emerge in societies with high ethnic polarization and economic malaise.     

Parental Cultural Affiliation and Youth Mental Health Service Use

Studies indicate that African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Latino youth have higher rates of unmet mental health needs and lower rates of mental health service utilization compared to non-Hispanic White youth, suggesting that obstacles may exist in the help-seeking and service utilization pathway for minority youth. Parental cultural factors may significantly impact youth service use, and acculturation is one way to measure adherence to culture specific values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. In this study, parental acculturation level, conceptualized as cultural affinity to 1) mainstream American culture and 2) an alternative culture, were examined as potential mediators of the relationship between race/ethnicity and youth service use. The current subsample (n=1364) was drawn from the Patterns of Care study, a larger study of at-risk youth who were active to at least one of five public sectors of care. Our subsample included all youth aged 6–17 who were African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Latino, or Non-Hispanic Whites (66.6% male). The results indicate that parental acculturation level as measured by affinity to an Alternative Culture was a partial mediator in the relationship between race/ethnicity and mental health service use for Asian/Pacific Islander and Latino youth. Doctoral student in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, 6363 Alvarado Court, Suite 100, San Diego CA, graduate research assistant, Child and Adolescent Services Research Center, Children’s Hospital, San Diego, 3020 Children’s Way (MC 5033), San Diego, CA 92123 Assistant Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University; Assistant Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, Research Scientist, Child and Adolescent Services Research Center, San Diego, 3020 Children’s Way (MC 5033), San Diego, CA 92123 Research Scientist, Child and Adolescent Services Research Center, Children’s Hospital, San Diego, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of San Diego; Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, 3020 Children’s Way (MC 5033), San Diego, CA 92123 Research Professor of Psychiatry and Family and Community Medicine at the University of New Mexico, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego; Emeritus Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University; Senior Research Scientist at the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center, Children’s Hospital, San Diego, 3020 Children’s Way (MC 5033), San Diego, CA 92123     

Urbanization,education, and the politics of space on the Tibetan Plateau

This article provides an introduction to a special collection of five articles showcasing the work of rising scholars in the geography and anthropology of Tibetan regions in China (Eveline Washul, Andrew Grant, Tsering Bum, Huatse Gyal and Duojie Zhaxi, published in Critical Asian Studies 50: 4 and Critical Asian Studies 51: 1). It contextualizes the authors’ contributions in the recent promotion of planned urbanization in Tibetan regions as the key to achieving the “Chinese Dream” under President Xi Jinping. The paper calls attention to these authors’ focus on Tibetan experiences of new urbanization policies and practices, as well as their less-appreciated entanglement with shifting education priorities. Providing brief summaries of each author’s case study and arguments, it points to the ways in which all five articles address the relationship between space and subjectivity, as well as the issue of constrained agency (versus simple notions of “choice”), in statist urbanization processes.     

The Paung Ku model: encouraging change through learning

It is well known within international development practice that the terms “capacity building” or “capacity development” are often used but infrequently (and inconsistently) defined; whether in funding applications, program strategies, staff training programmes, or field work. This article outlines the way in which one development organisation working in Burma/Myanmar wrestled with the issue of meaning, and practice, in relation to capacity development; it also reports on the resulting “Paung Ku model: encouraging change through learning.”     

Profiles of urine samples from participants at rave party in Taiwan: prevalence of ketamine and MDMA abuse

Drug abuse patterns are different due to cultural, social and geographical differences. Methamphetamine (MA) is the most important drug of abuse in Taiwan followed by opiates. Recently, there has been an increase of ketamine and MDMA abuse in disco dancing clubs. Here, we report the patterns of drug abuse by the participants in a metropolitan city disco-dancing club and the general public in Taiwan. The positive rates of common drugs of abuse detected in samples collected from participants in a dancing club were as follows: MDMA, 75.7%; ketamine, 47.0%; MA, 41.6%; opiates, 0%. Marijuana and cocaine were detected at much lower rates (3.4 and 4.7%, respectively). Ketamine and one of the amphetamines were detected together in 42.9% of the samples. The positive rates in samples collected from police detainees suspected of drug abuse in the general public were as follows: MA, 76.0%; OPA, 37.0%; MDMA, 6.0%; ketamine, 2.0%.