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Chinese film industry has recently grown rapidly. In the process, lots of foreign films have been reproduced in China as remake films which usually are localized for Chinese audiences. These remake films can be preferred because they have been proved to be popular in foreign countries where original films were released. Then the issue is how to customize original films to Chinese version. In this paper, foreign originals and Chinese remake films by genre (romantic, criminal suspense, family and fantasy) were compared along with narrative structure (character, plot, and lines) and the shooting technique (color and lighting, scenes and props, shooting skills). We collected 21 sets of original-remake couples of films (11 romantic, 6 criminal suspense, 2 family, and 2 fantasy films) released between 2013 and 2017 in China. As a result, we found that Chineseremake films tend to have more indirect description on love, show crime background, prefer happy ending, and describe main title more intelligent compared to foreign originals for narrative structure components. Also, we found that Chinese remake films tend to use red color for romantic mood, chilly grey for crime scene, red-and-yellow contrast for family gathering, and blue color for fantasy mood compared to their foreign originals. The findings of this study would contribute to the literature in the film industry, especially in remake films production field, by showing how cultural differences between foreign countries and China can be applied in remaking foreign-original films, and eventually benefit to practitioners who are working in Chinese films industry. Specifically, in terms of color usages, Chinese remake films have more ethinically distinguished characteristics from foreign original films which should be considered by Chinese films business people. Narrative structure components are not relatively mush different between the compared sets of films.

Amid growing tensions surrounding disruptions to the existing order of global balance of power, countries around the world have long ramped up their science and technology investment in the hope of securing better economic as well as national security. Given the profound ramifications for the stability of the global community, the astounding speed and the breadth of China’s technological advancement in particular have been a topic that received substantial international attention. At the same time, the traditional burden-sharing structure between the central government and the local government went through a fundamental alternation under the Tax Sharing Reform such that the share of local government investments in science and technology now outshadows that of the central government. Hence, this paper aims to 1) analyze determinants of Chinese local governments’ science and technology expenditure and 2) identify patterns of regional disparities in investment practices between the country’s Eastern, Middle and the Western regions. Drawing on the theories of fiscal capacity and budgetary incrementalism, we conduct a fixed-effects model analysis of 2003-2016 budget expenditure data from 278 prefectures in China while controlling for a wide scope of social, economic and political factors. The findings of the analysis indicate that Chinese local governments’ science and technology expenditures have statistically significant correlation with socioeconomic factors (population, level of regional economic development, and the shares of the secondary and tertiary industries), characteristics of party committee secretaries (age at the time of appointment and the level of education), fiscal elements (level of fiscal independence) and the pull of budgetary incrementalism (past years’ science technology expenditure). Further, although the influence of budgetary incrementalism was present in all regions, its effect was most pronounced in the Western region followed by the Middle and the Eastern region.

In general, public service advertisements (PSA) reflect political ideologies and cultural viewpoints in a society. This study compared message appeals shown in PSAs of two countries, the United States of America as the most representative capitalism country and China as the most representative communism country. Considering the fact that both countries are forerunners in different political and cultural sphere, it is possible to assume that there will be cultural differences in PSAs of both countries. Particularly, this study noted such cultural dimensions as high- and low-context communication by Hall (1976), collectivism vs. individualism, masculinity vs. femininity, large vs. small power distance, strong vs. weak uncertainty avoidance, and long-term vs. short-term orientation by Hofstede (1991). Applying those theoretical frameworks, this study performed a content analysis for a total of 292 PSAs (125 from U. S. and 167 from China). According to the results, American PSAs used more informational appeals than its counterparts, whereas Chinese PSAs used more emotional appeals than its counterparts. It indicated that American PSAs used more low-context communication than Chinese PSAs did. Second, American PSAs were more likely to adopt individualistic appeals, whereas Chinese PSAs used more collective appeals. Both countries’ PSAs used more famine than masculine appeals, showed low acceptance of power distance, showed the tolerance of uncertainty, and used more long-term orientation appeals in common. However, both countries showed statistically significant differences in spite of the same cultural direction. That is, American PSAs showed lower acceptance of power distance and more long-term orientation appeals than its counterparts. On the other hand, Chinese PSAs were more famine and lower uncertainty avoidance than its counterparts. Based on the results, the study discussed theoretical and practical implications in depth.

Since 2013, China has increasingly expanded its ‘Belt and Road’ Initiative (BRI) to a broad range of countries and regions. Nowadays, the BRI has geographically covered a variety of countries in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa. In contrast, Northeast Asia remains to be excluded by the BRI in past years. Entering into 2018, part of the BRI projects suffered a lot of setbacks due to the underestimate of local political risks. This study points out that, ever since 2018, the Chinese government has begun to re-assess the achievements and challenges of the BRI projects within the past five years, and is currently adjusting its BRI policies and strategies. Against this backdrop, this research finds out that, notwithstanding the Chinese government not officially incorporating Northeast Asia into part of the BRI map, increasing China’s scholars and policy makers have been cautiously watching at the possibility of doing so. This study explores a recent Chinese policy prospective that has started to see Northeast Asia as a new potential area for the future development of the BRI. This study mainly comprises of four parts. First, this article reviews recent progress of BRI in Northeast Asia, including China’s proposal of ‘China-Russia-Mongolia Economic Corridor’ and the Sino-Japanese ‘third-market cooperation’ mechanism. Second, this article also argues that, in the long term, China has been closely watching the possibility of connecting its Trans-China Railway with a prospective Trans-Korean Peninsula Railway. China’s ambitious vision can be explained by its domestic needs of economic development(in the local Northeast Asian provinces) and recent improvement of geopolitical tension in the Korean peninsula. Third, this study also illustrates a number of major challenges and obstacles in future development of the BRI in Northeast Asia. At present, Northeast Asia is mixed with underdeveloped economies (Russia, Mongolia) and advanced economies (Japan and Korea), leading to the necessity of a dual-track BRI strategy for China. In particular, Japan and Korea have proposed the ‘Indo-pacific Strategy’ and the ‘New Economic Map for the Korean Peninsula’ respectively. At present, many of existing BRI concepts in Northeast Asia remain in a preliminary and vague stage. To what extend can China coordinate its own BRI with diplomatic strategies of other regional stakeholders remains questionable. Finally, this article also aims to provide a number of policy recommendations to the Chinese government.

In this study, the effect of China’s family structure on the labor supply (economic activity participation and working hours) of married women in China is analyzed using 2015 China Health and Nutrition Survey(CHNS). In defining the family structure, the parents of married women and the parents of their husbands were distinguished separately. It is also different from previous research that the Instrumental variable method is used to take into account the endogeneity of the family structure. Those are main results. First, the effect of the family structure on the participation of married women in economic activities was found to be that the more women who live in the same home as their parents, the higher the participation of married women in economic activities. In particular, the participation in economic activities was higher when living with the mother of woman rather than the mother of her husband. Numerically, for married women who lived with their mothers, economic participation was 99 percent higher than for married women who did not. Second, regarding married women’s working hours, it was found that marri ed women’s working hours increased significantly when they lived in the same living area or nearby areas, rather than when they lived in the same home. These results suggest that one of the reasons for the continued decline in women’s participation in economic activities in China since 2000 may have been linked to nuclear familyization. The analysis of the time series data of CHNS also supports this prediction, which shows that the proportion of non-parent households in China increased from 47.9 percent in 2000 to 61.5 percent in 2011. Therefore, in order to attract women to participate in economic activities, it can be considered how to subsidize housing purchases if they live with parents’ generation or live in a nearby area.