Featured Publications of Lingnan Researchers
Responsibility in times of crisis : Lingnan researcher’s contribution in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic
This special issue is set out against the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 to critically examine how China and Asian countries have responded to the pandemic in the areas of work, education, city governance and crisis management. It features a total of 12 articles with authors from India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Taiwan, United Kingdom, in which 2 of them are contributed by Lingnan Researchers:
- Prof. LEUNG Wing Nang Albert - Use of Chinese medicine in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in China and Asia
- Prof. WONG Hiu Kan Ada - Promoting effectiveness of “working from home”: findings from Hong Kong working population under COVID-19
Asian Education and Development Studies, 10(2), Special Issue: The Impact of COVID-19 on Education, Work and Governance in China and Asia
MOK Ka Ho (Guest Editor)
Prof. MOK Ka Ho Joshua
Vice-President, Office of the President
Dean, School of Graduate Studies
Co-Director, Institute of Policy Studies
Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Comparative Policy, Department of Sociology and Social Policy
Use of Chinese medicine in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in China and Asia
LAW Siukan, XU Chuanshan, LEUNG Wingnang Albert
Prof. LEUNG Wing Nang Albert
Professor of Clinical Practice,
School of Graduate Studies
Promoting effectiveness of “working from home”: findings from Hong Kong working population under COVID-19
WONG Hiu Kan Ada, CHEUNG Oiwun Joyce, CHEN Ziguang
Prof. WONG Hiu Kan Ada
Associate Professor of Teaching,
School of Graduate Studies
Extension of social insurance coverage to informal economy workers in China : an administrative and institutional perspective
Authors : Jiwei QIAN; Zhuoyi WEN
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : International Social Security Review
DOI : 10.1111/issr.12258
This article reviews administrative issues in the context of decentralized social protection in China. In particular, what are the main obstacles to expanding social insurance coverage for workers in the informal economy? Over the last two decades, China has achieved remarkable progress toward universal social protection when this target was set as a national policy priority. However, the social insurance enrolment of informal economy workers still lags significantly behind. This article reviews the application of the International Labour Organization’s definition of informality in the Chinese context and overviews existing pension and health insurances in China. This article discusses the impact of China’s inter‐governmental fiscal relations and decentralized social protection in the multilevel government system. The article highlights that under a system of decentralized managed social insurance many informal economy workers choose to opt out of the system because of low benefits and high compliance costs. This result in deficits in social insurance coverage amongst informal economy workers.
Prof. WEN Zhuoyi Vincent
Research Assistant Professor, Asia-Pacific Institute of Ageing Studies
About the author
The effectiveness of an online grammar study scheme for Chinese undergraduate students
Author : Ryan John WINDSOR
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Smart Learning Environments
DOI : 10.1186/s40561-021-00147-w
This paper outlines and describes the effectiveness of a virtual learning environment (VLE) as a grammar learning resource for first year students at a university in southern China over two academic years. The resource, named the Independent Grammar Study Scheme (IGSS), offered short grammar exercises that were completed over a 14-week period by two cohorts of year one students. The results of this study suggest that IGSS was successful in raising the grammar test scores of participants in both 2018 and 2019; that IGSS was more beneficial to students with lower English proficiency in 2018 but not in 2019; and that the VLE has been of great benefit to the university and to around one thousand students thus far.
Global visual confidence
Authors : Alan L. F. LEE; Vincent DE GARDELLE; Pascal MAMASSIAN
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
DOI : 10.3758/s13423-020-01869-7
Visual confidence is the observers’ estimate of their precision in one single perceptual decision. Ultimately, however, observers often need to judge their confidence over a task in general rather than merely on one single decision. Here, we measured the global confidence acquired across multiple perceptual decisions. Participants performed a dual task on two series of oriented stimuli. The perceptual task was an orientation-discrimination judgment. The metacognitive task was a global confidence judgment: observers chose the series for which they felt they had performed better in the perceptual task. We found that choice accuracy in global confidence judgments improved as the number of items in the series increased, regardless of whether the global confidence judgment was made before (prospective) or after (retrospective) the perceptual decisions. This result is evidence that global confidence judgment was based on an integration of confidence information across multiple perceptual decisions rather than on a single one. Furthermore, we found a tendency for global confidence choices to be influenced by response times, and more so for recent perceptual decisions than earlier ones in the series of stimuli. Using model comparison, we found that global confidence is well described as a combination of noisy estimates of sensory evidence and position-weighted response-time evidence. In summary, humans can integrate information across multiple decisions to estimate global confidence, but this integration is not optimal, in particular because of biases in the use of response-time information.
