JUDICIAL REFORMS IN CHINA: THE WAY OF STRENGTHENING THE JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE

The idea of judicial independence and Chinese courts are the parallel subject matter of discourse among the scholars in several fields in place of either judicial independence strengthen or restricted as Chinese authority continually pushes numerous judicial reform strategy year to year. The westerns, frequently, utter China’s courts are beyond enjoying appropriate independence to decide judicial verdicts solely and independently. Conversely, the Chinese leaders enunciate they entirely extempore to swallow the Western impresses as they are a cradle of rescinding the unique Chinese features. This paper, broadly, attempts to address the design of several rounds of judicial reform policy till nowadays as a means of strengthening the independence of courts. The study catches that the Chinese authority invests rigorous reform efforts to the efficient management of court administrations; to recruit better-qualified judges; to reduce internal interference from party leaders and courts seniors. They also amended laws to progress decisional independence that will extend the Chinese judiciary closer to unaffected judicial independence.

Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medicine Diagnosis and Treatment Strategies for COVID-19 Based on “The Diagnosis and Treatment Program for Coronavirus Disease-2019” from Chinese Authority

In December 2019, coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) broke out in Wuhan and other places. Seven versions of the Diagnosis and Treatment Program for Coronavirus Disease-2019 successively issued by the Chinese government have designated traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as a necessary medical strategy. Based on the changes in TCM diagnosis and treatment strategies in these seven versions of Diagnosis and Treatment Program for Coronavirus Disease-2019, this paper collected data reported by the Chinese government media; analyzed the understanding of the etiology, pathogenesis, syndrome differentiation, treatment methods, and prescriptions of COVID-19 by TCM and evaluated the clinical efficacy of TCM strategies. COVID-19 is associated with TCM disease of pestilence, and its pathogenesis can be summarized as an “epidemic pathogen invading the body, followed by entering the internal organs and transforming into heat, resulting in pathogen trapping in the interior and healthy qi collapsing, and deficiency of qi and yin”. Pathological processes should be emphasized in syndrome differentiation. The manifestations of qi deficiency and yin deficiency are exhibited during the recovery period. TCM strategies represented by Qing Fei Pai Du Tang have shown apparent advantages in improving symptoms, promoting virus clearance, and shortening hospitalization, as well as surprising efficacy of zero patient progressing from mild to severe cases in a TCM cabin hospital. Clinical data illustrate the effectiveness of TCM strategies proposed by the Chinese government. This major epidemic may bring new opportunities for TCM development.

Conclusion

Chinese overseas workers at once represent and enact growing Chinese influence across the world. The bitterness they feel and narrate reveals the disputed nature of China’s engagement with Africa. Rather than being imposed, Chinese-led development in Ethiopia is contested, by Ethiopians and Chinese alike. Yet while Ethiopians assert their agency and challenge the power asymmetries intrinsic to the encounter, their Chinese counterparts, who are commonly presumed to set the standards of their engagement with Africa, lament their lack of agency in bringing their ideas of development to fruition. Indeed, the creativity and gumption with which Ethiopians, workers and non-workers alike, challenge Chinese authority reveals that they define their encounters with Chinese as much as they are defined by them.

Relocating Pastorian Medicine: Accommodation and Acclimatization of Pastorian Practices against Smallpox at the Pasteur Institute of Chengdu, China, 1908–1927

ArgumentRevising the diffusionist view of current scholarship on the Pasteur Institutes in China, this paper demonstrates the ways in which local networks and circumstances informed the circulation and construction of knowledge and practices relating to smallpox prophylaxis in the Southwest of China during the early twentieth century. I argue that the Pasteur Institute of Chengdu did not operate in a natural continuity with the preceding local French medical institutions, but rather presented an intentional break from them. This Institute, as the first established by the French in China, strove for political and administrative independence both from the Chinese authority and from the Catholic Church. Yet, its operation realized political independence only partially. The founding of this Institute was also an attempt to satisfy the medical demand for local vaccine production. However, even though the Institute succeeded at producing the Jennerian vaccine locally, its production needed to accommodate local conditions pertaining to the climate, vaccine strains, and animals. Furthermore, vaccination had to conform to Chinese variolation, including its social and medical practices, in order to achieve the collaboration of local Chinese traditional practitioners with French colonial physicians, who were Pastorian-trained and worked at the Pasteur Institute of Chengdu. Thus the nature of the Pastorian work in Chengdu was not an imposition of foreign standards and practices, but rather a mutual compromise and collaboration between the French and the Chinese.

