Many studies in Western societies show a pattern of discriminative grandparental investment as follows: maternal grandmothers (MGMs) > maternal grandfathers (MGFs) > paternal grandmothers (PGMs) > paternal grandfathers (PGFs). This pattern is in line with the expectation from evolutionary reasoning. Yet whether or not this pattern applies in China is in question. The present study was based on a questionnaire survey at a university in Central China (N = 1,195). Results show that (1) when grandparent–grandchild residential distance during grandchildren’s childhood (...) is controlled, in the case of grandsons and granddaughters as a whole and granddaughters only, both grandparental caregiving and grandchildren’s emotional closeness to grandparents display a rank order of MGM > MGF > PGM > PGF, but in the case of grandsons only, this order is not statistically significant. (2) There are stable relationships between grandparental caregiving/grandchildren’s emotional closeness and residential distance/similarity in appearance. (3) The effects of residential distance on either PGFs’ or PGMs’ caregiving exceed those on either MGFs’ or MGMs’. (4) The PGF and PGM prefer grandsons to granddaughters in their caregiving, whereas the MGF and MGM do not have a sex preference, and (5) the fact that the PGF and PGM invest more in grandsons than in granddaughters does not depend on grandsons’ duration of living in a rural area. Our results suggest that (1) in general, the Chinese display a pattern of differential grandparental investment predicted by an evolutionary perspective, (2) the evolutionary perspective that combines the two factors of paternal uncertainty and sex-specific reproductive strategies is applicable to grandparental investment in China, and (3) the traditional son-preference culture also plays some role in affecting grandparental investment in China, though the roles of culture and urban–rural cultural difference should not be exaggerated. (shrink)

"Yang Xiong is the most useless of all. He was truly a rotten Confucian."Zhu Xi (11301200 A.D.)With this comment from Song Dynasty Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi, the work of Han Dynasty philosopher Yang Xiong (53 B.C.18 A.D.) was effectively relegated to the dustbin of Chinese intellectual history. While influential in the Later Han as the clearest expression of the Old Text Confucian school, Yang's Fa yan has received little attention from Western scholars and appears here in a rare annotated (...) English translation.Written during the transition between the Former and Later Han Dynasties, the Fa yan is a notoriously elusive text that was stylistically modeled on the Analects of Confucius. Denigrated by later Neo-Confucians for his association with Han usurper Wang Mang, Yang Xiong served both the Former Han and Xin imperial courts as a court poet and scholar, and was well known for being a reclusive personality, earning him a reputation as a "hermit at court." Most famous for his position that human nature is a mixture of good and evil, Yang Xiong's philosophy stands in clear contrast to the syncretic Confucianism of his day as a reformer's vision of proper self-cultivation and statecraft.This volume presents an annotated translation of the entire text, focusing on the passages that elucidate Yang's discussion of the core concepts of the Confucian school. The translator's commentary traces the text's major philosophical concepts to their roots in Warring States era philosophy, noting stylistic and conceptual allusions to the Analects and Mencius, among other texts. Also included are a discussion of Yang's biography and the influence of the eremitic ideal on his life and thought. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the change of the image of “mouse” which was transformed from the legend of Fifteen Strings of Cash to the other versions. The legend of Fifteen Strings of Cash, written by Zhu Suchen, was a story of the vindication of defendants in a court case and formed the basis for a series adaptations. The legend of Fifteen Strings of Cash provided a frame of imagination about the image of a “mouse”. Meanwhile, the adaptation of the legend (...) in folk opera provided a more ethical narrative than the original. The folk versions not only strengthened the “evil” of the “mouse”, but also heightened the suffering of innocent scholars. In the contemporary versions after 1949, the “mouse” as an animal disappeared in the story, and Lou Ashu became a pure villain in this play, which also symbolized “evil” and pointed to the feudal and backward old society. (shrink)

In the course of his short literary life, Liu Na'ou travelled across four geographical areas: Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai and Beijing, as well as five cultural domains: Taiwanese, Japanese, French, English and Chinese. The transnational facet of Liu's modernist writing is not merely literary or cultural but political and historical. The earliest modernist writing in China was initiated on the basis of the colonial experience of Taiwan and the semi-colonial modernity of Shanghai. It became a “contact zone” in which various cultural (...) and political influences to contest with each other, signaling a process of power shifting in East Asia in the early 20th century. This article aims to reflect on theoretical issues ranging from nationalism, cosmopolitanism, colonialism and semi-colonialism, to the colonial modernity of East Asia, drawing upon Liu's modernist writings in 1928. (shrink)

本书力图从施特劳斯开启的古今之争的视野来研究现代西方法理学的三大论战。本书首先将三大论战置于现代政治科学的问题史脉络中进行辨析, 清理论战中的局限、疑难和乱象; 进而通过阐述现代政治科学本身面临的批判和挑战, 来理解三大论战和现代西方法理学存在的局限性, 但笔者最终采取的是一种有节制的态度.

