China has experienced rapid economic growth and a sharp rise in social conflicts and mass incidents since the launch of its reforms in the late 1970s. The petitioning institution of ″letters and visits″, which was designed to deal with ordinary citizens' complaints and petitions, has been caught in a paradox. The more power the institution gains, the more petitions it attracts. The draft law on ″letters and visits″ and the debates on how to reform this institution have centered on as well as divided on the two extreme positions of ″expanding″ and ″weakening″ the body. These debates have largely ignored the democratization of the petitioning institution of letters and visits. This paper argues that local deliberative democracy, such as citizen juries, has the advantage of addressing and managing petitions and complaints and it should become the main resolution to the ″paradox revolving around the petitions process″. China started public hearings on petitions more than 10 years ago, and the local deliberative democratic mechanism has been introduced. Such a process reflects the transformation of the petitioning institution of letters and visits from government affairs to public affairs, and from the secrecy of the state to the transparency of public concern and participation.Through a comparative study of the three cases of how local deliberative democracy addresses petitions at the grass-roots level in China, this paper finds that the cases share some common features- equal dialogues with petitioners, fair and reasonable decisions through public deliberation, and simplified and transparent procedures. These features have greatly improved the legality of the petitioning institution of letters and visits. However, such practices of local deliberative democracy also suffer from some shortcomings: they are time and labor-intensive, they produce a trade-off between the representativeness of public consultation and the quality of deliberation, and they create tensions between authority and control. To improve the practice of deliberative democracy at the local level, it is critical to innovatively integrate various methods of deliberative democracy, to combine formal deliberation and informal consultation, to set up a set of standards that are applicable to China, to ensure inclusiveness and neutrality, and to professionalize the function of citizen juries. Two core issues still need to be considered in the future. First, how to construct a consultative mechanism to deal with claims, and second, how to construct an independent third-party mechanism to handle complaints.

In recent years, the total amount of global data has grown at an exponential rate, most of it resulting from ″human behaviors″ and thus is ″personal data″. The drive and synchronization of those data are indispensable for the development of a variety of technologies, such as the Internet of Things, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence. However, the aggregation and circulation of personal data has the risk of violating individual privacy. Therefore, how to govern personal data in the information age has become a difficult problem. In this regard, we would like to discuss issues in personal data governance for modern states from four aspects. First, a goal of data governance should be to evolve with the development and the needs of the times. And the objectives of privacy protection as well as data circulation and utilization should be balanced and achieved in coordination. Second, the objects of governance need to be distinguished with different systems designed for protecting personal information with the fields of public law and private law. This is because public law concerns the self-restriction of state power, while private law is using public power to regulate private relations. In particular, the actions of handling of personal data by private citizens in a purely personal manner should not be regulated（ex ante) by personal data protection legislation. But it should be appropriate by using（ex post) regulatory means to strengthen criminal deterrence and increase the cost of rights infringement. A possible result of improper（ex ante) regulation may lead to infringement of the most basic freedom of thoughts and freedom of actions of individual citizens that may be viewed as an over-correction. Third, we should focus on innovation in the mechanisms of governance. Data dividends are internal driving forces for companies to collect, use, and exchange data. Relying solely on command-control type of governance cannot alter a company's profit-driven nature. Economic incentives, such as financial supports, tax breaks, and market access, could be used to encourage companies to adhere to the rules of personal data protection. In addition, the government can increase citizens awareness of privacy protection, and thus effectively trigger social supervision mechanisms, forcing companies to abide by the rules of data protection. Fourth, an ″informed consent″ framework needs to be properly designed. It should be noted that the reason why personal data has value is because of its ″reusability″. Therefore, to what extent personal data is protected is a question of how to control data flow. We try to address this issue by constructing a theoretical model of ″data pool″. ″Data pool″ is personal data, with the consent of citizens that can be collected and put into a ″pool″ and then become ″public goods″. Personal data in this ″pool″ can be shared, traded, or used（only) by ″eligible firms″, in a variety of ways without the need for consent from the original data owners. However, tort law, criminal law, and relevant administrative laws and regulations that protect citizens privacy will still constitute the boundaries of handling personal data. The so-called ″eligible firms″ refer to those having met the requirements of safe use of data in all dimensions, such as technical precautions and risk warning, and having obtained ″data access permission″. Whether a party agrees to allow personal data to become public goods depends on factors such as privacy preferences, incentives（for example, commercial discounts), and the enforcement of privacy policies. Legislators should set up ″guiding principles of public goods plus agreed exemptions（which means citizens can grant the usage of their personal data to only one or several companies and restrict the scope of personal data being used)″ to encourage and guide personal data to be circulated as public goods. Those principles should be supplemented by rules of private rights（such as rights to information, amendment and termination), appropriate administrative means of supervision（such as registration of data collection and data transferring, with data transferring restricted among only ″eligible″ companies) and administrative incentives. The above theoretical model should be supported by a unified data resource platform. At this time there are experimental big data trading centers established in China that function as hardware assurance for the above theoretical model.

