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Described as the biggest migration in human history, an estimated 250 million Chinese people have left their villages in recent decades to live and work in urban areas. Xinyuan Wang spent 15 months living among a community of these migrants in a small factory town in southeast China to track their use of social media. It was here she witnessed a second migration taking place: a movement from offline to online. As Wang argues, this is not simply a convenient analogy but represents the convergence of two phenomena as profound and consequential as each other, where the online world now provides a home for the migrant workers who feel otherwise ‘homeless’.

urban --- social media --- migration --- china

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The concept of ‘cultural heritage’ has acquired increasing currency in culture, politics and societies in East Asia. However, in spite of a number of research projects in this field, our understanding of how the past and its material expressions have been perceived, conceptualised and experienced in this part of the world, and how these views affect contemporary local practices and notions of identity, particularly in a period of rapid economic development and increasing globalisation, is still very unclear. Preoccupation with cultural heritage - expressed in the rapid growth of national and private museums, the expansion of the antiquities’ market, revitalisation of local traditions, focus on ‘intangible cultural heritage’ and the development of cultural tourism - is something that directly or indirectly affects national policies and international relations. An investigation of how the concept of ‘cultural heritage’ has been and continues to be constructed in East Asia, drawing on several case studies taken from China, Japan and Korea, is thus timely and worthwhile.

east asia --- korea --- heritage --- monuments --- japan --- china

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Environmental pollution poses serious challenges for China, including to its economy as well as public health. The China Story Yearbook 2015: Pollution looks at how China’s Communist Party-state addresses these problems and how Chinese citizens have coped with and expressed their concerns about living with chronic, worsening pollution. This Yearbook also explores the broader ramifications of pollution in the People’s Republic for culture, society law and social activism, as well as the Internet, language, thought, and approaches to history. It looks at how it affects economic and political developments, urban change, and China’s regional and global posture. The Chinese Communist Party, led by ‘Chairman of Everything’ Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has subjected mainland society to increasingly repressive control in its new determination to rid the country of Western ‘spiritual pollutants’ while achieving cultural purification through ‘propaganda and ideological work’. To adulterate, contaminate, spoil or violate—these are among the metaphorical and literal connotations of pollution expressed in this Yearbook via the character ran 染, which forms part of the word for pollution in Chinese, wuran 污染. As the world increasingly relies on economic ties with China, the complexities of China’s one-party system and the Chinese government’s attitudes towards ‘pollution’ are of increasing global significance.

government policy --- social impact --- pollution --- china

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This book investigates the nature of regional variation in the early Chinese writing system through bamboo manuscripts and inscriptions dating from the late pre-imperial China (5th-3rd centuries BCE). Diachronic and synchronic comparisons of graphic details show that none of the well-recognized regional varieties developed independently from one another. Furthermore, differences in graphic components can be accounted for as alternations of graphs that are compatible in their semantic or phonetic values. The phonological systems underlying various regional orthographies unanimously point to a single coherent sound system with some mixture of dialect pronunciations. This strongly suggests that all the late pre-imperial regional scripts derived from a kind of orthographic meta-system based on one spoken standard language. This orthography and its phonological systems should reasonably be dated to ca. 9th century BCE, just about the time when the earliest known Chinese lexicography "Book of Scribe Zhou" (ca. 830 BCE) was written. The conclusions of this book have further implications on reading and understanding manuscript texts in general as well as on using them as data for linguistic studies.

Pre-imperial China --- writing culture --- orthography --- bamboo manuscripts

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Located at the junction of East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia, Myanmar is one of the most important countries in the world's geopolitical landscape. Its ongoing political and economic reforms arouse growing concern from the international community, especially great powers like the US, Japan, India and China. Will the demostic reform bring Myanmar back to the international community? How and to which extent does the demostic reform change Myanmar's relations with other countries?This book is based on papers presented at an international conference on Myanmar held at the Institute of Myanmar Studies in Yunnan University, China in 2014. Based on their long-term observation and studies, experts from China, Laos, Myanmar, Germany, Singapore and the US share their opinions on Myanmar's domestic reform and foreign relations, as well as the current situation and future prospect. This book contributes to better understanding of Myanmar in its dramatic political and social transition.

Politics --- International Relations --- China–Myanmar Relations --- Myanmar Foreign Policy --- ASEAN --- Japan–Myanmar Relations --- Economic and Political Transition --- Chinese Investment