Anxious China

Anxious China
Author: Li Zhang
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520344197

The breathless pace of China’s economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people’s inner landscape. Faced with increasing market-driven competition and profound social changes, more and more middle-class urbanites are turning to Western-style psychological counseling to grapple with their mental distress. This book offers an in-depth ethnographic account of how an unfolding “inner revolution” is reconfiguring selfhood, psyche, family dynamics, sociality, and the mode of governing in post-socialist times. Li Zhang shows that anxiety—broadly construed in both medical and social terms—has become a powerful indicator for the general pulse of contemporary Chinese society. It is in this particular context that Zhang traces how a new psychotherapeutic culture takes root, thrives, and transforms itself across a wide range of personal, social, and political domains.

Anxious Wealth

Anxious Wealth
Author: John Osburg
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2013-04-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 080478535X

An ethnographic study of China’s new elites and their rarified world of debauchery and corruption: “A must have book for China studies” (Choice). This pioneering investigation reveals the private lives—and the nightlives—of the powerful entrepreneurs and managers redefining success and status in the Chinese city of Chengdu. For more than three years, anthropologist John Osburg accompanied wealthy Chinese businessmen as they courted clients, partners, and government officials. Now he invites readers along on his journey through the highly gendered world of luxury karaoke clubs, saunas, and massage parlors—places designed to cater to the desires of elite men. Within these spaces, a masculinization of business is taking place. Osburg details the complex code of behavior that governs businessmen as they go about banqueting, drinking, gambling, bribing, exchanging gifts, and obtaining sexual services. These intricate social networks play a key role in generating business, performing social status, and reconfiguring gender roles. Yet underneath the façade, many entrepreneurs feel trapped by their obligations and moral compromises in this evolving environment. Osburg examines their deep ambivalence about China’s future and their own complicity in the major issues of post-Mao Chinese society—corruption, inequality, materialism, and loss of trust.

Ambitious and Anxious

Ambitious and Anxious
Author: Yingyi Ma
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2020-02-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231545568

Winner, 2021 Best Book Award, Comparative and International Education Society Higher Education Special Interest Group Winner, 2021 Best Book Award, Comparative and International Education Society Study Abroad and International Studies Special Interest Group Honorable Mention, 2021 Pierre Bourdieu Award for the Best Book in Sociology of Education, Section on the Sociology of Education, American Sociological Association Over the past decade, a wave of Chinese international undergraduate students—mostly self-funded—has swept across American higher education. From 2005 to 2015, undergraduate enrollment from China rose from under 10,000 to over 135,000. This privileged yet diverse group of young people from a changing China must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the two most powerful countries in the world. How do these students come to study in the United States? What does this experience mean to them? What does American higher education need to know and do in order to continue attracting these students and to provide sufficient support for them? In Ambitious and Anxious, the sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of this new wave of Chinese students based on research in both Chinese high schools and American higher-education institutions. Ma argues that these students’ experiences embody the duality of ambition and anxiety that arises from transformative social changes in China. These students and their families have the ambition to navigate two very different educational systems and societies. Yet the intricacy and pressure of these systems generate a great deal of anxiety, from applying to colleges before arriving, to studying and socializing on campus, and to looking ahead upon graduation. Ambitious and Anxious also considers policy implications for American colleges and universities, including recruitment, student experiences, faculty support, and career services.

Anxious China

Anxious China
Author: Li Zhang
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520975391

The breathless pace of China’s economic reform has brought about deep ruptures in socioeconomic structures and people’s inner landscape. Faced with increasing market-driven competition and profound social changes, more and more middle-class urbanites are turning to Western-style psychological counseling to grapple with their mental distress. This book offers an in-depth ethnographic account of how an unfolding “inner revolution” is reconfiguring selfhood, psyche, family dynamics, sociality, and the mode of governing in post-socialist times. Li Zhang shows that anxiety—broadly construed in both medical and social terms—has become a powerful indicator for the general pulse of contemporary Chinese society. It is in this particular context that Zhang traces how a new psychotherapeutic culture takes root, thrives, and transforms itself across a wide range of personal, social, and political domains.

