H.O.P.E. Volume II Issue I (Paper and Commentary

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H,O.P.E. HOPE H.O.P.E. Volume II Volume II Papers and Commentaries Issue Issue I I Paper andCommentary Commentary Paper and

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Volume 1 Issue 3

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2 Paper and Commentary

About Humanities Online Platform for Everyone (HOPE) is an independent, student-run online journal that creates opportunities for high school students in the United States and around the world who are interested in the humanities to publish their outstanding works. These include creative writings (poetry and prose), research papers, editorial reviews, and visual arts. We realize that publication opportunities for high school students interested in the humanities are very limited. Thus, we hope to create this platform to help high school students to earn credit for what they have written or created. This is not merely a journal, but a place for lovers of the humanities to express themselves and receive recognition.

Submissions Submissions are published on a monthly basis. You may submit at the following link: www.hopehumanities.org This issue features winning pieces from the 2020 H.O.P.E. Writing and Art Competition.

Staff Design Alice Shao Amy Wang Andy Xu Holly Zhuang

Managing Editors

Editors

Neil Shen Amelia Lee Jessica Jia Ariston Zhou Matthew Wu Victoria Ling Michael Zhang Felix Bao Sherry Xie Carl Guo Forrest Hu Angela Xie Cathy Wang Athena Zhong Lucas Xie Lily Chen

Hope Humanities

Contents 4

The Creation of Division Within Great Britain

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Social and Economic Effects of UNESCO

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40

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Dafydd R. G..

Tai M.

The Ceasing of Racial Diversity

Jinhao W.

Girls, You can Fight, Boys, You can Cry

Lexie Fangyi S.

If Jesus Was Not God Incarnate, What Was He

Ava Weiyan Z.

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Post-War US Economic Hubris

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Ethical Adult

Bayan S.

Robin W.

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4 Paper and Commentary The creation of division within Great Britain1. A geographical, and demographical history of British people.

Dafydd R. Gimblett, Rugby School, 21’ Drawing a line from the mouth of the River Exe, in Devon, to the mouth of the River Tees, in North East England, it can be seen that the major hill masses and mountain ranges are located to the North and West, with the plains located to the south. This imaginary line is the boundary between Highland and Lowland Britain. Both regions differ significantly from each-other, with the landscape of Highland Britain containing more rugged and less fertile lands in comparison to the South Easterly plains. Soils of the plains are generally far deeper and richer with few steep scarps interrupting the land, which eases the practices of ploughing and cultivation. Man can use all the land to his advantage, which results essentially in a continuous settlement of humans. Unlike the lowland region, the highland region boasts a dominant upland landscape. Deep valleys separate high moorland and mountains. Thinner, poorer soil lines the surface, resulting in a poor agricultural land. The majority of human settlements in this region are found nestled in the sheltered bases of valleys, where flatter and more fertile land is available for agriculture. The main wind direction in the British Isles is from a South Westerly direction, from the Atlantic fetch. With the wind comes rain, which breaks over the high mountains of the West of Britain. This reduces the amount of precipitation which the East of the country experiences, meaning dryer conditions for crops, and less water erosion and flooding. The environment on the English plains is far kinder in comparison to the harsh Westerly landscape, which gives the land an advantage on an agricultural basis.

Turning now to the demography of the island, it is easily distinguished that the majority of the population reside on the fertile plains of the South East. The fertile agricultural lands have the ability to sustain a larger population, unlike the rugged West of the island. Most immigrant groups arriving in Britain, including pre-historic settlers, would approach the island from the South East, spreading North and Westwards in the process. The movement of people would be prevented or slowed by the natural barriers which exist, such as the edge of the Pennine Mountains, the Welsh massif, or the Scottish Highlands. Settlers are therefore most likely to remain in the lowlands of Britain. This is demonstrated by the huge population density which exists to this day in England. Modern cities such as Birmingham, grew and formed on the fertile lowlands of Britain, partly due to the vast expanse of agricultural lands available locally to supply growing population, especially so during the industrial Revolution.

After the retreat of the ice sheets a Megalithic civilisation spread to Britain from Atlantic France and Spain. Unlike most immigrant groups which arrive in Britain, the Megalithic peoples arrived by sea, and settled on the West fringes of the islands, and in Ireland. Over time, they spread Eastwards into the lowlands we call England today. These Stone 1 I refer here to the island of Great Britain, which includes the modern-day countries of Scotland, Wales, and England. I therefore am only concentrating on the movement of people within these areas, rather than the British Isles as a whole, which would include Ireland in addition to other islands such as the Isle of Man.

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Age settlers were responsible for the construction of dolmens and huge stone monuments, which are still visible across Britain today. They include the famous stone circle, Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, of which some of the stones used in its construction were transported from Pembrokeshire, which is noted for its unique ‘blue stones’. Simultaneously, the East of Britain seems to have been strongly influenced by the Neolithic peoples who arrived from the Baltic region or possibly as far East as modern-day Ukraine. They arrived at a similar time to the Megalithic peoples who arrived in the West of Britain, and are often referred to as the Beaker People, as they are associated with their unique beaker pots, a type of rough pottery. In around 2000 BC, the Celtic Nordic-Alpine peoples from central Europe arrived in the East of Britain and penetrated far into the Highland zones of the West of Britain. These people settled peacefully among the other peoples of Britain and were responsible for assimilating some Megalithic traditions such as constructing stone circles. It was these Celtic people who were also responsible for making Salisbury Plain into an important centre of their culture, with the restoring of monuments including Stonehenge. The Celtic peoples of central Europe brought trading links with the continent, and by 1000 BC, trade brought a high culture and developed metallurgy, in particular the art of bronze working. The Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age, and the creation of dominant British tribal kingdoms.

However, all this was about to change with the Roman conquest in AD 43.

The Romans, like the Beaker people and the Celts, entered Britain from the South East, pushing into the North and the West of the island. They established cities across the land, including their commercial centre Londinium. Long straight roads were laid out across lowland Britain, with military camps established in the Highlands of Britain, where control over the local indigenous population was more difficult in comparison to the lowlands. However, this highlights the significant division which existed then between the highland zone and lowland zone of Britain, with major Roman civilizations generally being established within the lowland region, where they were safer from being ambushed by the indigenous Celtic tribes. In addition, the inability to control the Natives in the North lead to the construction of Hadrian’s Wall, which allowed the Romans to control and survey the movements of the peoples beyond the wall. This tactic of constructing a defensive barrier is a technique which the Anglo-Saxons used later in Wales, something which I will discuss later. The Roman conquest and occupation of Southern Britain certainly left its mark upon the indigenous populations, with the introduction of Christianity, modern civilization, and in language. However, after four centuries of occupation, the collapse of the Roman Empire resulted in the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain.

With the withdrawal of Roman troops, the Celts of Lowland Britain were left woefully unprotected from pillages and invaders, having grown use to the protection which the Roman Army provided. Unruly tribes of the far North of Britain, such as the Picts, took advantage of the weak lowland Britons, and carried out a series of attacks, pillaging villages and taking land. In addition, tribes from Ireland also began taking advantage of the lack of defence, raiding settlements

6 Paper and Commentary along the Western coast of Britain. And so, sometime during the 5th century AD, leaders of the lowland Celtic tribes agreed a treaty with the Germanic peoples of Saxony, Anglia, and Jutland, who would give the Britons protection from the unruly tribes, in exchange for food supplies. The Anglo-Saxons, as they became known, were also granted lands in the fertile lowlands of Britain, including Kent, East Anglia, and the Isle of Wight. At the beginning the treaty was successful. The Picts and unruly tribes were kept at bay, and the Celtic Britons and Anglo-Saxons lived harmoniously.

However, due to the fertile and promising lands of Britain, higher influxes of the Germanic people began to settle in the designated lands allocated to them by the Native Britons. The former mutual agreement was disregarded when the Anglo-Saxons began to capture Celtic lands, thus expanding their own kingdoms and domain. By around 500 AD, after fierce battles with the Celtic Britons, the Anglo-Saxons had expanded their domain into what is today Southern England and the Midlands with the formation of new kingdoms including the larger kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. The Native Celtic Britons were pushed into the highland zones of Britain, regions such as Wales and Northern England, which led to the formation of the ‘Celtic Fringe’.

Already, before the dawn of written history, a frontier region of peoples and cultures came into existence between the two corresponding zones of Great Britain, with the dividing line between the zones roughly formatting at the outcrop of the youngest Palaeozoic rocks, which forms the boundary between highland and lowland Britain. This boundary separated the indigenous Celtic peoples in modern day Wales and Scotland aside from the invading Anglo-Saxon groups in the lowlands of England. The lowland zone of Britain is placed near the continent of Europe, and so, is susceptible to be invaded which imposes on the culture, and often the racial characteristics of the existing inhabitants. This is demonstrated by the conquests of the Romans, Anglo-Saxon, and Normans on cultures throughout Britain. These invaders also influenced the ethic build-up of the genetics of the British people. Such an example is shown by the gradual ethnic change which the Anglo-Saxons experienced by the integration of the Danes and the Norman genetics, which is still distinguishable within the English people to this day. On the other hand, in the highland zone, such of the few invaders as penetrated into the valleys, tended to be absorbed by the existing population near the coast. This is important because it helps to explain the persistence of differences between the Highland Scot or the Welshman on the one hand, and the English lowlander on the other.

The colonisation and invasion of the British lowland zone by the Barbarian Angles and Saxons in the fifth and sixth centuries created a contrast between the Lowland zone and the highland zone, with the highland zone remaining Celtic and the lowland zone completely Anglo-Saxon. This created difficulties for the Christian Celtic peoples of the West and North, who were now cut off from the Roman Christian Church on the continent, as the Anglo-Saxons were paganistic in their beliefs.

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The creation of different kingdoms in England, including the largest and most powerful, Mercia, pushed the native Celtic groups to the edges of Britain, where they can still be found, in Wales, Cornwall, Ireland and Scotland. The tribal society of Britain, which had existed during the Roman conquest, was fading away, and the distinct kingdoms of Wales begun to form. In the North was Gwynedd, occupying Snowdonia, the Isle of Anglesey, reaching to current day Cheshire. In Mid Wales were the kingdoms of Powys and Brycheiniog, who were the Britons’ main defensive front against the invading Anglo-Saxons. In the South West was the kingdom of Dyfed and Seisyllwng, and in the South East was the kingdom of Gwent, also a frontier, taking on the full force of attacks form the Anglo-Saxons. These British kingdoms were not a united front, which weakened their cause against the joint armies of the Saxon kingdom of Mercia, amongst other Saxon and Anglo forces. It was therefore clear that the joint forces of the Anglo-Saxon invaders were the stronger sides, against more primitive and less developed small Celtic kingdoms, who were often at war with each other, whilst fighting a common enemy.

From the year 450 until the early 6th century, fighting raged on, and the native Britons pushed back further into the Western and Northern fringes of Britain. It was not until the king of Mercia, Offa, in 757 AD decided to contain the ‘Wēalas’ within the peninsular which later became known as Wales. And so, between AD 757 and 796 a 150-mile physical border was constructed, which in parts is twenty metres in width. It runs from ‘’sea to sea’’ connecting the Dee estuary in the North to the River Wye in the south. Offa’s Dyke as it is known, has a simple design, with a flanking ditch being dug on the Western ‘Welsh side’, with the displaced soil being piled up to create a three-metre-high vertical bank on the adjacent Mercian side. This give the Mercians a clear defensive advantage over the Welsh kingdoms wishing to attack, as they would have to climb a three-metre vertical bank, whilst being fired upon. In addition, whilst standing upon the Mercians bank, there is a clear, uninterrupted view of the Welsh hills, which would give the Mercians the ability to survey and control any possible threat of an attack from the British. An example of its strategic importance is demonstrated by the fact that when the dyke comes across a hill or high ground, it passes around it on the Westerly side, ensuring that it maintains the view of the Welsh lands, to maintain the view and control of the lands.

The structure was in no way a mutually agreed boundary between the Celtic kingdoms and the Mercians, as it is clear that it was built as a defensive earthwork for the Mercians which demonstrated power and intent to control the British Celts. Although not as impressive, Offa’s Dyke can be compared to the construction of Hadrian’s Wall by the Emperor Hadrian of Rome in AD 122, which maintained Roman control over the Picts in Scotland, beyond the wall, from entering what is current day Northern England. According to reports, it was customary for the Mercians to slice off the ears of every Welshman who was found to the east of the dyke, and for the Welsh, to hang every Englishman whom they found to the West of it. This demonstrates the brutality of the period, and how it truly was a physical divide not to be

8 Paper and Commentary crossed, literally!

But what of the importance of this structure? Do we underestimate its importance in the shaping of modern Britain? I believe we do. To many it may be a ditch. But to the people of Wales, it is the first physical barrier between Wales and England. The current border still generally passes within a few miles of its course. Prior to the construction of this dyke no Welsh identity existed. Although the Native Britons spoke a common language, Old Welsh, and shared the religion of Christianity, they were often divided, living in different kingdoms, all with their own cultures, beliefs, and ideology.

However, the construction of the dyke can be seen as the foundations of the Welsh people that we know. People began to see themselves as a united people West of the dyke, and people to the East of the dyke, thus creating the English and Welsh identities we know today. This is demonstrated when the people to the West of the dyke, began to refer to themselves as Cymry, a word which is still used to this day, in reference to the Welsh people in the Welsh language. This replaced the previous name for the native British people who called themselves the Brythoniaid, which directly translates as Britons. And so, without the creation of the dyke, arguably the nation of Wales may not have evolved as we know it.

In addition, the dyke formally split up the Celtic British into different regions, cutting them off from each other, by creating fixed borders between these new nations and the Anglo-Saxons in England. The Britons, in Wales, could no longer travel by land to their Celtic counterparts in Northern England and Scotland. This led to the Brythonic language, which was commonly spoken by the Celtic peoples across Britain, evolving into distinct languages of their own, including Welsh, Cornish, and Scottish Gaelic. In addition, four clear nations were created on the island of Great Britain: Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, and England. Although each region consisted of multiple different kingdoms, these regions began to see themselves as distinct nations, separate from one another.