In the latest discussions on Marx's critical theory of fetishism, Chinese scholars gave special attention to the relationship between fetishism (Fetischismus), reification (Versachlichung) and materialization (Verdinglichung). Many scholars pointed out that we should distinguish versachlichung from verdinglichung by the differences in their root forms Sache and Ding. In German, Sache and Ding are interchangeable and have basically the same meaning, except that the former is mostly used to refer to things while the latter to objects. In Capital, Marx did not deliberately distinguish Sache from Ding, nor did he distinguish versachlichung from verdinglichung. The fetishism of commodities, money and capital stemmed from the social character of labor ″manifesting itself″ in a perverted form. To analyze Marx's Critique of Fetishism, it is necessary for us to distinguish reification in general from the reification of production relations (die Versachlichung der Produktionsverhltnisse) and to distinguish materialization in general from the materialization of the social features of production (die Verdinglichung der gesellschaftlichen Produktionsbestimmungen), because only the reification of production relations and the materialization of the social features of production are inseparable from the fetishism of commodities, money and capital. The reification of production relations means that production relations manifest themselves as a relation between things; the materialization of the social features of production refers to the social characters of objects which are obtained in particular social relations and manifest themselves as their inherent properties in objects. The fetishism of capital is so complicated that it cannot be fully explained by the reification of production relations and the materialization of the social features of production. Marx's ″fetishistic conception″ refers to a kind of ″misdeem″, regarding the formal determinations of objects which are obtained in a particular social relation of production as their inherent properties in objects. It is neither people's ″worship″ of commodities, money and capital nor the ″fetishism″ of the school of psychoanalysis. This kind of ″misdeem″ is not directly related to the reification of production relations but to the materialization of the social features of production. Under the control of the fetishistic conception, the agents of capitalist production confuse the material content and social forms of production, abstract the unique capitalist mode of production, and eternalize the historical nature of the capitalist mode of production. It is necessary for us to make a clear distinction between the fetishism of commodities, money and capital, a kind of ″social existence″, and the fetishistic conception, a kind of ″social consciousness″. It is also important to make it clear that the former lays a realistic foundation for the latter. Marx revealed the secrets of commodities, money and capital, and was no longer trapped in the fetishistic conception. But the work of Marx cannot eliminate the manifestation mode in which the social character of labor embodies the objective character of the products themselves. Only when the production of commodities withers away, will the materialized mode of manifestation disappear.

Team work mode creates more achievements than individual mode in today's enterprises and thus becomes ever more popular. However, ethical crisis in the team, once emerges, will significantly affect group outcome. The leader contributes to the team's morality so much that ethical leadership has become an important research subject these years. To make clear how much an ethical leadership would affect on the group performance seems both theoretically and practically meaningful. Previous studies usually use social exchange theory to explain the interaction between an ethical leader and his team members. Two shortcomings commonly exist in such researches. First, they mostly focus on the behavior mechanism rather than the cognition mechanism, leading to the neglect over the analysis on and digging into the trust mechanism. Second, they neglected the necessary situational condition in the social exchange process, i.e., only when the two parties follow the same moral protocols will they be able to follow the mutual favored rules required by the social exchanges. To solve these problems, this research constructs a theoretical model and conducts empirical studies in respects of the mediation mechanism and the marginal conditions of an ethical leader's influences on group performances. We firstly, based on four possible explanations, hypothesize that ethical leadership enhances group task performance. Secondly, we reveal the mediation mechanism by introducing trust perspective. According to social exchange theory, reciprocity will happen in a mature social exchange relationship, whereas mutual trust is the key to ensure that such responsibility will be fulfilled. On one hand, ethical leaders have behavioral consistency with his words and benevolence toward others. These characters will affect team members' trust towards ethical leaders. On the other hand, trust towards leaders will enhance interpersonal interaction within team and improve employees' working attitude, and ultimately improve team performance. Therefore, we hypothesized ethical leadership influenced group task performance through trust in leaders. In addition, we examine the moderating effect of group-level moral identity from the perspective of value congruence. When team members have higher moral identity, they will have a consistent moral standard with ethical leader, which produce a coherent behavior standard and mutual trust, resulting in expected group outcome. Accordingly, we hypothesized group-level moral identity moderate the relation between ethical leadership and trust in leaders. Finally, we systematically built an integrative moderated mediation model. Empirically, we collected data of 81 work groups from several Chinese companies (395 members and 81 leaders were included). Regression analysis provided supporting evidence for all the hypotheses. Ethical leadership increases subordinates' trust in the leaders, and further increases group performances. Such effect will be stronger when there is higher group-level moral identity. These findings emphasize the importance of trust in social exchange process, and deepen the understanding of social exchange theory. More importantly, the research outcome will enhance ethical leadership study. Finally, the limitation of our study is discussed. A longitudinal research design and contextual questionnaire should be further developed in the future.

