X. Wang

Currently, U.S. trade policy-making process is filled with strong partisan color, the two parties diametrically opposed attitudes towards trade issues, which makes the process of trade liberalization in the United States severely hampered. Democratic presidential oath of office just a weak footing, partisanship intensified, the U.S. financial crisis has caused a huge economic impact, in this context, free trade is subject to unprecedented challenges. In the future, only the two sides through friendly dialogue to resolve bilateral trade problems, positive and sincere look at the shortcomings of their own economic policies, bilateral trade in order to embark on the road of healthy development of bilateral economic development and make due contribution. The parties' struggles influence the process of the formulation of trade policies in America at present, and the two parties often are tit-for-tat attitudes on the topic of trade which hinders the process of trade liberalization. Obama as a member of the Democratic Party has just inauguration of President still on weak footing, the financial crisis created a huge impact on American Economy, the trade liberalization has been unprecedented challenged. Both China and the United States want to solve problems in bilateral trade only by friendly dialogues and examine their own deficiencies in economic policies actively and honestly. Then, the bilateral trade could be developed regularly and make due contributions to the economic development in both countries

U.S. Mission made ​​tough in the Puritan view of religion. This concept of the United States as God choose a special country, the development of human history and destiny to bear a special responsibility. This concept is deeply rooted in American culture, deeply influenced the Americans on their own or to the outside world views and attitudes. It is the name of the U.S. government to achieve this mission under the guise of outward expansion, the small countries wanton interference. However, the result of interference, and not to be interference in bringing democracy and freedom, but on the already very peaceful situation, inject new destabilizing factors to stimulate these countries have become increasingly strong dissatisfaction and resistance, leading to caught in the dilemma of American foreign policy, history and reality have been fully proved this point

The "New Deal"-oriented institutional change actually constitutes a gentry "system" of the institutional basis for expansion. From the old system to new system squire who has received a much broader power to space, thus generating social contradictions and conflicts of interest are constantly accumulate. When the Qing Dynasty as a revolution in the sense of the object system after the overthrow of the existing society, all point to the shortcomings of the gentry. Gentry will be more in-depth after the national revolution and the revolutionary storm swept through. "Revolution" at low tide, the KMT to abandon the "Down with evil gentry" political demands, opting instead for the implementation of national power system, rebuilding the path to the penetration of rural society. After the war the Communist Party in the rural areas and the land revolution, "the village election politics," to all levels of "model worker" and "Heroes" as the main body of the new authority of the gradual control of the rural village political life, the political influence of traditional authority, a sharp drop off. Squire position and influence to the final exit, really marks the end of an era. Since the institutional changes for the "New Deal" had been become the institutional base of squire power's expansion, the squires became more and more powerful in the system of "New Deal", at the same time, social contradictions and conflict of interests incident to the change accumulated constantly. After Qing dynasty as the institutional target of the revolution had been dethroned, the gentries as the new undertaker for all the social disadvantages had been certainly stricken in National Revolution and in the subsequent more profound revolutionary. The Kuomintang abandoned the revolutionary aim of "striking local lords and evil gentry down" but turned to reconstruct the political system for the national power to penetrate the countryside after the "Big Revolutionary". The Communist Party controlled gradually the political life in the rural areas by the agrarian revolution and "village election politics", then, the gentries had been dropt out the historical stage which was a signal for end of an era