Now I will consider the next wave of settler in Britain, the Danish and Norse Vikings, who arrived between the eighth and tenth centuries AD. In Scotland, the archipelagos of the Shetlands and the Orkneys were colonised by the Vikings in addition to a large fringe of Northern Scotland, which included most of Caithness. New settlements were also created along the coast of Great Britain and Ireland, including Dublin, Swansea, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick. In addition, the lands of modern-day Lancashire and the Lake District were colonised by the Viking settlers, thus cutting off the Celtic peoples of the North from their counterparts in the South West, or Wales as we know it today. The Danes also colonised many places in Britain, and to this day, the place names of Eastern Britain demonstrate this. Danish settlements were located along the Eastern coast, spreading far inland along navigable rivers, inlets, and estuaries. The area in which Danish law and influence prevailed, which was situated in the Eastern England, was named ‘Danelaw’. Many attempts were made by the Danes to venture deeper into England, however clashes with the Anglo-Saxons slowed down and prevented their ambitions. Such a clash is demonstrated by stand of King Alfred who prevented the Danes

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from engulfing Wessex, and between 880 and 890 AD a line running in a North Westerly direction from the River Lea, East of London, was agreed as the Western limit of the Danish domains. However, the Danes were conquered by 920 AD by the Anglo-Saxons. Yet this new arrival of people from the South East had lasting effects, as it pushed the Anglo-Saxons further West and Northwards, into what were the edges of the highland zone of Britain. The Anglo-Saxons penetrated Northwards into the East of the Scottish Midland Valley. The Eastern side of Scotland is more sheltered and drier, and the land is more fertile compared to the West, which may suggest why the Anglo-Saxons chose not to penetrate into the West of Southern Scotland. The Anglicisation of the Scottish Lowlands is something which can still be recognised today, with the Scots language, which originated from Old English. The Scots language differs from the older Scottish Gaelic, which arrived in Scotland via the Celtic people. The Celtic Scots were forced back further North into the highland zone due to the influx of the Anglo-Saxons in the Southern region of Scotland. And so, by the arrival of the Normans in 1066, Britain was divided into a Celtic speaking highland zone, an Anglo-Saxon lowland zone, with a Scandinavian Fringe.

To understand the divisions of people within Britain, we must consider how each nation formed, and how the different peoples of the contrasting nations viewed each other. Each wave of new people arriving in Britain, be it the Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, or Normans, throughout their arrival of, we see the repetition of history. The first wave of peoples already established in Britain pushed North and Westwards by the new invaders invading from the South East originating in Continental Europe. This is how we see the development and formation of the three countries of Wales, Scotland, and England. The Anglo-Saxon invaders pushed the Celtic peoples to the edges of Britain, into the Highland zones, cutting them off from each other by land, thus forcing them to become distinct form their counterparts in the other regions of Britain. The Welsh and Scottish people originated from the same Celtic, Beaker and Megalithic peoples, yet today they differ enormously both linguistically and culturally. The English people emerged as a collective from the 14th century when writers such as Chaucer wrote in the English language rather than in Anglo-Saxon or Norman French, and when people began to see themselves as English rather than Anglo-Saxon or Norman. Since the Norman invasion of 1066, there have not been any mass invasions, and so the three main groups of people of Britain in the 1300s remain relatively intact to this day.

10 Paper and Commentary Social and Economic Effects of UNESCO World Heritage Designation Tai Markma Abstract Cultural sites and landmarks can play a unique role in the socioeconomic development of a community. Yet many cultural sites are facing two conflicting priorities: cultural preservation and economic gain. In response, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) attempts to help alleviate this conflict by creating the World Heritage list, a group of cultural and natural global sites that have “Outstanding Universal Value.” By designating a landmark as a “World Heritage” site, the landmark can obtain UN funds as needed. Although a widely held belief is that such UNESCO efforts help play a role in social and economic development of a community, this has not been proven. This paper examines this belief through analyzing correlations between increased UNESCO sites in an area and greater socioeconomic development. Four different socioeconomic factors were compared: Gross Domestic Product, Nights Spent in Tourist Accommodations, Unemployment, and Higher Education Levels. By standardizing these factors and drawing comparisons between sites, there was no evidence that there is a connection between a UNESCO designation and socioeconomic development. This then demonstrates that the aforementioned commonly held belief regarding development seems to be false. This paper thereby argues that UNESCO is misusing its funds, which then harms itself and other stakeholders. This paper concludes by outlining how a more thorough examination and understanding of the cultural contexts of World Heritage sites should be a required foundational best practice throughout this process. In turn, this paper advocates for drawing upon such knowledge when implementing enhanced publicity methods to help foster recognition of cultural sites in mainstream society. As a result of these endeavors, such communities would be more likely to gain greater economic prosperity.

Introduction

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Landmarks play a major part in the heritage and culture of a community. Unfortunately, these sites face problems such as over-tourism and a negative view of world cultural sites. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has created a list of “World Heritage Sites” in an attempt to increase tourism, generating greater revenue to preserve cultural sites (Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, 1972). After the events of World War I, an international movement centered around protecting cultural and natural heritage had emerged (“The World Heritage Convention”, 2019). This movement gained further momentum when a group of global leaders convened in 1972 at the “United Nations Conference on the Human Environment” in Stockholm (“Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage”, 1972). The acts of this convention led to the creation and adoption of the World Heritage Convention. The primary mission of the Convention was to identify and preserve the natural and cultural heritage of what the Convention deemed to be valuable heritage sites. Today, there are more than 1,120 properties from 167 countries designated as World Heritage Sites. (World Heritage, 2019).

UNESCO uses a total of ten criteria (see Appendix A) to designate a site as a World Heritage site with the title of “Outstanding Universal Value” (“The Criteria for Selection,” 2019). This value varies from demonstrating creative genius, exhibiting cultural developments in landscape, illustrating a significant part of human history or earth’s history, or representing a significant biological process or habitat (“Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention”, 2017).

UNESCO uses a variety of legislative, regulatory, and contractual measures in order to protect its World Heritage sites. The main method of preservation that UNESCO utilizes is the delineation of boundaries of sites, which creates strict borders of areas that are designated to

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have Outstanding Universal Value. UNESCO is careful to outline that these general principles are used “when necessary,” along with delegating the responsibility of the implementation of effective management of these sites to their respective states (“Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention”, 2017). To this end, UNESCO “[supports] States Parties’ public awareness-building activities for World Heritage conservation” (“World Heritage,” 2019). UNESCO exerts these efforts because it operates under the assumption that such awareness would bring economic influx into the country. UNESCO attempts to achieve economic prosperity through the “Policy on the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the processes of the Convention,” adopted by the World Heritage General Assembly in 2015. This policy “aims at assisting States Parties, practitioners, institutions, communities and networks to harness the potential of World Heritage properties and heritage in general, to contribute to sustainable development,” (“Policy on the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the Convention”, 2015). Through this economic gain, UNESCO would then be able to increase social prosperity and help the community as a whole without sacrificing cultural heritage.

Review of Literature Factors of Tourism

In order to understand why this study focuses on the connection between tourism and the surrounding community, it is important to identify the different factors that contribute to increased tourism. Researcher Sachida Jha attempts to identify these criteria in her paper “Can Natural World Heritage Sites Promote Development and Social Harmony?” Jha concludes that World Heritage sites can be an important factor in the connection between social harmony and

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development (Jha, 2005). In many of these instances, however, UNESCO first needs to intervene and help countries develop the proper infrastructure to sustain tourism. Using different programs to increase awareness of World Heritage sites can help drive both tourism and socioeconomic improvements. Limitations of this study include that it was based on the assumption that an increase in World Heritage sites would increase tourism. This creates a gap in knowledge that a different study could help answer, so the results of this study can be used most effectively.

One of the largest factors implemented in World Heritage sites is the use of local government employees and training to help maintain their facilities. These skills and their relationship with social and economic threats are what researcher Simona Cadar explores in her paper “New Skills in a Changing World: Strategic Alliances at World Heritage Sites.” Cadar cites education as a vital component of preserving cultural sites. She clarifies that this course of action does not merely include formal education, but knowledge of the cultural site’s surrounding area as well. Cadar argues that, in order to be a conservation expert for a site, the managers of these landscapes have to include and partner with local communities to preserve the Outstanding Universal Value of an area. Due to an increase in urban populations, sites have to be more carefully maintained to sustain the structure and integrity of the culture of the landmark (Cadar, 2014). However, this study adopts the practice of preservation of World Heritage sites without demonstrating the benefits of such conservation. Through research, this still creates a gap in knowledge of the actual benefits of these changes in procedure and maintenance.

Culture

Though UNESCO provides methods for safeguarding heritage sites, there is controversy surrounding its impact on the sites’ cultural community (which, by extension, can influence the

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socioeconomic atmosphere of the region). Researchers Susan Keitumetse and Olivia Nthoi investigated this connection through a study of the Tsodilo Hills World Heritage site in Botswana. In many global cultural areas, communities will produce a sense of material culture to showcase their interaction with their surrounding environment. However, in World Heritage sites, tourism seems to be at the forefront of economic activity. If not dealt with properly, such tourism can have unintended consequences on the intangible heritage of a community. In the Tsodilo Hills region, tourism resulted in demands for commodification, which transformed culture into material goods used for economic gain. As a result, the increase in tourists has led to the making of crafts and other artifacts of culture that prioritize economic gain over sociocultural practices (Keitumetse and Nthoi, 2009). Yet these types of commodification are not necessarily substantial methods for improving the lives of poverty-stricken individuals. Through this study, Keitumetse and Nthoi argue that the labeling of a World Heritage site does not necessarily have a negative impact.

However, without providing specific means and procedures for taking care of these sites, the surrounding culture of a community is at risk of becoming over-commodified. Excessive commodification, in turn, can hurt the cultural community without significantly helping it on a socioeconomic level. This study investigates one specific site and applies its findings to all World Heritage Sites. Therefore, to fully understand the impact of this UNESCO designation, many different sites must be investigated.

World Heritage in the Status Quo

In the process of examining World Heritage, it is important to account for specific governments and their policies regarding cultural and socioeconomic restoration and preservation.. Researcher Stefan Gruber examined China’s policies and development of its own heritage sites. In recent years, China has created institutions and legal heritage departments.

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Furthermore, China has greatly increased the number of its protected sites. However, gentrification and urbanization are still occurring at an alarming rate in larger cities, as communities tend to emerge from earlier civilizations around heritage sites. Gruber recognizes that the Chinese government lacks both the funds and staff to ensure the proper protection of identified heritage sites. He concludes that improvements in this protection are occurring, and it is essential for China’s government to preserve sites that exhibit Outstanding Universal Value (Gruber, 2008). Indeed, the government of a given country is the main enforcer of the values outlined in a UNESCO designation for its heritage site(s).

Although UNESCO is supposedly the main source for funding and socioeconomic development at these sites, much of the maintenance needed for site preservation is the individual government’s responsibility. It is important to examine these procedures in varying countries, along with the resources that the country has at its disposal to implement such procedures. Accordingly, it is important to question the impact of the UNESCO designation on these procedures.

Despite claims that UNESCO improves communities socioeconomically, World Heritage designation has many faults. Researcher Anna Augustyn and her team from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences discussed such pitfalls in their paper “Revealing the Socioeconomic Potential of Cultural Heritage.” By way of background, this team analyzed Sirok’s Castle in northern Hungary. This site was funded by the Hungarian government as part of a cultural heritage investment project. The team found that this investment did not improve the socioeconomic conditions of the region.

From this, it was concluded that large infrastructural investment as well as local involvement was needed to actually improve the conditions of the area (Augustyn et al., 2015). This finding can be applied to World Heritage sites, as there is a potential for the misuse of funds that would otherwise actually improve a site’s surrounding

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community. Though these conclusions clash with other research involving UNESCO’s goals, there is still a gap in the actual effects of designation over different sites. Augustyn’s team only focused on one site, in which the authors revealed to have too small of a sample to test needed statistical models. Thus, it is still unknown if the funds used by UNESCO to improve World Heritage sites are actually fulfilling their purpose.

In addition to potential fund misuse, World Heritage site designation is problematic because it pits two contrasting ideas of tourism and culture against each other. A trend of over- tourism in UNESCO designated areas often leads to a shift in their respective cultural communities. Over-tourism can result in a commodification and idealization of traditions, along with a neglect of historical and past events. This problem impacts UNESCO, as the organization needs to know how to use its funding most effectively in light of the effects of increased tourism. This problem also affects government tourism agencies, which can determine the best course of action to help their own citizens. Considering the ongoing global trend of over-tourism, how does the label of “UNESCO World Heritage Site” affect the surrounding areas socially and economically? An analysis of many factors affecting tourism in differing UNESCO sites could help answer this question.

Methods

To begin investigating, the first step was to decide what countries to analyze, and the sources from which this data would derive. The availability of data restricted research to countries in Europe. In turn, information concerning social and economic factors is from Eurostat, the “statistical office of the European Union.” (“Your Key to European Statistics,” 2020). Partnering with national authorities and organizations, Eurostat collects statistics

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concerning a variety of different factors that are easily accessible to the general public. The next step was to decide upon specific countries to isolate and study. They had to meet two criteria: the country had to have enough data points to find a correlation, and the country had to not already be an established “tourist destination.� This would allow for a more accurate understanding of the impact of tourism as a direct result of UNESCO designation. Countries that fulfilled the aforementioned criteria included: Czechia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia. The remaining countries failed to meet these two factors. For example, Estonia and Cyprus only had one piece of data available, so there could not be a correlation found for these countries.

Other countries, such as France and Spain, are already popular tourist destinations with large tourism industries that bring improved social and economic factors, regardless of their designation. By limiting the data, the effect of the UNESCO World Heritage designation can be isolated, and conclusions can be drawn.

The next step was to quantify the number of UNESCO cultural sites. Each country in the Eurostat database is broken up into smaller NUTS, or Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, regions. These NUTS regions are divided by Eurostat into a hierarchy to better organize social and economic statistics. There are NUTS 1, NUTS 2, and NUTS 3 regions, which classify Europe according to size differences (see Figure 1). NUTS 1 are the largest groups, with each region becoming progressively specific and smaller for NUTS 2 and 3, respectively. NUTS 2 was the most ideal, as it provided the necessary statistics while still offering the most specific data available. This is because Eurostat presented a variety of data that could identify socioeconomic development in terms of varying NUTS 2 regions. In turn, the number of UNESCO cultural World Heritage sites were recorded for each region. The NUTS region map breakdown was then overlaid on Google Earth. Next, using coordinates provided by

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the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, each site was pinpointed and recorded in its respective region. On the list, there are both cultural and environmental World Heritage Sites. For this data collection, only cultural sites were recorded. Environmental heritage sites are designated using different criteria than cultural sites. Their goals for conservation are different, as environmental sites are only focused on preserving the natural landscape. Given that this research is attempting to find a correlation between UNESCO designation and social and economic factors, using environmental sites would have skewed the data. This analysis resulted in a total of 39 sites, organized into 34 regions, to be studied.

Figure 1 Breakdown of NUTS Regions Retrieved 2020, from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/about/overview Eurostat divides its statistics into various domains. To gain an understanding of social and economic factors, those domains pertaining to this topic included economy, labor market, education, and tourism. NUTS further provided the following statistics for their respective domains: Gross Domestic Product (Euro Per Inhabitant), Nights spent in tourist accommodation (per 1000 inhabitants), Unemployment rate (% of labor force aged 15-74), and Tertiary educational attainment (% of population aged 25-64). These factors can help display a clear relationship between UNESCO sites and development of social and economic impact, if it exists. These factors were recorded for each NUTS region (see Appendix B).

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These were then standardized to better analyze the data through each region. To do this, the z-scores of each data point were calculated based on the mean and standard deviation of the country’s data (see Appendix C). A z-score represents the number of standard deviations between a given point and the mean. By using the mean and standard deviation of each country’s data, confounding variables of different countries are removed. Due to the number of UNESCO sites, a raw analysis of the data would likely not have yielded an accurate understanding of how UNESCO site designation impacts a given country’s socioeconomic status. Therefore, the use of z-scores helps isolate the independent variable of the number of sites and allows a valid standardization between countries (see Appendix D).

