Bare branches and social stability: A historical perspective from China?

“Bare branches,” the name given to unmarried men in China, have historically posed a great threat to social stability in that country. Based on historical records and literature, the findings in this study reveal that female infanticide, coupled with the practice of polygyny, meant that during the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Republican Era, up to twenty percent of males remained single. As a result, underclass bare branches turned to less socially accepted marriage practices. And if they were still unable to find a suitable marriage partner, they would turn to prostitutes, adultery with married women, or might even resort to sexual assault. Humiliated by their social status, bare branches tended to drift away from their hometowns and form brotherhoods, secret societies, bandit gangs and even military groups, posing a real threat to social stability. In extreme cases, they engaged in armed conflict, taking over government offices, clashing with government forces, destroying social infrastructure, and helping to topple dynastic regimes. Such extreme violence and disorder led to the reduction of local populations by the thousands or even millions, creating a subsequent negative effect on social development.     

An integrated assessment of China's South—North Water Transfer Project

China's South–North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) is a vast and still expanding network of infrastructure and institutions that moves water from the Yangtze River and its tributaries to cities in North China. This article aims to assess the SNWTP's impacts by beginning to answer seven questions about the project: How is the management of the SNWTP evolving? What are the problems to be resolved when managing SNWTP water within jurisdictions? What are the status and management of water quality in the SNWTP? What are the consequences of resettlements caused by the SNWTP? How is increased water supply affecting regional development? Is the SNWTP achieving its stated environmental goals? What are the sustainability credentials of the SNWTP? Drawing on primary and secondary data, the article demonstrates both that the opportunities and burdens characterising the project are highly uneven and that management systems are evolving rapidly in an attempt to enforce strict water quality targets. Furthermore, while the SNWTP may be helping to resolve groundwater overexploitation in Beijing, it is highly energy intensive, raising questions about its sustainability. Our analysis highlights the need to continue to interrogate the socio‐economic, environmental, and political implications of such schemes long after they are officially completed.     

Spatial Distribution of City Tweets and Their Densities

Social media outlets such as Twitter constitute valuable data sources for understanding human activities in the virtual world from a geographic perspective. This article examines spatial distribution of tweets and densities within cities. The cities refer to natural cities that are automatically aggregated from a country's small street blocks, so called city blocks. We adopted street blocks (rather than census tracts) as the basic geographic units and topological center (rather than geometric center) to assess how tweets and densities vary from the center to the peripheral border. We found that, within a city from the center to the periphery, the tweets first increase and then decrease, while the densities decrease in general. These increases and decreases fluctuate dramatically, and differ significantly from those if census tracts are used as the basic geographic units. We also found that the decrease of densities from the center to the periphery is less significant, and even disappears, if an arbitrarily defined city border is adopted. These findings prove that natural cities and their topological centers are better than their counterparts (conventionally defined cities and city centers) for geographic research. Based on this study, we believe that tweet densities can be a good surrogate of population densities. If this belief is proved to be true, social media data could help solve the dispute surrounding exponential or power function of urban population density.     

天津市明长城防御体系研究

通过明长城资源调查,天津市明长城本体的分布、构成、体量均有了翔实、科学的记载,天津市明长城虽然很短,其防御体系却很完整,在某种程度上,可以说是明长城防御体系一个具体而微的代表。本文在调查资料的基础上,归纳剖析,以物见人,以物证事,结合文献,以长城墙体、敌台、烽火台及关城、寨堡等设施为载体,将天津市明长城防御体系划分为侦查预警、前线防卫、信号传递、增援策应、前线指挥、后勤保障六大部分,并揭示了有明一代"边有墙、墙有关、关内有堡、堡内有兵"的防御思想.形成了从侦查预警到前线防卫、从信号传递到增援策应、从前线指挥到后勤保障的一整套以防为主、防守兼备、以静制动、以逸待劳的完整防御体系。     

也论新疆“三七政变”

"三七政变"由樊耀南及拥护他的新进派势力所发起,杨增新的牵制政策导致保守派作为制衡力量卷入其中,两股政治力量对决的结果是金树仁的最终胜出。新疆的政权更迭,为国民政府统合新疆提供了契机,而这场政变实质上是受隐伏于新疆社会深层的现代化革新的欲望所驱动。     