With the development of the third sector, social organizations have gradually become the core subject in social governance, with an increasingly important role in providing social services, solving social problems, promoting the development of social management, and building state-society relations. The Chinese context, however, has witnessed extended political ties between social organizations and the government. According to a report in 2013 in the South Reviews magazine, quite a portion of over 20 000 social organizations in a Chinese province had kept close ″ties″ with government departments. Therefore, an exploration into the impacts of these political ties on the effectiveness of social organizations will not only contribute to a deepened understanding of their behaviors, but also register a profound significance in facilitating economic and social transformations. Previous studies have discussed the relationship between governments and social organizations from the macro and meso levels of structures and institutional environments by applying theories of civil society and corporatism. Yet, as to how an institutional environment shapes behaviors of social organizations, and how social organizations cope with external environments, analysis and discussions made from the perspective of micro-mechanism can be rarely found. Our questionnaire survey of 254 social organizations has revealed that the political ties of social organizations generate a significant positive impact on organizational effectiveness, which is mediated by organizational autonomy. Further research shows that institutional support will moderate this intermediary relationship. Specifically, a higher level of institutional support will enhance the indirect effect of political ties on the effectiveness of an organization through organizational autonomy; similarly, a lower level of institutional support will weaken that effect. Compared to the previous studies, this study contributes to the extant literature in the following three aspects. First, the previous ones looked into state-society relations from the macro and meso levels yet overlooked questions of how social organizations behaved at the micro level and how institutional environments influenced behavior of social organizations. By trying to analyze the interactive mechanism between the state and society from the micro level with a focus on ″action strategies″ of Chinese social organizations, this study is a necessary supplement to the previous studies on discussing the ″controversy of structure″ from perspectives of state politics and power allocation. Second, this study provides a new perspective for researches on social organizations by introducing ″political ties″ in enterprise research into the researches of social organizations. In the past, the study of the relationship between social organizations and governments considered more of the formal relationship formed by property relations or administrative relations from the organizational perspective, keeping the informal social relationship between social organizations and governments out of their scope of research. This paper picks up the informal relationship between social organizations and governments caused by social networks as its research topic, trying to expand researches into this field. Third, this study has established the model of ″Political Ties — Organizational Autonomy — Organizational Effectiveness″ to clarify the relationship between political ties and organizational effectiveness by combing through the moderate mechanism of institutional support, which opens up the ″black-box″ between political ties and organizational effectiveness, and provides a basis for deepening the understanding of the development of Chinese social organizations. And more importantly, the results also provide theoretical guidance for the regulations over Chinese social organizations.

A village regulation and agreement is a binding code of conduct which has been spontaneously formed by villagers in their social life and practices. It is also a kind of ″local knowledge″ which implements social governance by means of indoctrination, ethics and related punishment mechanism. Village regulations and agreements have played a significant role in the construction and governance of the traditional Chinese social order, and have become an indispensable key element in maintaining the orderly development of the rural society. The village regulations and agreements with the social governance function not only appear in the literature about Chinese rural social studies, such as Liang Shuming's ″Ethic-centered Ideology″ and Fei Xiaotong's ″Differential Mode of Order″, but also finds its place in the Chinese traditional ″countryside politics and village governance″. Today, with the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, it is of great theoretical value and practical significance to discover the value of traditional village regulations and agreements, to sublate and reconstruct a new type of village regulation and agreement in accordance with the social development of new countryside in China, to make the ″village regulations and agreements″ play a vital role in the modern grass-roots social governance, which will in turn contribute to solving the three rural problems and promoting the modernization of the means of social governance. At present, the research of village regulations and agreements can be roughly divided into two lines of reasoning: ″the theory of social contract″ and ″the theory of national will″. ″The theory of social contract″ emphasizes the ″spontaneity″ and ″local knowledge″ of village regulation and agreement, claiming that the village regulation and agreement is a kind of spontaneous self-governing rule of the grass-roots society, and as a kind of conventional ″local law″, it maintains a harmonious and orderly life for the villagers who share the common ethical culture and living habit. On the other hand, ″the theory of national will″ stresses their ″legality″ and ″common knowledge″, claiming that any village regulation and agreement is a kind of local self-regulating behaviors within the limits of state laws and policies, and is the effective extension of state law and policies in the rural society which essentially embodies the will of state power. However, both theories have coincidentally incorporated the value of village regulation and agreement as a localized social governance resource，although they have their own emphasis in research ideas and academic purport. Therefore, as a sort of localized social governance resources, traditional village regulations and agreements not only perform the managerial function of the government, or the so-called ″visible hand″, but also performs an important function of the ″invisible hand″ of the market in regulation and guidance, as well as the function of the ″third-party force″ of the market in organization and coordination. Therefore, it is the ″local law″ which maintains the good orders, fine traditions and social stability of the rural society. Nonetheless, with the accelerated development of Chinese marketization and urbanization and quickening reconstitution of rural social order, the traditional village regulations and agreements are faced with a series of realistic difficulties and governance limits, such as the plight in governance concept, legitimacy, governance effect, means, and commensurability of governance effect. All these drawbacks seriously hinder their exertion of the governance value and function at the grass-root level . Therefore, it is very urgent and significant to sublate and reconstruct the traditional village regulations and agreements. At the same time, it is also very important for the government to promote the effective integration of village regulations and agreements with the times, with the legal norms, grass-roots autonomy and government governance and with other modern governance civilization, and actively respond to new problems and new changes in our rural grass-roots social governance.

