Yang examines the political process of the Occupy Movement spanning from January 2013, when the “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” (OCLP) campaign was initiated, to December 2014, when the Occupy Movement finally ended. This book adopts an actor-centered approach in the study of democratization and places civil society as the focus of the analysis. The OCLP campaign was an attempt to transfer leadership of democratization from political parties to civil society, while the incorporation of Deliberation Days further let ordinary participants decide on the electoral proposals. The democratic ideals of civil society activists and the mobilization of radical democrats led the campaign to enter a radical position. The Chinese government interpreted democratization in Hong Kong from a regime security perspective and took a hardliner position. After the Occupy Movement finally occurred, the leadership of civil society and the conception of civil disobedience contained the radical protesters. However, after the movement, civil society organizations were blamed for its failure, and contention in Hong Kong became more transgressive and decentralized. This book is a valuable resource for scholars of Hong Kong’s Politics and a relevant case study for those studying the dynamics of social movements and the civil society strategy in democratic transition.

Children are significant consumers of services such as health, welfare, educational institutions and the environment. Alongside this, the marketization of childhood means that children are exposed to advertising and marketing through a wide range of media on a daily basis. Examining key debates on children’s power, status and citizenship issues, it considers the wider implications of how consumerism impacts on children‘s health, well-being and life chances. This timely book explores childhood and consumerism through four key strands: children as consumers of services; children as consumers of space; the link between citizenship and consumption; the influences of the marketization of childhood. Rethinking Children as Consumers will be essential reading for students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers who are interested in the topic of consumerism across early childhood, childhood, youth and society.

Neoliberalism remains a flashpoint for political contestation around the world. For decades now, neoliberalism has been in the process of becoming a globally ascendant default logic that prioritizes using economic rationality for all major decisions, in all sectors of society, at the collective level of state policymaking as well as the personal level of individual choice-making. Donald Trump's recent presidential victory has been interpreted both as a repudiation and as a validation of neoliberalism’s hegemony. Rethinking Neoliberalism brings together theorists, social scientists, and public policy scholars to address neoliberalism as a governing ethic for our times. The chapters interrogate various dimensions of debates about neoliberalism while offering engaging empirical examples of neoliberalism’s effects on social and urban policy in the USA, Europe, Russia, and elsewhere. Themes discussed include: Relationship between neoliberalism, the state, and civil society Neoliberalism and social policy to discipline citizens Urban policy and how neoliberalism reshapes urban governance What it will take politically to get beyond neoliberalism. Written in a clear and accessible style, Rethinking Neoliberalism is a sophisticated synthesis of theory and practice, making it a compelling read for students of Political Science, Public Policy, Sociology, Geography, Urban Planning, Social Work and related fields, at both the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.

This book employs cutting-edge digital and spatial methodologies to tackle the critical issue of religious site scarcity across China for five major religions: Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Islam, spanning the period from 1911 to 2004. Drawing from Chinese government datasets and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this comprehensive work presents official information concerning religious sites and pinpoints specific cities facing shortages in such sites. The book also offers an in-depth analysis of religious sites, delving into their statistical, historical, comparative, and religious contexts and evolving significance within China, shedding light on the unique challenges and opportunities each religion faces. This groundbreaking book uncovers spatial patterns and relationships, providing new insights into the distribution of religious sites and the evolution of Chinese religious practices since 1911. It will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of modern China, religious studies, and digital and spatial humanities.

This book explores the literary history of the zhiqing, Chinese educated youth, during the liberal 1980s era of the PRC. By incorporating personal experiences, literary representation, shared history, and theory, it argues that attention to bodies’ physical/physiological condition, as represented in their fictional works, can reveal their attitudes toward the shifting and anomalous socio-political environments, both at the time of their rustication in Mao Zedong’s era and at the time of writing about their experiences in Deng Xiaoping’s cities. It highlights the ideological transformation of educated youth writers’ malleable fictional bodies, which preserved and encoded their private ambivalence and dynamic compromises with political and literary dilemmas. By studying these "fictional bodies," this book deciphers the specific significance of labor, hunger, disability, and sexuality, negating the simplification of the fabricated embodiment as only containing and delivering iconoclastic spirit, sincere patriotism, personal struggle, socialist ideological control, and feminine self-consciousness. Exploring the community of Chinese educated youth, of which Xi Jinping was one, this will be a valuable resource to students and scholars of Comparative literature, Modern Chinese literature, and Modern Chinese history.