Results

For each different factor being observed, a box plot was created for the distribution of the z-scores for each different factor based on the number of UNESCO sites. Box plots allow for the distribution of each category to be easily compared, helping demonstrate a significant difference in the categories or lack thereof. For each country (not including Bulgaria), a NUTS region was omitted. This was due to the fact that these regions solely contained the capital of their respective countries. These regions included Prague (Czechia), Bucharest (Romania), Budapest (Hungary), and Bratislava (Slovakia). Bulgaria was not included because the designated NUTS region that contained the capital also contained a large region of Bulgaria, so the capital is not solely influencing its data. Each of these capitals takes in more revenue and accommodates more tourists than the rest of the country, thereby creating multiple outliers within the data. This created a confounding variable that would not properly show if there was a correlation between these factors and UNESCO designation, leading these data points to be removed. Along with this, there was a region in which three sites were located, as well as a region where five sites

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were located. Since such data could not produce a proper box plot, they were not included in the graphs. After this data was omitted, the box plots were created. These plots were, based on the different factors, compared against each other to distinguish any noticeable differences. From this data, a one-way ANOVA test was performed, which helps test the possibility of the differences in the samples being due to sampling variability. In the ANOVA test, a p-value was calculated, which is the probability that, given that the true mean z-scores of the different samples are similar, the test would obtain the observed differences. Thus, a p-value above a threshold of .05 was deemed to indicate that, based on the sample, there is no evidence that the different number of sites affects these factors. All data was derived from the Eurostat database.

Figure 2: Z-Score of GDP vs. Number of UNESCO Sites Note: Using a one-way ANOVA test, the calculated p-value=.78.

Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, in this context, is the monetary market value for all goods and services in Euro per inhabitant of each region. For the GDP of the sites, the box plots seem to have no statistically significant differences between them. Since their intervals largely

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overlap, there is no present correlation between an increase in UNESCO sites and a growth in GDP. This is proven by the high p-value, meaning that there is no evidence that an increase in UNESCO sites correlates to an increase in GDP for a region.

Figure 3: Z-Score of Number of Nights Spent in Tourist Facilities vs. Number of UNESCO Sites Note: Using a one-way ANOVA test, the calculated p-value=.12.

Tourism, in this case, was measured in terms of the number of nights spent in different tourist accommodations, including hotels and vacation rentals, per 1000 inhabitants. Regarding tourism, the intervals of the different box plots overlap largely, and are not significantly different. This indicates that there is seemingly no correlation between an increase in UNESCO sites in a region and an increase in tourism in a community. Further supporting this claim, the calculated p-value is greater than the threshold of .05, indicating that the differences in the z- score distributions is attributed to sampling variability, and there is no apparent evidence of a correlation between an increase in UNESCO sites and an increase in tourism for a region.

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Figure 4: Z-Score of Unemployment Rate vs. Number of UNESCO Sites Note: Using a one-way ANOVA test, the calculated p-value=.23.

The unemployment rate being measured is the percent of the labor force age 15-74 who are unemployed.

When analyzing the unemployment rate, there are no significant differences between each box plot. Thus, because all of the intervals of the z-scores overlap, there is no indication that an increase in UNESCO sites correlates with a decrease in the unemployment rate for different regions. Furthering this claim is the p-value of .23, indicating that it is likely that the differences seen in the box plots are due to normal variability, and do not indicate a correlation between this development in employment and an increase in UNESCO presence.

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Figure 5: Z-Score of Tertiary Educational Attainment vs. Number of UNESCO Sites Note: Using a one-way ANOVA test, the calculated p-value=.86.

In this instance, tertiary education levels are defined as post-secondary education, including university and trade schools. The box plots for each different factor are not statistically different. The high p-value indicates no evidence of a correlation between the two factors being presented. Due to this observation, it can be concluded that there is no apparent correlation between an increase in the number of UNESCO sites and an increase in tertiary education levels.

Discussion

The first factor being observed was the GDP of a region. There was found to be no correlation between an increase in UNESCO sites and a growth in GDP. In this context, then, UNESCO designation seems to have no effect on the economic prosperity of its surrounding region. As one of the main goals of UNESCO designation is to help bring revenue to these areas, it seems that this goal is not being achieved.

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The next factor being examined was the connection and correlation between rates of tourism and number of UNESCO sites. The lack of statistically significant differences between the box plots indicated that there was no real correlation between these two factors. These were surprising results, as one assumed effect of designation as a World Heritage site would be an increase in tourism. However, this goal is also not achieved, as an increase in UNESCO designation does not seem to create a larger tourism industry in the area.

Third, the correlation between an increase in UNESCO sites and the unemployment rate for a NUTS region was examined. There was seemingly no indicated correlation between these two factors. Thus, it appears that World Heritage designation has little to no impact on the job market and employment of the surrounding citizens. These findings contradict the perceived notion that, through designation, more attraction to the region and city will initiate greater employment. The last factor being examined in this study is the percentage of those living in specific NUTS regions that acquired tertiary, or post-secondary, education. The similar box plots indicate that an increase in UNESCO designated cultural sites in a region does not correlate with an increase in the level of education of an area. With economic development, the perceived implication of World Heritage site designation is that it also brings social development for a region, including higher education levels. Thus, due to the different factors being studied, UNESCO World Heritage designation does not seem to improve such educationally rooted social conditions in the surrounding area.

Conclusion

This study attempted to discuss the social and economic effects on communities of a cultural site being designated as having “Outstanding Universal Value� from UNESCO. It is

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commonly believed that UNESCO designation and an increased number of UNESCO cultural sites correlates with improved socioeconomic development. This is because, due to their UNESCO designations, cultural sites would gain greater recognition, and thereby attract more tourists. It is believed that this influx in tourism would result in more employment, greater social development, and improved economic standing. Yet, contrary to popular belief, the results from this study demonstrate that World Heritage designation does not help improve the surrounding area socially or economically.

These findings can benefit different stakeholders. UNESCO, in particular, can improve upon its design of UNESCO designation procedure, funding, and maintenance. The organization spends, in association with the World Heritage Fund, more than $4 million US dollars annually (“Funding,� 2020). With this information, UNESCO can develop different programs that result in more substantive socioeconomic benefits for the region. UNESCO has seemed to falsely assume that a site’s designation will intrinsically result in greater socioeconomic conditions. However, because this is not working, UNESCO is apparently missing a key step: publicity. A site can be designated as UNESCO heritage, but without UNESCO working actively to increase awareness and tourism for the site, minimal improvements can be made. Yet, by developing ways to connect these sites to the general public, UNESCO can actually increase tourism and awareness of its sites and programs. Moreover, governments of specific sites should not solely rely on UNESCO to improve their conditions. Instead, they should also seek to actively publicize their respective designations and tourist accommodations.

Limitations

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One of this study’s most significant limitations is its inability to analyze each cultural site. The NUTS regions described are the smallest regions available to the public for data collection. Given this constraint, it cannot be concluded that there are no confounding variables present. Since individual site data is not readily available for all regions, it could be possible that other confounding variables (such as the history, resources, and infrastructure of the differences of NUTS regions and countries) could be affecting the data. Nevertheless, the data available is the clearest depiction of the correlation and removes known confounding variables.

Another limitation of this study is the inherent lack of cultural and social understanding that occurs through data. UNESCO’s main goals include cultural preservation, which connects to helping the community around a specific culture both socially and economically. However, this data cannot quantify the cultural aspect of the effect of World Heritage designation, as observing the culture directly would do. This still leads to a gap in knowledge, considering the cultural impact and its connection to socioeconomic development. However, even with this drawback, the connection or lack thereof to social and economic conditions and UNESCO can be observed through the data.

An additional limitation is the use of Eurostat as the sole database for the research undertaken in this study.

Eurostat is the largest database for the European Union, and is used and created by large research institutions, making it credible and valid in its information. Indeed, other databases did not present the sheer extent of the information held

by Eurostat. However, due to lack of data availability, Europe could only be studied to make conclusions regarding the effect of UNESCO designation on surrounding areas globally. Despite that, the effect of this confounding variable was limited to the greatest extent due to the use of standardized z-scores. This allowed each factor to become comparable to the country’s mean of each corresponding

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data point. In turn, this allowed different countries to be effectively compared between each other. These results can be used to draw conclusions globally, as the data is relative to the means of each country, so regional and country-based factors do not play a role. These conclusions could be strengthened if these factors were able to be recorded in countries on continents other than Europe. However, through this study’s proper precautions, sound conclusions are still able to be made regarding the effect of UNESCO World Heritage designation on these sites.

Implications

One implication that can be further explored entails the effect of marketing and advertising in the different social and economic factors of UNESCO World Heritage designation. When discussing these cultural sites, many are not known or popular to those who do not live in the area of the site. Along with this, the idea of a World Heritage site, designated by UNESCO, is generally unfamiliar to the public. To fully gain social and economic development, the World Heritage designation should substantially impact the number of tourists who visit each site. Advertising and media could possibly be an effective way to achieve this goal. For example, UNESCO World Heritage has a social media account, but has not been active since 2016. It would further help UNESCO and government tourism agencies to discover how they can most effectively increase tourism, and thus economic growth of their respective communities.

A further implication of this study could be the role that socioeconomic development plays in the cultural aspect of UNESCO designation. As the studied sites were designated as having “Outstanding Universal Value� based on their importance in the culture of certain groups, one of the main goals, along with social and economic development, is cultural preservation. Though the goals associated with economic and social factors were not met based on the data,

28 Paper and Commentary understanding is quantified and correlated could be used to help answer this question.

Further Research

An important continuation of this study would entail supplementing statistical data from each site with firsthand observations. This potential observational study of different regions surrounding cultural sites could help better decipher the true social, cultural, and economic impact of the designation on the people who live there. In turn, this would then allow UNESCO and tourism agencies to better develop a connection with their native inhabitants and devise methods to increase social development without compromising cultural identity.

If more time was allotted to further research this topic, it would be valuable to explore more sites around the world. The conclusions made by this research could then be further validated by analyzing different indicators of socioeconomic development in non-European countries. Studying and comparing UNESCO sites globally would illuminate the extent to which Europe provides a proper study sample. Moreover, contrasting the sites across different continents would allow a broader scope of UNESCO designation to be considered. Thus, UNESCO and government tourism agencies would have sufficient evidence to change their practices, and effectively gain socioeconomic development for their sites.

Overall, this study was able to accomplish its goal of determining the efficacy of a cultural site’s “World Heritage” designation by UNESCO to improve the site’s socioeconomic conditions. The study concluded that, in the present, this designation does not seem to help in this regard and that UNESCO is misusing its funds. Instead, both UNESCO and government agencies should invest in more effective ways of publicizing and managing sites. In turn, this can

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30 Paper and Commentary References Augustyn, Anna, et al. “Revealing the Socioeconomic Potential of Cultural Heritage.”

Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, 23 Apr. 2015, conferences.iaia.org/2015/Final-Papers/Augustyn,%20Anna%20%20Revealing%20the%20Socioeconomic%20Potential%20of%20Cultural%20Heritage. pdf.

Cadar, S. (2014). New Skills in a Changing World: Strategic Alliances at World Heritage Sites.

Journal of Tourism, Culture and Territorial Development, 12-19.

Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. (1972, November 16). Retrieved from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization: https://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-en.pdf The Criteria for Selection. (2019). Retrieved from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization: https://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/ Funding. (2020). Retrieved from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization: https://whc.unesco.org/en/funding/ Gruber, S. (2008). Protecting China’s Cultural Heritage Sites in Times of Rapid Change: Current Developments, Practice, and Law. The University of Sydney Law School, 253-301.

Jha, S. (2005). Can Natural World Heritage Sites Promote Development and Social Harmony.

Biodiversity and Conservation, 981-991.

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Keitumetse, S., & Nthoi, O. (2009). Investigating the Impact of World Heritage Site Tourism on the Intangible Heritage of a Community: Tsodilo Hills World Heritage Site, Botswana. International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 144-149.

Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. (2017, July 12). Retrieved from United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization: https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/ Policy on the integration of a sustainable development perspective into the processes of the Convention. (2015). Retrieved from https://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/6578/ The World Heritage Convention. (2019). Retrieved from UNESCO World Heritage Centre: https://whc.unesco.org/en/convention/ World Heritage. (2019). Retrieved from United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization: http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/

Your Key to European Statistics. (2020). Retrieved 2020, from https://ec.europa. eu/eurostat/about/overview

32 Paper and Commentary Appendices Appendix A: The Criteria for Selection Criteria

Description

I

To represent a masterpiece of human creative genius.

II

To exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design.

III

To bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.

IV

To be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history.

V

To be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea- use which is representative of a culture (or cultures) or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change.

VI

To be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance.

VII

To contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance.

VIII

To be outstanding examples representing major stages of earth’s history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic features.

IX

To be outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals.

X

To contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.

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34 Paper and Commentary Appendix C: Mean and Standard Deviation of Each Factor with and without Outliers

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The Ceasing of Racial Diversity —— Snowpiercer Jinhao Wang, Issaquah High School, 22’ The movie Snowpiercer, based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, directed by Bong Joon-ho, is not simply an apocalyptic movie that shows environmentalism, classism, social revolution, and revealed humanity, but also demonstrates a new connotation behind it. Flashing back to the first era of the apocalyptic movies around the 1950s, to the modern state of its type, Snowpiercer finally sets up a formal threshold for the apocalyptic film industry as the transition towards the ideal morality with the removal of the typical endings and stereotypical characteristics towards minorities.

Although it can be jarring, peeking through the history of apocalyptic films, reveals a consistent theme about the hierarchy of race. Reflecting the broader mood of the film industry and its place in the cultural landscape, white people are often portrayed as the inevitable heroes, and occasionally the lone survivors, of apocalyptic terror of various kinds. This tendency to overemphasize the value of whiteness persists throughout the film industry. As a recent study in The Guardian reveals, in 2018 only “twenty-seven films had a non-white lead or co-lead” (Shoard). In the early era of apocalyptic cinema, many movies directly indicate the superiority of white characters over the dispensable others.

For example, Night of the Living Dead (1968), George A. Romero’s new formula for the zombie film tells a familiar story about race and the end of the world. In this film, a group of people retreats to a small house to evade an army of undead ghouls. Although Ben, the only black character in the film, outlasts the other characters he is hiding with, he is eventually killed at the very end by a group of white vigilantes, led by a white sheriff, when they mistake him for a zombie. The 1960s was a sensitive time for the Civil Rights movement, and this film made a giant leap in the industry by casting an African American male as the lead. But even though this step forward was taken, the same old story is told in the end.

More recently, many apocalyptic movies, such as The Divide (2011) and World War Z (2013), retain this same structural relationship to race and its deployment within the narrative. In these films, black or minority characters are often killed off during the middle phase of the story. Very few, if any, survive to the end. And yet, no matter how dynamic the plot is, and no matter how severe the threat is, the white man always survives to save the world. This persistence of this trope white superiority creates embedded assumptions about race that may have detrimental effects, especially on younger viewers, who are still formulating their understanding of the world and themselves. According to Variety, Will Smith’s decision for not to attend the Oscars was due to his concern about the imbalance the racial representation in Hollywood: “‘This is so deeply not about me. This is about children that are going to sit down and watch this show and they’re not going to see themselves represented” (Littleton). The lack of representation truly had internal consequences

36 Paper and Commentary as well for its success and cohesiveness. It’s obvious that people try to avoid talking about race and ethnicity in public, but these elements of fragmentary racial diversity are still present in society—and Hollywood is merely one avenue where the problem is visualized.

