An Analysis of the Current Chinese Economy

Question 1: Was China successful in implementing economic reforms? The Chinese Economic Reform was no doubt a success as the economy of the republic continued to increase its Gross National Product annually in the past decade. The various phases that involved the economic reform were in a circular course. It was composed of expansion, retraction and then consolidation after a campaign of political â€Å"rectification† had been undertaken (Hu). The drastic changes in the economic state of China can be attributed to certain reasons. But in a nut shell, the success of the economic reforms can be attributed to the China’s policies which pushed the Chinese to bring out and optimize their abilities and resources. It is the China’s willingness to accept foreign investors to have business in their country. Question 2: What are the factors that affect the Chinese economic growth? The first specific reason would be the open door policy. The open door policy allowed and welcomed foreign investors and endorsed foreign investment and trade. This same policy has provided skills training, capital, and latest technology, among others to the Chinese people. It also gave much employment opportunities for the Chinese (Finkelstein and Gunness). On the other hand, it also brought competition in the local market. Fortunately, these domestic competitions has caused the workers and local businessmen to become efficient and pushed to manufacture quality products and consumers. In addition, the China’s decision to join the World Trade Organization provided wider opportunities for the Republic. The negative effects of the foreign competition that could be brought to the country’s economy were controlled by imposing gradual reduction of import Tariffs. World Trade Organization or WTO is an international organization which plans and implements economic and trade policies among its member nations. Its main aim is to make sure that there will be a smooth flow of trade as freely as it can be. Question 3: What is the role of the Chinese Communist Government in this economic reform? At present, China promotes superiority of local officials and even the plant managers, in the field of agriculture (Mann). That system allowed small businesses to have greater varieties of their products and even increased the trade and investment from non-state members or foreigners. Since the economic reforms were implemented, the economy of China has drastically boomed. It has substantially grown faster as compared to the time when the reform was not yet implemented. For example, in 2004, there was an original measurement of 9.5 percent Gross Domestic Product Growth but revising the figure would mean 10.1 percent rate of the GDP. More so, the average yearly GDP of China has grown to 9.6 percent between 1979 and 2005. The statistics only implies that every year, China, has manifested growth in its economy. The production has increased which means the national income would also bloat of its amount. The increase in GDP would also mean more employment opportunities among Chinese and more business ventures for the businessmen, even the small-scale ones (Curley and Thomas). The rapid economic growth of China is worth note taking. The â€Å"socialist market economy† could be an answer to the long before economic problems of the third world countries. Who would have thought that the Chinese Economic Reform would drastically change the economy of China? The concept of economic development is not a utopian one. A country could always has its economic leap if it is open to the changes it entails, just like what China did—even by bit by bit. Reference: Curley, Melissa, and Nicholas Thomas. Advancing East Asian Regionalism. Politics in Asia Series. London ; New York: Routledge, 2007. Finkelstein, David Michael, and Kristen Gunness. Civil-Military Relations in Today's China : Swimming in a New Sea. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2007. Hu, Angang. Economic and Social Transformation in China : Challenges and Opportunities. London ; New York: Routledge, 2007. Mann, Jim. The China Fantasy : How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression. New York: Viking, 2007.      

Critique for the Potentials, Network, Motivations, and Barriers: Steps Towards Participation in Social Movements