名人的《诗经》与《诗经》的人名
Author : 蒲帥
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Feb 2021
Source : 传记文学
《左传·桓公六年》的记载中有一段关于命名原则的描述：“公问名于申繻。对曰：‘名有五，有信，有义，有象，有假，有类。以名生为信，以德命为义，以类命为象，取于物为假，取于父为类。不以国，不以官，不以山川，不以隐疾，不以畜牲，不以器币’。” 鲁桓公在得子后向大臣询问命名的注意事项，大臣申繻详尽阐发了一套“五可六不可”的具体要求，将命名的是非原则清晰地表述出来。由此可见古人很早就对“命名”行为进行了细致思考与严谨总结，并将自身的美好希冀与祝愿寄寓在了命名之中。
Beyond RSS : a PRR and SNR aided localization system for transceiver-free target in sparse wireless networks
Authors : Dian ZHANG; Wen XIE; Zexiong LIAO; Wenzhan ZHU; Landu JIANG; Yongpan ZOU
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
DOI : 10.1109/TMC.2021.3063629
Nowadays transceiver-free (also referred to as device-free) localization using Received Signal Strength (RSS) is a hot topic for researchers due to its widespread applicability. However, RSS is easily affected by the indoor environment, resulting in a dense deployment of reference nodes. Some hybrid systems have already been proposed to help RSS localization, but most of them require additional hardware support. In order to solve this problem, in this paper, we propose two algorithms, which leverage the Packet Received Rate (PRR) to help RSS localization without additional hardware support. Moreover, we take the environment noise information into consideration by utilizing the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) which is based on the RSS and Noise Floor (NF) information instead of pure RSS. Thus, we can alleviate the noise effect in the environment and make our system more sensitive to the target. Specifically, when reference nodes are sparsely deployed and RSS is very weak, PRR and SNR can help in performing localization more accurately. Our BEYOND RSS system is based on sparse wireless sensor networks, wherein the experimental results show that the average localization error of our approach outperforms the pure RSS based approach by about 15.19%.
Prof. ZHANG Dian
Associate Professor, Department of Computing and Decision Sciences
About the author
The production of contemporary sociological knowledge in Hong Kong
Author : Tse Shang Denise TANG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Journal of Historical Sociology
DOI : 10.1111/johs.12310
This paper explores the development of academic sociology in Hong Kong since the expansion of higher education and increased student enrolment in the nineties. Colleges gained university titles and sociology departments matured as a result. I attempt to trace the current state of sociology in teaching programs and research directions. I conclude with a discussion of future developments with specific reference to the repositioning of Hong Kong within sociology as the former British colony continue to negotiate, navigate and grapple its relationship with Mainland China both as a productive site for sociological research and a reference point to be different in method.
Prof. TANG Tse Shang Denise
Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Studies
Associate Director, Centre for Cultural Research and Development
About the author
Investment in children, social security, and intragenerational risk sharing
Authors : Simon FAN; Yu PANG; Pierre PESTIEAU
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : International Tax and Public Finance
DOI : 10.1007/s10797-021-09664-3
We analyze the role of pay-as-you-go social security in intragenerational risk sharing in an overlapping-generations model with individual heterogeneity. Parents invest in their children’s education in state schools in exchange for old-age financial support. Due to random factors such as luck in the job market, children may have different earning capacities despite that they receive the same education. Without social security, a parent gets a transfer payment from her own child, so the received amount is uncertain as it depends on the child’s earnings. The social security scheme, which essentially serves to pool transfer contributions from all children and then redistribute them equally to each parent, insures parents against the risk of educational investments. Our model shows that social security stimulates educational spending, enhances labor earnings, and increases ex ante individual utility. However, it may worsen ex post intragenerational inequality of lifetime income.
