Challenging simplistic claims that Chinese corporations merely serve Communist Party goals, this book argues we cannot understand these corporations without tracing their dynamic evolution within a unique socio-political ecosystem. Vivid case studies illuminate the strange hybrid structures and networks that are essential for corporate success in the Chinese habitat. Tracing the reciprocal impacts between Chinese corporations and their environment, Colin S. C. Hawes reveals how corporations' political adaptations have raised serious obstacles for their international expansion and worsened China's environmental crisis. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that synthesizes insights from behavioural economics, science and Chinese philosophy, this book proposes innovative solutions to the damaging impacts of Chinese corporations. It makes a compelling case for redirecting the vital energy of corporations and government officials in more productive and sustainable directions.

Observing that the vast majority of surviving Northern Song poems are directly addressed to other people, Colin S. C. Hawes explores how literati of China's mid-Northern Song period developed a social and therapeutic tradition in poetry. These social poems, produced in group settings and exchanged with friends and acquaintances, are often lighthearted in tone and full of witty banter and wordplay. Hawes challenges previous scholars' dismissal of these poems as trivial and insignificant because they lacked serious political and moral content by arguing that the central function of poetry at the time was to release pent-up emotions and share them with others in a socially acceptable manner--what Hawes views as circulating emotional energy or qi. Focusing on the circle of poets around Ouyang Xiu (1007-72 CE) and Mei Yaochen (1002-60 CE), the most influential literary figures of the mid-Northern Song period and the creators of a distinctive Song poetic style, Hawes provides a number of translations of poems of the period. Several major functions of poetic composition are discussed, including poetry as a game, as therapy, as a means of building relationships, and as a way of finding solace in history and in the natural world. Ultimately, the Northern Song attitude toward poetic composition spread throughout Chinese society.