Table of Content

15 March 2022, Volume 39 Issue 2

Previous Issue    Next Issue

“Metaverse”: A Future Concept at the Initial #br# Stage of Its Basic Technology

JIAN Shengyu

2022, 39(2):  1-16. 

Asbtract ( 6258 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

 “Metaverse” is an inevitable product of the development of virtual reality technology. Humans need to build the “Embodied Internet”, so that the full-simulation of digital transformation in various fields can be achieved in a more integrated form. At present, despite being a future concept at the initial stage of its basic technology, “Metaverse” has demonstrated the necessity and feasibility of building the next-generation Internet. The basic infrastructures, relevant software technologies and application-side content production mechanism involved in “Metaverse” have already taken shape. The upgrading of virtual reality technology has brought human society unprecedented opportunities of transformation as well as potential risks. How to grasp the opportunities, meet the challenges and create new prospects are important targets of the times requiring prudent consideration.



A Chinese Approach to Currency Governance in the “Metaverse”

YUAN Zeng

2022, 39(2):  17-28. 

Asbtract ( 6061 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

“Metaverse” is a virtual digital space parallel to the physical world established under the conditions of new science and technologies. “Metaverse” differs from the traditional Internet in that its behaviors in the space have real connections with the real society. The value exchange provided by currency is an important logical basis to provide cross-space connections. Currently, digital tokens issued for data platform enterprises to settle transactions in the “metaverse” have certain monetary functions such as price identification, payment and settlement, but due to the decentralized issuers and lack of national credit endorsement, digital tokens always face insurmountable defects such as unstable value, inability to regulate and limited scale. Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP), the digital form of RMB, is backed by Chinese national credit, advantageous in advanced digital technology and data market, credible for its recognition and protection of data rights and interests and in line with the currency governance of the metaverse. To determine the standards of currency governance in the metaverse, it is necessary for China to actively participate in international cooperation, to carry out bilateral and multilateral cooperation on digital currency governance in the form of soft law, and to clarify key compliance standards such as supervision and data protection in the issuance and circulation of DCEP. By strengthening the restrictions on the power of the data platform, we can gradually modernize the DCEP governance system and capacity, so as to seize the commanding heights of the “metaverse ”economic development.



Judicial Blockchain: Values, Goals and Approaches to Realization

HAN Xuzhi

2022, 39(2):  29-44. 

Asbtract ( 6102 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

 Judicial blockchain, a new type of trust mechanism, has shown unique value in promoting “governance at the source of litigation”, improving trial efficiency, realizing judicial convenience, deepening judicial openness and strengthening supervision and management. As an important link of “smart justice”, judicial blockchain must inherit the humanistic foundation of traditional justice, adhere to the essential attributes of justice and take the realization of digital justice as its goal. Examining the application scenarios of judicial blockchain from the three dimensions of application value, construction goal and necessity, we can find its problems and risks, such as system security risk, possible new litigation burden, “duplication of construction” and “disconnection between construction and use” to a certain extent. Moreover, some application scenarios are not conducive to rights protection; it may conflict with the attribute of passive neutrality of justice; and some applications can be replaced by other trust mechanisms. Only by adhering to the decentralized and open architecture design, focusing on the protection of human rights, regulating and limiting the multi-dimensional applications of judicial blockchain, and aiming at the benign synergy between judicial blockchain and other trust mechanisms, can we finally realize the values and goals of judicial blockchain.



The Genre Film as the Synthesis of Synchronic System and Diachronic Process—Investigating the Formation of the Classical Research Approach to Western Genre Films

GUI Lin

2022, 39(2):  45-55. 

Asbtract ( 6171 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

The study of Western genre films started after World War II, pioneered by Bazin who initiated the research of the genre of American westerns. In the 1970s, Thomas Schatz took genre only as a synchronic system, leading to predicaments. After the 1980s, an integrated approach came into being, upholding that genre films must be regarded as the synthesis of synchronic system and diachronic process. In the late 1990s, Film/Genre by Rick Altman and Hollywood Genres by Steve Neale were almost published at the same time, signifying the maturity of the integrated approach. Up till now, the two representative works have still been the most frequently cited books in the study of Western genre films, indicating that it is the classical approach to studying Western genre films from the dual perspectives of synchronic system and diachronic process. Its formation process is a clearer and more profound choice for western researchers to understand genre film as a complex research object, which can also shed light on China’s genre film research. In the current era of intertwining factors of literature, arts, commerce, science, technology and media, the genre film research has still much room to expand.



“Bodies-in-Space” as Symbols:  Rural-Old-Fathers as “a Mob of Illiterates”  in the 1980s’ Chinese Films from the Perspective of Visual Narrative

YU Wanting

2022, 39(2):  56-66. 

Asbtract ( 6161 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

 In Chinese rural films many symbolic rural-old-father images were created to elaborate various rural social relationships, human-land and rural-urban relationships. In the 1980s’ films, rural-old-father images departed from the wise-old-man cultural archetype, changing from heroes of revolution and construction to backward, conservative and need-to-be-enlightened “illiterates”. The symbolic images were made more prominent as the visual narrative was enhanced while language narrative was decreased. As the center of the images of rural-old-fathers, “bodies-in-space” reflected various human-environment contrastive relationships, extending to gender, class, individual/collective, public/private dimensions. Three types of images were portrayed as starting points of analysis: bitter portraits, “bodies-in-workspace”, and “bodies-in-interpersonal space”. Different from Chinese visual tradition, portraits of rural fathers shared such features as large areas of shadow, silence and hidden facial expressions. “Bodies-in-workspace” were images emphasizing bodies in work, while ignoring individual subjectivity. “Bodies-in-interpersonal space” placed “father-son”relationship in a reversed “up-down” spatial one, depicting the rural old fathers as onlookers without discourse power in the opposite position who needed to be enlightened by their sons. “Bodies in space” as symbols facilitated the portrayal of “rural old fathers” as a mob of illiterates, visualizing relevant culture, experience, ideologies and values into the narrative of enlightenment, and as “silent work machines” who contributed to demarcation of the rural-urban boundaries, thus setting examples for cultural geography on the screen. 



