2014.3

The article, based on a series of computations and models, shows that during the last thirty years developing countries, by applying their comparative and dynamic advantages (among them low, although rising, levels of wages and steeply increasing levels of educational attainment and investment rates), have on the whole substantially enlarged their positions in the world economy — in global GDP, industrial production, gross fixed capital formation, R&D expenditures, exports, and inflows of foreign direct investment. Despite acute ecological, financial, social and political problems that Asian, African and Latin American countries are grappling with, many (including the largest) of them, by implementing institutional reforms and rational economic policies, have by and large benefited from ongoing globalization and substantially progressed in catch-up development, productivity growth, reduction of poverty and reaching levels of global competitiveness which turned out to be considerably higher than could be expected judging by their GDP per capita standards.

The conflict in the Arab countries was caused by a complex of socioeconomic, political, cultural and religious reasons. A specific role in the Arab events was played by the youth. It is well known that the youth as a sociodemographic group is determined by a complex of age characteristics, specifics of social status and particular sociopsychological traits. A typical characteristic of the youth is the formation of motives for political behavior and behavioral attitudes in its milieu. The function of political mobilization and socialization in the Arab protests was fulfilled by the Internet, which demonstrated a new form of political communication. Thus the role of the youth factor as an objective one has been increasing in the Arab protest movements.

During the Edo period (1603–1867), Japanese thinkers adopted some elements of European geographical thought. The new view of the world included both traditional and Western scientific knowledge. The treatise “Nihon Suido Ko:” by Nishikawa Joken (1648–1724) is one of the earliest examples of this kind of synthesis. The work was important not only for the development of geographical thought, but also for the Japanese people’s self-perception, as the synthesis of knowledge from different sources aimed to determine Japan’s position in the world.

A current problem of the modern Chinese language is the study of Internet vocabulary. Over the past decade, the Chinese language has become more diverse, incorporating numerous computer terms, borrowings and new words from the World Wide Web that reflect the mutual influence of different languages. The goal of this article is to describe the language of the Internet, blogs and chat rooms as a new form of communication.

The paper centers on some of the main problems of Wang Chong’s (1st century CE) literary thought, which can be found in the “Chaoqi pian” chapter from Lunheng.