http://hdl.handle.net/10453/309 Mon, 20 May 2013 06:59:04 GMT 2013-05-20T06:59:04Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/17886 Oscillating between Mao and Deng? The Domestic-Global Nexus of China's Public Health Reform Chan Lai-Ha Chan Lai-Ha, Gerald Chan, Kwan Fung Deng's China inherited a Maoist cradle-to-grave health-care system that emphasised wide entitlement and access to medical care that was backed up by the state or collective financing. However, the economic reforms since the late 19705 have sadly left the country with a failing public health system. From the turn of this century onwards, the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to revert its health-care system partially back to the Maoist universal one in different ways. Previous studies have largely ignored the external factors that contribute to the recent health reform in China. This chapter has demonstrated that what motivates the Chinese leadership to press ahead with public health reform in the country are not only internal demands, but also external factors, such as the pressures to make improvements exerted by intergovernmental organisations and international opprobrium over its rickety health-care situation. Owing to the powerful force of globalisation, it has now become a global norm that all states are obliged to cooperate with each other under a global institution to prevent a global spread of contagious diseases. First, the normative pressure from the global community, particularly the pressure that emerged during the SARS outbreak in 2003, has heightened China's awareness of the need to remedy its ailing health system and shoulder greater responsibility for providing public goods for health to its own citizens as well as the global community. Second, using 'naming and shaming' tactics, the WHO fairly succeeds in prodding countries into complying with its health regime. The global discourse on disease transmission creates a situation in which states can no longer afford to evade WHO advice. Third, due to the recent global economic downturn, the Chinese government increased its investment in its health system as part of an economic stimulus package to promote domestic consumption. Overall, China's increasing participation in globa health governance in the last two decades has been conducive to China's learning and acceptance of international norms. However, China has yet to fully internalise the norms of the global health regime. An advantage of China's politicoadministrative system is that it can readily mobilise local governments to tackle pandemic crises promptly as soon as the central government perceives the diseases as threats to national security. However, mobilisation is often a one-off incidence and depends on the leaders' preferences and interests. There is a sign of incipient norm change. In February 2009, for the first time, Premier Wen Jiabao referred to health care as a 'public good' when he said that the principle of the current reform is that 'public medical service must have public good as its goal'. At present, it is uncertain whether this goal can be achieved or not. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10453/17886 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/17887 Tlo, Inspiracje, Kontekst Forrest Tara; Scheer Anna Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer In the late nineties of the twentieth century Christoph Schlingensief Germany attracted such media attention, as pop stars, the most famous politicians and Bollywood fame. He was an artist, independent filmmaker and one of the permanent Volksbuhne the Berlin theater directors, which made the hype around him was an unusual phenomenon dose. One of the defining features composed in Schlingensief is how its work intervenes in current policy. Throughout his career, is actively looking for ways to mobilize public debate around the various kinds of relevant themes, such as - to name only a few of them - the recent success of the extreme right in Europe, the sense of humiliation resulting from unemployment and homelessness, absence disabled people in the media, politics promoted threat the West after the September 11 attacks and the Nazi legacy of contemporary Germany. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10453/17887 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/17889 Vox humana: The Instrumental Representation of the Human Voice Van Leeuwen Theodoor N. Neumark, R. Gibson and T. van Leeuwen I am a jazz pianist and church organ player as well as an academic. Two years ago I bought a new digital piano, a Roland RD300-SX. Its hundreds of voices imitate the whole range of traditional musical instruments, but also include "human voices": Aah Choirs and Oooh Choirs, Jazz Scat, Space Voices, and more. As a church organ player, I knew this was nothing new. Church organs have included vox humana ("human voice") stops for centuries. I became intrigued. Is there a continuity between analog and digital musical representations of the human voice, or has digitality introduced a new dimension? It is this question that I will explore in this chapter. Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10453/17889 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/17888 Falun Gong in the Academic Perspective Feng Chongyi Ling Xiaohui The sustained all-out campaigns by the Chinese authorities since 1999 have not been able to eliminate Falun Gong, which has involved millions of followers and spread to more than one hundred countries in the world. The Chinese authorities have labelled Falun Gong as an 'evil sect' to brutally suppress it, but that label does not confirm to the definition of 'evil sect' in the West. There are many ways to define the phenomenon of Falun Gong in the academic perspective. Falun Gong cannot be defined as a religion in term of its ultimate concern, belief system, activities and 'organisation' in particular. Falun Gong can be a Chinese popular belief and practice defying a definition but requiring further research. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10453/17888 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z