China

  2009 NOV 17 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "Over the past decade, educational leaders in China have maintained that the pattern of social interactions in Chinese classrooms is not conducive to the cultivation of innovativeness and creativity and that this lack of creativity is a major barrier to China's global competitiveness," investigators in the United States report.

  "One key response has been the implementation of the 2001 New Curriculum reforms in basic education. This article draws on qualitative classroom observation and in-depth interview data, as well as quantitative survey data, from Gansu province to investigate the extent to which classroom interactions differ substantially in Chinese primary school classrooms that are implementing the New Curriculum reforms compared with those that are not," wrote T.C. Sargent and colleagues, Rutgers University ...read more

  2009 NOV 17 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "Research has largely overlooked the reification of the intellectual (zhishifenzi) after the 1949 Communist revolution. Studying this major feature of Chinese socialism can illuminate the workings of the Chinese Communist Party, state-society relations, and the experience of so-called intellectuals," investigators in the United States report.

  "This article explores the social and ideological contexts that first nurtured the party's concept of intellectuals. It focuses on the debate about the intellectual class (zhishi jieji) in political and literary circles from the late 1910s to the mid-1920s. During the May Fourth era, socialists, anarchists, and other activists regarded the intellectual class as a distinct social category with internal cleavages based on age and political consciousness. Under the influence of the Comintern, the Chinese Communists recast the intellectual class as the primary ideological enemy. The debate about the intellectual class profoundly affected the party's understanding of the intellectual," wrote U. Eddy and colleagues, University of California ...read more

  2009 NOV 17 - (VerticalNews.com) -- According to a study from Hong Kong, People's Republic of China, "Why are the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and its regiona branches, or union bureaucracies, able to play an active role in labor legislation, unionization, and labor dispute settlements, while their grassroots organizations, or workplace unions, remain haplessly impotent and incapable of representing workers? This article argues that union bureaucracies' power and its operation are decisively reliant upon their formal government status. While a government status constrains union bureaucracies' autonomy, it also paradoxically accounts for their influence in areas in which their active role is permitted and expected by the government. ...read more