However, the film Snowpiercer completely reverses the ordinary paradigm of race. In this minority characters survive and offer a new vision of hope for a world that is built on something more than the tenets of white exceptionalism. Yona, one of the main characters in Snowpiercer, is one of the few Asian characters to appear in the history of apocalyptic films. Far from being merely a placeholder for the heroics of other characters, she, along with a small black child, survives to the end. This is the first time an Asian character acts as the Savior of a world that has been decimated because of climate change. It’s intriguing how the director uses Curtis, the other main character, who is played by Chris Evans, as the slow but eventual transition of Asian characters into the Apocalyptic tradition. In the course of the film, Curtis, who is one of the lower-class people on the train, succeeds defeating Wilford. However, instead of becoming the new leader and the savior of humanity, no doubt fulfilling the audience’s expectation, Curtis dies protecting Yona from the final explosion at the train’s side door.

Could this new plot develop signal the potentially increasing exposure of minority actors in the apocalyptic imagination? As of right now, not quite, but it casts a practical projection to the future, where more minority actors will be presented in apocalyptic films, or possibly the entire entertainment industry. According to Stacy L. Smith, the director of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, “companies are making more of an effort to be inclusive” (Shorad). Without a doubt, Snowpiercer marks a turning point and a point of departure, revealing that apocalyptic movies can be successfully structured around a world in which white people are not the only heroes capable of redeeming a failing world.

Whereas Snowpiercer offers a new landscape for the apocalyptic film to explore, there have been other moments in which the potential for racial liberation has been perhaps hinted at but never fulfilled. In some cases, the existence of longstanding racial stereotypes is merely the legacy of inherited and unchallenged images that originate outside of the writer’s or director’s intention. And yet, in the present day, where we have a greater understanding of the world and diversity, such representations can no longer be excused based on the accident.

The movie Geostorm (2017), directed by Dean D, exemplifies this movement toward a more self-conscious notion of race. This is an apocalyptic film where the earth is fully monitored by a universal system called “DutchBoy”. Because of human-made pollution, this system has been put in place to fulfill the role of a climate moderator. One of the only Asian characters in the movie, Cheng Long, played by Daniel Wu, shows up as a computer engineer in the International Climate Council. In the whole of the two-hour film, he appears for about five minutes and has barely any lines. After

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discovering the scandal in the system, he is predictably got murdered. In this case, whether it means to or not, the film upholds two stereotypes at once. The Asian character is technically adept but functionally expendable. He discovers the problem, but he does not survive the effects of his cleverness.

Alongside, the movie Independence Day: Resurgence (2015), directed by Roland Emmerich, underscores the claim of this paper. Even though the film attempts to minimize the stereotype by making Rain Luo, played by Angela Wing, a fighter pilot, the attempt fails to escape some of the traditional pitfalls of standard cinematic treatments of race.

The movie depicts the struggle against an alien civilization. A large of the plot centers on the human command center, in which people collect and analyze large quantities of data and manage the satellite system to secure the Earth. In looking at the way the characters are deployed, the same problem of racial stereotyping rears its head. All the staff members in front of the computer screen are Asian, who play minor roles in the film, and all the leaders are white people who make the decisions. Once again, Asian characters are seen as superior when it comes to matters of technology but are never promoted to positions of true leadership or importance. Both of these films project limit Asian people to cogs in the technical workforce. They are not permitted to act as leaders but instead reinforce the existence of the global stereotype of Asians as both mathematically gifted and quietly obedient to the capitalist structure. They are portrayed as mindless and expendable cogs who care only about performing their role, silently accepting rules that are made for them.

In the construction of these films, the role and placement of African American characters play a similar role.

They are both reduced to minor characters who are there to follow the orders that are proposed for them. The black characters in the film never possess intricate technical jobs; in fact, they always showed up in the conflict/combat scenes and often carry heavy weapons with them. In this sense, because they are the infantry of the human race, they are seen as useful, in part, because of their capacity to be sacrificed. They are expendable, whereas the leaders are always held in reserve because of their importance. Secondly, they are reduced to the effects of their bodies and not on the strength of their minds.

These forms of representation amount to cinematic microaggressions. According to Marc Choueiti, programmer director at the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the current situation in the film industry is amounts to mass whitewashing. By turning away from the reality of racial complexity, thereby relying only on perceived and discredited knowledge, films deny the complex subjectivities of other people: “You’re basically seeing the erasure of whole communities” (Shoard). But as we rewind to Snowpiercer, the light at the end of the tunnel is still bright. Rather than support the sort of conventions that we have already detailed, the movie refrains from creating characters whose role within the landscape and the hierarchy of work is predetermined by race. Minorities do not need to be a specialist in one area but are instead outfitted with the potential to be leaders. For example, although the revolution is started in the fil by Curtis,

38 Paper and Commentary one of the main Asian characters, Namgoong, played by Kang Ho Song, also serves as a leader. After the capture of Mason, the second in command aboard the train, Curtis and Namgoong selected a group of people to keep exploring the rest of the train to avoid risks. Here comes a historical scene in the movie. The director uses a long shot to show the members of this small group. Unlike most apocalyptic films, the main squad is occupied with every ethnic delegation.

Curtis and Andrew, played by Ewen Bremner, represent the white community; Namgoong and his daughter Yona, represent the Asian American community; Tanya, the black determined mother, played by Octavia Spencer, representing the African American community; and Grey, played by Luke Pasqualino, represents the Latin American community.

This is what the pluralistic world is supposed to look like, where people do not judge each other by their background and work together as one team.

Another interesting area of life that the film reveals is the classroom. When this space is filmed, it shows both the multi-ethnical student body, which affirms the message that everyone deserves equal education and points to a segment that is missing from the train——a group of frozen people. In the story, people have tried to escape the train. But owing to the harsh external environment, they froze. The director emphasizes that the leader of that movement is Yona’s mom, which again solidifies the opinion that minorities can also become the leader in society.

Along with these, there are multiples scenes in the movie that eradicate general stereotypes. For example, instead of the bulky and action-driven black character, Tanya is more cerebral when she slaps Curtis out of his hallucination after the death of Gilliam and tells him that he has to lead the team. Also, rather than the nerdy and vulnerable status of Asian characters, Namgoog and Yona are not only stripped of vulnerable markers, but they also demonstrate leadership, which rarely happens with minorities.

In conclusion, racial diversity will be, and always be one of the biggest uphill battles in not only the apocalyptic movie but the entire industry. Joaquin Phoenix, the winner of the best actor of the 2020 Oscar, said in his speech “We have to do the hard work to truly understand systemic racism. It is the obligation of the people who have created and benefit from the system of oppression to be the ones dismantle it” (Shoard). The vision of movies cannot only be on a specific group of people but to the entire civilization. Apocalyptic, being the most dynamic genre that can represent the plurality of the world, could be the potential first step toward the destination.

Work Cited Littleton, Cynthia. “Will Smith Says He Won’t Attend Oscars.” Variety, Variety, 21 Jan. 2016, variety.com/2016/film/ news/will-smith-oscars-diversity-protest-nominations-1201684878/.

Shoard, Catherine. “Gender and Racial Diversity on the up in Blockbuster Films, Study Finds.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 4 Sept. 2019, www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/04/diversity-films-gender-race.

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Shoard, Catherine. “Joaquin Phoenix’s Attack on Baftas for ‘Systemic Racism’ Hailed by Film Industry.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Feb. 2020, www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/02/joaquin-phoenixs-attack-on-baftas-for-systemic-racism-meets-industry-wide-praise.

40 Paper and Commentary Girls, You Can Fight, Boys, You Can Cry: Climbing the Mountain of Gendered Stereotypes in Conflicts through the Case of China Fangyi (Lexie) Shi, the Stony Brook School, 21’ Abstract This article reveals the predominance of two war-related gender essentialisms - women as victims and men as perpetrators/warriors – and the negligence of the other two gender roles – women as perpetrators/warriors and men as victims – in human societies through a Chinese event of the Nanjing Massacre. I indicate that when people overly generalize a particular belief (dominant stereotype) about a person to include everyone in the person’s group, they are unlikely to identify individuals whose behaviors differ from traditional ideologies. By exploiting historical evidence and referencing a relevant film, The Flowers of War, I challenge the illusory view of civilian women being the most war-affected group in wars, urging the public to rethink the matter of gender stereotypes. The associations between women and femininities and between men and masculinities, I argue, are hazardous because they produce social classifications and unequal treatments. Hence, my conclusion is that restrictions of gendering are necessitated to promote collective wellness for the human body.

Introduction

Growing up in China, I was taught to be elegant, soft, and calm - characteristics signifying femininity - just because I am a girl. Violin, not basketball, should be my personal interest; Barbie dolls, not cars, should be my childhood happiness; Reading, not running, should be my spare time activity. Therefore, I live out what people expect me to be, not what I want to be. Knowing how distressful it is to endure people’s false notion of myself, I oppose all types of stereotypes, especially those related to gender. However, gender essentialisms are omnipresent in our daily life, subtly blinding people’s eyes from seeing things critically. In one conversation, my mother told me that women should receive special protection in conflict because they are vulnerable and incapable of fighting. This provokes me to wonder why women always have to be victims. Aiming to answer this question, I begin to explore the topic of both dominant and subordinate gendered stereotypes.

I was mainly inspired by R. Charli Carpenter’s essay, “Women, Children, and Other Vulnerable Groups”: Gender Strategic Frames and the Protection of Civilians as a Transnational Issue, which argues that gender-based ideologies hinder people from recognizing male civilians and female perpetrators in conflict. She also claims that network actors, including warring parties, the global media, transnational constituencies and partners in the international women’s network, intentionally use these norms to mobilize the public for their own political purpose. Thereupon, I build on her

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arguments by assessing gendered stereotypes that existed in a remarkably brutal Chinese event, The Nanjing Massacre (The Rape of Nanjing), and incorporating examples of various gender roles depicted in a renowned film, The Flowers of War, to argue that males can be vulnerable and passive and that females can be strong and active.

In any type of conflict, females and males are expected to play two kinds of roles - the first are victims and the second are perpetrators/warriors. Here, I combine warriors with perpetrators because both groups, who represent invulnerability, are opposite to victims, who represent forcelessness. My argument is that the four roles - female victims, female perpetrators/warriors, male victims, male perpetrators/warriors - should occupy the same area in our consciousness; we should treat each of them equally1. The following graph helps the reader visualize this abstract concept: Women as victims

Men as victims

Women as perpetrators/warriors

Men as perpetrators/warriors

If the area of hegemonic stereotypes (women as victims/ men as perpetrators or warriors) becomes greater than that of subordinate stereotypes (women as perpetrators or warriors/ men as victims), gender discrimination and social exclusion may occur. Oftentimes, media focuses more on a particular gendered characteristic and neglects the other, with the intention of provoking certain feelings (hatred) among the audience and manipulating them to do certain things (loathe the political enemy). Hence, my paper attempts to reduce the dominance of gendered stereotypes rooted in the major public, through exploiting examples in the Nanjing Massacre and the film, The Flowers of War, in order to sever the associations between women and femininity and between men and masculinity. As I mention above, the most desirable state is when the four stereotypes equally share the space with each other; if two of the physical boxes surpass the limitation, the balance of human society might be threatened. Polarizing gender norms are toxic yet powerful. Thus, this polarization is significant and worth detecting and rejecting.

Methodology

As a bi-linguistic author, I am able to conduct my research on both American and Chinese websites, which makes my paper more comprehensive because of its inclusion of multiple perspectives on the same violence-involved issues. Besides referencing a historic holocaust, I also analyze a specific piece of media to further reflect the prevalent

42 Paper and Commentary stereotypes of women and men in Chinese conflict, and then challenge these conceptions using the stories told in the movie. Throughout my paper, I utilize substantial authentic texts to buttress my points, such as scientific research, academic journals, the UN reports and et al.

First, I open my article by introducing key background information about the Rape of Nanjing and The Flowers of War. Then, I proceed to discuss dominant stereotypes - women as victims and men as perpetrators/warriors - which I criticize in the following section by disclosing the significance of subordinate stereotypes - women as perpetrators/ warriors and men as victims. After illuminating males’ weakness and females’ powerfulness, I present several consequences of neglecting the darkened areas shown in the table above. Finally, I conclude that in order to overcome war-related gender issues in many societies, biased people should be able to see the gray parts and control the spread of the white parts. In this way, they will considerably contribute to world’s effort of bringing justice and wellness to the entire human population.

The Nanjing Massacre (The Rape of Nanjing) and The Flowers of War

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese captured the Chinese city of Nanjing and committed mass murder and mass rape against the civilians and soldiers there. The massacre lasted over six weeks starting on December 13th, 1937. Anywhere from 40,000 to over 300,000 were killed, and 20,000 women were sexually assaulted (Levene & Roberts, 1999; Totten & Samuel, 2008; International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 1948). People were tortured with inhumane methods, the city was destroyed by fire, and possessions were looted by fierce soldiers. The brutality and savagery of the Japanese troops, in the Nanjing Massacre, elicited deep hatred from Chinese citizens, and such abhorrence remains fresh in many Chinese people’s hearts even now.

The movie, The Flowers of War, is a well-known film directed by Zhang Yimou and released in 2011. Based on

the historical event of the Rape of Nanjing, the story aims to illustrate females’ chivalrous spirit that was born during the wartime, presenting an image of brave women, which contradicts the traditional notion of women being vulnerable and weak. When invaders marched into the city of Nanjing, twelve innocent schoolgirls found sanctuary in a church, where they met an American mortician and a boy of their age. Later, fourteen prostitutes fled to the church and sought protection. At first, there were multiple conflicts between the girls and prostitutes because of their vast difference in identity; however, this tension began to diminish as they spent more time with each other under the same shelter, and a solid wartime friendship occurred between the two contrasting groups of women. One day, the Japanese army arrived

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at the cathedral and demanded that the twelve schoolgirls perform songs. Suddenly, a prostitute, who should have hidden in the basement, accidentally exposed herself to the enemies. In order to save her, the schoolgirls lied to the Japanese by telling them that the prostitute lost her uniform and therefore was unable to participate in the performance.

The prostitute’s life was spared, but the delighted Japanese colonel ordered all thirteen of them to sing at the Japanese Army’s victory celebration. Knowing the safety of the virginal girls was threatened, the twelve prostitutes (two of them slaughtered earlier) and the teenage boy volunteered to substitute for them. Thanks to the self-sacrificing decision of the thirteen “Flowers,” the mortician and the twelve girls successfully escaped from Nanjing (Zhang, Kong & Liu, The Flowers of War, 2011).