Accommodate the new Army reorganization with the meta rule and military institutions in the South important part. After the mid-yuan new army is still attached? Scholars have different views. Analysis of the Yuan Dynasty military system of the background we can see, the new soldiers were attached to military families forced incorporated into the system, still maintaining the typical characteristics of mercenary, the economic benefits and logistics, supply system is different from the Han, so the lowest level of the organizational unit can not be canceled ; Yuan Ting Yuli with South manpower, while preserving the national level, differentiation of the system, it is a political organization and a new name with the military must also be long term. Newly discovered historical data show that the new army with military and other element collected series of the same until the Yuan Dynasty also maintained its name establishment. Incorporated with the army of the new South in large part to avoid the system of conscription for military families the destruction of social production, but the mercenary system conflicts with the military families and meta-ting control of the use of military policy and the new with the most is to maintain the original the scale. Southern huge manpower in the military and can not take full advantage of the Yuan-ting. There are several different views about Xinfu Anny , which is an important problem for the army system and the controls in the South of the Changjiang River during Yuan dynasty. The Xinfu Army still kept the characteristics of the mercenary system that their treatments were different from that of the Han Army. That the Xinfu Army existed until the late Yuan was proved by new materials. The South of the Changjiang River in Yuan dynasty avoided to be destroyed by the Army House System because of the Xinfu Army system existed which was not utilized thoroughly in military affairs by Yuan

Since China's WTO accession, the bilateral trade imbalance off gradually exposed, the U.S. trade imbalance to blame all walks of life to the RMB exchange rate regime, that the Chinese government manipulation of the RMB exchange rate, and have asked the Government to urge China to take action to adjust the RMB exchange rate system , so that rapid and large appreciation of the renminbi. From the perspective of political economy analysis, the U.S. public about the RMB exchange rate issue and Sino-US trade imbalance all the argument is absurd, members of Congress continue forcing the RMB appreciation is for the maintenance of the authority of the U.S. position in the world economy political considerations. After China's WTO accession, the issue of imbalance in Sino-US bilateral trade has become more and more serious so all circles in the United States blame that RMB exchange rate system leads to the imbalance and consider Chinese government manipulates China's currency. Then they ask the US government to urge China to take actions to rectify RMB exchange rate system to achieve a large RMB appreciation immediately. However, it is ridiculous that various myths about RMB exchange rate and imbalance in Sino-US trade with the political economic approach. The reason why the US congressmen compel continuously RMB to appreciate is to stick up for the US authority status in the world economy by this way

• the environmental virtues of Thomas Hill, a pivotal figure in the field of ethics, environmental virtue theory, its main idea is "appropriate humility" theory. "Appropriate humility" is a measure of the importance of an attitude thing, it requires people to recognize the "no perception of nature," the importance of correct understanding of their place in nature. • Thomas Hill wants people to overcome the ego and ignorance, to have "appropriate humility." However, he demonstrated his theory Shique anthropocentrism tend to show, and do not fully explain the existence of defects, so criticized by the people. Nevertheless, his theory of environmental protection is still an important revelation. Thomas Hill is a very important figure in the environmental virtue ethics, whose primary theoretical thoughts of environmental virtue is "Proper Humility". "Proper Humility" is an attitude to measure the importance of things, which requires recognition of the importance of consentient nature and appreciation of the people's place in the natural world. Thomas Hill wishes people to overcome self-importance and ignorance to have "Proper Humility". However, when Thomas Hill argued his theory, he showed a tendency of anthropocentrism which be suffered critiques. Nevertheless, his theory is still a very important message for protecting environments

In a static sense, hidden rules can be defined as undetected or do not have the legitimacy of the rules, it also means do not follow the explicit rules or contrary to accepted, the concept ought to act or behavioral tendencies, and its social consequences caused by the coexistence of diverse rules and the separation of its name, there. The generation of the unspoken rules is a common phenomenon, but the prevalence of hidden rules is a special cultural phenomenon, and the nation's culture is closely related to the psychological habit and action. The deeper qualities of traditional culture of the Chinese people's actions shape the habit, so to act strictly in accordance with a meta-rule approach is difficult to become the norm in the order form. Although the depth of invasion of modernity that the rapid loss of legitimacy of the traditional rules, but still can not short change the psychological structure of the actions of national habit. Traditional and the modern system of rules habit uncoordinated and rub between the shock is caused by the prevalence of current major hidden rules of social and cultural psychological roots. The hidden rules as the undiscovered or illegitimate rules or behavior patterns bring about phenomena that various rules exist simultaneously and the discrepancy between name and the reality in Chinese society. The origination of the hidden rules derives from the cultural psychological structure of Chinese tradition which would never allow a strictly logical manner of actions. The tradition has been changing under the impact of modernity that the traditional habitus lost its legitimacy, but could not be replaced. Therefore, the conflicts between the tradition and modernity give rise to the cultural psychological background of the prevailing of hidden rules which should be systematically studied