Teaching Jack Kerouac in a decolonizing South African University
Author : Eric STRAND
Type : Book Chapter
Published Year : 2021
Source : The Beats : A Teaching Companion
Publisher : Clemson University Press
DOI : 10.2307/j.ctv1j13z0x.24
In 2015, student activists at the University of Cape Town in South Africa met with the dean of humanities, arguing that Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) should be included in the first-year curriculum of the English major. In this charged political context, whatever layered arguments one might make in favour of Conrad's antiracism seemed swept away by the potential for demonstrations targeting the large lecture hall, and the anxious course director told me that Heart of Darkness would have to be canceled. Ironically, I had dreaded giving these lectures, protests or no protests, since Conrad was outside my field (I had agreed to fill in for the regular lecture, who was on sabbatical) and the assignment would have involved considerable prep work. After negotiating with the course director, I was overjoyed to lecture on another race-conscious, proto-modernist work of reasonable reading length, W. E. B. De Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903). While this was a happy outcome for me, one wonders if an expatriate American white male lecturing on the Souls of Black Folk was really what South Africa student and academics had in mind when they spoke of decolonization.
Examining mechanisms for creating shared value by Asian firms
Authors : Hamid KHURSHID; Robin Stanley SNELL
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : May 2021
Source : Journal of Business Research
DOI : 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.02.030
This paper examines the home-based creating shared value (CSV) projects of two multinational corporations (MNCs), and three small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). One CSV project was examined in each firm. Based on qualitative case studies, we developed two bricolage-based models to represent different motives, different processes of resource acquisition, and different processes of resource utilization when implementing CSV. For the MNCs, both based in Hong Kong, institutional advocacy and recognition provided encouragement to engage in CSV. Internal resource slack underpinned their ability to implement their respective CSV projects by repurposing internal resources or infusing them with purpose. By contrast, the SMEs, two from Pakistan and one from Hong Kong, found it necessary to adopt collective bricolage for their respective CSV projects, involving repurposing external human resources while drawing on donations or grants and enlisting the collaboration of benevolent external experts or giants. Interviewees indicated that all the focal CSV projects were distinguishable from corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects, in that the former (but not the latter) were designed to create economic revenue for the respective focal firms, while concurrently generating social/environmental benefits. Most of the CSV projects were reported to have created significant economic value for external beneficiaries.
Plate's account of intrinsicality
Author : Dan MARSHALL
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Inquiry : An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy
DOI : 10.1080/0020174X.2021.1884130
Jan Plate has recently proposed a highly sophisticated account of intrinsicality which, if successful, would analyse intrinsicality purely in terms of broadly logical notions. I argue that Plate's account is unsuccessful, since it falsely classifies as non-intrinsic the intuitively intrinsic property of being such that no part of one is non-self-identical.
COVID-19 and the political economy of the “September School Year Start” in Japan : overlooked victims and foregone revenues
Authors : Satoshi ARAKI; Shinichi AIZAWA; Naoya OKAMOTO
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : 社会情報研究
DOI : 10.24790/00000038
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a “September School Year Start” has become a central topic of discussion in Japan. While the pros and cons of changing a conventional academic calendar have been raised, two important aspects have been largely disregarded: foregone earnings of new graduates and relevant tax revenues. We therefore analyse national statistics on the number of new graduates as overlooked victims and their expected monthly wages in conjunction with tax payment, revealing that a September Start would force new graduates to give up approximately 715.7 billion yen, which leads to 87.6 billion yen foregone tax revenues for the government. This means both individuals and the society would lose a certain amount of financial resources by merely introducing a September Start. Considering other policy options are available should national budgets equivalent to foregone tax revenues be mobilised, it is essential for policy makers to examine cost-benefit of both a September Start and alternatives so that they make a sound decision. Although the primary focus of this article is on a September Start and its consequences, the said approach with close attention to scientific evidence rather than abstract notions is now required for the effective education policy-making and beyond.