Critique for the Potentials, Network, Motivations, and Barriers: Steps towards participation in social movements. The four factors to form social movement are mobilization potentials, forming and activating recruiting networks, raising the motivation to participate and overcome the barriers of participation. Becoming a participant also required four different steps: becoming part of the mobilization potential, becoming target of the mobilization attempts, becoming motivated to participated and overcome the barriers to participate.To define the mobilization potential, the term referred to the people who take a positive attitude to the social movement. Attitudes consist of means and goals toward the movement. With the respect toward means, the term is related to the willingness to become engaged in conventional forms of political behavior, the protest potential in abbreviation. With the respect toward the goals, the concept is related to manifest political potential which means a group of people with a common identity and sharing the common goals. People who are not involved in the mobilization potential won’t consider participating in the movement activities.To explain the recruitment network and the mobilization attempts. Despite the mobilizing consensus and the mobilization potential, if these factors can’t be linked to the recruitment network, the mobilization won’t be realized. The networks identifies whether the people became the target of mobilization attempts. People can be target by the mobilization attempts by media, mail, relationships with organizations and friends. Different routes get a different influence on people. The significance of friendships reaching potential participants has been emphasized in many researches.The third factor is the motivation to participate. The motivation is defined as the function of the perceived costs and the benefits of participation. Two different kinds of incentives are identified as the collect ive incentives and the selective incentives. With the respect to the collective incentives, a multiplicative relationship is assumed between the value of the collective goods and the expectancy of the success. With the respect of the collective incentives, the soft or social incentives are important in determining the willingness to participate while the effect of the hard or nonsocial incentives is ambiguous.Such incentives appeared different effects in different environment. Since the movements must communicate to the potential participants to which extent the incentives are controlled by the movement, the mobilization of consensus is also a key part of this stage. The fourth factor is the barriers to participation. Motivation and barriers interact to active participation. The more people are motivated, the higher barrier they can overcome. Maintaining or increasing motivation or removing barriers are the two strategies for the movement.The paper gave the data on all the four step s of the mobilization campaign for the peace demonstration in The Hague in 1983 which is the largest demonstration the Netherlands had ever experienced. The authors conducted surveys before and after the demonstration in sake to analyze the participation behavior. In the survey, the mobilization potential, mobilization target, motivations, participation, attitudes, incentives, participation barriers, leftism of party vote and demographics of the participant have been measured. In each of the process toward the final demonstration considerable amount of people drop out.Not being the target of the mobilization attempts, unable to overcome the barriers, could not arouse the motivation to participate lead to the drop out situation. The author analyzes those factors carefully in the paper to explain the result. The first step is the mobilization potential. Authors compared the age, gender, education, vote behavior, and attitudinal factors to analyze the people whether belong to the mobil ization or not. With the respect to the demographics, olds and people who votes for the right party tend not belong to the mobilization potential.People from the mobilization potential were more concern about and fight against about the missile deployment and sign a petition to against the deployment. The two groups show no difference on the possibility to control the arms race no matter in which way this would be achieved. The political preference is also a factor influence the motivation potential. People who stay outside the mobilization potential of movement against the missile were mostly from the right wing. The entire left wing of the Dutch society was the part of the motivation potential.The author also found that the people who did not belong to the motivation potential got higher education level which is contradict to previous study. In conclusion, the mobilization potential of the movement covered a wide range of social categories rather than restricted to categories thou ght to be typical of the mobilization potentials of new social movements like new middle class, well-educated professionals and youth. The second step is to become the target of the mobilization attempts. Whether a person has formal or informal links with local peace movement is used to test whether person have been the target of mobilization attempt.Most of the mobilization potentials were reached by mobilization attempts by formal networks like visit peace stand, reading newspapers or reached by organizations. Individual with several or even many acquaintances who tend to go to the demonstration are defined as have an informal recruitment network to the movement. Only 30% of the respondent got several informal links. The ratio of the mobilization potential has no link, formal link or informal link with the peace movement networks are quite the same at around 20%. 40% of the people got both kinds of link to the movement.This indicates that people who belonged to the mobilization po tential had been as frequently targets of mobilization attempts as people outside the mobilization potential. People outside the potential have more formal links than the people within the potential. But with fewer informal links doesn’t prevent the government organization to approach these people. Gender factors have no independent effect on the links to government networks. Highly educated people appeared to create new mobilization potentials because they connected to the social network engaged in recruitment more.Informal networks are far more important than the formal ones in arousal of the motivation to participate. The third step is the motivation to participate. The motivation depends on the specific blend of costs and benefits perceived. With the respect of the collective incentives, in this demonstration, none of the respondent was optimistic about the outcome. In this protection, the potential participants estimated the number of participants more than the nonpartic ipant did, this is contradict to the finding that people tend to participate more if they expect others will do so as well.But in certain conditions, people tend to participate less when they believe other people will. With the respect of the selective cost and benefit, knowing more people will increase the tendency one goes to the demonstration. The nonsocial cost of the demonstration is low. In the regression analysis, the result shows that the collective incentives were more important than the selective incentives in determining the motivation to participate. Due to the small sample size, the stage of overcome the barriers to participate cannot be explain.Previous papers have explained the nonparticipation in many points of views. Free rider problem has been used to explain the nonparticipation phenomena. In some past research, free rider theory has been used to explain the non-participation. In this research, the author explains the non-participation by the four steps towards th e participation. This paper also reveals that the attitudes toward to goal were important determinant of willingness to participate.The network and ideological incentives are another important factor affect peoples’ participation decision. In this paper, the author gives four stages to explain why people would like to participate in social movement or not. The issue the author does not mention a lot is the institutional factors. How the institution can courage people to participate the movement and how they can control the movement can be studied. The problem in the paper is the sample size may be a little too small. This may cause some statistical problem during the research.