This article will briefly describe the features, methods, goals of family education in ancient China, as well as the relevant educational roles of the father and mother in the family. The article will also analyze one of the most unique characteristics of ancient Chinese family education: in each family fixed a tablet with the words 天地君亲 Tian Di Jun Qin Shi. In ancient China, people believed that teachers and relatives, and heaven, earth, and monarchs, were objects that people should respect (...) and worship. Obviously, this clearly differs from the traditions of most other countries. The idea of Tian Di Jun Qin Shi first appeared in Guo Yu, and in Xunzi you can see the initial form of this thought. Over the next 2000 years, these five words penetrate deeply into people's minds, and people often mention them in their daily lives. Their importance and value in Chinese culture and Chinese life are very important and indispensable. The role played by the idea of Tian Di Jun Qin Shi in ancient Chinese family education is more effective than any classical legal practice. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to introduce a novel fourth-order hyperchaotic system. The hyperchaotic system is constructed by adding a linear feedback control level based on a modified Lorenz-like chaotic circuit with reduced number of amplifiers. The local dynamical entities, such as the basic dynamical behavior, the divergence, the eigenvalue, and the Lyapunov exponents of the new hyperchaotic system, are all investigated analytically and numerically. Then, an active control method is derived to achieve global chaotic synchronization of the novel hyperchaotic system (...) through making the synchronization error system asymptotically stable at the origin based on Lyapunov stability theory. Next, the proposed novel hyperchaotic system is applied to construct another new hyperchaotic system with circuit deformation and design a new hyperchaotic secure communication circuit. Furthermore, the implementation of two novel electronic circuits of the proposed hyperchaotic systems is presented, examined, and realized using physical components. A good qualitative agreement is shown between the simulations and the experimental results around 500 kHz and below 1 MHz. (shrink)

Mencius, the second sage of Confucianism after Confucius, is well known for his subtle argumentative skills. Mencius did not develop his own argumentation theory, but argumentation practices, including his political argumentation, have enormously inspired later scholars in China to develop argumentation theories. In this paper, we try to reconstruct Mencius’s political argumentation from perspectives of both strategic maneuvering developed by van Eemeren et al. in argumentation theory and truth-functional logic in formal logic. The aim is to manifest the Dao, a (...) rational balance among logical, dialectical and rhetorical dimensions in Mencius’s political argumentation. The results indicate that Mencius’s political argumentation is not only logically justified but also shown to have maneuvered strategically between reasonableness and effectiveness, and that human beings have a common ground of formal and substantial logos, which makes it possible for people from different cultural groups to communicate rationally. (shrink)

The article mainly tries to discuss the dialogue between China and Western countries from the aspect of logic. There were three sources of logic, including formal logic in ancient Greek, logic in Early Qin of China as well as logic in ancient India. While, among all the schools in ancient China, Mohist and Virtuoso valued logic most. But as the rulers of Han Dynasty only paid their homage to Confucianism, the two schools gradually sank, logic in Early Qin of China (...) discontinued, without entering the main headstream of logic development worldwide. Later, logic in China had little influence on Chinese society although Indian logic was introduced in Tang Dynasty, a scholar-bureaucrat named Zhizao Li in Ming Dynasty, translated logic textbook Discussion of Name and Science, and German philosopher G.W. Leibniz explained Chinese changing theory with binary system. In the early 1900s, during the process of introducing western science, logic, regarded as the basis of science and a tool of scientific research, was highly valued by Chinese scholars, in fact, western logic entered China through two channels. After Chinese scholars learnt from western logic, they made their contribution to the development of logic. (shrink)

This paper analyzes legal fact-argumentation in the framework of the argumentation-based litigation game by Xiong :16–19, 2012). Rather than as an ontological one, an ALG treats a legal fact as a fact-qua-claim whose acceptability depends on the reasons supporting it. In constructing their facts-qua-claims, parties to an ALG must interact to maintain a game-theoretic equilibrium. We compare the general interactional constraints that the civil and common law systems assign, and detail what the civil, administrative, and criminal codes of mainland (...) China require of the suitor, the respondent, and the trier to establish their respective S-, R- and T-facts. We also offer an improved version of the legal syllogism. (shrink)