Prof. ARAKI, Satoshi
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Policy
About the author
Education market with the Chinese characteristics : the rise of minban and transnational higher education in China
Author : Ka Ho MOK
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Higher Education Quarterly
DOI : 10.1111/hequ.12323
In the last few decades, the Chinese higher education system has changed considerably from an elitist model to a massified one with public and minban/transnational provisions. Accordingly, this study sets out against the context of higher education expansion initiated in late 1998 to critically examine the major trends of non‐state (including minban and transnational) higher education developments. More specifically, it discusses how minban higher education has transformed and why transnational higher education has evolved and become far more popular in China. Against the marketisation and privatisation of education context, this article focuses on reviewing policy change and university governance to diversify higher education provision through the market forces/non‐state provision. A critical examination of the changing state‐market‐education relationship would enable us to appreciate the complex social, economic and political issues that the Chinese government has to tackle, especially when the country confronts the dilemma of adopting a more liberal approach in reform with the fear of excessive external influences to the political regime or a more conservative approach which would limit the country's further development. The present article contributes to a better understanding of the ‘education market’ formation in China.
Prof. MOK Ka Ho Joshua
Vice-President, Office of the President
Dean, School of Graduate Studies
Co-Director, Institute of Policy Studies
Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Comparative Policy, Department of Sociology and Social Policy About the author
A lateral ankle sprain during a lateral backward step in badminton : a case report of a televised injury incident
Authors : Daniel T. P. FONG; Kam Ming MOK; Isobel M. THOMPSON; Harry Y. WANG; Mark A. KING
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Journal of Sport and Health Science
DOI : 10.1016/j.jshs.2021.03.007
Background: This study presents a kinematic analysis of an acute lateral ankle sprain incurred during a televised badminton match. The kinematics of this injury were compared to those of 19 previously reported cases in the published literature.
Methods: Four camera views of an acute lateral ankle sprain incurred during a televised badminton match were synchronised and rendered in 3-dimensional animation software. A badminton court with known dimensions was built in a virtual environment, and a skeletal model scaled to the injured athlete's height was used for skeletal matching. The ankle joint angle and angular velocity profiles of this acute injury were compared to the summarised findings from 19 previously reported cases in the published literature.
Results: At foot strike, the ankle joint was 2 degrees everted, 33 degrees plantarflexed, and 18 degrees internally rotated. Maximum inversion of 114 degrees and internal rotation of 69 degrees was achieved at 0.24 s and 0.20 s after foot strike, respectively. After the foot strike, the ankle joint moved from an initial position of plantarflexion to dorsiflexion—from 33 degrees plantarflexion to 53 degrees dorsiflexion (range = 86 degrees). Maximum inversion, dorsiflexion, and internal rotation velocity were 1262 degree/s, 961 degree/s, and 677 degree/s, respectively, at 0.12 s after foot strike.
Conclusion: A forefoot landing posture with a plantarflexed and internally rotated ankle joint configuration could incite an acute lateral ankle sprain injury in badminton. Prevention of lateral ankle sprains in badminton should focus on the control and stability of the ankle joint angle during forefoot landings, especially when the athletes perform a combined lateral and backward step.
