Table of Content

15 March 2019, Volume 36 Issue 2

Previous Issue    Next Issue

Annual Report on China’s Judicial Reform (2018)

2019, 36(2):  1. 

Asbtract ( 682 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

2018, China’s judicial reform revolved around the tasks and objectives of “promoting the comprehensive reform of the judicial system” deployed by the central government. Progress has been made in deepening the reform of the state supervision system, implementing the judicial responsibility system, improving the people’s jury system, developing specialized trials, and deepening judicial openness.However, subject to the constraints of the system and other factors, the reform efforts are limited. In the context of the difficulty in achieving critical breakthroughs in institutional reform, a viable strategy is to promote close justice and gradually improve the judicial ecology through technological changes such as judicial transparency.


Film Studies in Digital PostModern EraKeyan Tomaselli1

2019, 36(2):  20. 

Asbtract ( 517 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

Abstract： Interdisciplinary nature characterizes the postindustrial, postmodern, postdisciplinary intellectual environment. With the virtual and augmented technological development, the certainties offered by the traditional normative theories in the 20th century are lost in the new millennium world that appears to be no longer fully grounded on modernist assumptions or even material reality. It is of critical importance to know about disciplinary epistemologies, disciplinary histories and the paradigmatic evolution of film theories across different periods, contexts and conditions. This article critically examines some of these issues by applying the framework of "langue" (structure, form, schools, etc.) and "parole" (accent, style, anecdotes, etc.) as the major approach and analyzes "theme" ("langue" in the disciplinary sense) and "topic" ("parole" in the nondisciplinary sense）accordingly. Contrary to the modernistic and industrial teaching mode adopted by many current film academies, film textbased postmodernistic teaching mode refuses to take film theories as the explanatory framework. In addition, digital story telling approach attempts to remap the "langue" and "parole" scene by letting the "specactors" have the virtual, interactive experience.


Grammar, History and Culture: A Review of Rick Altman's Threelayer#br#  Framework for Film Genre Researches

2019, 36(2):  33. 

Asbtract ( 482 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

Rick Altman with the University of Iowa is one of the most respected scholars in the field of international film genre researches. In his more than 20 years of film genre researches, he constantly revised and perfected the theoretical framework, and finally formed a threelayer analytical framework of grammar, history and culture. This theoretical framework can powerfully reveal the aesthetics, commercial and cultural features of commercial genre films and their interactive force. His theoretical achievements are of great significance to the promotion of the theoretical construction of film genre researches in China.


Hegemony Change, Russian Revolution and the Evolution of the #br# Connotation of “Les damnés”——Revisiting “May Fourth” (I)

2019, 36(2):  43. 

Asbtract ( 591 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

Abstract： This paper argues that both the turn of the New Cultural Movement and the outbreak of the patriotic May Fourth Movement were to some extent the consequences of the “European War” (World War I). The consequences were not only embodied in the victory of the Entente Countries over the Ally Countries, but also the superiority of “the 20th Century Civilization” to “the 19th Century Civilization”. Specifically, the “European War” marked the overall crisis of the 19th Century Civilization, while the “Russian Revolution” became the starting point of the 20th Century Civilization. Borrowing from Eric Hobsbawm’s historical division of the Short Twentieth Century and Giovanni Arrighi’s division of the Long Twentieth Century, the significance of the European War may be further interpreted as paving way for the “hegemony change” of capitalism, while the Russian Revolution may signify a breakthrough in the hegemony change. It is in this twofold perspective of “war” and “revolution” that the personnel of New Youth, represented by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, experienced a profound ideological transformation “from Wilson to Lenin”, attempting to connect the “new subjects” summoned up from the New Culture to the victorious subjects of the “les damnés” and “the subjects of history”, thus laying foundation for the transformation from abstract “human” to the concrete “people” in the postMay Fourth period.


Political Geography and the Outlook on the History of Civilization#br#  in the Late Qing Dynasty

2019, 36(2):  62. 

Asbtract ( 572 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

 Political Geography, a major branch of Geography, turned out to be an important field of study in the late Qing Dynasty as a result of national crisis. Founded by German geologist Friedrich Ratzel in 1897, Political Geography was mainly about the relationship between national organism and geographical space and later developed into Geopolitics by his student Rudolf Kjellén.In other words, modern Geography resulted from great geographical discoveries, but took on features of nationalism at the end of 19th century. Thus, it may acquire both features of progressivism of the early modern period and Darwin's philosophy of evolutionism. Both features influenced Chinese people and constituted an important part of their outlook on the history of civilization in the late Qing Dynasty.


The Construction of the Right to Personal Information in China#br#

2019, 36(2):  77. 

