Journal of China in Global and Comparative Perspectives

About the author

Professor Xiangqun Chang FRSA, FGCA, President and Founding Fellow of the Global China Academy (GCA), a UK-based independent worldwide fellowship that encourages global and comparative studies on China in the social sciences and humanities; Editor-in-Chief of Global Century Press (GCP) and the Journal of China in Global and Comparative Perspectives (JCGCP); Distinguished Professor at Nankai University and Honorary Professor at Jilin University. She was Honorary Professor at University College London (2015-2020), a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University London, a Visiting Professor at University of Westminster, and holder of several Professorships and Senior Fellowships at Peking, Renmin, Fudan and Sun Yat-sen University in China. Her academic publications amount to over three million words (in English and Chinese), including Guanxi or Li shang wanglai?: Reciprocity, social support networks and social creativity in a Chinese village (Chinese 2009, English 2010). Based on the above thorough and detailed ethnography of a Chinese village with longitudinal comparisons, and borrowing and adapting Chinese classical and popular usage of li shang wanglai (礼尚往来), she has been developing a general analytical concept – ‘recipropriety’ (lishang-wanglai 互适), the mechanism by which Chinese society and Chinese social relations operate, thereby contributing to existing theories of reciprocity, relatedness, social exchange, social creativity, social interaction, social networks , social capital and transculturality with characteristics of ‘ritual capital’ (礼仪资本), for understanding and governance of global society.

Gary G. Hamilton (韩格理) is Henry M. Jackson Professor, Department of Sociology and The Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington (Seattle), formerly Associate Director of the School. He is the author of Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths, Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan (2006), Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies (2006), and The Market Makers: How Retailers Are Changing the Global Economy (2011). He is also well known in China for introducing Fei Xiaotong’s book From the Soil – The Foundations of Chinese Society (1994) to the English-speaking world.