The movie was very popular in China. According to the results of Sina Entertainment’s movie viewing survey, more than half of the audience stated, “It was unexpectedly excellent” (“Jinling,” 2011). The Flowers of War portrays different roles that each gender can play in a time of crisis, attempting to reduce fallacious gender stereotypes that are rooted in Chinese culture. In the following essay, I will incorporate several examples from the film into my discussion of gender discrimination in modern conflicts.

Discussing Stereotypes

Based on Mike Cardwell’s definition, a stereotype is “a fixed, over-generalized belief about a particular group of people” (Cardwell, 1999, as cited in Wikipedia, 2020). In daily life, people tend to expect a person to possess certain personalities or abilities which are characterized by the person’s group. However, such generalizations may be problematic because they make people overlook individual differences, causing them to make untrue assumptions about an individual (Saul, 2011). Among various types of stereotypes, this paper will mainly focus on the ones associated with the two genders, male and female, especially under the circumstances of warfare.

Dominant Stereotypes of Women For women, one traditional presumption is the association between women and feminine qualities (Schippers, 2007). In traditional notions, a typical, well-cultivated woman should be maternal, caring, pure, peaceful, and innocent.

For example, Confucianism advocates that females be soft, empathic, and yielding, so they are expected to be suitable for domestic duties such as needlework and cooking. Also, Christianity emphasizes the value of females’ virginity because it reveals one’s loyalty to God. In the Bible, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 claims that, “The sexually immoral person sins against his or her own body” which is “the temple of the Holy Spirit” within that person. All these traits contribute

44 Paper and Commentary to the formation of the concept of a woman as a “Beautiful Soul,” a phrase that originally appeared in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s book, The Phenomenology of Spirit, but was later exploited by Jean Bethke Elshtain to justify women’s need for protection in wars due to their innocence and weakness (Hegel, 1977; Elshtain, 1987). The concept establishes an illusory notion that a “good woman,” as measured by cultural standards, can only act as a victim and usually requires rescue from others. Since the picture of a vulnerable, powerless female has been instilled in most cultures’ subconscious, there is a natural inclination for us to generalize this particular belief to include all females as a group, which is a troublesome extension of the stereotypes.

In China, people fall into the trap of gender essentialism when reflecting on the Nanjing Massacre. This historical event is commonly remembered by the Chinese public as a catastrophe that terrorized people in Nanjing, in which the civilian women who were raped by Japanese soldiers seem to be the most afflicted group. People tend to discuss the misery experienced by the female civilians rather than the mass death of male soldiers. Also, they seem to believe that once violence erupts, all women seem to automatically become victims (Enloe, 1999). To further attest to whether the incidents of women being raped have more coverage, I searched the “Nanjing Massacre” with the keyword “female” on the Baidu search engine, and it gave me approximately 13,700,000 available results. In contrast, typing in “Nanjing Massacre ‘’ and a keyword “Male” only renders me around 554,000 results. This huge gap implies the fact that Chinese people consider females as the victims who suffer the most, rather than males. On Sohu.com, there is an article documenting The Rape of Nanjing, in which the writer portrays females as “completely vulnerable and harmless” without any fighting ability (Shishuoshihua 始说史话, 2017). Doubtlessly, the hegemonic stereotype of females as victims directs how Chinese people view women’s role in the Nanjing crisis.

In the film The Flowers of War, the twelve schoolgirls symbolize the nature of innocence, and the cathedral is the sanctuary where refugees can avoid any potential dangers. By displaying the girls being sexually assaulted (innocence is stained) and the church being ruined (sanctity is infringed), these bloody scenes attempt to outrage the audience, escalating their long-embedded hostility toward the Japanese perpetrators. The film director’s strategic use of gender stereotypes exemplifies Carpenter’s argument that network actors manipulate norms for their own political interests (Carpenter, 2005). Similarly, the purpose of highlighting women’s distress whereas ignoring men’s deaths is because women, who represent vulnerability and purity, are better for evoking a sense of sympathy and anger from the audience. Ignited by the disclosure of the Japanese soldiers’ sexual violence against local women, the Chinese public may grow more radical and nationalistic and therefore regard Japan as their evil enemy.

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Dominant Stereotypes of Men For men, the dominant stereotype is the association with masculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Contrasted to femininity, the conventional characteristics are aggressiveness, a tendency towards violence, fighting capability, heroic and courageous spirit, fewer possibilities of being harmed, and a responsibility to protect the weak. Norms for males can be categorized into two specific presumptions. First, males are viewed as perpetrators. Throughout history, soldiers who fight in battles are mostly male. They conduct violent actions, hardly sparing any victim’s life. In the Nanjing Massacre, all Japanese invaders were male; they tortured residents, raped women, and slaughtered unarmed soldiers. They scared us with their barbarity and cruelty, which encourages the audience to hold negative stereotypes about Japanese men.

The second presumption is of males as warriors. Stronger and more muscular than women, men are assumed to be less likely to experience harm, especially through sexual-related attacks. On Zhihu, a widely-used Chinese question-and-answer website, an anonymous user (A) posted a question: “Was there any sexual violence against males in The Rape of Nanjing?” Only three identity-concealed accounts responded to A, and all of them denied the possibility of a man being raped by another man, an untrue belief which I will challenge in the later sections. One of the comments ridiculed A for being “too stupid to ask such a meaningless question;” another answer even reported A to the Zhihu system because he claimed that A’s question threatened social virtues and morals. Besides functioning as a tool for network actors to mobilize collective thinking, a well-developed internet can also create interactive effects; that is, electronic communications establish platforms for people to freely share ideas which may impact others’ thoughts.

As more online communities, such as Zhihu, where users can hide behind a cloak of anonymity, emerge into our lives, we are less restrained from expressing our opinions and openly discussing controversial and sensitive topics on the internet. People say what they want, and others can see and comment on it, thus spurring hot conversations on particular subjects. Unlike pornography or drugs which can be censored by system managers, the topic of gender cannot be monitored. If a gender-charged person meets with another gender-charged person and together talk about how they think men and women should behave, both of them will become more radical, subjective, and biased. Lacking necessary supervision, open discussion websites facilitate the accumulations of multiple gender-discriminative groups.

This phenomenon is extremely toxic because it disseminates dangerous stereotypes without people’s awareness and prevention.

Moreover, regarded as the superior sex by many societies, men are expected to have altruistic and heroic behaviors such as protecting victims, given that they may sacrifice their own lives for the weaker sex. Authors and filmmakers more or less exhibit a tendency to include one or more male hero characters who fight until death in their works. In The

46 Paper and Commentary Flowers of War, when Japanese soldiers tried to rape a schoolgirl, one wounded Chinese soldier saved her by killing the aggressors with his last bullet, and eventually was slain by the enemies.

Criticizing Stereotypes “The prejudice in people’s minds is like a mountain, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t move it.”

-

Ne Zha

Although mobilizing a massive mountain of prejudice would be a challenging task, people could climb over it by giving up their propensity to over-generalize a particular individual characteristic to a particular group of people.

Below, the graph demonstrates what I mean by over-generalizing stereotypes: an unfavorable state in which the four gender roles do not equally share the area. The two bright sections represent dominant beliefs about both sexes, whereas the two darkened ones represent subordinate beliefs that are commonly overlooked by the broader public. When a vast majority of the Chinese population regard women as the only victimized group in conflicts and men as the only violent/ chivalrous group, the area of the highlighted parts expands disproportionately and therefore deprives of room the two gray boxes. I expect that the objectivity of the popular public opinions in China is reduced by the predominance of the white sections. A critical thinker should recognize the existence of the normally forgotten parts and well-balance the importance of both dominant and subordinate beliefs. They should also identify individual differences, wisely escaping the luring trap of stereotypes.

Gender and Sex: Severing the Associations between Women and Femininity and between Men and Masculinity

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Firstly, it is critical for the major public to correctly differentiate gender and sex. On the one hand, a class of organisms that is characterized by male or female features is known as sex (Stevenson & Waite, 2011; Purves, Sadava, Orians & Heller, 2000). On the other hand, according to Donna B. Hurowitz (as cited in Lewis, 2001, p. 720), “a grammatical term among those languages that have masculine, feminine or neuter nouns” is known as gender, and it cannot be applied to species other than humans (Lewis, 2001). Gender is a term completely generated by cultures and values.

Gendering is to label a person, or a group of people, based on their observable sex (Hartmann, 2006; Tickner, 2001).

However, gender norms are misleading and dysfunctional for the following reasons.

First, Gentry and Sjoberg (2015) reveal that people do not share common character or common experiences “because they are men or because they are women” (Ideal Types of Women in Global Politics, para. 2). Growing up in different families, countries, or continents, people vary greatly from each other, given that environmental factors can shape people’s thinking. Second, it is true that males are scientifically proven to be physically stronger to females, but a person’s pure sexual characteristics can be confounded with the contextual influence when it comes to analyzing his or her actions. For instance, Lightdale and Prentice (1994) experimented on a group of college students who were deindividualized (that is, having their individual identity concealed). Aiming to investigate how social context and gender roles determine one’s behaviors, the researchers asked their participants to play an video game in which they first defended and then attacked by dropping bombs. To everyone’s surprise, women seemed to exhibit more aggression, whereas men seemed to exhibit more passivity. Hence, the interference of surrounding complexity destabilizes the seemingly fixed socially-constructed understandings of each gender (Gentry & Sojoberg, 2015). Finally, gender norms may produce discriminations against a certain group of people, since the presence of conventional gender norms unconsciously affects behavior and attitudes towards a person (Donaldson, 2019). Based on these reasons, I reject the validity and reliability of gendering and social classification, and thus call for distinctions between women and femininity and between men and masculinity.

Unlinking Women and Femininity In any conflict, women play multiple roles, some of which contradict the traditional images of women as delicate, pure, vulnerable, and non-aggressive. Below, I will attempt to delineate both positive and negative deviations from the social expectations for women and how each deviation is treated differently by the public.

48 Paper and Commentary Positive deviation refers to an active, not passive, woman who is courageous to contribute in wars, usually working to benefit her side without partaking in actual combat. Such mutation in dominant stereotypes of women is positive because it is welcomed and respected in most societies. One crucial figure widely respected in the case of the Nanjing Massacre is Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary who established women’s education, protected war victims, and provided shelters for refugees. She was also determined, as she refused to return to the U.S. to continue to offer necessary aid to Chinese refugees. Unlike the notion of a woman being timid, weak, and passive, Minnie exemplifies a woman of chivalry and conviction. More brave women are noted in Vautrin’s diary written on December 14, 1937. She mentions that many civilian women volunteered to serve in military hospitals and “even middle school girls could help tremendously in the thousand tasks that must be done to equip and maintain an army” (as cited in Lian-hong & Hu, 2010, Chapter 2, para. 2). Based on Vautrin’s observation, we can see that a woman showing heroic spirit is not a special case which rarely happens in war; in fact, the entire group of unarmed, physically disadvantaged, common women can provide help to the war effort.

Negative deviation indicates a woman who acts against the beliefs about a good woman and thus is considered as a bad, unusual woman (Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015). Sometimes, she is blamed for behaving differently than the society believes she should behave, which should not be hers but the society’s fault for ignoring individual differences. The first situation in which a female is blamed is when she participates in actual combat activities. Since some women have always expressed their personal and political hostility through violence in many historic events no matter their cultures, we have to acknowledge the fact that women, not only men, can be aggressive and belligerent (Parashar 2014; Bloom 2011; Alison 2007; Gentry & Sjoberg, 2015). With special training and conditioning, a female body can be fit for the army, which reduces the gap between male and female soldiers. As a result, participation in physical activities can no longer be determined by gender (MacKenzie, 2012). Given that systematic training programs create more possibilities for a woman to fight, the prevailing public opinion shall not discriminate against those females who actually fought in wars.

Secondly, for a long time, seemingly all cultures have criticized female prostitutes. The embedded understanding of prostitutes is women being flirty, superficial, impure, and dirty. Their sole existence seems to contaminate the holiness of Hegel’s “beautiful soul” of virgin girls. In the movie The Flowers of War, the fourteen prostitutes are treated with a feeling of aversion and disapproval by the twelve schoolgirls. The girls avoid any unnecessary physical contact and refuse to share a bathroom with them. Ironic yet compelling, the plot that these prostitutes selflessly sacrifice them-

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selves in order to save the symbolism of innocence triggers the audience to rethink female gender roles in conflicts.

Nonetheless, there seems to be an inconsequent impression among the majority of the viewers, which is that those who fight are often whores. The night before the fourteen prostitutes set forth their never-returning journey, in a dim and serious atmosphere, one of them says that, “We are already dirty, why should we fear? How can we see those virginal girls suffer such kind of things (rape)?” Her justification for taking the risk seems morally acceptable because it doesn’t matter if she becomes dirtier. Therefore, the implied message seems to be that the prostitutes will not be further victimized if they encounter sexual violence by Japanese troops, and that promiscuous women are not actually feminine women who belong to a category of victims.

Although the prostitutes have internalized this belief, such perception is completely erroneous and should be eliminated. In fact, “bad women” are also victims. Take Yu Mo, one of the fourteen prostitutes, as an example. She was sold to a brothel by her stepfather; she was forced to betray her body. Also, her other sisters all have similar experiences, and they all have a dream to become schoolgirls one day. These fourteen prostitutes are also females, same as the twelve schoolgirls, so their extrinsic appearances, personal identities, and life stories cannot determine who they are and how they should be treated. Obviously, they are likely to die if they go to the enemy’s camp, but they convince each other to go anyway. Their altruism attests to the idea that body’s stain doesn’t equal an ugly soul; these prostitutes indeed have “beautiful souls” which biased people think only good women could possess. Ultimately, gender norms should never be used as a fixed standard to measure an individual’s inherent nature, personal character, and divine morality.

The majority of the Chinese people accept, even praise, a woman who displays valor and firmness, yet they reprimand a woman who demonstrates violence or loses her chastity. It seems that only certain types of nonconformities are disliked. In the history of the War of Resistance in north China, the Chinese Communist Party encouraged women’s mobilization; however, rather than aiming to expand women’s participation in public life, the CCP’s purpose seemed to use women as a productive workforce to “support the economy and anti-Japanese effort” (Johnson, 1985, p. 65). The party intentionally elected to welcome the positive deviation of female war-contributors rather than negative deviation, which illustrates how polarizing gendered issues can interfere with political scenarios. Because gender is so powerful, we should take gendered stereotypes, as well as the implied consequences, more seriously than ever before.

Unlinking Men and Masculinity

50 Paper and Commentary For people who mentally visualize males as either perpetrators or heroes, they would find difficulty agreeing with the idea that males can also be vulnerable victims in wars, which results in the general ignorance of men’s suffering. In China, the widespread impression of the Rape of Nanjing is that women suffered the most in that period of time. Nevertheless, males between the ages of 20-60 constitute 80%-90% of the casualties during the Nanjing holocaust (Zhang, n.d.). This solid fact shakes the dominant stand of the belief that only women were the greatest war victims.

Fearing Chinese soldiers would form guerillas, Japanese armies conducted numbers of mass executions of war prisoners. They searched subjects “house-to-house” and slaughtered “any young man who passed” because he could be a former soldier (Chang, 2012, p. 46). In the executions that took place near the Mufu Mountain, approximately fifty-seven thousand civilians and former soldiers were killed, all were men and boys (Chang, 2012, p. 44). According to common Article 3(1) of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, killing war prisoners or combatants who have already surrendered is a type of war crime (International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 1949).

