<p> Millennia ago, a vital trade route connected the thriving civilizations of ancient Greece, Persia, and China. Through the ancient Silk Road, China was able to influence societies far beyond its national borders. And now, in the twenty-first century, it seeks to do the same. This paper will attempt to develop a new paradigm that more fully explains the rationale and objectives of the One Belt One Road initiative. It argues that nation-building is the most comprehensive way to understand the Chinese government's intentions with OBOR. The following chapters will also demonstrate how OBOR fits into the CCP's larger ethno-nationalist "China Dream" campaign, which crafts a narrative of a unified and rejuvenated China predicated on a single identity.</p>

<p> During the European Enlightenment, the notion of an &ldquo;economic self&rdquo; (<i>homo economicus</i>)&mdash;an individual, autonomous, benefit-maximizing, rational decision-maker&mdash;was born. This understanding of the human as rational actor lies at the core of free market capitalism today. In the 1990s, stakeholder management theorists, in seeking new metaphors to understand firm&ndash;stakeholder behavior, turned to other social sciences such as feminist theory with its conceptualization of the relational self. In this study, I argue that a detailed and nuanced understanding of the concept of <i>interconnectedness</i> as presented in Vedic and early Buddhist traditions can, like feminist theory, be applied to the revisioning of the self as <i>relational, interdependent </i> and <i>co-creative.</i> These insights as afforded through the lens of Indian philosophies can contribute to the advancement of stakeholder theory and management by providing a substantiated platform for discussion of the <i>interconnected stakeholder self</i>&mdash;a dynamic, collaborative participant in the stakeholder ecosystem. An advancement of stakeholder theory that incorporates both feminist and non-Western epistemologies can enhance understanding of the purpose and success of business as &ldquo;conscious&rdquo; and linked to the optimization of <i>sustainable collective value.</i></p>

It is sometimes purported that one of the factors affecting a firm's value is its capital structure. The event of the 1997 Asian financial crisis was expected to affect the firms' gearing level as the firms' earnings deteriorated and the capital market collapsed. The main objective of this research is to examine empirically the determinants of the capital structure of Malaysian firms. The main additional aim is to study the capital structure pattern following the 1997 financial crisis. Empirical tests were conducted on two different data sets: the first data set is the published data extracted from Datastream and consists of: 572 companies listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) between 1994 and 2000. The second data set comprises finance managers' responses to a questionnaire survey. Chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis, ANOVA, multiple regression, stepwise regression and logistic regression were utilised to analyse the data. The multiple regression analysis was employed to find the determinants of the capital structure using various account data items provided by Datastream. The gearing differences between the two boards and within the sectors were also analysed using ANOVA and Krukal-Wallis tests. The panel data were evaluated with regard to the gearing pattern following the 1997 currency crisis. Overwhelming evidence on profit was found, with past profitability being the major determinant of gearing. In particular was the support for pecking order theory, in that finance managers had given internal funds the highest priority, followed by debt and equity as a last option. The statistical analysis found a strong negative correlation between liquidity and the gearing ratio for both boards, implying firms considered highly the excess current assets for funding, a conservative approach towards debt management policy. On the other hand, taxation items were not highly significant in capital structure decisions. The results indicate the existence of gearing differences between the main board and the second board gearing with high debt levels employed by second board companies. However, the second board's high gearing is dominated largely by short to medium term bank credit. Differences were also significant between different sectors of companies listed on the main board. Firms' gearing ratios increased significantly following the 1997 financial crisis, and the gearing tended to increase where the company's share prices were highly sensitive towards currency volatility. Also inflation is found to influence the changes in actual and target gearing ratios following the crisis. Recent emphasis on the development of private debt securities may affect the findings of this research in the near future.