Asbtract ( 468 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

Abstract： As the information society is highly complex, a sketchy conceptualized thinking mode cannot fit in the complicated ontology. The right to personal information must be explained in a holistic approach with personality and property as the dual ownership and through constructing the right to personal information by embedding personality into property. Under the condition of a given personality element of personal information and with the environmental and external constraints in a series of events （labor and transaction）, a set of new rights to personal information separates from other rights such as the right to privacy, right to personality and basic rights, thus generating a new form of rightright to personal information, with the aid of the State empowering and  functional deriving. The right to personal information includes the right to control personal information, public right, right to information property, right to be forgotten and residual right, with all these rights overlapping and sharing common ground. Due to the complicated strucutre of the right to personal information, the protection of personal information in China should combine the mixed legislature mode with the holistic legislature principles, aiming at an integrated legal structure with privacy law as the starting point, the economic law, administrative law and criminal law as the protection and the law of society as the guarantee. In this way, we may construct a legal system of personal informtion protection, which encourages the mobility of personal information while warding off potential huge risks involved.


The Liability Structure of Automated Driving—Also on the Threelayer#br#  Insurance Structure of Automated Driving Vehicles

2019, 36(2):  90. 

Asbtract ( 526 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

 Automated driving can be divided into highlevel automated driving and driverless driving. Since no automated driving vehicles can completely avoid accidents, we should fully respond to the challenges of automated driving through the legislation of Civil Code. First of all, in terms of product liability, the modifiers as the the producers of the automated driving vehicles should take full responsibility.Meanwhile, standards of reasonable consumers expectations should be referenced in judging product defects. The presumption of causation and the reversal of the burden of proof should be applied to automobile product liability. Nevertheless, the defense of development risks should not be applied. Secondly, traffic accident liability needs to be differentiated according to the types of automated driving. Producers and users have joint liability in highlevel automated driving vehicles while producers should take full responsibility for driverless vehicles. Finally, in auto insurance, automobile insurance is embodied in a unique threelayer structure, including compulsory insurance insured by the owner or custodian, the commercial automobile insurance insured by the user or the producer and the product liability insurance insured by the producer or seller.

Exploring the Feasibility of Decentering Eurocentrism in#br#  Chinese Translation Studies

2019, 36(2):  104. 

Asbtract ( 386 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

 Translation Studies as a new discipline both at home and abroad has made great progresses since the 1980s. However, the study of modern translation theories in China mainly focuses on European translation theories, leading to Eurocentrism, while few innovative translation theories have been put forward by Chinese scholars. This paper explores the reasons for Eurocentrism both in the west and in Chinese Translation Studies. In the west, Eurocentrism in Translation Studies is due to the fast development of western translation theories and English as a lingua franca, while in China, theoretical study of translation theories has not been given enough attention to because Chinese cultural tradition puts more emphasis on translation practice rather than translation theories. The paper argues that since Chinese translation tradition has its own unique features, Chinese translation scholars should carry out translation studies on the basis of Chinese translation activities so as to make its own contribution to the world. The author puts forward some suggestions to decenter Eurocentrism in Chinese translation studies in order to promote Chinese translation studies and enrich world translation theories in future.


From Encounter to Eclecticism: The Translations and Studies of#br#  Li Yu’s Works in the English World

2019, 36(2):  114. 

Asbtract ( 446 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

A comprehensive literature review of the translations and studies of Li Yu’s works in the English world shows that in different periods,their overall features varied from the initial “encounter” between the East and the West to the pluralism in translations and researches, from hunting for novelty to seeking literary and cultural dialogues in the context of globalization. The evolution reflects the differences in cultural psychology, theoretical context and research perspectives between the Oriental and Occidental cultures. Overseas Sinologists' preference for the subject matter of Li's works for translation and their research findings offer multiple perspectives, which can be referenced by domestic researchers. The paper concludes that the ultimate determinant of the canonization of Li's works is their universality and literary ontological value and domestic scholars and overseas sinologists can learn from each other in the process of mutual reference and eclecticism so as to open new spaces for academic dialogue.


Notes on Narrative as Medium and a Media Ecology Approach #br# to the Study of Storytelling

2019, 36(2):  126. 

Asbtract ( 413 )  

Related Articles | Metrics

Storytelling, as a distinctively human characteristic, is a product of our capacity for language and symbolic communication. Just as language is considered a medium within the field of media ecology, so too can narrative be understood as a medium of communication, as well as a kind of language, and as a fundamentally social phenomenon. As a medium, narrative interacts with and is modified by other media, undergoing significant change as it is expressed through oral tradition, dramatic performance, written documents, and audiovisual media. In particular, major changes in the nature of character and plot accompany the shift from orality to literacy, and writing and especially printing make possible new forms of tragedy as opposed to comedy, prose as opposed to poetry, and fiction as opposed to nonfiction. Storytelling continues to mutate through the introduction of new media, with increasingly greater emphasis on narrative as an environment, especially one associated with social interaction and gaming.