Not only are men killed during conflicts, they can also be the victims of sexual violence, and it happens more frequently than is usually thought. A 2013 survey in Jordan, which asked 613 Syrian refugees, indicates boys are more prone to be exposed to sexual assault than girls (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, 2013). Throughout history, many armed conflicts involved sexual violence against men, such as in Ancient Persia, Chile, China, Rwanda, and so on (Sivakumaran, 2007). During the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, cases relating to male suffering are under-reported, as one Congolese activist remarks that “the rape of men is much more frequent than you might think” (Amnesty International, 2004, p. 19). Though women maintain being disproportionately victimized by sexual and gender-based crimes, people should not forget war-related male victims of sexual violence because such cases are less reported by the internet, newspaper, and televisions. The reason why conventional and social media focus less on male victims of rape is that the belief that men are strong does not serve the purpose of provoking sympathy among the audience’s own group and anger against the enemy. Thus, to trigger hostility towards Japan and raise nationalist sentiments among the Chinese citizens, media and network actors would prefer to use the ideology of vulnerable women rather than that of strong men in the context of the siege of Nanjing.

A typical, socially expected male image is a hero being tough and persistent in front of obstacles. Once a man demonstrates a slight sense of weakness, he might receive reproach from others. During the Nanjing Massacre, the fact that Chinese soldiers quickly surrendered to Japanese troops stunned Azuma Shiro, a former Japanese General, and evoked a feeling of contempt from him. In his diary, he called them “a herd of ignorant sheep” and “crawling ants”

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(Chang, 2012, p. 44). In addition, male fighters’ passive act of submitting to the enemies cannot be easily forgiven by Chinese people themselves either. My mother once commented that, “Chinese soldiers during the Nanjing Massacre were cowards and not chivalrous at all.” In her opinion, she deems that if only these soldiers had been more determined and stubborn, fewer innocent people would have died. Nonetheless, these masculine characteristics should not be connected to all men as a group. Both vulnerability and chivalry are not distinguishable as male or female. If females are accepted to be defenseless, helpless, and not resistant, so should males. This section aims to illuminate the commonly forgotten box - males as vulnerable victims - in people’s consciousness, diminishing the hegemony of its counterpart males as perpetrators/ warriors.

Social Problems Brought by Gender-based Stereotypes

Gender essentialisms of women and men, which dominant the minds of the major public, are dangerous due to their negative consequence of gender discrimination, which then leads to social classifications, unequal treatments, and tensions between different groups of people. Since an idealized figure of a combative and muscular man deeply embedded in the generality of Chinese people, the tremendous number of male civilians’ and submissive soldiers’ deaths in the Rape of Nanjing are remembered far less than that of civilian women’s suffering, albeit more males died than females did.

As I disclosed in previous sections, sexual violence against males is usually under reported (Chynoweth, 2017).

This underreporting is primarily due to stigma, since when raped, a man demonstrates weakness which does not meet social expectation for a gallant man. Fearing the hostility and disdain expressed by discriminating service providers, men are more reluctant to seek support than women (Donnelly, 1996). As a result, the silence of these male victims contributes to the concealment of sex-related crimes in warfare, which is unjust because the culprits will never be divulged and receive punishments they deserve. Although progress has been made to improve the stigma against male victims of rape, such as a report published by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict and the US mission to the UN in July 2013 which “determines the scope of sexual violence against men and boys and

52 Paper and Commentary promotes their protection,” these efforts are very much the “first step” because males’ victimization is not “discussed in detail” (UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, 2013, p.

3; Touquet & Gorris, 2016, Conclusion, para. 2). Thus, gender discrimination against male victims of sexual violence should be reduced in order to heal their mental and physical pains.

Having presented the issue of not seeing men’s subordinate stereotypes (men as victims), I will proceed to analyze how women’s subordinate stereotypes (women as perpetrators) disrupts fairness in societies. Traditional notions of women indicates that women should remain at home during the time of chaos rather than going to the battlefields.

Since women are expected not to fight, there is a fallacious belief that women do not need any medical care for war wounds nor any programs for the recovery from actual fighting experience in conflicts. As a task force points out, on the merciless battleground Afghanistan women “risk urinary tract and vaginal infections” because the military doesn’t prepare them to avoid those problems (Drummond, 2012, para. 5). Moreover, female combatants are excluded from disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), which assists veterans to re-accommodate to life in peacetime (Mazurana & Krystalli & Baaré, 2017). Without integrating into society, soldiers are likely to perceive a feeling of isolation and loneliness, therefore placing them at risk for radical behaviors, such as suicide and crimes, which disturbs the harmony of civilian life.

Conclusion

The imagery of a defenseless woman and a warlike man imprints in the minds of those who subconsciously generalize particular beliefs about a woman and a man to all women and men, without realizing the flaws of their gendered behaviors. One universal belief is the associations between women and femininities (socially-granted qualities for being a female) and between men and masculinities (socially-granted qualities for being a male). Reinforced by media advertisements, hegemonic stereotypes - women as victims and men as perpetrators/warriors - seem to become a deceptive fact that is widely accepted in Chinese communities. Like an immovable mountain in their hearts, gendered stereotypes block the majority from approaching the actual truth. The Rape of Nanjing remains a scar to our Chinese,

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and most people are more easily enraged by the rape of innocent women than by the massive murder of male prisoners.

For many years, global scholars have already begun to promote recognition of the conventionally neglected population, such as male sexual assault victims, afflicted male residents in wars, and neglected female heroes. The progress humans have made so far is laudable, but in Chinese culture, gendering still deeply poisons the thinking of common people who do not possess a non-skewed insight needed to conquer the mountain of gendered stereotypes.

The analysis in this paper primarily focuses on reducing war-based gender discriminations in cultures through

increasing biased people’s awareness of subordinate stereotypes as well as decreasing their emphasis on dominant stereotypes. Failing to identify female soldiers and male victims may generate a series of social problems such as injustice, tensions, and ostracization. Again, social classification based on femininities and masculinities should be diminished because deviant males and females meet unnecessary criticisms after wars and are excluded from policies alleviating the conditions of certain war-afflicted groups. Without banishing gendering from our societies, we may not be able to deliver humanitarian aid to all groups of people who need it, which produces avoidable disagreements and social inequality. Consequently, the wellness of all civil communities might be endangered by gender-related biases.

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Jinling shisanchai guanying diaocha [Viewing survey for the film The Flowers of War]. (2011, December 19). Sina Entertainment. Retrieved from http://ent.sina.com.cn/m/c/2011-12-19/00333510871.shtml Johnson, K. A. (1985). Women, the family and peasant revolution in China. p. 65 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/ heb.04240 Levene, M., & Roberts, P. (1999). The massacre in history. Berghahn Books.

Lewis, J. D., & D.D.S. (2001). Sex vs. gender. The Journal of the American Dental Association, 132(6), 720. https:// doi.org/10.14219/jada.archive.2001.0253 Lian-hong, Z., & Hu, H. (2010). Undaunted women of Nanking: The wartime diaries of Minnie Vautrin and Tsen Shui-fang [eBook edition]. Southern Illinois University Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com Lightdale, J. R., & Prentice, D. A. (1994). Rethinking sex differences in aggression: Aggressive behavior in the absence of social roles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(1), 34-44.

MacKenzie, M. H. (2012, November). Let women fight: Ending the U.S. military’s female combat ban. Foreign Affairs. 32-42.

Mazurana, D., Krystalli, R., & Baaré, A. (2017). Gender and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Oxford Handbooks Online. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199300983.001.0001/ oxfordhb-9780199300983-e-35 Mcleod, S. (1970, January 1). Stereotypes. SimplePsychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/katz-braly.html Parashar, S. (2014). Women and militant wars: The politics of injury. Routledge.

Purves, W. K., Sadava, D. E., Orians, G. H., & Heller, C. H. (2000). Life: The science of biology. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-7167-3873-2.

Schippers, M. (2007). Recovering the feminine other: masculinity, femininity, and gender hegemony. Theory and

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Shishuoshihua 始说史话. (2017, April 27). Nanjing datusha: riben zheyang duidai zhongguo nvxing, canren zhiji! [The Nanjing Massacre: Japanese soldiers treated Chinese women in an extremely cruel way!]. Sohu.com. https:// www.sohu.com/a/136726717_585273 Sivakumaran, S. (2007). Sexual violence against men in armed conflict. European Journal of. International Law, 18(2), 253–276. https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chm013 Stereotype. (2020, June 17). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype Tickner, J. A. (2001). Gendering world politics. Columbia University Press.

Totten, S. (2008). Dictionary of genocide. Greenwood Press.

Touquet, H., & Gorris, E. (2016). Out of the shadows? The inclusion of men and boys in conceptualisations of wartime sexual violence. Reproductive Health Matters, 24(47), 36–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rhm.2016.04.007 United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. (2013). Inter-agency assessment: Gender-based violence and child protection among Syrian refugees in Jordan with a focus on early marriage [PDF]. UN Women. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/39522 UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. (2013, July 25-26).

UN workshop on sexual violence against men and boys in conflict situations. LinkedIn. http://www.slideshare. net/osrsgsvc Zhang, L.-hong. (n.d.). Nanjing datusha yunan renkou de goucheng [Formation of the victims during Nanjing Massacre]. xzbu.com. https://m.xzbu.com/4/view-10297581.htm Zhang, Y. (Director), Kong, W. (Producer), & Liu, H. (Writer). (2011, December 16,). Jinling shisanchai [The flowers of war] [Film]. EDKO Film Wrekin Hill Entertainment Row 1 Productions.

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If Jesus Was Not God Incarnate, What Was He? Ava Weiyan Zhang, the Stony Brook School, 22’ This question is rooted in a long-lasting controversy -- What is the nature of Jesus? The debate on Jesus’ God-man identity and his correlation with God has always been fundamental to the establishment of Christian beliefs and the development of the religion itself. Dating back to before the Council of Nicea, to modern-day society, people have never ceased trying to come up with the most righteous and logical explanation for Jesus’ identity, resulting in multiple distinct theories and viewpoints. Hence why this essay first approaches the question from widely accepted Christian beliefs, as well as historically emerging arguments that are significant in the discussion, before addressing plausible interpretations. The latter views operate under the assumption that Jesus was not God incarnate, taking a historical and secular, rather than biblical approach.

To begin, this essay adheres to the following definition of “incarnation” according to mainstream Christian interpretation: to be incarnate is “to be embodied in flesh or given a bodily, especially human, form [1].” Incarnation is an act of grace whereby Jesus Christ took human nature into union with His Divine Person, becoming a man. Therefore, Christ is God and man simultaneously, and the two natures are not mixed but permanently united. [2]

Christians refer to multiple Bible quotes that confirm the actuality of incarnation and support that Jesus Christ and God the Father are One. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…He was in the beginning with God (John 1:1-2)... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father…(John 1:14).” This quote assures that the Son walked through a process to gain physicality and become part of the human race, while at the same time, was born from and in an eternal union with the divine Father.

In the gospel, Jesus also directly claims to be equal with God by referring to himself as “I am”: “Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).” Furthermore, the gospel of Colossians 1:15-20 clearly points out, “He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, For by him all things were created... And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together...For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things.”[3]

The Christian view also argues that Jesus is surely the one and only “God in flesh” as he fulfilled the Old Testament

58 Paper and Commentary prophecies about the Messiah throughout his life: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14). But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6).” Born of the Virgin Mary and from the line of David, Jesus performed miracles, forgave people’s sins, predicted the future, died in pain and humbleness and was finally resurrected just as prophesied. Alternatively, the Bible also acknowledges Jesus’ human nature, as he experienced normal aging, physical needs, human emotions, died a physical death, and most importantly endured extreme pain just as any human would. Jesus was in every way human except for his absolution from sin.

Indeed, Christ being both man and God could be compelling and also take strong faith to believe. Incarnation is an essential, crucial, and inseparable step in God’s ultimate resurrection plan; without this basis, the Christian faith would be fragile and replaceable. On one hand, God knows humans are deeply sinful and have to face righteous judgment, but on the other hand, He loves humanity so much that He is willing to resurrect humans at all costs. Therefore, God, being omnibenevolent, just, and holy at the same time, has to embody Himself in Jesus and suffer in place of all humans, so that people’s sins are washed away; His love is expressed all through Jesus.

Thus it could be logically concluded from the scriptures that Jesus must be a well-designed two-way bridge; he must be fully human in order to thoroughly endure the pain of redemption, while he must also be holy and sinless. To a faithful Christian, Jesus Christ the incarnated God, is much more than a moral teacher or a spiritual leader, but instead the promised savior to restore their personal connection with God or the only hope of eternal resurrection. Rejecting Jesus as God incarnate in this context is equal to rejecting God’s salvation.

There is a common misunderstanding nowadays, as addressed in C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, when people say, “I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I do not accept his claim to be God (Lewis).” [4] C.S. Lewis refuted this position by first asserting that Jesus is either the true God or else he is a lunatic or a fiend since he made so many and such powerful claims that continuously assured his identity as God -- “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me (John 14:11).” By regarding Jesus as a moral teacher, people ignore his irreplaceable role of reconciling humanity with God and diminish Jesus’ uniqueness as the one and only prophesied Savior.

“We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher...He produced mainly three effects — Hatred — Terror — Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval (Lewis).” People could either choose to believe and worship Jesus as God or choose to disbelieve that everything in the Bible is a lie or insane.

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Lewis constructed this powerful logic to argue that Jesus could only be, however unbelievable it may sound, the true God incarnated, since he is sane and honest.

Not surprisingly, such a unique and astounding idea as incarnation is not only controversial in modern-day society but has never stopped arousing debates and questions throughout history. In Christianity’s early stage of development, Jesus’ role and identity were defined based on his given titles in apolistic writings -- “Son of God,” “Lamb of God,” “Servant of God,” “Messiah,” and “the judge.” Despite its frequent mention in the Gospel, the term “Son of Man” was less accepted in practice, for early Christians generally viewed Jesus as a heavenly figure who would come to judge the world while disregarding his human nature. [5]

One of the earliest and most significant disputes on Jesus’ nature dates back to AD 325 at the First Council of Nicaea. The majority argued that Jesus the Son is eternal, was with the Father “in the beginning” and directed the genesis as an agent; therefore Jesus and God are “of the same essence.” [6] This later became the Nicene Creed and laid the foundation for the common belief of Jesus’ incarnation. However, there was also Arianism, which held the unpopular opinion that Jesus Christ was not an eternal being but instead was created by the Father at a point in time; He is “the Word” or “the Logos” embodied, not God in flesh. This position was recognized by many clergies at that time as it adhered to strict monotheism while offering a straightforward interpretation for the appearance of “Son” in the New Testament. Arianism disregarded Jesus’ irreplaceable role in the redemption of humankind: If Jesus is separate from God and died as a mere human, how could he connect mankind with God and forgive all sins?

The dispute on Christ’s relation with God did not cease even after the Nicene Creed was confirmed as orthodox.

