Rural migrant workers in urban China: living a marginalised life

The rural migrant worker population in China is attracting more and more attention because of its magnitude and potential economic and social impact on Chinese society. While literature abounds in describing the demographic trends and economic impacts of rural to urban migration, very few articles have been written about the psychosocial impacts of migration on the lives of rural migrant workers in urban China. Drawing on the concept of marginalisation, this article describes the nature and characteristics of marginalised living experienced by migrant workers. More importantly, it examines the underlying policy issues contributing to such marginalised living. It is argued that the Hukou system (household registration system), the process of decentralisation and the obscure role of trade unions have contributed to the experience of marginalisation of rural migrant workers in urban cities in China. Implications for policy changes are also discussed.     

女性之夜(英文)

"Ladies' Night"是一些酒吧和俱乐部举行的优惠活动,每周定期有一天为女性提供消费优惠。     

Modelling and forecasting by wavelets, and the application to exchange rates

This paper investigates the modelling and forecasting method for non-stationary time series. Using wavelets, the authors propose a modelling procedure that decomposes the series as the sum of three separate components, namely trend, harmonic and irregular components. The estimates suggested in this paper are all consistent. This method has been used for the modelling of US dollar against DM exchange rate data, and ten steps ahead (2 weeks) forecasting are compared with several other methods. Under the Average Percentage of forecasting Error (APE) criterion, the wavelet approach is the best one. The results suggest that forecasting based on wavelets is a viable alternative to existing methods.     

A study of sexual satisfaction and frequency of sex among Hong Kong Chinese couples

There have been several studies in Western societies on the causes and consequences of sexual satisfaction within marriage. Little is known, however about the marital sexual relationship in Chinese societies. Moreover, most published studies used married individuals rather than married couples as participants. The present study examined data from a well-established knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) survey of 1,124 Hong Kong Chinese couples on martial sexual relationship. A conceptual model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). Interest in sex was found to be the strongest predictor of both sexual satisfaction and frequency of sex for both husbands and wives. Among the sociodemographic variables, the following two were significantly associated with lower frequencies of sex: for wives, that of having a full-time job; and for husbands, the factor of age. Theoretical implications for research on the interplay among culture, marriage, and sex in non-Western societies are discussed.     

The protective function of meaning of life on life satisfaction among Chinese students in Australia and Hong Kong: a cross-cultural comparative study

OBJECTIVE: The authors compared the predictive effects of acculturative stressors and meaning of life on life satisfaction between Chinese students in Australia and in Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS: In 2006, the researchers recruited 606 Chinese students studying abroad at the University of Melbourne in Australia and at 6 universities in Hong Kong. METHODS: Participants completed a questionnaire that included measures of acculturative stressors, meaning of life, life satisfaction, and demographic information. RESULTS: The Australian sample experienced a significantly higher level of acculturative stressors than did the Hong Kong sample, but life satisfaction did not differ significantly between the 2 samples. Meaning of life had a strong positive contribution and acculturative stressors had a negative contribution in predicting life satisfaction in both samples. Meaning of life partially mediated the relationship between acculturative stressors and life satisfaction in both samples. CONCLUSIONS: The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications for Chinese students studying abroad.     

Stagnation as a Distinct Clinical Syndrome: Comparing 'Yu' (Stagnation) in Traditional Chinese Medicine with Depression

Background: Depression was translated into Chinese as yiyu,with reference to the yu syndrome in traditional Chinese medicine.Literally meaning ‘not flowing, entangled or clogged’,yu, or ‘stagnation’ in English, is, however, a constructdistinct from depression. Objective: The study aimed to explorethe construct of stagnation through scale development. Method:A concept-driven approach was adopted to generate candidateitems for the Stagnation Scale. Other measures were a validitychecking item, a Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and a twelve-itemGeneral Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12). Respondents were recruitedby convenience and snowball sampling, resulting in 602 questionnairesbeing completed by adults between the ages of eighteen and sixty-five.Results: Exploratory factor analysis provided a three-factor,sixteen-item solution. The three factors were named Overattachment,Body-Mind Obstruction and Affect-Posture Inhibition. Cronbach’salphas of the entire scale and subscales ranged from 0.82 to0.91. Correlations of the scale total with the validity checkingitem, BDI and GHQ-12 were 0.71, 0.53 and 0.48, respectively.Stagnation showed a pattern of associations with demographicvariables different from depression. Conclusion: The StagnationScale has good psychometric properties, and has meaningful factorstructures. The evidence supports the contention that stagnationis a clinical syndrome distinct from depression. The new concepthas important implications for social work practice.