Xi Chen explores the question of why there has been a dramatic rise in and routinization of social protests in China since the early 1990s. Drawing on case studies, in-depth interviews and a unique data set of about 1,000 government records of collective petitions, this book examines how the political structure in Reform China has encouraged Chinese farmers, workers, pensioners, disabled people and demobilized soldiers to pursue their interests and claim their rights by staging collective protests. Chen suggests that routinized contentious bargaining between the government and ordinary people...

Reforging the Central Bank presents an insightful comparison between financial development in China — a rising global economic superpower — under the old and new normal and an all-encapsulating study of current monetary transmission mechanism and monetary policy instruments. Focusing on the "top-level design" for Chinese financial system and the reformation of People's Bank of China (PBoC), China's central bank, Dr Deng, head of the Fixed Income Research Department at CITIC Securities, and his team provide a deep analysis with useful suggestions and bold predictions for the...

This book discusses self-assembly in various types of small material structures including thin films, surfaces, and micro- and nano-wires, as well as potential applications of the practice in micro and nanoelectronics, MEMS/NEMS, and biomedical engineering.

Injection molding is the most versatile, flexible, and dynamic plastics production operation. It has been used to manufacture products from practically all thermoplastic polymers, blends, composites, and nanocomposites. A critical aspect for the success of the process depends on understanding and control of the various steps of the injection molding process and the thermo-mechanical history experienced by the polymer throughout the process. Moreover, it is important to understand the impact of this history on the characteristics of the final product. As many of the above...

This volume explores Chinese reading development, focusing on children in Chinese societies and bilingual Chinese-speaking children in Western societies. This volume offers an integrative framework of Chinese reading, and deepens our understanding of the intricate processes that underlie Chinese children's literacy development.

Complexity theory aims to understand and classify computational problems, especially decision problems, according to their inherent complexity. This book uses new techniques to expand the theory for use with counting problems. The authors present dichotomy classifications for broad classes of counting problems in the realm of P and NP. Classifications are proved for partition functions of spin systems, graph homomorphisms, constraint satisfaction problems, and Holant problems. The book assumes minimal prior knowledge of computational complexity theory, developing proof techniques as needed...