This book discusses the recently introduced concession policy, which is also known as PPP worldwide, on municipal utilities policy in China. In this context, critics have claimed that there is a gap in accountability with regard to concessions. The author utilizes interdisciplinary methods and comparative studies, taking into account the situation in the EU and US to analyze the accountability gap some feel will be created when the policy is implemented. Taking water sector concessions as the subject of discussion, the author distinguishes between three types of accountability: traditional...

The purpose of this research is to develop and motivate a theory of passive constructions under Minimalism. This theory includes three proposals: firstly, accusative Case is available in passives; secondly, nominative Case takes priority over accusative; finally, a Passive Phrase exists between TP/VP and vP. English passives and Chinese bei-constructions are analyzed based on the Agree and Phase system in Chomsky's recent framework, Minimalist Inquiries. In conclusion, a unitary syntactic structure and derivational process of English passives and Chinese bei-constructions are developed. The...

In Detecting Chinese Modernities: Rupture and Continuity in Modern Chinese Detective Fiction (1896–1949), Yan Wei historicizes the two stages in the development of Chinese detective fiction and discusses the rupture and continuity in the cultural transactions, mediation, and appropriation that occurred when the genre of detective fiction traveled to China during the first half of the twentieth century. Wei identifies two divergent, or even opposite strategies for appropriating Western detective fiction during the late Qing and the Republican periods. She further argues that these two...