A House for Mr. Biswas

In his novel A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul has created a very lively and realistic atmosphere of ex-patriot Indian community that is living separate from its culture, while trying to live the same cultural atmosphere.The novel has vividly shown internal conflict and struggle of its protagonist, Mr. Biswas, especially in relation of his in-laws, the Tulsis. Mr. Biswas, a person of humble personal fortunes and limited means was never fully accepted in rather affluent and well-off business class Tulsi family. At the best of their behavior Tulsis merely tolerated Mr. Biswas and Mr. Biswas, on his part found Tulsis an extremely hypocrite and disorganized clan, though he often wondered at the complexity of their huge joint family.In this context the Christmas celebration in Tulsis holds special significance for both its inhabitants as well as for Mr. Biswas. Mr. Biswas, normally finding the stores of Tulsis very depressing and repulsive, could not ignore the sudden transformation of Tulsis store in places of romance, charm and delight at the time of Christmas.The stored owed this transformation to assorted goods kept their for sale in Christmas, and presence of these varied, multicolored goods, that included various toys, musical instruments, resplendent show pieces, gift items and scintillating glassware that changed the character of not only the store, but also enlivened the houses of Tulsis and spirits of its members. Christmas always created a series of anticipations and hopes among members of Tulsi clans.The younger generation engaged itself in colorful decorations, while the ladies of house, although superficially uninterested in this ‘trite’ event, could not help preparing for the occasion, stuffing the lining of children’s pillows with gifts items.The excitement of Christmas, as described in the novel, peaked on Christmas morning and with sufficient over dose of excitement, it was felt to be over by noon, with everyone’s atte ntion turning to delicacies being prepared in kitchen and children went to sleep with great anticipations for their ‘Santa Clause’ gifts.The gifts, eventually proved to be very ordinary-an apple, a balloon and a whistle for every child, but as it was a common gift, no one complained and children remained content with their gift, enjoying some excellent lunch and not so excellent dinner. Meanwhile a sharp contrast has been drawn by description of Christmas at barracks, the world of Mr. Biswas, showcasing the great difference of class in even a small ex-patriot community.â€Å" At the barracks there were no apples, no stockings, no baking of cakes, no churning of ice creams, no refinements to be waited for. It was from the start a day of abandoned eating and drinking and was to end, not with the beating of children, but with the beating of wives.†There is no wonder then Mr. Biswas felt a kind of fascination for the Christmas celebration taking place at the house of Tulsis.The following of ‘Doll House’ sharply points at the vast gulf that existed between the world of Mr. Biswas and the world of his in laws. At the time of above described Christmas, Mr. Biswas’ wife Shama was living at her parent’s house along with her two children Savi and Ananad. On the next day of Christmas Mr. Biswas, realizing he had not brought any gift for his children, purchased a splendid doll house ly for his daughter Savi, with whom was he was most attached, and presented it to her when all other children happened to be standing around.Mr. Biswas had gifted this rather exquisite doll house to his daughter out of purely love and affection, however, in the complex political atmosphere of Tulsis, this gesture was seen particularly offending and humiliating and Mr. Biswas was straightforwardly told of his effrontery by the matriarch of the family.Meanwhile the situation turned unpleasant as other children at Tulsis were publicly admonished agai nst touching the ‘Doll House’ that was brought just for Savi, in an attempt to ostracize the girl and her mother because they happened to receive an expensive and quality gift that other children did not.