The book explores how Chinese TV series and Asian Diaspora fiction are consumed, experienced, and adapted by and for audiences worldwide, particularly those of the Chinese diaspora. It focuses or ‘zooms in’ on well-known exceptional Chinese TV series such as Reset and The Bad Kids and ‘zooms-out’ to explore a wider panorama of lesser-known TV dramas and films. It also explores Asian American representations of ‘bespoke immigrants’, the Nobelist Kazuo Ishiguro and other ‘1.5-generation novelists’, a Canadian missionary’s memoir, a Taiwanese Canadian young adult fantasy author, among others. Through the analysis of this material, it reveals how some Asian American writers are themselves liable to portraying stereotypes of Asian immigrant communities, reinforcing familiar tropes of the white gaze. It also features an insightful analysis of Taiwan’s films and culture, highlighting how Taiwanese identity is represented and moreover shaped by cross-strait tensions. Exploring a diversity of content and media consumption, this book will appeal to students and scholars of media studies, Cultural studies, Chinese studies and Asian studies.

This book examines the issue of plagiarism in the Chinese context of history and education, both in classical and contemporary times. In view of the effort on a global scale to fight against plagiarism and consolidating anti-plagiarism education, this book examines how plagiarism is conceptualized and addressed in the Confucian Heritage Culture society of China. Employing qualitative content analysis, genre analysis, and discourse analysis to examine Chinesemedium textual materials of different kinds, this book offers new perspectives on the question of plagiarism in China. These textual materials include classic and ancient Chinese books, modern newspapers in China (1840–1949), academic literature, correspondence texts on plagiarism cases, and textbooks published in China on Chinese and English academic writing. Inspiring future research and educational initiatives aimed at addressing the problem of plagiarism in the contemporary world, this book will appeal to students and scholars of education, Chinese history, and Asian studies.

Using ethnographic materials and documents from East Tibetan villages, this book addresses the impact of modernization on everyday life and the ways in which it melds with traditional forms of knowledge to create a new Tibetan identity and scientific rationality. Including cases centred on meteorology, geography, and seismology, the book assesses a wide range of traditional local activities, including foraging, farming, and domestic practices, and argues that and demonstrates how science, technology, and ideas about modernity have all influenced these activities. It highlights that when inconsistencies among different knowledges emerge, modernization can create inconsistent assemblages of modern and traditional practices and reveal the multiplicity of everyday life. Using these examples of everyday life to portray the complexity of day-to-day existence in Tibet, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Tibet, China, human geography, anthropology, and the sociology of science and technology.

This book introduces a comprehensive conceptual framework which examines the impact of ecological modernization on city branding, using Chinese megacity regions as examples. Focusing on city branding efforts led by local governments, it delves into practices driven by vertical inspiration, horizontal imitation, and self-reflection. It explores the influence of ecological modernization on different aspects of city branding, such as the branding process, strategy, and governance. The book also compares how ecological modernization affects city branding in terms of local government promotion and individual perceptions. Lastly, it scrutinizes city images associated with ecological modernization initiatives in symbolic urban projects, shedding light on implementation barriers from the perspective of policy network theory. This book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Chinese urban and environmental studies, urban geography and urban sociology. It will also appeal to policy-makers, practitioners and private companies working in the fields of place promotion, city marketing and branding.

Over the last decade, anti-government demonstrations worldwide have brought together individuals and groups that were often assumed unlikely to unite for a common cause due to differences in ideological tendencies. They have particularly highlighted the role of youth, women, social media, and football clubs in establishing unusual alliances between far left and far right groups and/or secular and religious segments of the society. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors question to what extent political ideologies have lost their explanatory power in contemporary politics and society. This book aims to contribute to the ongoing debates about the relationship between ideology and public protests by introducing the global context that allows the comparison of societies in different parts of the world in order to reveal the general patterns underlying the global era. Tackling a highly topical issue, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of international relations, social movements and globalization.