The coopetition theory holds that the overall IR process is an allocation process of power, institution and Ideas. If only from the perspective of idea distribution, it acknowledges its role and importance in international relations, regardless of IP Cognitive School of the unit level, the Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) or the mainstream IR theory — Constructivism and other schools on the system level. However, neither constructivism, the English school, nor Cognitive School can provide a clear language on the construction process of the international system through ideas. Therefore, it has some special theoretical significance in examining the validity of ideas on IR from the perspective of ideas or ideology history, and in discussing how the coopetition of the idea distribution influences and shapes the renewal and transformation of the international system. Historically, since the beginning of the modern international relations in 1648, the coopetition of statism, conservatism, radicalism, nationalism, liberalism and other ideas, has successively become the dominant concept of four major international systems, the Westphalian system, the Vienna system, the Versailles system, and the Yalta system, all of which dominate the use of power and distribution of institution in the various periods. It's also the process of the establishment of the international system when the main ideas become the dominant positions in the coopetition. As an integral factor, the idea is always an indispensable force to shape and change the international system. Statism was the first to become the dominant idea in Europe. After the Renaissance, Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, dominant European ideas transformed from church supremacy to the supremacy of national interest and sovereignty. Statism took the place of the theocentricism, and the idea of sovereignty was further confirmed and strengthened in the following centuries. The subsequent Enlightenment further promoted the development of liberalism and influenced and promoted the bourgeois revolution in Europe and America. But with the failure of Napoleon in war, liberalism and nationalism—the two subversive forces released by the French Revolution—were then suppressed, and conservatism dominated the Vienna system period. However, conservatism could not prevent the development of liberalism. Extreme nationalism, imperialism, militarism and radicalism directly led to the outbreak of the First World War, and overthrew the old order. In order to avoid further human catastrophes and rebuild peace, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson brought out idealism, which is literally a combination of liberalism and nationalism, shaped and established the Versailles System. With the intensifying coopetition of radicalism and idealism, idealism failed. The combination of nationalism and imperialism produced wild fascism and triggered the Second World War. In general, this period was dominated by radicalism. In World War Ⅱ, US President Franklin D.Roosevelt learned the advantages of socialism and put forward the ″Four Freedoms,″ once again raising the once depressed liberal flag. Until the Yalta system after World War Ⅱ, nationalism finally defeated imperialism, while liberalism succeeded over totalitarianism. With the end of the Cold War, the tide of statism and nationalism began to ebb in the era of post-cold war and globalization. Moreover, socialism as a higher and lofty human ideal and social form will rejuvenate the strong youth and vitality if it can correctly and comprehensively absorb the essence of liberalism, and will eventually become the dominant ideas in shaping the emerging international system after the Cold War. The process of idea coopetition should be part of it. Therefore, correctly grasping the general trend of the world development in the last 500 years and the future of mankind is essential for us to study the changes of the international system.

It is widely recognized that social network has a profound influence on the risk of informal finance; however, it is still left unanswered what kind of social network structure controls risk and what kind of social network structure amplifies risk. Moreover, most informal financial activities are at a grass-root level so the hiddenness of informal institution working on them protects them from official monitoring and control, which raises the bar for academic research on its risk mechanisms. This also causes current regulatory policies on informal finance to be ineffective to some extent. Beyond a general discussion on social network and based on social network analysis methods, this paper answers these questions and proposes feasible suggestions to policy-makers regarding the risk control of informal finance. Employing the rotating savings and credit associations (or RoSCAs for short) as one example of informal financial activities, this paper categorizes social network structures into two kinds: the network within one RoSCA and the network among several RoSCAs connected by intermediate members. The former network forms the foundation for monitoring and punishment mechanisms in informal finance, whereas the latter network forms the foundation for synergistic monitoring and synergistic punishment mechanisms in informal finance correspondingly. The informal financial default models in the paper internalize these four mechanisms of the informal finance to be part of default cost for the participants of informal financial activities. Therefore, the cost of default to informal financial contract is much beyond the concept of economic cost. Based on the theoretical models, this paper utilizes the data from the 1999 financial crisis in Wenzhou, Zhejiang to empirically test its hypotheses. For practical purposes, the number of survival periods and the hazard ratios while surviving are set as the dependent variables, respectively, to denote the risk of informal finance. By using the Newey-West robust regression method and the survival analysis (robust Cox Proportional hazard model) method, this paper empirically tests the role played by the social network in informal financial risk and obtains ideal results supporting the hypotheses proposed by theoretical models. The main conclusions include: (1) The tighter a social network is (including no strange member and lower looseness of the network), the more effectively the network can control the financial risk; and (2) the social network among several RoSCAs can either control or amplify risk depending on its specific structure: On one hand, it shapes the foundation of synergistic monitoring and synergistic punishment mechanisms so that it has effect on controlling risk; on the other hand, however, it increases the risk of the RoSCAs that are part of the network by dispersing economic resources into each of them and the risk of the whole market is increased by constituting channels for risk contagion. Combining these effects, the social network is able to control risk only if the intermediate member plays as the head of at least one RoSCA of which he/she participates in. The tightness of social network within a RoSCA plays a role in increasing the monitoring level and default cost faced by its members so as to decrease the motivation of default. On the other hand, the extensiveness of social network among several RoSCAs connected by intermediate members plays a role in increasing the synergistic monitoring level and the default cost faced by all members of those RoSCAs so as to reduce the risk; but meanwhile, it dilutes the intermediate membersresource distributed in each RoSCA so as to increase the risk. This paper theoretically and empirically explores the relationship between the social network structure and informal financial risk, which fills in the theoretical gap in the informal financial research. It dialectically analyzes the function of social network in informal financial activities, based on which the result is constructive for risk control policymaking in informal financial sectors.