Dr. MOK Kam Ming
Assistant Manager (Physical Education) I, Office of Student Affairs
About the author
China's move to mass higher education since 1998 : analysis of higher education expansion policies
Authors : Jin JIANG; Guoguo KE
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Higher Education Quarterly
DOI : 10.1111/hequ.12313
Under the knowledge‐based economy, higher education plays an important role in cultivating talents and enhancing national competitiveness. Compared with other countries, China is a latecomer in the expansion of higher education but has undergone considerable transformation from elite to massification in a short time since 1998. Most important, China's higher education expansion is not limited to the undergraduate level but includes junior college and postgraduate education. This dramatic development in higher education is also simultaneously affected by marketisation and decentralisation. Moreover, the unprecedented growth and achievements of the reform drew scholars' attention to this inspired case of the consequences of educational expansion. However, few studies analyse higher education expansion policies. This study analyses educational policies since 1998 to understand how the move to mass higher education was achieved through marketisation and decentralisation with the strong control of the central government. Drawing on policy analyses, this study suggests that the higher education expansion in China exhibits the characteristics of the East Asian model, which is shaped by the strong nation‐state structure with instrumentalism.
Ms. KE Guoguo Rainie
Project Officer, School of Graduate Studies
Core Centre Fellow, Institute of Policy Studies
About the author
Novel reproductive behavior in an Asian frog : sex‐reversed inguinal amplexus
Authors : Yik Hei SUNG; Wing‐Ho LEE; Ho‐Nam NG; Martha L. CRUMP; Nancy E. KARRAKER
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Mar 2021
Source : Ecosphere
DOI : 10.1002/ecs2.3407
Amphibians exhibit diverse reproductive behaviors, including nine documented types of amplexus, the behavior in which male and female frogs position themselves for courtship, oviposition, and fertilization. All known forms of amplexus involve the male on top of or in line horizontally (cloacal apposition) with the female. Here, we report a novel form of amplexus observed in Lau’s leaf litter toad (Leptobrachella laui; Megophryidae) in Hong Kong, China. Termed “sex‐reversed inguinal amplexus,” the female climbs on top of a male and the male transports the female to a concealed breeding site. We were unable to determine whether this was the amplectant position in which frogs engaged during oviposition or solely during courtship and prior to oviposition, but there are a number of possible evolutionary drivers that may have given rise to this behavior, including limiting suitable oviposition sites or strong competition for males among females. Further research will be necessary to understand the evolutionary origins of this novel
Queer representations in Chinese-language film and the cultural landscape
Author : Shi-Yan CHAO
Type : Book
Published Year : 2020
Publisher : Amsterdam University Press
ISBN : 9789462988033
This book provides a cultural history of queer representations in Chinese-language film and media, negotiated by locally produced knowledge, local cultural agency, and lived histories. Incorporating a wide range of materials in both English and Chinese, this interdisciplinary project investigates the processes through which Chinese tongzhi/queer imaginaries are articulated, focusing on four main themes: the Chinese familial system, Chinese opera, camp aesthetic, and documentary impulse. Chao’s discursive analysis is rooted in and advances genealogical inquiries: a non-essentialist intervention into the "Chinese" idea of filial piety, a transcultural perspective on the contested genre of film melodrama, a historical investigation of the local articulations of mass camp and gay camp, and a transnational inquiry into the different formats of documentary. This book is a must for anyone exploring the cultural history of Chinese tongzhi/queer through the lens of transcultural media.