The concept of Tao occupies a core position in Taoism and even the entire Chinese classical philosophy. For philosophical Taoism, ‘Tao’ is the ultimate reality. Therefore, exploring Taoist epistemology, its role in governance, education and self-cultivation is necessary. The only way that can be approached beyond human ability to fathom ‘Tao’ is beyond mere reasoning or words. Thus, the basic guiding principles behind Taoism for approaching Tao are ‘no action’ and ‘no words’. In traditional Chinese philosophy, following Tao to cultivate (...) oneself is teaching, so as Taoism advocates the teaching of non-action beyond words. The educational thought of Taoist also strongly dismisses the notion of ‘learning’, which is at odds with the Confucians and majority of Westerns. However, Taoism does not negate the importance of learning to attain knowledge, while only opposes the so-called knowledge that is cumbersome, limited, rigid and antagonistic. According to the Taoist thought, children like all human beings are guided naturally and attain fulfillment in harmony with the rest of the world. Enlightenment is a continual and constant process that can be attained by gradual self-transformation until the Tao is realized. Teaching without words seems to be a negative method, while it actually possesses significance. Excessive addiction to knowledge and efficiency drifts modern education away from Taoism. Excavating the educational significance of Taoist ancient philosophical heritage can facilitate us understanding the true nature of education. (shrink)

This paper is expected to introduce a novel memductor-based chaotic system. The local dynamical entities, such as the basic dynamical behavior, the divergence, the stability of equilibrium set, and the Lyapunov exponent, are all investigated analytically and numerically to reveal the dynamic characteristics of the new memductor-based chaotic system as the system parameters and the initial state of memristor change. Subsequently, an active control method is derived to study the synchronous stability of the novel memductor-based chaotic system through making the (...) synchronization error system asymptotically stable at the origin. Further to these, a memductor-based chaotic circuit is designed, realized, and applied to construct a new memductor-based secure communication circuit by employing the basic electronic components and memristor. Furthermore, the design principle of the memductor-based chaotic circuit is thoroughly analyzed and the concept of “the memductor-based chaotic circuit defect quantification index” is proposed for the first time to verify whether the chaotic output is consistent with the mathematical model. A good qualitative agreement is shown between the simulations and the experimental validation results. (shrink)

The salience of social risks and the incidence of various crises in China have induced widespread concerns among urban residents. Encountering frequent risks places higher demands on the cognition of urban residents. The concept of safety cognition capability is defined within the context of urban residents' daily life, and measurement instruments are developed and tested to lay the foundation for grasping the current safety cognition capability of urban residents and conducting further research. In this study, the five-dimensional structure of urban (...) residents' safety cognition capability was proposed by using the grounded theory method to sort out the interview transcript of interviews with 30 urban residents, and a 38-item URSCC scale was designed and used for surveys conducted in China. The results show that the scale can be used as a valid tool to measure the URSCC, and it can help city managers to better understand the safety needs of residents, as well as monitor the effectiveness of policy implementation. (shrink)

This paper aims to study the determinants of subjective happiness among working females with a focus on female managers. Drawn on a large social survey data set in China, this paper constructs gender development index at sub-national levels to study how institutional settings are related to female managers’ happiness. We find that female managers report higher levels of happiness than non-managerial employees. However, the promoting effect is contingent on individual characteristics and social-economic settings. The full sample regression suggests that female (...) managers behaving in a masculine way generally report a high level of happiness. Meanwhile, female managers who refuse to support gender equality report low happiness levels. Sub-sample analysis reveals that these causalities are conditioned on regional culture. Masculine behavior and gender role orientation significantly predict subjective happiness only in gender-egalitarian regions. This study is one of the first to consider both internal and external factors when investigating how female managers’ happiness is impacted. Also, this study challenges the traditional wisdom on the relationship between female managers’ job satisfaction and work-home conflict. This study extends the literature by investigating the impacts of female managers’ masculine behavior on their happiness. This study is useful for promoting female managers’ leadership effectiveness and happiness. (shrink)

To guide the design direction of emotion regulation products that improve the positive emotions of users, investigation into the correlation between relevant visual factors and multi-dimensional complex emotions is needed. In the present study, an extended product emotion measurement method was adopted to describe the multi-dimensional emotional set of each influencing factor and calculate their weight according to the order. The positive and negative emotion indicators of all influencing factors were compared and the evaluation and ranking factors that affect users’ (...) emotional value of emotion regulation products were analyzed. The experimental results reveal that specific emotion mapping scenes on positive emotion are the most significant among the key factors affecting user emotion. Further, the influence of emotional stickers, interactive data visualization, and text on positive emotions decreased in turn. The influence of emotional text on positive emotion was the lowest. Through investigating the visual factors that affect the psychological emotions of users, the development of emotion regulating products could be guided in a more scientific and reasonable manner. (shrink)

This subject was mentioned in my previous letter, but only vaguely, and my ideas were not fully conveyed.