New positions continued to arise among scholars, some of them developing into distinct branches or factions under the common belief of Christianity. One of the opinions that became relatively prominent was Monophysitism. [7] This theory claimed that Jesus had only a divine nature and that he had passed through Mary’s body “as water passes through a tube.” There was also Nestorius of Antioch who asserted that Jesus is a mere man filled by God’s presence or “united with God”.

Besides Western Christianity, which was considered the dominant view, Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy also possessed quite distinct standpoints upon this issue -- the former emphasized the divinity of Jesus over humanity, as they saw Jesus as a God-man union that glorifies humanity, as well as prepares humanity for its deification; while

60 Paper and Commentary the latter considered themselves Miaphysites, believing that both the human and divine natures of Christ were present in a single nature, which makes Jesus a fusion of divinity and humanity.

As Christianity spread, several other factions also came up with their own answers. The Ebionites believed Jesus to be completely human, while the Gnostics believed Jesus to be solely God; the Apollinarians regarded Jesus as only partially human and mostly divine and the Eutychians insisted Jesus had only one nature. In 451 AD, The Council of Chalcedon resolved the controversy theoretically by confirming for the first time that “Jesus is of two natures, truly God and truly man...without confusing, transmuting, dividing or contrasting.”[8] Today, theories other than the Council of Chalcedon’s conclusion are marked as heresies theologically, but the question “What is Jesus?” still has countless distinct answers according to people’s different beliefs and interpretations.

If interpreting the bible as literally accurate, then the most reasonable answer would be Jesus is God incarnated. However, when viewing the Bible as more metaphorical and symbolistic, the controversy opens to a much wider range of possibilities. Some people regard Jesus as a “legend,” suggesting that he might originally have been an over-achieving human whose life story got exaggerated. Thus, the historical Jesus and the religious Jesus could be separate. Even with counterarguments such as those of C.S. Lewis, that point out that Jews “need not make up the story of Jesus as it complicates their belief of only one God” and “the Bible’s language is too clumsy to be a literary creation,” there is little archeology or documented evidence from Jesus’ time that could prove his existence or disprove it. [9]Therefore, if Jesus is not God incarnated, he could very well be interpreted as a symbol. The historical Jesus could be one Jewish man, or even the combined figure of many, with no superhuman power, but righteous, respectable manners; his leadership affected so many people for such a long a time that followers started to regard his spiritual guidance as an everlasting being, therefore adding gospels that paralleled with the Old Testaments’ prophecies.

Though the historical Jesus is already impossible to figure out, the biblical Jesus, together with his mission of redeeming humanity and his unique position as Son of God, could be interpreted as a metaphor. Jesus existed as a calling towards love, hope, and courage, guiding people to become better humans not through words, but through his godly character and actions that live on in his memory. He “revived” and “ascended to heaven by the side of God” not in Jerusalem, but in people’s hearts. “Jesus, like the crucifix on which he hangs, is a symbol in the classic sense of the word, an empty vessel we can fill with our own multiple meanings.” [10] This, other than incarnation, could be another explanation for Jesus to be fully God and fully man at the same time.

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In summary, the nature of Jesus is a fundamental and controversial question throughout the history of Christianity. Although multiple and distinct opinions have been present, the most logically coherent and biblically supported answer would be that Jesus is God incarnate. However, incarnation is not the only right way out, since the lack of archaeological reference makes “the nature of Jesus” a matter of faith -- He could as well be a symbol, a calling, a legendary model of perfect humanity, or the combination of many -- there will never be an answer that explains all about Him, and that is precisely what makes Jesus unique.

Footnotes 1 M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, Thomas Nelson, 1897. https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/incarnation/ 2 “What does it mean that Jesus is God incarnate? What does incarnate mean?” https://www.compellingtruth.org/God-incarnate.html 3 “What are the strongest biblical arguments for the divinity of Christ?” Accessed July 14, 2020. https://www. gotquestions.org/divinity-of-Christ.html 4 “Is C.S. Lewis’s Liar-Lord-or-Lunatic Argument Unsound?” February 1, 2016, http://ministryfeeds.com/justin-taylor/is-c-s-lewiss-liar-lord-or-lunatic-argument-unsound/#.XwwEbPJS_6Y 5 “Christology.” Accessed July 14, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christology 6 “On the Incarnation of the Word,” Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm 7 “Monophysitism,” Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.theopedia.com/monophysitism 8 “Two Natures of Christ,” Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-natures-of-Christ 9 Christopher Klein, “The Bible Says Jesus Was Real. What Other Proof Exists?’ History.com. April 2, 2020, https:// www.history.com/news/was-jesus-real-historical-evidence 10 Claudia Tikkun Setzer, “The Historical Jesus,” Frontline, July 17, 1995, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/tikkun.html Bibliography “Christology.” Accessed July 14, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christology “Christology.” Accessed July 14, 2020. http://www.oxfordbiblicalstudies.com/article/opr/t94/e389 “Is C.S. Lewis’s Liar-Lord-or-Lunatic Argument Unsound?” February 1, 2016, http://ministryfeeds.com/justin-taylor/ is-c-s-lewiss-liar-lord-or-lunatic-argument-unsound/#.XwwEbPJS_6Y Klein, Christopher, “The Bible Says Jesus Was Real. What Other Proof Exists?’ History.com. April 2, 2020, https://

62 Paper and Commentary www.history.com/news/was-jesus-real-historical-evidence M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, Thomas Nelson, 1897. Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/incarnation/ “Monophysitism,” Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.theopedia.com/monophysitism “On the Incarnation of the Word,” Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm Setzer, Claudia Tikkun, “The Historical Jesus,” Frontline, July 17, 1995, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ shows/religion/jesus/tikkun.html Strand, Greg, “The Incarnation: Jesus Christ, The God-Man. December 18, 2013. https://www.efca.org/blog/understanding-scripture/incarnation-jesus-christ-god-man The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed July 14, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu Two Natures of Christ,” Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-natures-of-Christ “Was Jesus God Incarnate?” Debunking Christianity, December 26, 2006. https://www.debunking-christianity. com/2006/12/was-jesus-god-incarnate.html “What are the strongest biblical arguments for the divinity of Christ?” Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.gotquestions.org/divinity-of-Christ.html “What does it mean that Jesus is God incarnate? What does incarnate mean?” Accessed July 14, 2020, https://www.compellingtruth.org/God-incarnate.html

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Post-War US Economic Hubris and the Myth of Perpetual Growth Bayan Shimizu, the Nueva School, 21’ The end of the First World War in 1918 spelled economic instability for much of the European continent, a state of affairs not reflected by the comparative opulence of the American Roaring 20’s. The US economy had boomed after WWI through a combination of loans to warring countries and international trade. The economic prosperity following the United States victory of World War I created a misplaced belief in the stability of the US economy, creating a false sense of security amongst Americans households and companies. The trust in endless economic growth had a mythic status amongst Americans; The United States believed that they “had discovered the philosophers’ stone of perpetual prosperity,” (Woytinsky, SSA) a state where they could experience infinite economic growth without consequence, a belief backed up by the economic boost that both private industries and the federal government received from WWI. The assumption of stability meant that both consumers and businesses were willing to make economic decisions that were unsustainable in the long term, with businesses often overproducing and providing overly generous lines of credit, and consumers taking on more debt than they would be able to pay back. The issues of overspending and overproduction were only exacerbated by a constant reinforcement of the idea of American prosperity created by both a cultural standard of opulence and newfound advertising that sought to encourage and maximize consumer overspending. Therefore, the economic aftermath of World War I led to a snowballing of overconfidence issues in both consumers and producers, creating an economy that drove the United States directly into the Great Depression.

The economic growth of WWI meant that many consumers had much more capital at their disposal than ever before, and manufacturing industries made sure to accommodate for the reckless overspending that had overtaken the American public in the form of mass production. Mass production affected manufacturing industries on a massive scale, ranging from oil refining to the paper industry (Lorant). Not only did consumer capital increase, the vast production industry of the US grew to match it. At this point in time, “The economy grew 42% during the 1920s. The United States produced almost half the world’s output.” (thebalance.com) Production had become a pillar of the US economy like never before. The growth of US industry came not only because of consumer growth, but because of a need to shift to a peacetime economy. During WWI, “US exports to Europe rose from $1.479 billion dollars to 4.062 billion dollars,” (Rezvi) signifying the vast economic growth made by American industry during a wartime economy. Production that was used during wartime needed to keep up profits during a time without war, and thus, industry needed to maintain high consumer spending during peacetime. This need for consumption meant that factories produced as much as possible, which would later become a massive issue. Overproduction is one of the most commonly known reasons for the beginning of the Great Depression (Rothbard) and is an issue that stemmed from many post-war companies’ need to

64 Paper and Commentary produce. The ending of the wartime economy of WWI demanded that manufacturers overproduce to remain at a level of profitability similar to that of wartime, a belief justified by the ever-growing capital in the United States’ populace.

Thus, factories produced as much as possible, allowing the legacy of WWI to carry the United States into a depression.

However, the production industry was not alone in allowing this spiral into overproduction and consumption; the American public actively encouraged the overspending that would lead factories to overproduce.

The culture of post-war America encouraged rampant opulence and spurred a need to consume and purchase luxury goods even when it meant spending beyond one’s needs. Achieving great material wealth became a cultural goal across the nation, with companies such as General Motors now advertising their products as symbols of status rather than as just a functional product, with yearly modeling of automobiles allowing consumers to flaunt their wealth in the form of consumption. Alfred Sloan, CEO of General Motors, was “convinced that Americans were willing to pay extra for luxury and prestige” (University of Houston) rather than rely on just functionality to decide which car to buy. The success of General Motors’ strategy of selling a product to give recognition and identity over providing utility demonstrates the newfound value of opulence in post-war American culture, a culture that hubristically encouraged overspending and overproduction.

The hubris of post-WWI America was heavily backed by the myth of perpetual economic growth, with many purchasing luxury goods on credit with the assumption that the money would never run dry. It came to a point where “the pattern of economic activities in the late 1920’s required a perpetual rise of the stock market,” lest the economy face an enormous downfall. The reliance on perpetual growth was worsened by the assumption that any economic challenges had vanished due to the country’s vast earnings from WWI and the seemingly endless growth that the economy was experiencing. The vast spending of the 1920’s due to this perceived growth is visible when compared to the years preceding and proceeding it, with non-necessities spending more than doubling from the previous decades (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The myth of perpetual growth through the economic boosting of WWI led American consumers to believe that they could avoid the negative consequences of overconsuming and overproducing. When those repercussions finally took place, the nation was caught entirely off guard due to the misplaced courage after the first World War.

The 1920’s were a time of cultural opulence stemming from the victory in Europe that allowed consumerism to dominate the public consciousness, a phenomena that would lead to the creation of the consumer identity and the sale of individuality would push the United States further on the track to the Great Depression. Everything from automobile production to cigarettes were now made to target individual identities of consumers and encourage more spending.

Even the rising idea of the 1920s ‘new woman’ was monetized, with products like cigarettes, cars, and shredded wheat

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being targeted, with women now being “the primary consumers in the new economy [and were] thought to make up over eighty-percent of consumers” (Tichnor) at the time. The increased cultural attachment to mass consumption was only exacerbated by the massive advertising campaigns that sought to use the consumer identity to sell even more products, with identity becoming another aspect to market to. Advertisers began to utilize pop psychology to convince consumers that certain products were absolutely needed, encouraging even more spending on luxury items beyond a consumer’s purchasing power. Of course, to purchase the luxury goods that many marketers advertised, the consumers needed a way to accrue enough capital to make the purchases, leading to the advertising of installment purchasing becoming prevalent. Ads told the consumer that “You can beat the price rise if you buy today” (Burns) encouraged taking out loans to purchase luxury goods, backed up by the post-WWI belief of perpetual growth, unaware of the potential danger of over lending to the American economy.

The issues of economic arrogance and overspending and producing was enabled by a system that made loans and buying on installment extremely accessible and appealing. Department stores would offer extremely generous lines of credit to shoppers, allowing them to spend more than they had with what seemed to be very little drawback. The opportunity for easy lending was extremely tempting to consumers, “consumer debt more than [doubling] between 1920 and 1930.” (ushistory.org) The sheer volume of the loans was demonstrated when the stock market crash prevented the American public being able to make the payments to the banks, stores, and companies that had given them. Under the assumption of a perpetually growing economy, an issue like this was completely unexpected, as both lenders and consumers assumed that the money needed to pay off the loans would keep flowing, and the economy would stay stable.

Without the economic hubris inspired by the economic gain of WWI, the assumption of perpetual growth would not have justified the economic decision to create and perpetuate a credit-based economy.

The overconfidence that followed the American victory in WWI started an economic snowball that would lead America down the route to the Great Depression. The newfound capital and need for continued production left in the war’s aftermath meant that industry needed to keep producing to maintain profits, and needed to make sure that consumers kept purchasing, a rabbit hole that led to a culture of excess purchasing and advertising. Advertising aided in the creation of an American culture that valued overspending at its core and encouraged consumers to purchase both beyond their means and beyond their needs. The myth of perpetual growth served to justify all the excess spending and lending, allowing Americans to continue taking out loans to maintain their unsustainable lifestyles, with banks and companies giving out loans to a point where nearly all Americans were in some form of debt, a problem that coalesced in the eventual stock market crash, leading the US into the Great Depression. The arrogance following the economic growth of WWI led to this snowballing effect that swept up the nation, leading it to financial ruin.

66 Paper and Commentary Works Cited Tichnor, Ariel. “Suds and Selfhood: Marketing the Modern Woman in the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s.”

CUREJ-College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal (2006): 13.

Ariel Tichnor was an undergraduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. Tichnor covers the methods and reasoning for how and why mass marketers like Proctor and Gamble used targeted advertising to appeal to women for the first time. Tichnor analyzes how advertisers relied on 1920’s ideal of femininity in order to market products to female consumers.

Amadeo, Kimberly. “The Economy in the 1920s and What Caused the Great Depression.” The Balance, The

Balance, 3 Jan. 2020, www.thebalance.com/roaring-twenties-4060511

Kimberly Amadeo is a business consultant and author. Amadeo provides an overview on the economic

situation of the US manufacturing and employment in the 1920s. Amadeo makes a year-by-year analysis of changes to the US economy in the forms of GDP change, employment statistics, population geography, and stock market analysis.

The article provides insight into what seemed to be endless growth in the US economy, as well as the rapid decline into the Great Depression.

Woytinsky, Wladimir S. “Postwar economic perspectives.” Soc. Sec. Bull. 8 (1945): 18.

W.S. Woytinsky was a Principal Consulting Economist at the Bureau of Employment Security in 1945, as well as

a Bolshevik revolutionary in 1917. Woytinsky analyzes trends in national income, business conditions, and employment in order to establish planning for social security. Woytinsky also documents the 1920s-era perspective on economic growth, noting American mythologizing of perpetual economic growth, and how this belief led the US to make economic decisions on false pretense.

Mintz, S., and S. McNeil. “The consumer economy and mass entertainment.” Digital History (2013).