Dr. CHAO Hsi Yen
Research Assistant Professor, Centre for Film and Creative Industries
About the author
Blending language learning with translation teaching : a new perspective on the teachability of Chinese translation
Author : Yu-kit CHEUNG
Type : Book Chapter
Published Year : 2021
Source : Diverse Voices in Chinese Translation and Interpreting : Theory and Practice
Publisher : Springer Singapore
DOI : 10.1007/978-981-33-4283-5_18
Over the past fifty years or so, a gargantuan number of textbooks on English–Chinese (hereinafter “E–C”) translation has been published. There are usually two major approaches. One of them is to explain how translation can be done on a word-class and linguistic-level basis. Another is to put on display a repertoire of translation methods and techniques in the hope that users are fully equipped for translation tasks at various linguistic levels and in different text types. Some of these works include Loh (1959), Sun and Jin (1977), Chen (1996), and Liu (1997; 2006). Nonetheless, both strategies, to a large extent, rest on the assumption that readers have such a firm grasp of the Chinese language that they are able to stand against the interference of the source language in the translation process. As Poon rightly points out, there are no translation techniques independent of language competence (2000, 53). With reference to the universals of translation, this chapter argues that translation as an activity represents resistance against normalization and simplification. Thorough language proficiency training before translation training being costly, if not out of the question, it is argued that incorporating the defining characteristics of the Chinese language in an E–C translation textbook or course syllabus along with the aforementioned methods may enhance, if not maximize, the teaching effectiveness. There are three major parts in the ensuing pages. The first outlines the history of textbooks on E–C translation, highlighting their two major approaches and the desideratum in the future development of textbooks with regard to E–C translation. The next argues how translation may be seen as resistance to normalization and simplification, which lead to the so-called “translation-ese.” Part Three elucidates the major defining characteristics of the Chinese language, namely, yìhé 意合 (parataxis), linearity, dynamism, an emphasis on such dimensions as concreteness, humans and human relationships, holism and a sense of balance, and how Chinese culture has played its part in shaping them. This chapter is significant in pushing back the frontiers of teaching E–C translation, setting the scene for further discussion on the delicate balance between language teaching and teaching translation. It is original in highlighting the importance of developing students’ awareness of the defining characteristics of the Chinese language in order to enhance their language sensitivity with a view to producing unaffected written Chinese. It further contributes to the academic discourse through presenting these characteristics in a systematic manner and placing them in the context of Chinese culture.
Does having multiple identities predict life satisfaction? Holistic thinking as a condition for achieving integrated self-concept
Authors : Hilary K. Y. NG; Sylvia Xiaohua CHEN; Jacky C. K. NG; Ting Kin NG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Feb 2021
Source : Current Psychology
DOI : 10.1007/s12144-021-01477-1
In today’s diverse and mobile world, it is common for people to engage in different roles, which make their self-concept more complex and layered, hence enriching their cognitive and behavioural repertoires. Given the importance of the self-concept, it is worthwhile to further understand the process and condition of the self on psychological functioning. The present research aims to investigate the effect of multiple identities on life satisfaction and identify the mechanism underlying this linkage and its boundary condition. We hypothesised a moderated mediation model with multiple identities predicting life satisfaction through identity integration, and the development of a cohesive self-concept depends largely on people’s holistic thinking, a cognitive tendency to attend to the linkages among objects and orient towards the context or field as a whole, instead of focusing on the unique properties of discrete objects. Results converged from Study 1 (N = 383) and Study 2 (N = 210) to support the mediating effect of identity integration on the association between multiple identities and life satisfaction. Moreover, we found in Study 2 that the relation between multiple identities and life satisfaction was significant when holistic thinking was high or moderate, but not when holistic thinking was low. In sum, the present research provided empirical evidence that identity integration represents the key mechanism, whereas holistic thinking represents the key condition in determining how multiple identities can be associated with life satisfaction.
Dr. NG Ting Kin
Research Assistant Professor, Wofoo Joseph Lee Consulting and Counselling Psychology Research Centre
About the author
Profit‐tax relationship, business group affiliation, and external monitoring in China
Authors : Kenny Z. LIN; Shanshan SHI; Feng TANG
Type : Journal Article
Published Date : Jan 2021
Source : Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting
DOI : 10.1111/jifm.12128
This study examines whether business group affiliation weakens the sensitivity of income tax expense to pretax income, while external monitoring mechanisms mitigate the effect of group affiliation. We find that this sensitivity is weaker for Chinese listed firms affiliated with a top 500 business group than for unaffiliated firms. Economically, our coefficient estimate implies that group affiliation weakens tax sensitivity to income by 5.2% in relative terms. However, we find that tax sensitivity improved in the post‐2008 period and with the presence of strong monitoring mechanisms by means of tax enforcement, analyst scrutiny, and long‐term institutional shareholding. To the extent that unexplained variation in current tax expense at a given income level is indicative of aggressive tax behavior, our results suggest that effective external monitoring can mitigate this behavior in group‐affiliated firms.