What Is Modern Technology Provide to Us

What is Modern Technology Provide to Us? â€Å"Technology begins with human nature,† this is a slogan what I believe. There is one question always appear in my mind, what does modern technology bring us? Since development of modern technology, more and more inventions appear. Modern technology was designed to meet human needs, and for convenience. It cannot be denied that modern technology makes our life more convenient; however, modern technologies still bring greater inconvenience than convenience.Complex method of operation is one of the biggest problems when using the modern technology; for example: a millionaire bought a car from Europe to show his wealth, everyone could drive it easily by pushing several buttons because this car was full automatic with its artificial intelligence. But the system setting was very complicated before you started it. Once, this millionaire pushed the wrong buttons and then the car could not move. Then, he had to invite the professional engin eer from Europe to help him solved this problem.After that, he decided not to use those buttons to avoid any problem and troubles. Let’s take the invention of cars as another example, its invention is supposed to enable us to travel faster and is more convenient. But, what happens now? The traffic jams for hours, pollutions appear, every time when I see the traffic jams in any city during the rush hour, I feel that I am so lucky because I don’t have a car. We don’t even know exactly how much time we have to spend or waste on our car. That is the reason why I choose to take populace transportation vehicle.To compare radio and cable, radio can provide news, entertainment or even advertisement as cable does. There is no doubt that cable plays an important role in our lives; however, cable brings numerous negative things as well. Cables transmit more violence and pornography than before. It might affect our new generation. On the other hand, radio still occupies an important role in our life. Most of people don’t really have time to watch the news on television, but they will still listen to the radio have they are driving or so.Modern technologies bring inconvenience because it doesn’t really fit in what we need in our life. Let’s take the most popular invention: cell phone as another example. Nowadays, cell phones become smaller and lighter. Cell phone seems very convenience to us. Nevertheless, this kind of design is not suitable for some of us. Such as the button are too small for senior citizen to click, too expensive to fix. Personally, I am always looking for my cell phone because my cell phone is too small for me. What does modern technology really bring to us?One of my teachers told us that the richest people will get richer and richer. But we are getting poor. It is because those producers are sucking our money because we are buying their new invention. Personally, I strongly believe we should consider if the new est technology can really provide the convenience to us when we try to develop them, or they will only become a trouble for us. Now, I am also thinking about another question: â€Å"If my laptop break down right now and this essay suddenly disappear, how will I feel and what should I do? †

Being A Good Manager Because Of People Skills Management Essay

Being A Good Manager Because Of People Skills Management Essay Being a good manager has less to do with knowledge of a companys main field of activity and more with displaying a range of so-called â€Å"people skills†. While this detail is common knowledge in todays business world, what exactly are the main skills in a managers arsenal remains a rather grey area. This situation stems from the fact that considering the management needs in the 21st century, the field of management as a whole has become increasingly divided and fragmented. If not long ago management was split into clear areas (such as HR management, financial management, operational management and others), today specific management positions may require processes from multiple areas thus blurring the borders. Therefore, correctly identifying a manager’s toolkit of skills can prove to be a challenge in itself. The Professional Development Module attempts to settle this grey area using a study by the Association of Graduate Recruiters. This study conducted among a larg e number of employers tries to identify the main management skills considered to be in short supply in today’s market. The study names â€Å"commercial awareness† and â€Å"communication skills† as the very top shortages identified by employers. With each harnessing the attention of 60% of the respondents, they stand well ahead of the next identified shortages: â€Å"leadership†, â€Å"teamwork† and â€Å"problem-solving abilities†. â€Å"Conceptual ability†, â€Å"Subject knowledge and competence†, â€Å"Numeracy† and â€Å"Foreign languages† follow, but each being named by less than 20% of the respondents. â€Å"Good general education† is the last of the skills considered in this study. The results confirm the initial premise that the aforementioned â€Å"people skills† are considered much more relevant in the field of management, while at the same time being severely scarce. Thus, the Professional Development Module places emphasis on these skills, while aggregating them into more focused categories. The Module accurately describes the manager’s toolkit as containing: communication skills, presentation skills, negotiation skills, and cross-cultural awareness, networking skills, team skills as well as conflict management skills. Having a head start given by an accurate identification of the market’s needs, the Professional Development Module proceeds to train these skills in an effective manner. It is notable that the module is divided into sections covering each of the identified skill categories. Each of these sections takes the time to properly define its area of emphasis, underlining its relevance and importance within the toolkit before proceeding to develop the subject and use real-life examples and exercises to help develop the skill. Facilitation is certainly one of the most important skills in the set described above. Sometimes presented as mediation or negotiation, in fact facilitation is a broader term that describes the activity of creating the proper environment so that participants in a meeting or discussion can reach a satisfactory agreement. The Professional Development Module segment dedicated to facilitation does a great job at describing the issues that fall under a facilitator’s jurisdiction. While meetings are part of any core process of any corporate activity, they can also be the very Achilles’s heels of the process they are used in. Since meetings bring together different people with different goals, different hopes, different expectations, different personalities and different view of the world altogether, conflicts appear very easily. Conflicts can result in disagreement, aggression or frustration, which lead the meeting away from its intended purpose and alienate the participants. While conflicts are the most common choke point in a meeting, there are many other pitfalls that can turn a meeting into a counterproductive activity. Having an individual or small group dominate the discussion is one such pitfall just as letting an otherwise productive discussion fall into running around in circles when conclusions are called for.