Li Kuan was a significant figure in the founding period of the Tang Dynasty who went through the Sui Dynasty, as well as Emperors Taizong and Gaozong in the Tang Dynasty. He had important relations with several momentous political events in the early Tang Dynasty. However, his deeds were buried in oblivion for thousands of years. The excavation of Li Kuan's tablet and epitaph demonstrated his life story, confirmed and revealed the history of the Early Tang Dynasty. The rubbing of Li Kuan's tablet was obtained from Mr. Zhang in the Forest of Steles, Xi'an. The rubbing of Li Kuan's epitaph is now collected by the Ancient Rubbings Research and Conservation Center of Zhejiang University. Text and punctuation were arranged based on the rubbings. Firstly, Li Kuan's family went through the process of the surname change and granting. Li Kuan's forefathers were granted surnames by the monarchs twice, and as a result, they finally restored their original surname. It is a special remembrance circumstance of Surname Li in Longxi, which is also a typical case of family vicissitude in ancient China. It was clearly recorded in the tablet and epitaph of Li Kuan's extraction. Bing Qiu, Bing Ming and Li Can were Li Kuan's most important ancestors. Secondly, Li Kuan was a significant figure in the early period of the Tang Dynasty. He participated in the battles with Wang Shichong, Liu Heita, Tuguhun, Gaochang, Koryo and other momentous political events. These records in the tablet and epitaph could make up the absence and error of handed-down documents. Moreover, the historical facts contained in Li Kuan's tablet and epitaph have high literature values, which help identify major ancient books and records. For example, handed-down documents recorded Li Can as the interested party of ″To ride a horse by the Imperial Palace″ event, but Li Kuan's tablet and epitaph recorded it was Li Kuan. Meanwhile, Li Kuan's official experience could help supplement and correct Tang Cishi Kao and Tang Jiuqing Kao. Finally, the writing and building of Li Kuan's tablet and epitaph contained complicated political and familial factors. There was a long time lag between the writing and building of Li Kuan's tablet, along with the difference between titles, narratives and historical facts. It implied some political changing factors from Empress Wu Zetian to Emperor Tang Xuanzong, as well as Li Kuan's family elements. The tablet was written by Liu Yizhi, the Prime Minister of Empress Wu Zetian's court, but it hadn't been built at that time, probably because Liu Yizhi was sentenced to death for offending Empress Wu Zetian. These factors revealed some traces to the writer and building time.

The dissemination and reception of modern and contemporary western literary theories in China have been a process of alternation between cooling and heating. The “theory heat” once appearing in literary circle in China shows the Chinese scholars' eager pursuit of creativity in theories and methods, which was undoubtedly positive and promoted the diversity and creativity in literary theories, literary studies and criticisms to some extent. On the other hand, it also reflected the excessive admiration of western literary theories, the anomic theoretical application and the theoretical dearth of its applicants. Actually, the literary studies in the past 100 years or so have been growing up with the nutrition of western theories. Although we can’t say that there was absolutely no theoretical originality in our literary theories and criticisms in this process, we have to admit that on the whole our literary theories and criticisms are short of theoretical originality. There do exist defects in modern and contemporary literary theories like “subjective presupposition”, “off-field appropriation”, "from 'theory' to 'theory'", “disconnection between theory and text” and “degrading literature to the servant of theory” and such defects also exist in literary theories and studies in China. This phenomenon should be corrected, but not by simply calling for literary critics and researchers to return to texts and to reading more classic works, since effective textual reading and interpretation need the guidance of proper, resourceful and mature theories. Literary criticism and literary studies are a process of sublimation, which is extremely difficult to achieve effective professional reading and interpretation without previous theoretical acquisition, accumulation and preservation, let alone literary studies and the “reassessment” of canon. Especially, the application of some theories and ideas in textual interpretation and literary studies reflects the aesthetic and value judgment of the research object by the interpretative subject, which conforms to the law and norm of literary criticism and differs from the “subjective presupposition” of western literary theories. In addition, it is obviously necessary for literary theoretical construction and literary criticism to return to literature and texts. But the creative “eagle” of literary theory neither can nor should hover over the small land of literature, seeking and searching for a better literary theory. For a long time, cross-disciplinary studies of literature have been advocated in both domestic and foreign academic circles which should not be mentioned in the same breath with “off-field appropriation”, one of the defects of modern and contemporary western literary theories. It remains one of the ways for the creativity of current and future literary theories and approaches to reform our literary theory on the basis of synthesizing knowledge, theory and methods of other disciplines and to conduct cross-disciplinary literary studies and criticisms under the guidance of the methodology of comparative literature. Literary studies and criticisms always need the guidance of theories and conceptions. Modern and contemporary western literary theories should be treated rationally. We should neither ignore their contributions and remaining value to the literary studies in China despite some of their defects, nor should we ignore the importance of theories and the necessity of their direction in literary studies in spite of the excessive “theory heat”. What we call for now after “theory heat” is a new literary theory with “Chinese characteristics” which tries to integrate all of the excellent, ancient and modern, domestic and foreign theoretical traditions as well as theoretically profound and academically rational literary studies and literary criticisms.