Modern advocators of personal autonomy are eager to stress the distance between their belief in personal autonomy and moral autonomy. I hold a very different view that there is no need drawing a strict boundary between moral autonomy and personal autonomy. I introduce into this article two phrases—contextual autonomy and global autonomy, with the help of which we blend successfully moral autonomy with personal autonomy. Finally come to such a conclusion that contextual autonomyn+1 compromises global autonomy which in this sense is in an additive fashion; and moral autonomy is one variety of personal autonomy. I hope this would inspire a new angle to understand personal autonomy and moral autonomy, or even, autonomy and morality.

About a month ago, I went to a university to give a lecture. During the questions-and-answers and discussion, a young fellow standing in the last row drew a good deal of attention: "Some people today show concern for spiritual values but are very helpless where material life is concerned." However, he said, "more people are pursuing only material benefits and have absolutely no spiritual requirements." You may perhaps doubt that people today truly, as he indicated, regard the spiritual and the material as "fish-and-bear's-paws"—if you want the one, you have to give up the other

I was born in the city of Beijing. As a child, I used to climb to the top of the highest building in our courtyard—it was in Xidan—and look in all four directions. I could often see as far as the Temple of Buddhist Virtue at the Summer Palace. From Xidan to the Summer Palace is at least 20 li [one li = 1/2 KM]. Some years ago I was living in the Changchunyuan section of Beijing University, which is only a few li from the Summer Palace, and eight out often times when I looked out of the window to try to see the Temple of Buddhist Virtue, I could not. The air in Beijing is always rather hazy, so that you cannot see clearly, and is slightly irritating to the throat; but when I was young, it was not like this. Now I have grown up and become a "greaser"—by which I mean that my shirt-collar is covered with oil. Living in Beijing City, I have to change my shirt almost every day, whereas when I was overseas, I could wear the same shirt for several days. There are many cities in the world that are notorious for their pollution—I have visited Milan, Los Angeles, London, etc., though not Mexico City—and as far as I can see, the situation in Beijing is bad even by their standards

I have read some outrageous books and as a result have lost my innocence. In English, to lose one's innocence also means to become sly and devious, and that is what has happened to me. My innocence was lost in the University of Pittsburgh library. It was there that I borrowed a book called The Pleasurable Experiences of a Foreign Devil in China, which was about the travels of an American in China. On the surface, this American seemed to be passionate about Chinese culture—as soon as he disembarked in Shanghai, toward the end of the Qing dynasty, and saw what Chinese people were like, he became crazy about them. I could have been very pleased that other people like us, but not in this case, because this fellow was a "sadist" and a "bisexual" [Wang uses the English words here and below, and I have put them in quotes.— Trans.] or, in Chinese, a bisexual sadist. There is no way that being liked by this sort of person could please you, unless you happened to be a masochist

In his book The Road Ahead, Bill Gates writes that modern developments in information technology mean that engineers already have the capability to produce real sensations. They can put goggles on you that show colored pictures and give you stereo earphones so that what you see and hear is controlled by computer. Once the hardware and software are sophisticated enough, we will not be able to tell the difference between electronic sounds and images and real sounds and images. The hardware and software available at present are probably not yet that sophisticated and are not at the stage where this would be feasible; but in the past twenty years technological progress has been amazing, and we must prepare ourselves psychologically for the day when it does become possible

Someone asks a climber why he wants to climb a mountain—everyone knows that climbing is dangerous and is of no practical advantage—and he replies, "Because it is there." I like this answer because it shows a sense of humor—it is quite clear that it is because he wants to climb it, but he tries to trick us by saying that it is because the mountain is there that he is itching to get at it. Apart from this, I also like what the climber does, scaling sheer cliffs for no good reason. It may cause aching muscles, and there is a risk you might knock your brains out, so the average person does all he can to avoid climbing mountains. From the point of view of thermodynamics, this is the very rarely seen phenomenon of negative entropy. Because human beings always tend toward what is beneficial and avoid what is harmful, and in thermodynamics spontaneous phenomena are known as entropy-increasing phenomena, anything that tends toward the harmful and avoids the beneficial must be negative entropy