Digital History is a program by the Department of History at the University of Houston. Mintz and McNeil exposit the formation of the consumer culture of the 1920’s, and the normalization of luxury purchases. The paper provides examples of such goods, namely that of electric phonographs, cigarettes, vacuum cleaners, and telephones.

The authors summarize the business strategy of Ford and General Motors: the streamlined manufacturing of Ford, and the commodification and prestige-based marketing of General Motors. Alongside this, the authors mention installment credit and mortgages as inventions of the era.

Madison, James H. “Changing Patterns of Urban Retailing: The 1920s.” Business and Economic History (1976): 102-111.

James H. Madison is a professor in the department of History at Indiana University. Madison covers the development of department and retail stores during the 1920s. Madison explains the rise and decline of department

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stores, as well as explaining their install-payment models.

Rothbard, Murray Newton. America’s Great Depression. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1972.

Murray Rothbard was a defining figure in the establishment of radical neoliberalism, and an economist of the Austrian School of thought. Rothbard summarizes the economic factors that preceded the Great Depression, as well as establishing what key issues led to the economic downturn at the end of the decade.

Lorant, John H. “Technological Change in American Manufacturing During the 1920’s.” The Journal of Economic History 27.2 (1967): 243-246.

John H Lorant is a writer for The Journal of Economic History of the Cambridge University press. In this paper, Lorant exposits on technological innovation in the 1920s, covering topics such as the electrical grid, and mass production in manufacturing. Lorant also looks into what economic and social incentives were used at the time to promote technological innovation, such as the heavy investment in industrial development.

Rezvi, Masood. “Promise to Pay (Vol. I): Banks, Battles & Bellies.” Google Books, K. M. Rizvi (Independently Published), 22 Dec. 2018, books.google.com/books/about/Promise_to_Pay_Vol_I.html?id=gA6GDwAAQBAJ. Masood Rezvi is an author and economist at the Lucknow NGO in India. Rezvi analyzes the connections between international banks and their responses to economic crises ranging from the Great Depression of the 1920s to the modern day. Rezvi aggregates international data of lending, exports,and imports during periods of economic growth and downturn.

68 Paper and Commentary Ethical Audit: Hailan clothing Inc. Robin Wu

Last summer I worked as an intern at Hailan clothing Inc. Hailan clothing Inc. is one of the biggest clothing

companies in China as it dominates the domestic market and produces a large amount of exports annually. Hailan adopts the vertical integration model, meaning it controls all operations including production of clothes to the sale of clothes. At Hailan’s headquarters, there is a clear structure among employees: the executives who administrate operations of the company; the office workers who work in finance, marketing, and operation; and the factory workers at the bottom of the hierarchy. Under such an elaborate structure, Hailan is able to satisfy its customers with high-quality products. In the past three years, Hailan has produced revenues surpassing all of its competitors, and it seems that Hailan will dominate the clothing industry in China. However, as an intern at Hailan for two months, I observed severe organization ethical risks with their current vertical integration model.

One aspect of Hailan’s ethical risks is social well-being issues, which includes heavy physical labor done by

child factory workers. In China, the legal working age is 16. However, Hailan employs child workers between the ages 10-15. Usually, parents of those children are also workers at Hailan’s factory, and those workers are mostly from the less developed areas in China. Hailan pays its underage workers $4.5 daily. In fact, Hailan employs over 60 underage workers in order to cut expenses, thus increasing net income. The extremely competitive economy triggers companies to take opportunities to surpass its competitors, even through illegal means. Thus, even a large public company like Hailan secretly employs child labor just to minimize the expense of workers’ salaries. Now, a question might rise: how does Hailan, a public firm, conceal the fact that it employs underage workers? To answer this, Hailan is located in a small town near Shanghai, so the governmental system is not strictly regulated. Hailan’s owner actually bribes local governors to be tolerant about child laboring, which is strictly illegal in the country. Just like the reading on bribery in other countries, bribery does exist in the Chinese government, especially in small towns where Hailan operates. Also, by participating in child labor, Hailan deprives the opportunities for children to be educated. Looking at this from a consequentialist perspective, Hailan is destroying the future of those children because illiteracy will put them at a huge disadvantage. If the children were instead provided educational programs, they would learn practical knowledge and perhaps make some friends. By exposing those children to heavy physical work at such a young age, Hailan is hurting them physically and mentally, and those children are likely to be antisocial when they grow up because they were not given a chance to socialize with others. Therefore, child labor needs to be prevented at Hailan as well as all industries.

Another ethical aspect is the failure of Hailan to give its workers safe working and living conditions, by put-

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ting workers into sweatshops. At Hailan, most workers do heavy physical work for 13-15 hours daily, and they are not allowed to go on breaks except during the 1-hour lunch time. In the sweatshop, workers are constantly exposed to unbearable temperature, poor ventilation, as well as malodorous and potentially toxic chemicals. One time, I felt difficulty breathing when I stood in the sweatshop for only 10 minutes. It was shocking to me how those workers can work in such an environment for 13-15 hours a day. This terrible situation at Hailan is similar, or, even worse than that of Foxconn because workers for the clothing industry are constantly carrying heavy materials, operating huge machines, and experiencing high temperatures. However, the worst is yet to come: almost all Hailan sweatshop workers live in dirty, over-crowded dormitories with nine or ten beds in a single room, and they are forced to pay $100 monthly. One worker that I talked to revealed that people seldom take showers in the dormitory because water is usually cut-off and people are just too exhausted to even take a shower. This causes severe hygiene and health issues among workers, but Hailan totally ignores the detriment brought to its workers: during the two months of my internship, Hailan ruthlessly fired 8 workers because they were not effective enough due to their weak physical conditions.

Furthermore, Hailan makes no effort on improvements of its infrastructure as there are broken parts of equipment and overloaded electric wires laying on the ground, where workers constantly walk. Disorganization like this subjects workers to enormous danger such as getting electric shocked and falling down to the floor. Aside from the horrible living and working conditions of workers, Hailan pays its workers based on pieces rather than a fixed hourly payment. This system leaves the workers no choice but to work hard even under such a terrible infrastructure. One of the highest paid workers received only $158 for a month, which was significantly lower than the national minimum wage of $358 at the time. Not only is this amount not sufficient to sustain life, workers’ basic human rights are violated.

Taking the virtue approach, Hailan should not underpay its workers while exposing them to terrible living and working conditions. Otherwise, these workers are no different than indentured servants as they are stripped of basic human rights and are forced to work tediously for almost no gain. Hailan, as a profitable firm and industry leader, should be responsible to offer better conditions for its workers or at least treat its workers like human-beings instead of machines.

Furthermore, Hailan needs to be held accountable for its pollution on local rivers and streams. With the

clothing industry being the second largest environmental polluter after the oil industry, more and more customers have become more willing to be affiliated with firms that are environment friendly. However, Hailan purchases cheap machines that produce large amounts of waste, sewage, and surplus fabrics. On top of that, Hailan also purchases cheap, unsafe dyes that detriment both the environment and workers health. I know these because my father owns a textile company, so he is familiar with machines and dyes in the clothing industry. In fact, Hailan is producing three

70 Paper and Commentary times as much sewage as my father’s factory even though Hailan’s production is only twice as much. Looking at this from a common good approach, Hailan should strive to protect the environment as much as it can instead of hurting the environment severely just to cut expenses. If more pollution were imposed on the rivers, the animals and plants will potentially die, and the water supply of local areas will be contaminated to an extent where people lack water to shower and wash clothes. Taking the utilitarian approach, “one of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken” (Leo Tolstoy). If Hailan continues to harm the environment, the happiness of the entire community will vanish as no natural resources can be utilized anymore. People are blessed to receive the goodness of mother nature, so firms like Hailan should not abuse its rights to detriment the environment unscrupulously.

In order to find the most suitable solutions to these ethical problems, it is vital to understand the driving forces

that trigger immorality. First, Hailan is an extremely profitable company, and it is always seeking ways to expand productions as well as to cut expenses. However, the leaders at Hailan clearly do not view the operations of the company as having an ethical aspect. Instead, Hailan solely aims to maximize its profits in order to surpass all of its competitors. As a result, Hailan totally neglects the harm it brings upon its workers and their families, as well as the environment. This is a perfect illustration of ethical fading. Yes, it is essential for Hailan to generate profit, but if the profit is maximized by means that hurt others, it is not justified and deserved. According to the corruption argument, the market creates its own value that sometimes crowds out the “non-market norms worth caring about,” including ethics (How Markets Crowd Out Morals). In this case, the competitive clothing market does play a role in corrupting companies, but it is essentially the company that has the final say for its means to compete in the market.

Another psychological phenomenon that contributes to Hailan’s immorality is slippery slope and displacement

of responsibility. The executives at Hailan are quick to condemn the clothing industry for its competitiveness whenever they are asked about potential ethical pitfalls of the company. I personally witnessed the chairman of Hailan being blamed by governors at higher levels for the amount of sewage Hailan produced (not those local governors being bribed by Hailan). Thus, Hailan has been warned to limit its pollution to the environment; the chairman of Hailan promised to improve. However, Hailan did not put in any efforts to improve its facilities and machines. A year after my internship, Hailan produced 40% more sewage than before. Nevertheless, the chairman of Hailan justifies the firm’s operation through displacement of responsibility by saying that China’s clothing industry forces companies to make unethical decisions. In other words, unscrupulous pollution of clothing companies is turning into a trend in China. Is that true? Certainly not. The firms that produce similar amounts of products to Hailan report 60 percent less sewage produced per year. Those firms actually purchase advanced machines and facilities that help limit sewage

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and waste, but Hailan chooses not to because it aims to slash costs regardless of the enormous pollution. Therefore, blaming the industry for its competitiveness is merely a displacement of responsibility of Hailan’s unethical business practices.

The final psychological force that adds to Hailan’s vicious circle of immorality is ingroup favoritism. At

Hailan, the people who have voices that carry the biggest impact are usually the ones that have worked for Hailan for over 10 years. Those people are usually treated with “privileges” such as easily getting away with significant mistakes that can cause dismissal of younger employees. Furthermore, the more experienced employees are likely to be “brainwashed” by their employer, meaning that they fully agree with Hailan maximizing its profits while casting harm on its workers and the environment. If these ingroup people are always safe in their positions, it is almost impossible for Hailan to rectify its business strategies because all of these people are accustomed to Hailan’s means to increase profit. Also, under the effect of obedience to the authority, it is difficult for executives and lower-level employees at Hailan to realize their actions are in fact unethical. Especially for those lower-level employees, they typically do not have independent thinking to recognize the immoral aspect of an authority’s order. Therefore, Hailan should develop a new management system to make sure that employees are more inclined to find unethical aspects and report it.

Now that the driving forces behind Hailan’s unethical business practices have been identified, it is clearer

what actionable suggestions can be taken to assuage the existing problems. First, in addressing the ingroup favoritism and ethical fading problem, Hailan should develop a new management system where new and more experienced employees are treated equally. There should be a bulletin board in the workplace that keeps track of numbers of misconduct of each employee. In this way, the transparency of each employee’s mistake will be enhanced, thus alarming all employees to be disciplined in their positions. An executive at Hailan needs to be in charge of the bulletin board, and he/she also has to anonymously ensure that senior employees get punished if they happen to make mistakes. Eventually, ingroup favoritism can be reduced, and all employees will be treated equally. Additionally, employees that have the least amount of misconduct should be considered first for promotion, even if they are new. As a result, more new voices will participate in the decision making process. Those new voices will potentially realize the unethical aspect of Hailan, such as child labor, pollution, and workers’ living and working conditions. Then, the new voices and the old leaders can work to make Hailan ethical while still generating profit. Essentially, Hailan has to get rid of the old ingroup favoritism system. Instead, by letting in the new voices at higher-level, Hailan will start paying attention to the ethical aspects it previously ignored because there will not always be the same group of people making the same, old mistakes.

Furthermore, Hailan should improve its machines, facilities, and infrastructures. This action will potentially

72 Paper and Commentary solve most of Hailan’s problems like pollution and workers’ working and living conditions. As previously mentioned, Hailan uses cheap machines, unsafe dyes, and a poor sewage system in order to cut expenses. It is true that Hailan saves a large amount of money from these practices, but these savings come at the expense of workers’ health and the environment. Workers at Hailan suffer from toxic chemicals, high temperatures, and defective machines; the environment deteriorates from the tremendous amount of sewage and chemical surplus. Plus, Hailan makes profit that is more than enough to purchase all those advanced machines and infrastructures. If better machines are purchased, Hailan can include protecting the environment as a part of its CSR, which can help Hailan gain trust and interest from customers and other companies. This solution will solve both the problems of ethical fading and slippery slope: almost all Hailan’s competitors have adopted advanced machines and an efficient sewage system, and those companies produce significantly less amount of sewage than Hailan does annually. Therefore, upon adopting better machines and infrastructures, Hailan will realize that it is not a trend for Chinese clothing companies to be unethical in a competitive market. Instead, if all companies in the industry take the responsibility to be ethical, a trend for companies to benefit the society will potentially emerge.

Last but not least, in addressing the child labor problem, Hailan’s upper management should totally prohibit

child labor. Hailan should provide an educational program to its workers’ children because it is impossible for those children to go to school given the insufficient salaries for sweatshop workers. Plus, the children’s right to be educated should not be deprived by anyone, especially when those children are put into sweatshops that can detriment their health. Hailan should not merely focus on maximizing its profits: if Hailan’s customers knew about Hailan’s unethical practices, they are likely to stop buying Hailan’s products because most people do not want to be affiliated with companies that adopt child labor and harm the environment. Therefore, providing an educational program not only helps the poor children who can not afford to go to school, it also helps Hailan to establish a good reputation, thus attracting more customers. Educating the children could lead to educated employees that could potentially contribute to the company one day. In addition, Hailan should expand this educational program to its local community (a suburb nearby Shanghai) because most families in the community receive low income. As a result, the problem of ethical fading can be solved because Hailan can make money while doing good to its community.

My key pieces of advice to the CEO at Hailan are the following: as one of the industry leaders, Hailan is

responsible to set standards for the rest in the industry. If Hailan decides to be unethical just for monetary gains, other firms will potentially simulate Hailan, thus posting even more harm to the workers and the environment as an industry overall. Now, Hailan needs to prioritize investments in better machines and infrastructures, especially a new sewage system. Better infrastructures will improve workers’ living conditions and help them to be healthy and ef-

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fective at work. On the other hand, a new sewage system can significantly reduce pollution to the environment, thus saving water species and improving water supply for the local community. A better water supply and environment for the community will also make Hailan healthier and therefore benefit the workers. Besides, Hailan needs to develop a management system where senior employees’ mistakes are not tolerated. Over time, new voices will be added to the company to help realize some of the ethical aspects that are previously ignored. Finally, Hailan should provide an educational program to both its workers’ children as well as kids in the community who can not afford to go to school.

This will not only eliminate child labor, but also establish a nice image for Hailan in the public that can attract more customers. These actionable suggestions would reconcile most of Hailan’s ethical risks and psychological problems and help Hailan to be an ethical and sustainable company.

Note: I made up the name “Hailan” because it is a company owned by my father’s friend. Also, I did not visit any website for additional information, so I don’t have a reference.

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