Recently, a trend of reflection has emerged in the research of Western literary theories, including the reflection on the theories themselves. However, misreading and misunderstanding of Western literary theories have accompanied the reflection. One of the likely causes is that some researchers do not pay much attention to the fact that their researches are based on translation, and equate the translated version to the original text. This could be seen as an absence of the perspective of translation.  The aforementioned perspective refers to the awareness and action of the researchers in keeping a certain distance from the translated text based on which their study is carried out, including the awareness of transformation, the awareness of context and the awareness of difference. The awareness of transformation means that researchers realize that the translated text results from a shift of languages, with an asymmetry of information owing to this shift. The awareness of context means that researchers bear in mind the cultural context of the specific time and space in which Western literary theories have developed, and the cognitive context of the theorists. The cultural context calls for the literary theories that fit the specific time and space, and theorists invariably develop their theories in accordance with their cognitive patterns. Therefore, relocating the theories in the specific time, space and events, and relating them to the theorists' cognitive contexts conduce to an understanding of the theories in a more precise and in-depth manner. The awareness of difference means that researchers recognize the differences of time and space between original text and its translation. In terms of the differences of space, the emergence and development of the literary theory in its original context reflects its close interaction with literary and social practices, but the ″travel″ of the theory breaks the inevitable connection between the text and the time and space. As for the difference of time, the publication sequence of the translation replaces that of the original works, which hides the inheritance and the echoes among the original works, and highlights the answers of different translated works to specific questions in the context of translation. As the original works were published in different ages, the answers may greatly vary in both theory and method. Inadequate knowledge of the differences may lead to insignificant comparisons among theories from different times and spaces and hasty judgments on the function and value of the theories. This will not only affect the understanding of the theories themselves, but also influence the effective reference to them. The perspective of translation encourages us to explore the origin and development of Western literary theories in the context of the source language and to study dialectically its applicability in the context of the target language. This may help us to deeply understand the core of Western literary theories, to better absorb their essence, and to promote the development of Chinese literature and cultural studies when the translation of and the introduction to Western literary theories are gaining increasing popularity at present. In the present context of the growing trend of reflection on Western literary theories, this paper points out a gap in the research and its influence on the reflective research. Starting from the theories and methods of translation studies, this paper reveals the nature of the gap and proposes the possibilities of filling this gap and improving the effectiveness of the research on Western literary theories. With reference to translation theories, this paper adopts a new perspective which reveals the complexity of the cross-lingual and cross-cultural Western literary research, puts forward an original view that research should include ″the perspective of translation″. Some of the mainstream views in the current research of Western literary theories in China are discussed. From the perspective of methodology, this paper is an attempt of interdisciplinary research that combines the study of literary theories and translation studies and expands the research methods of Western literary theory studies.

One of the intriguing issues of Joseph Needham's Civilization in China is why the scientific revolution and the Industrial Revolution did not originate in China. In fact, before the 15th century, China was ahead of the Western nations, both in science and in technology. However, China suffered a disastrous decline in the subsequent era while its Western counter parts became the great powers of the world. Four possible explanations of the Needham Puzzle are discussed widely. These include the imperial examination system hypothesis, the high-level equilibrium hypothesis, the geographical endowment hypothesis, and the property rights hypothesis. Though each of these hypotheses may, more or less, provide a plausible explanation, none of them can be proved by available evidences. Our paper provides an alternative explanation and applies an empirical approach and data to support our theoretical hypothesis. To help solve the Needham Puzzle, we term the institutional change hypothesis. Our hypothesis incorporates North's institutional change theory, as well as the leading factor of China's institutional structure. Economic theory holds that motive and constraint are the two essential factors which influence behaviors. Any motive for scientific inquiries, whether from practicality utility or simply curiosity, is the same for everyone. As a result, the logical explanation for the Needham Puzzle should focus on the constraint. The leading factor of China's historical institution is its single-authority structure. Political operations in ancient China were under the premise of maintaining and strengthening the authoritarian. There have been four important ideologies in China: Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, and Legalism. Confucianism has comparative advantages in both political and policy implementation. Confucianism helped incumbent rulers build a strong bureaucratic system and a familial patriarchal system to strengthen the authoritarian. Confucianism gradually became the mainstream thought of Chinese culture as a result of enforcing single-authority. This unique institutional structure also suppressed innovation while initiating many unique political and social phenomena. All these phenomena are incentive compatibles, in other words, they are the different results evoked by the same motivation. In addition, empirically, we count and check the knowledge stock structure of different historical periods by various official bibliographies and bibliographies in historical records. We use historical literature related to science and technology as a proxy to represent the scientific and technological level, and literature related to Confucianism as a proxy for the level of the policy intensity of the Confucian domination. That allows us to capture the dynamic trend in the development of science and technology knowledge. Our analysis shows that the volumes of Confucianism-related literature are negatively associated with the volumes of scientific and technological literature. It also indicates that technological innovation was gradually ignored by the Chinese ruling class in maintaining its authority. All these evidences verify our theoretical hypothesis.

Market mechanism is the basic foundation of modern society. Market integration is an important manifestation of market growth. How is market formed or changed over time？ Previous studies have explored the impacts of spatial distance and transportation on market integration. This paper argues that natural disasters have also played a key role in the evolution of market integration， especially on grain markets. As extreme climate events， disasters have an impact on grain production， which would lead to development and evolution of the grain markets. There is great theoretical significance for us to learn about market evolution patterns by studying the impact of disasters on market integration. This paper demonstrates that disasters influence grain markets integration through two mechanisms. Firstly， market grains supply decreases in the short run when disasters occur， which causes arbitrage opportunities between markets of different regions. Disasters reduce the local grain production significantly in a short period of time. As grain production is seasonal, it is impossible to get over the influences of disasters through production adjustments. Decreasing supply will suddenly raises grain prices in the markets and promotes grain transportation between regions. Secondly， disaster relief provided by the central government would decrease transaction costs and promote market integration. Take Qing Dynasty for instance， Qing Shilu records many government disaster reliefe and some of them， such as reducing transaction tax， lifting export ban， guiding grain transaction， increasing water conservancy projects and dredging watercourses， deceased transaction costs and promoted the interconnectivity between local and neighboring grain markets. By digging the history， this paper first explains the mechanisms theoretically. Then, using China's major grain monthly price dataset from 216 prefectures in 18 provinces during 1746-1795 from Gongzhong Liangjia Qingdan （Grain price lists in the palace achieves） and the Chinese historical disaster records dataset during 1696-1795, this paper analyzes the impact of natural disasters on grain market integration empirically. The empirical results show that natural disasters have a significant positive effect on the integration of grain markets. In Qing Dynasty，water transport was the most common way for commodity exchanges especially for bulk commodities such as grain and cotton. The growing environment and storage condition of rice and wheat are different， which may cause various behaviors in the markets and lead to distinct market integration from each other when market participants face disasters. The findings still hold after controlling the traffic conditions and grain varieties. Besides, the impact of disasters on market integration may lag behind and market integrations may differ from the north to the south. We conduct regressions in dynamic perspectives and in two main regions. After considering the time variance and dividing the whole dataset into the north region and the south region， the results remain robust. This paper not only explains the mechanisms of the positive impacts of disasters on market integration in the historical perspective， but also empirically testifies the impact with historical data．