The derivation of water quality criteria for nonylphenol considering its endocrine disrupting features

Nonylphenol (NP) is an endocrine disruptor and causes feminization in various organisms. This study aims to determine the water quality criteria for NP in China based on species sensitivity distribution (SSD) models considering both reproductive and traditional toxicity effects. A total of 17 chronic values with reproductive endpoints and 14 chronic values with traditional endpoints tested with aquatic species resident in China were found in published literature, among which six values were from marine species. As chronic toxicity data for marine species were limited, the acute-to-chronic toxicity ratio methodology was employed to extrapolate from acute-to-chronic toxicity values. The SSD models were then built with a whole set of chronic toxicity values for NP. Based on model simulation, the chronic water quality criterion in fresh water was calculated as 1.37 μg/L and 4.29 μg/L for reproductive endpoints and traditional endpoints, respectively. The criterion in seawater was derived as 1.68 μg/L for traditional endpoints. Although these criteria were derived by a third-party organization not affiliated with the Chinese authority for criteria development, they were obtained from a scientific point of view and can be used to evaluate water quality and ecological risks of nonylphenol in various water bodies.

Warlord Colonialism: State Fragmentation and Chinese Rule in Kham, 1911–1949

This article investigates Chinese warlord authority in the east of the Kham Tibetan region between 1911 and 1949. The colonial government established by the Qing Empire in Kham during the five years before the end of dynastic rule relied on central government funding. With the fragmentation of the Chinese state in the Republican period, Chinese regimes in Kham were forced to raise more revenue locally and reduce expenditure. Responding to these challenges shaped the nature of Chinese authority in Kham. The late Qing colonial government had paid Tibetans who provided livestock and labor for transport as part of the 'u-lagcorvée. Republican-era governors lacked the resources to do the same. They struggled to develop other ways of controlling the corvée, and attempted to create alternative state transport organizations. Changes in the sources of county government revenue also had important effects on Chinese officials' approach to what they considered to be “wasteland.”

Is Hong Kong Democratizing?

We argue that the transition to Chinese authority has not undermined democratic governance in Hong Kong and that voice and accountability have improved since the handover. We seek to explain this surprising result and conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for China, Taiwan, and cross-strait relations.

War or Stratagem? Reassessing China's Military Advance towards Tibet, 1942–1943

This article re-evaluates an important yet usually ignored episode in modern Chinese ethnopolitical history. It seeks to argue that, in the midst of the Second World War, Chiang Kai-shek manoeuvred towards a possible war with Tibet in order to serve other military, strategic and political purposes, namely, to insert his direct control into China's south-western border provinces that were still in the firm grip of obstinate warlords. Chiang Kai-shek's careful manipulation of the Sino-Tibetan border crisis in 1942–43 also reveals how he and his top military advisors perceived wartime China's territoriality and border defence in south-west China. With considerations of regime security and national survival foremost in their minds, top KMT leaders took a pragmatic stance towards the intractable issue of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. In addition, at the diplomatic level, the Sino-Tibetan border crisis brought discord among the Allied Nations. The Chinese regarded Tibet as part of China whereas the British had long considered it within their sphere of influence. Eventually the Chinese won the sympathy of the US government. Facing Sino-British disagreement over Tibet's political status, the State Department continued to recognize Nationalist Chinese authority in Tibet, however fictitious that authority was. In retrospect, this episode, along with the US government's official stance towards China's sovereignty over Tibet, although a only a minor disagreement between the Allied Nations during the war, led to the problematic Tibetan issue that still haunts the international community today.