Narrative Dilemma of New Female Images in Domestic Animated Films

SONG Yu

2022, 39(2):  67-81. 

Asbtract ( 6156 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

 Influenced by feminist thoughts and cultural consumption market, the female images in domestic animated films have begun to change. In recent years, a number of animated films with women as narrative subjects have been released one after another, trying to create new female images that reflect the aesthetics of the times by subverting the traditional stereotypes and catering to the market female topics in the swim. However, an in-depth examination reveals that the female images in these films have not broken away from the traditional male discourse system, and the established gender stereotypes still exist. Hence it is still a long way to go for Chinese animation filmmakers to build a broader gender discourse system in the context of globalization, to explore new aesthetics of gender narrative that meets the needs of the times, and to create female images with both personality charisma and aesthetic tension.



The Effect of the Depth of FTAs on Domestic Value-Added Exports

ZHAO Jinlong, ZHANG Runqi

2022, 39(2):  82-97. 

Asbtract ( 6188 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

Over the past three decades， the rapid development of global value chains and free trade agreements （FTAs） have become two new features of international trade. The deep FTAs which aim at strengthening “trade policy coordination” among members have gone beyond WTO authorization and exerted a profound influence on value-added trade driven by global value chains. Empirical analysis shows that the depth of FTAs has significant positive effects on both the total trade and value-added trade among member countries. Secondly， FTAs not only enhance the export levels of simple and complex global value-chain trade， but promote value-added export of each sub-items to various degrees. Further study shows gaps in economic levels among FTA members and FTA structures can lead to heterogeneous effects on domestic value added exports. Besides， from the perspective of FTA contents， WTO-X clauses have more important effects on members’ domestic value-added exports.



Overcapacity, State Regulation and Inefficient Investment —Empirical Evidence from A-Share Listed Companies

YAN Endian, HOU Minghui, LI Lu

2022, 39(2):  98-116. 

Asbtract ( 6034 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

Taking A-Share listed companies as research samples, this paper constructs overcapacity variables according to the list of backward enterprises with overcapacity in different industries published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology from 2009 to 2015. The double difference model is employed to investigate the impact of industrial policies on the investment efficiency of the enterprises with overcapacity. It is found that industrial policies have a regulatory effect on the investment efficiency of the enterprises with overcapacity. Further analysis shows that the regulatory effect is more significant on the non-state-owned enterprises, government-business irrelevant enterprises, and enterprises with high concentration of equity. As to the robustness, industrial policy mainly affects investment efficiency through government subsidies and mergers and acquisitions, and the research conclusion is still robust if the explained variable is replaced. The study not only helps us better understand the problem of enterprise overcapacity under the “new normal” of China’s economy and explore the mechanism restricting the investment efficiency of enterprises, but also provides theoretical basis for policy-making in overcapacity cutting, supply-side reform and economic transformation.




Globalization, East-West Dialogue and the Intelligible Community  —From the Perspective of Fran?ois Jullien’s De  l’universel

WU You

2022, 39(2):  117-129. 

Asbtract ( 6048 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

With the intensification of global interconnectedness, the world today is featured by a tendency involving both multi-cultural hybridization and the clash of civilizations, leading to a global field with increasing tension. In the age of global mélange, homogenization has established itself as a major force blocking and even burying cultural diversities, whereas the clash of civilizations generated by Western universalism, in the meantime, has become the greatest threat jeopardizing global stability. Fran?ois Jullien elaborates in De l’universel on the three core concepts of the universal (l’universel), the uniform (l’uniforme) and the common (le commun) and their relationships. He criticizes the rigid and stereotyped uniform and hegemonic universalism while advocating “the common” based on the doctrine of “the divergence of thoughts and the dialogism of the mind” which is the ideal direction for the multicultural coexistence and progress. Based on this, he upholds the dialogic construction based upon intelligibility and communicability between cultures. Jullien’s philosophical ideas have provided us with many inspirations. Cultural communication between China and the West should shift from the one-way borrowing model in modern history to the two-way exchange model today and both sides should learn from each other’s “impensé” to set off its weaknesses. The similar strategy could also be applied to reexamine the Chinese culture and affairs from outside (dehors) in today’s globalized and contextualized world, with an ambition to reconstruct Chinese cultural discourse and achieve “common” cultural ideals through the approach of dialogism.



Literary Narration of the Immunity Paradigms in Bio-Politics

WANG Jie

2022, 39(2):  130-140. 

Asbtract ( 5993 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

Whether it is the negative bio-politics since “the social contract” theory of Hobbes, or the affirmative bio-politics advocated by political philosophers after Foucault, all could be found in the plague narrative of western literature. What is more meaningful lies in the literary works to conceive a heterogeneous bio-community in accordance with the dual logic of immunity paradigms in bio-politics and the dialectical relationship between semantic differences explored by Esposito. Literary works could vividly present the complexity, subtlety, openness and uncompleted tense of political discourse at stake. Based on the immunity logic and community concept of the bio-politics theory, the paper discusses the contradictions, crises and future prospects of modern bio-politics from the social and historical dimensions of literary research, expecting to bring about enlightenment and reference in constructing new orders for the community in post-epidemic era.