"It is clear by now that further pressure on Tehran to abdicate its right would cause a major fissure between the West and the developing world." (Hiro, 1) Iran's insistence upon continuing its efforts to enrich uranium have gained it support amongst the world's non-aligned nation-states even as the U
There remain such enterprises trading in key export commodities such as corn and sugar. Prior to China's accession to the WTO, there was significant concern about the transparency of its state trading agencies (or lack thereof) with respect to the provision of subsidies (Ackerman, 1998)
S. cotton protections, which it views as being hypocritical (Wang & Lim, 2009)
chicken producers, it has also used the influence of the central government on the state-run or newly-privatized companies. An example of this can be found with the recent dispute concerning rare earths, where China used its influence over its rare earth mining firms to further its political agenda, in contrary to international trade law (Hudson, 2010)
China has largely taken a back seat role rather than a leadership one in these talks (Wang & Lim, 2009) and Chinese negotiators have been largely unwilling to engage in the negotiation process. The implication of American criticism is that China is behaving more like a minor economic player than the world's second-largest economy (Lynn, 2010)
It has, however, been unwilling to lower tariffs on many key manufactured goods. For example, the deadlock on agricultural special safeguard mechanisms could have been broken had China been willing to reduce tariffs on chemicals and machinery, but China refused (Baldwin, 2009)
There are trade unions, but the government plays a strong role in the activities of the unions and in ensuring that conflict between union and business is minimal. For example, the government and one of the largest unions issued a new plan together to collect more funds from enterprise to go to a worker's reserve fund (Walsh & Lin, 2012)
Gift-giving is also a part of Chinese business culture. It has been advised that gifts are for the organization, not specific individuals (Hays, 2008)
"Yum Brands is seen by investors as a bet on Chinese domestic demand. The company opened 168 new restaurants in China (out of a total 297 around the world) and now counts with 4,649 stores there, including franchises" (Fontevecchia, a
This menu is in sharp contrast to McDonald's which "in China mostly sell the same U.S.-style burgers" (Mellor, W
This reporting was fairly even-handed, in that it focused on the factual details of the deal. The Wall Street Journal (Chao, Areddy & Poon, 2012) discussed the same pact, but with headlines indicating that this deal would "ripple across China," changing working conditions across the entire country
This incident illustrates how much of a high profile case this is, and the article cites the Fair Labor Association report as critical to providing support for the claims of worker abuse at the factory. A follow-up report on March 30th in the New York Times (Duhigg & Greenhouse, 2012) announced that a fact had been reached by Apple and Foxconn to "sharply curtail" working hours and significantly increase wages at the plant
This incident illustrates how much of a high profile case this is, and the article cites the Fair Labor Association report as critical to providing support for the claims of worker abuse at the factory. A follow-up report on March 30th in the New York Times (Duhigg & Greenhouse, 2012) announced that a fact had been reached by Apple and Foxconn to "sharply curtail" working hours and significantly increase wages at the plant
Analysis In these articles, the information in the FLA report is the primary basis for the articles, along with snippets of interviews from key subjects, and information culled from Apple's publicly-available documents such as its code of ethics for suppliers. The reporting of the FLA material implies that the findings of that report are factual and reasonable, although the Times did run a separate story (Greenhouse, 2012) that discussed the accuracy of the report explicitly
Later reforms separated state enterprises from commercial banks. The close links between these two sets of entities had been a component of earlier market reform, but those links have become weakened (Fernandez, n
In addition, the people were enlisted to help with the industrialization process, as backyard furnaces were built, theoretically to produce steel but in reality to produce pig iron. Over 100 million peasants were enlisted to build water conservation works (Harms, 1996)
Mao sought to destroy religion because it offered a rule of law contrary to what he himself wanted to establish. Indeed, it was the "purpose of the Cultural Revolution as a whole to eliminate the principal features of the old society, and in particular all that [had] the taint of foreign origin" (Fitzgerald 1967:124)
System, Process and Policy Levels Yet, perhaps there is more to China's rule of law than meets the eye. Despite the fact that China is a one-party system, it still allows for the formation of interest groups, which "exert extensive influence" (Guangbin 2007:2)
As Jamie Horsley reports, "No one claims that China is today a rule of law country. But most would acknowledge that China has moved a long way from the primarily 'rule of man' governance approach of traditional China toward establishing a legal system that increasingly seeks to restrain the arbitrary exercise of state and private power" (Horsley 2006:1)
Mao meant to be China's visionary leader -- even though he was far from that. Mao had already offered his mea culpa for the Great Leap Forward when, in 1959, he stated, "The chaos was on a grand scale, and I take responsibility" (Johnson 1992:551)