A central concern of much of the emergent literature of Asian American women is the question of how identity is defined. Living in, and writing from, what has been called the 'between worlds' condition engenders an often contradictory and frequently shifting sense of identity in Asian American women's texts. The 'hyphenated identity' is further destabilised and complicated by gender. This precarious female subjectivity is often reflected textually through shifting narrative voices and fractured narratives. A self-consciousness can be detected in the relation between the structures of narrative and the construction of self. Conventional genre distinctions are often traversed so that in particular the demarcations between fiction and autobiography are challenged. I refract current theoretical discussions of identity and the processes of identity formation through a series of texts by Asian American women which are preoccupied to varying degrees with the question 'Who am I?’ Several possible answers are suggested to the question of where identity actually originates. They are: the maternal, language; physiognomy; 'home' and the prominent cultural marker of national identity. It is around these locations of cultural identity that I organise my analysis. Chapters One and Two introduce a discussion of the ways in which identity is negotiated in this group of texts, and analyse the ways that genre is used and abused by these writers to suit their purposes. Chapter Three addresses the prevalence of mother/daughter writing in this body of work, suggesting that in their depiction of alternative maternal-daughterly arrangements, several Asian American women writers actually challenge dominant analyses of the mother/daughter dyad. As I discuss in Chapter Four, linguistic identity is also a focus of extended interest for many writers, for whom bilingualism is an uneasy condition. In Chapter Five, I address the Asian American feminist re-writing of the body as signifier. The body is often a battleground of identity. Asian American women's texts repeatedly address the practice of reconstructing the body to project less racially marked identities, as part of a wider project of recovering a positive sense of self-identity. This emphasises the corporeality of identity as well as the connections between the internal and external body. Chapter Six stresses the roles of culture and the polity in defining and creating identities, through the culturally and legislatively defined identity afforded by citizenship. I argue that particular texts by Asian American women may be read as challenges to dominant constructions of national identity, constructions which sought to exclude certain Asian American groups at critical moments in American history. Chapter Seven addresses the dynamics of space and home, a preoccupation with the idea of return as fundamental to the negotiation of identity. The search for 'home', both as psychological construction and real location, is a recurrent preoccupation in many texts.

<p> This dissertation presents the details of a study that explored the experiences of <i>roninsei</i>&mdash;Japanese students who are preparing to re-attempt the university entrance examination. Though an influential population later in life, its defining educational experience has rarely been researched. The questions this study sought to answer were akin to &lsquo;what themes characterize the <i>roninsei</i> experience,&rsquo; &lsquo;how is that experience understood as having changed those who undergo it,&rsquo; and &lsquo;how do intervening time and space affect the way former <i> roninsei</i> understand their experiences.&rsquo; </p><p> To address these questions, the study employed a mixture of methods and sources, triangulating its findings with a combination of literature review findings, phenomenological interviews with former <i>roninsei</i>, and thematically-focused content analysis of social networking service-sourced data composed by current <i>roninsei</i>. It employed a hermeneutic approach to all the data it collected. </p><p> The study found that the <i>roninsei</i> experience produces several maturational outcomes and that, while it is characterized by hardship, it comes to be highly valued by those who have undergone it. </p><p> This study contributes to the understanding of this under-researched, yet consequential population. Its findings implicate both strengths and weaknesses of the current system and, in so doing, have the capacity to influence how the current wave of educational reforms is understood and implemented.</p><p>

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This dissertation study focuses on constructing a scale measuring the Asian American experience of racial microaggressions, a contemporary form of prejudice and discrimination. The paucity of research on racial microaggressions, its suitability in capturing the contemporary Asian American experience of racism, and the need for an instrument quantifying this experience are discussed. To develop a quantitative measure on racial microaggressions directed against Asian Americans, a four-step process is proposed: pilot study, exploratory factor analysis, validity analysis, and test-retest reliability analysis. Results, limitations, and implications of the dissertation study are discussed. Suggestions for future research are also given.

People from Taiwan have been internationally marginalised and unrecognised for a long time, particularly by the cultural hegemony from the Western cultures and colonialism from Japanese imperialism and Chinese authoritarianism. These historical influences generate a hybrid culture in the Taiwanese society. Through the migratory experience of the Taiwanese people in Britain, their hybrid-cultural identity is caught between even unstable in between the host society and their homeland. As Stuart Hall states that identities, particularly in late modern times, are ‘multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions’ (Hall, 1996:04). It is intriguing to explore what is the identity of Taiwanese people in the UK, especially in the migratory situation. This practice-based research project, which combines a production of a documentary feature and a series of seven short documentaries made over the research period, and a written thesis. The research explores and examines the intricacies of the experience of a small group of Taiwanese migrants. living in the UK. It investigates Taiwanese identity in Britain using collaborative documentary filmmaking techniques as its central research methodology.

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