Foreign Language Learning Anxiety in China

Foreign Language Learning Anxiety in China
Author: Deyuan He
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2018-01-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9811076626

Already the focus of much interest for 50 years, the study of foreign language learning anxiety (FLLA) still remains a popular research topic among scholars in Western countries. FLLA is believed to be an important cause of students’ “dumb English”. Considering the paucity of monographs on FLLA in China, this book represents an important step towards filling this gap. The author uses his PhD dissertation as a foundation for reviewing and discussing previous literature, as well as the current status of and major issues concerning FLLA worldwide. The book explores FLLA in China by using innovative triangulated research methodology, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods, namely surveys, focused interviews, and classroom observations. It also highlights the significance and implications of the research results and predicts the future of global FLLA research with a particular focus on China. Readers will discover the latest developments and issues concerning FLLA, causes of FLLA, and verified, effective strategies for alleviating such anxiety.

China and Globalization

China and Globalization
Author: Doug Guthrie
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2009
Genre: China
ISBN: 0415990394

An accessible, introductory text on contemporary China, this book covers the social, economic, and political factors responsible for China's revolutionary changes, and interweaves this structural analysis with a consideration of social changes at the micro and macro levels.

Making Hong Kong China

Making Hong Kong China
Author: Michael Davis
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781952636134

How can one of the world's most free-wheeling cities transition from a vibrant global center of culture and finance into a subject of authoritarian control?As Beijing's anxious interference has grown, the "one country, two systems" model China promised Hong Kong has slowly drained away in the yearssince the 1997 handover. As "one country" seemed set to gobble up "two systems," the people of Hong Kong riveted the world's attention in 2019 by defiantly demanding the autonomy, rule of law and basic freedoms they were promised. In 2020, the new National Security Law imposed by Beijing aimed to snuff out such resistance. Will the Hong Kong so deeply held in the people's identity and the world's imagination be lost? Professor Michael Davis, who has taught human rights and constitutional law in this city for over three decades, and has been one of its closest observers, takes us on this constitutional journey.

Destination China

Destination China
Author: Angela Lehmann
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2018-06-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137544333

This book is a compelling account of China’s response to the increasing numbers of ‘foreigners’ in its midst, revealing a contradictory picture of welcoming civility, security anxiety and policy confusion. Over the last forty years, China’s position within the global migration order has been undergoing a remarkable shift. From being a nation most notable for the numbers of its emigrants, China has increasingly become a destination for immigrants from all points of the globe. What attracts international migrants to China and how are they received once they arrive? This timely volume explores this question in depth. Focusing on such diverse migrant communities as African traders in Guangzhou, Japanese call center workers in Dalian, migrant restaurateurs in Shanghai, marriage migrants on the Vietnamese borderlands, South Korean parents in Beijing, Europeans in Xiamen and Western professionals in Hong Kong, as well as the booming expansion of British and North American English language teachers across the nation, the accounts offered here reveal in intimate detail the motivations, experiences, and aspirations of the diversity of international migrants in China.

China Underground

China Underground
Author: Zachary Mexico
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2010-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1458792218

In the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is hard to imagine a place more exciting than China. The country's economy is growing by more than ten percent per year. The lives of Chinese citizens in every stratum of society are changing--indeed, the very rules that define the parameters of their lives are changing. Over a billion people are simultaneously hustling, trying to decipher the rules, carving a place out for themselves in the new China. Predictably, the result is a glorious mess. Westerners are fascinated with news coming out of China, but in general, most such reporting focuses on the country's economy (growth rates, infrastructure, trade deficits, currency valuation, globalization, etc.), social issues (human rights, income inequality, diseases such as avian flu, SARS, and HIV/Aids, the traditional Chinese culture, mainstream social trends, etc.), and the current government (the workings of the CCP, its response to social unrest, etc.). Westerners hear much about China's booming economy and its role as the next global superpower from the mainstream media, but they know less about the young people who make up China's varied and fascinating subcultures. In China Underground, Mexico introduces young western readers to their Chinese counterparts, highlighting an unfamiliar side of China: today's varied youth cultures, which are both fascinating and under-exposed. Readers are introduced to a wannabe rock star from the desert of Xinjiang, trying to make it big in Shanghai; a disillusioned journalist; a budding screenwriter; a vagabond ladies' man; a straight-A student at China's best university; a Chinese mafia kingpin; a punk band trying their best to stay relevant; a prostitute; the world's most polluted city; Beijing's drug-fueled club scene, and many others.

Young China

Young China
Author: Zak Dychtwald
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2018-02-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1250078814

The author, who is in his twenties and fluent in Chinese, intimately examines the future of China through the lens of the Jiu Ling Hou—the generation born after 1990—exploring through personal encounters how his Chinese peers feel about everything from money and marriage to their government and the West