Compared with the New literature school,the literary thoughts of Xueheng School are relatively conservative.As far as the reasons for this contrast is concerned,firstly it is due to their different degrees of recognition of national culture;secondly,it is result that they have different choices of Western cultural tradition.For this,the formation of the concept of literature development is a typical example.Owing to the influence of the Chinese and foreign traditional thinking of″time,″regarding both the understanding of the phenomenon of literature and the interpretation of the development of literature,Xueheng School has a strong flavor of classicism.The classical view of time is that time is mainly a kind of cycle,a historical cognitive pattern which regards time as a cycle of circular motion.Both in the East and in the West,for the classical thinkers,the understanding of the essence of history couldn't go beyond the limitation of this historical view.Affected by such concept,Xueheng School had a tendency towards classical cultural tradition in the Western cultural resources,an important part of which is the concept of circular time.At the same time,it also inherited some of oriental philosophy,such as things will turn to the opposite after reaching the extreme,there is an permanent alternation between disorder and order. Blending of this oriental philosophy and western Pendulum theory,not only provides a theoretical source for Xueheng School in terms of historical interpretation,but also forms a unique perspective for their observation about the evolution of literature.The scholars of Xueheng School insist that just as life,literature has also two models shifting between spring and summer,that is to say,literature development is the cycle of spring and summer model. They further recognize that from the individual to writers, the development of literature cannot go beyond such two styles of reincarnation — flat and gorgeous,and the evolution of Chinese and foreign literature failed to change the alternation between plebeianstyle and aristocratic faction. By contrast,there is a linear time mode,a kind of historical cognition model which was born in modern times.With the development of modern science,some theories(including evolution of species,social evolution), change the traditional sense of history effectively, therefore the conception of evolution had become a common sense of history as well.In modern Chinese,the attitude toward the conception of evolution passed through a tortuous course from rej ection to acceptance,in which Yan Fu,Liang Qichao and other thinkers played an important role.In the field of literature,Hu Shi and other New Literature writers introduced linear evolution theory into literary narration, correspondingly making literary concept of historical progress a mainstream idea in narrative of literary history.However,this vector concept of time is subject to amendment from Xueheng School's cycle time view.Finally Xueheng School,which was based on the concept of circular,had fierce and protracted debates about literature development with the New literature school that advocates the concept of evolution as its theory support. Practically speaking,either the linear theory or the cyclical theory,is the perspectives for observing historical phenomena,both contains truth and false part.The complexity of history is far more than the labels attached to it.Linear evolution theory is not directly equal to modernity, while cycle time mode of classical flavor is not necessarily anti-modernity.So why the historical concept of Xueheng School was marked as anti-modernity? In our view what concerns is the constraints of the times context,that is,the control effect of the politics of time.

The study of the formation of the 18th Century literary public sphere provides a comprehensive perspective for those who want to understand the process of the development of modern European civilization. This comprehensive perspective is comprised of two aspects, namely, the macro aspect of society and the micro aspect of individual books. The focus of the formation of the literary public sphere is on the textual production of books, and their social dissemination. We can have a clear picture of the process of the textual production of books in the interaction among the authors, the books and readers. We can define the social significance of the dissemination of books in the interaction among books, market and society. Against the historic background of the application of printing technology, the establishment of copyright system and the formation of book market, the writing process of authors commenced to define styles and contents of their books from the actual demands of reading market and social reading expectations. The profiting business of the booksellers could prod authors to undertake the writing in line with the reading expectations of readers through the means of market adjustment. The actual reading consumption of readers would pass the direct judgment on the concerned efforts of readers and booksellers. The interaction among authors, booksellers and readers serves to define their own identity and exerts influence on each other. Ultimately, their efforts start with the pursuit of their individual subjectivity, and end with the combined striving for the social commonality, which jointly usher in the formation of the literary public sphere.  The theory of public sphere of Habermas is of great inspiration for humanistic and social sciences studies, which has become the important analytical perspective adopted frequently by scholars all around the world. Although Habermas has put forward the concept of ″literary public sphere″ in his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, he did not present a convincing argumentation for the nature of the literary public sphere and the process of its formation. Henceforth, the creative aspect of this paper is to center on the textual production of books and their social dissemination, and to start with the construction of the self-identity of authors, booksellers and readers in the 18th Century in order to analyze the process of the formation of public consciousness of books, market and society. In the meanwhile, the paper is to choose the study of textual books as the entry point in order to present two analytical models, namely, the internal factor and the external factor of textual books of literary public sphere. The paper is also to display and represent the abstract process of the self-identification of the individual subjectivity and social commonality, two driving forces of the formation of literary public sphere through concrete social phenomena. The study of literary public sphere provides not only the mixed and shifting perspectives from macro and micro aspects, which might enable scholars to have an insight into the writing motives of the 18th Century authors, but also a model of new argumentation concerning the interaction between individual experiences and social consciousness. This study will enable us to understand how the sages and forerunners of the 18th Century managed to condense Zeitgeist into the textual books through the effort of summarization and converging, and to project the consciousness of political public sphere onto the real life through the reading process of readers, which ultimately construct the new institutional civilization and political civilization. The restoration of this process will surely serve as a good reference to China, a country confronted with similar issues at present.