Before The Bridges of Madison County was released, several editor friends of mine wanted me to go and see it, and to write a short article about it when I had. The movie has finished showing now, and I never did go to see it. This was not because I was being deliberately snooty about it, but chiefly because there was a debate around the movie that I found very irritating; and as a result, I did not have the slightest desire to go and see it. Some people said the novel advocated extramarital affairs and should be criticized. Others said that it was completely opposed to extramarital affairs and, therefore, should not be criticized. Thus, The Bridges of Madison County came to be welded together with "extramarital affairs." If I had seen the movie, I also would have had to make an evaluation of extramarital affairs, and that is something I hate doing. My basic judgment of The Bridges of Madison County is as follows: Firstly, the story is made up, not true. Secondly, even if it were true, it is about Americans, and has nothing to do with us. Some comrades may say that, whether or not it has anything to do with us, we have seen the movie and so we must have a moral judgment of it. This reminds me of something that happened almost twenty years ago. It was when the Paris Opera came to Beijing and performed La Dame aux Camélias, and some of the audience said, "The lady of the camellias is a prostitute! And the male lead is no good either: Put Marguerite and Armand together and all you've got is a whore and ha client!" If Dumas fils were alive, I'm sure he would be enraged to hear such an assessment. If the French singers had been aware of such comments, they too would have said, "It was stupid of us to come and perform here. Performing opera is very tiring, and what do they see while we're singing our hearts out? A whore and her client! "That was over ten years ago, and I do feel that Chinese audiences should have made some progress by now—one would never have expected that that is not the case

I am now halfway along the road of life; if we liken the human lifespan to a single day, it is now noon. Childhood is when we wake up from our slumbers and need some time to get over our morning lassitude, before we throw ourselves into our work; at midday, our energy is at its greatest, but we already feel tiredness looming; by dusk, we just want to finish off the day's work and get ready to sink into eternal rest. If you look at it in this way, as I do, work is the most important thing in a person's life. But not everyone would agree with this view. I know that in China, country folk see having children as the most important thing in their lives. You bring up your children and then you die, leaving space for them—this is a very common way of thinking. But in the towns there is a different way of thinking, though I don't know if it is very common, and that sees winning social status as the most important thing in life. If you stand in front of the wall on Babaoshan in Beijing where the ashes of the dead are placed, you can gain some understanding of this attitude. On the grave of an old gentleman there I saw written, "Deputy Department Director, Deputy Branch Secretary, Associate Professor, Deputy Director of Such-and-Such a Teaching and Research Section, etc." It would of course be better for the old gentleman if the word "Deputy" could be removed from all of those, but that word is the best evidence for this way of thinking. And incidentally, in graveyards I have been to look at in the United States, I found that only two things were written on the gravestones: One was the dates of birth and death; the other was the dates of military service. This shows that they believe these two things are the only ones worth recording about a person's life: That this subject of God came into the mortal world, and that this citizen served his country loyally. To write anything else would be superfluous. I think this is a simpler and more unaffected way of thinking though probably it is overly distressing to write in a youth magazine about what I've seen written on graves, and I should get back to the main topic as soon as possible