南京大屠杀期间市民财产损失的调查与统计——基于国内现存档案资料的分析

抗战期间留宁西方人士、伪督办南京市政公署、迁往后方的南京市政机关及战后南京市抗战损失调查委员会等各方,从各自角度先后对日军在南京所造成的市民财产损失状况进行调查。因受各种主客观条件制约,这些调查结果远低于实际损失。根据目前搜集的5865户市民财产损失档案资料,这些市民家庭的财产损失额不低于1.67亿元(1937年法币),户均损失为28474元,仅此损失数额即相当于战前南京全部市民家庭约678个工作日(近2年)的收入。     

一九二九年宿迁小刀会暴动与极乐庵庙产纠纷案

1929年2月13日,宿迁县小刀会突然"暴动",砸毁国民党党部和学校,绑走党员和教职员,持续三日之久。这次"暴动"与同年3、4月发生的另两起刀会"暴动"被描绘为旨在反对南京国民政府所推行的社会政治改革。与事件无关的极乐庵之所以成为主角,与宿迁国民党党部"庙产兴学"的政治意图不无关系。小刀会事件引发的极乐庵庙产纠纷案,是地方社会对南京国民政府推行"庙产兴学"、"反迷信运动"的因应。     

Seismic Response of Rolling Isolation Systems with Concave Friction Distribution

This article attempted to improve the isolation performance of a rolling isolation system by assuming that the rolling friction force gradually and linearly increased with the relative displacement between the isolator and the ground. After the rolling isolation system under different ground motions was calculated by a numerical analysis method, it obtained more regular results than that of other uneven friction distributions. Results shows that the considered concavely distributed friction force can not only dissipate the earthquake energy, but also change the structural natural period. These functions improve the seismic isolation efficiency of the structural relative displacement in comparison with the general uniform distribution of rolling friction coefficient.     

The first palaeontinid from the Late Jurassic of Australia (Hemiptera,Cicadomorpha, Palaeontinidae)

Chen, J., Beattie, R., Wang, B., Jiang, H., Zheng, Y. & Zhang, H., 12 April 2019. The first palaeontinid from the Late Jurassic of Australia (Hemiptera, Cicadomorpha, Palaeontinidae). Alcheringa 43, 449–454. ISSN 0311-5518.

Palaeontinidae, an extinct group of large arboreal insects, has the most diverse record among the Mesozoic Hemiptera, but only a few taxa have been reported from the Southern Hemisphere. Herein, Talbragarocossus jurassicus Chen, Beattie & Wang gen. et sp. nov., one of the earliest representatives of ‘late’ Palaeontinidae, is described and illustrated from the Upper Jurassic Talbragar Fossil Fish Bed in New South Wales, Australia. This new taxon constitutes the first representative of Palaeontinidae in Australia and the first Jurassic example in Gondwanaland, providing significant distributional and stratigraphic extensions to the family.

Jun Chen*? [rubiscada@sina.com] and Yan Zheng? [zhengyan536@163.com], Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Linyi University, Shuangling Road, Linyi 276000, China. Bo Wang? [bowang@nigpas.ac.cn], Hui Jiang [huijiang@nigpas.ac.cn] and Haichun Zhang [hczhang@nigpas.ac.cn] State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 39 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China. Robert Beattie [rgbeattie@bigpond.com], Australian Museum, 1 William St., Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia. ?Also affiliated with: State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 39 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China. ?Also affiliated with: Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Depositional Mineralization & Sedimentary Minerals, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, Shandong 266590, China.     

新中国农村基层政权初创时期的历史考察

1949～1957年,新中国农村基层政权的建设经历了四个阶段:1949～1950年,在新解放区进行了以废除保甲制为中心的接管建政;1950～1953年,以土地改革为中心进行群众建政; 1953～1954年,以普选为中心进行民主建政;1954～1957年,在农业合作化运动中实现了农村基层政权的调整与发展。经过这几个阶段,新中国的农村基层政权逐步建立起来。其中蕴含的历史启示是:农村基层政权建设的基石是中国农村社会的现代化转型;农村基层政权建设的核心是农村基层民主的发展;农村基层政权建设的关键是加强中国共产党执政能力建设。