Lü Liuliang was a Neo-Confucianist in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Histhoughts have been characterized as “Respecting Zhu Xi’s thought and refuting Wang Yangming’s thought” (Zun Zhu Pi Wang). Lü Liuliang, Zhang Lüxiang and Lu Longqi became the driving force behind the revival of Zhu Xi’s philosophy in the early Qing dynasty. Lü Liuliang lived during the transitional periods of the Ming and Qing dynasties, a period of great political turmoil. Throughout his life, Lü Liuliang adhered to national integrity and righteousness, and deliberately took the adherent identity of Ming dynasty as his world outlook and lifestyle. It is his acknowledged integrity that sowed the seeds of future trouble. Forty years after his death, a literary inquisition was instituted by Emperor Yongzheng, and one of the famous cases was the Zeng Jing Case. Yong Zheng’s unexpected handling of it ultimately brought disaster on Lü Liuliang, and as a result his works were banned by the Qing government. There has been little research on Lü Liuliang’s neo-Confucianism, with extant studies mostly focusing on his biography. This article analyzes Lü Liuliang’s neo-Confucianist work, Notes on the Four Books (Sishu Jiangyi), especially Lü’s exposition on the idea of Striving for Perfection in the Great Learning. In his interpretations of the connotation of Three Guiding Principles, Lü Liuliang expounded on Zhu Xi’s ideas of “Zhi Zhishan” (perfectionism) as the foundation of “Tianli” (justice), stressing that perfectionism was the aim of “Ming Mingde” (manifesting virtue) and “Qinmin” (treating people with affection). Lü Liuliang’s interpretation revealed Wang Yangming’s influence, especially Wang’s idea of “Liangzhi” (conscience), with “Zhi Zhishan,” and “Tianli,” revealing different aspects of a common core.This paper proposes that although Lü Liuliang regarded himself as a scholar of Zhu Xi’s Confucianism, and was often regarded as a faithful Zhu Xi’s follower, it is open to discussion to what extent his neo-Confucianism strictly adhered to Zhu Xi’s. A textual analysis of Lü’s discussion of the Three Guiding Principles of the Great Learning shows his compromise of Zhu Xi's and Wang Yangming’s ideas. Lü Liuliang was a unique Confucian in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. His life experiences and thoughts were deeply influenced by the political situation of that time and his philosophy mainly focused on solving the problems of that special period while whether the misunderstanding derived from Zhu Xi’s or Wang Yangming’s works was not so important. Thus we may conclude that Lü Liuliang might be labeled as a “practical Confucianist” rather than a faithful Zhu Xi's follower.

A notable tendency of contemporary philosophy is academicism and specialization, which result in alienation and estrangement from life.″Philosophy as art of life″(Philosophie als Lebenskunst)has been one of the reactions among intellectuals to this tendency.At present, philosophy as art of life is intensely debated among contemporary European thinkers.This new style of philosophical understanding and practice is closely related to the Phenomenological Movement of the twentieth century.Edmund Husserl's conception of life-world(Lebenswelt)as a source of meaning relating to non-topicalization und pre-science and the corresponding genetic constitutions based on life-world are the original field of philosophy as art of life. Martin Heidegger's Daseins-analysis has subverted the understanding of essence of Being according to the traditional metaphysics and is focused on the experiences of existence in the world in the dimension of ″meta-practice″in order to establish the central theoretical basis for further discussions of the philosophy as art of life.Using descriptions of body and its field,and defending contingency as a foundation for truth,Maurice Merleau-Ponty has interpreted ego and world as a unity.The philosophical views and motivations guiding the above-mentioned topics, which belong to the field of classical phenomenology,involve inversions of the relationships between theory and practice, presence and absence, uncertainty and possibility, inevitability and contingency,and have laid the necessary theoretical foundation for philosophy as art of life. Based on this, philosophy as art of life, which centers on human existence and sensible relationship between human beings and the world as its fundamental motivation,has been fully developed in different dimensions, one example being the practice of philosophy and aestheticization. Odo Marquard treated philosophy as contemporary art of life for″Orientierungsdienstleistungsgewerbe″by his defense of contingency. Marquard's concept of compensation,as well as the practice of philosophy and the consolation of philosophy by Gerd Achenbach and Gernot B?hme,have attempted to provide guidance for the living dilemma of modern humans,while Wolfgang Welsch's aestheticization interpreted the whole world as a huge aesthetic system involving the life of modern human in terms of aesthetic guidance and artistic creations;Richard Shusterman's Somaesthetics aimed at the realization of human self-promotion in two directions,inward and outward.All these are variations on the theme of philosophy as art of life based on phenomenology.The phenomenological spirit of″small change,″the position against the tendency of theorizing,specialization and academicism in contemporary philosophy, the position of″pre-science,″i.e.of philosophy preceding empirical science and normal science, the defense of life-world and contingency,the focusing on the genetic constitution of meanings, the return to classical philosophy and the practice of philosophy,the attitude of mild criticism of modern technology based on the affirmation of everyday life — all these have become the starting point and standpoint of philosophy as art of life.Research into the theoretical connection between phenomenology and philosophy as art of life has therefore become indispensible to comprehending the values of and recent developments in contemporary phenomenology, as well as tounderstanding the origins and development trends of philosophy as art of life.