Women's Role in the labor movement Research Paper

Women's Role in the labor movement - Research Paper Example The process of collective bargaining is deployed whereby the leaders negotiate either directly with the concerned entity or through an arbitrator to come to common terms of agreement. The history of trade unions dates back to the Industrial Revolution when mass industrialization and exploitation of workers and poor living conditions gave birth to the concept of worker rights (Dumont and Hacourt). The role of women in trade unions has presumed great significance today as the notion of gender equality and anti discrimination lawsuits become rampant. Women have assumed increasingly greater importance in trade union activities particularly in the United States, U.K, Netherlands and Canada (Curtin and Jennifer). The paper discusses the role of women in labor unions both in the United States and in Europe. The Case of U.S.A The history of women’s role in labor unions in the United States dates back to 1765 when â€Å"Daughters of Liberty†, a first of its kind society for prof essional women, was established (Tax). Thereafter, in 1824, women’s rights in the workplace assumed their significance when , in Rhode Island, 102 women workers called a strike, to support their brothers ( who were weavers) in an attempt to protest against the decline in wages and the introduction of long working hours (Anne). In 1825, however, this concept was taken to heights when the first union comprising of women only was formed under the banner of â€Å"The United Tailoresses of New York† (Tax). In 1831, approximately 1600 women of this union called on a strike, demanding a just and fair wage rate (Tax). IN 1845, Sarah Bagley formed â€Å"The Female Labor Reform Association† in protest of the 12-13 hour long work day and gave a call to reduce it to 10 hours along with improvement in sanitation and safety facilities at cotton mills in Massachusetts (Tax). The acceptance of women in labor unions was gaining ground which was marked by the first of its kind in clusion of women and African Americans at a national level, in the leading trade union of that time- Cigar. From here onwards begun the journey of women in labor unions at a nationwide level. In 1869, women shoemakers established a national labor union by the name of â€Å"Daughters of St Crispin† at Massachusetts (Tax). This gave birth to the concept of Equal Opportunity in America, when in 1872, the Congress, for the first time, passed a bill whereby women working at the federal level were given the same pay for the same nature of work as their male counterparts (Tax). The notion of protests by women workers for their rights continued and, in 1881, Black women in the laundry sector hosted the biggest ever strike in history till then. In the same year, over 1800 women workers won the bill whereby women doctors were made mandatory for women patients at mental health clinics (Tax). In 1889, however, the concept of women’s rights at workplace was extended beyond that ref lected by strikes and protests (Tax). Jane Adams established a â€Å"full house† for social welfare of women in order to enhance their personal development and increase the recognition of their efforts in the society. It was in this year that the concept of social entrepreneurship in the context of women truly took shape and set the stage for others to follow suit. The concept of social welfare then extended to other spheres of life in 1898 when Charlotte Perkins Gillman, through power of the ink, conveyed the importance of women to be economically and financially independent (Martens and Mitter). As years passed different modes of expressing women’s rights in the workplace came into shape. For instance, in 1899, National Consumers League was established to steer and empower women consumers to use their power to achieve

How did the target market change for Holiday Inn Hotels after the Literature review

How did the target market change for Holiday Inn Hotels after the financial crisis amongst hotels in England & Bosnia - Literature review Example Different types of relevant literatures are reviewed for the purpose of attaining some conceptual findings regarding research work. From the perspective of impact of financial crisis in late 2008, Platt, Carper, and McCool (2010) have presented their views. As per the findings of the author, it can analyzed critically that recent financial crisis have been proved quite critical for business organizations operating across the world. The failure of some of the major business organizations has induced different domestic as well as multinational business organizations to change the norms of their business practices and strategies for the purpose of minimizing risks in their business operations2. Kotler, Bowen, and Makens (2011) have presented the theory of strategic change in the market. As per the theory, external environmental factors can be responsible factors for changes in the market place. As per the theory, although the major impact of recession have been seen in the operations of finance sectors organizations, yet still there are some other sectors such as hospitality, manufacturing, and automobile, that hav e been affected quite significantly after the occurrence of this financial slump across the globe 3 In contrast to such findings, Corgel, and Woodworth (2012) have explained the impact of recession over hospitality sector. Authors have argued quite critically that hotel industry is one of the industries which directly relates with other business industries. The recession has affected the patterns and trends followed by different hotel organizations4. In the support of this Shi, White, Zou, and Cavusgil (2010) has elaborated that such crucial differences can be observed in the context of product and service offerings, internal administration, operations, and marketing strategies. Due to shortage of financial resources during the time of recession, hotel organizations have started to be more concerned about refining their