I'm now in my forties, but my teacher is still alive and well; so I'm still one of the junior generation. When I was a graduate student, my teacher told me that I didn't have enough background in Chinese traditional studies, and in a burst of energy I went off and read my way, albeit in a rather random fashion, through everything from the Four Books to the Cheng brothers [Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Confucian scholars of the Song dynasty] and Zhu Xi. My studies had started off with fiction, and the Four Books came afterwards; I had started off as an "educated youth," and became a student later. Doing things that way round, one can expect to have problems; but even so, when I read the ancient classics, I still feel some singular emotions, which I cherish purely because they are my own. When I finished reading the Analects and closed my eyes to think about it, I felt that to utter those great truths so often and so earnestly Confucius must have been a very sweet and naive old man. His students were always hanging on his every word and, in his concern for them, he said that A could do this, or B could do that, like an old lady listing the characteristics of her grandchildren. Sometimes the old gentleman had a furtive side to him, as in the chapter "The Master went to see Nanzi" [See Analects VI. 28; Nanzi was the wife of Duke Ling of Wei]. When he emerged, he insisted that he had committed no "impropriety." In a nutshell, I liked him, and if I had been born during the Spring and Autumn period [722-481 b.c.e.], I would have gone and studied under him, because the atmosphere round him was like that of the Pickwick Club. His ideas were actually pretty ordinary, and there is nothing special about them to win our admiration. The ceremonial on which he laid such particular emphasis was in my view much the same as the rituals performed during the Cultural Revolution—I've been through all those morning requests for instructions and evening reports myself and it wasn't very interesting. It may be indispensable for the very young, but for educated adults it is a burden. However, if I'd gone along to be taught by Confucius, I would have gone for the atmosphere, and I would not have expected to learn much

When I was young, I read Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw, and there was one scene that left a great impression on me. The industrial magnate Andrew Undershaft meets his son Stephen, whom he has not seen for many years, and asks him what he is interested in. The young man has no talent for science, the arts or law, but says there is one thing he is good at, and that is telling right from wrong. Undershaft pours scorn on his son, and wants to know how, if he is unable to do anything else, he can possibly do something that has baffled all the scientists, politicians and philosophers, and distinguish right from wrong. I was only about twenty when I read this, and at once I made the major decision that it did not matter what I did in my life, but I must not become a person who is capable of nothing but telling right from wrong. For that reason, I became a member of the silent majority. The people I saw when I was young had grasped only a few superficial principles and thought they knew it all. They made wild judgments about the world, and the result was that the whole world was badly damaged. It was not until I was about forty that I realized Shaw's view was rather biased; but that came later—any-how, these comments of Shaw's acted as an antidote to all those shallow, arrogant people

I have enjoyed reading fiction since I was young, and until I was twenty-eight I believed that I could write it myself. Then I read a novel by [Michel] Tournier and changed my mind. Imperceptibly, great changes have taken place in fiction. The difference between modern fiction and classical fiction is as great as the difference between the car and the horse-drawn cart. The finest of the modern novels cannot be read ten lines at a glance. Let me cite an example, so that my readers can come to share my point of view. The first sentence of Marguerite Duras's novel The Lover is "I was already old." Innumerable vicissitudes are contained in that phrase. If you read on carefully, you will discover that more or less every sentence is written like that, and my views on modem novels were formulated by reference to The Lover. The great modern novels always contain a lot of information and are extremely elegantly written, delighting those who read them and scaring those who would like to write fiction. Of the classic writers, only the Russian Chekhov occasionally writes in this way, but by no means all his works command reverence. I have to confess that modern novelists used to shock me greatly. The novel by Tournier that I read, called Death and the Maiden, was only the first of a series of shocks

Twenty-five years ago, when I went down to the countryside to live and work in a production team, I took a few books with me, one of which was Ovid's Metamorphoses. The people in our team looked through it many times, read and reread it, until it was as ragged as a roll of dried seaweed. Then people from other teams borrowed it, and I spotted it in several different places, looking more and more dilapidated. I believe that in the end the book was read to death. Even now I still can't forget what a sorry state it was in. Life in the team was very hard—We didn't have enough to eat, we couldn't get used to the climate, and many people got sick; but the worst hardship of all was that there were no books to read. If we had had a lot of books to read, Metamorphoses would not have disappeared so tragically. On top of this, we never had the pleasure of thought. I do not believe I was alone in this experience: As you sat lonely and forlorn under the eaves in the twilight, and watched the sky slowly darken, you felt that you'd been deprived of your life. I was young then, but I was scared of having to go on living like that, of growing old like that. To my mind, that would be even more frightening than death.