China – Page 4 – Junjun's Home

Google in China: To Be or Not To Be

It would be amazed to see that a young man who works at the computer for eight hours and more that is ignored about Google. For us, the coming out of search engine has changed our lives. Their service make the seeking of specified information from the pool of Internet become easy. Among the numerous search engine, Google is undoubtedly the most famous one due to its advantage on technology and service. And in less than a decade, the Google has developed from a small workshop, settled in a garage, to a global company that integrated various services, like online photo album, Email service, Books, etc. However, it is this large firm that announced his willing of exiting China this morning.

The respect of freedom is a virtue of the Internet, and it is proposed to be a bottom line for Internet as well. In a virtual environment of Internet, people from everyone corner can share their understanding on public affairs, political events, and technical issues. It is the application of the Internet that boost the development of international trading and academic exchange among the institutions around the world. No matter if you are an expert, professor or just an ordinary citizen from a small town, the Internet is served as a public dictionary, from where you can look up historical events, statistical data, or even the pricing vegetables in a town that you are living in. Any attempt on preventing the users of Internet from obtaining certain contents can thus be regarded as a volatility to its virtue, except for some cases like threatens to the national security.

But in a mystery China, everything can happen, including the governmental control of the usage for this network. For decades, the information from the Internet is carefully filtered, which is generally introduced in a previous post. Such filtering also exists on the controlling of paper based materials. Materials and publications that are against the communism are fully controlled, especially when such materials are written in simplified and traditional Chinese, which is comprehensive for most readers hereby. That’s why for decades, the custom between Hong Kong and Mainland is caring much more on the publications within the traveler’s luggage, comparing to the custom in Shanghai, who are welcoming most travelers from US and Europe.

Google’s respect to the virtue of China is apparently conflicting with willing of the Chinese government. For Google, they are willing to present every result that they can obtain from the Internet based on their automatic indexing service, which is regarded as both the virtue of Internet and their customers. In contrary, for Chinese government, such service may not be that pleasant. Since the result presented by Google can offer news reports and analysis from other news agencies that are inconsistent to the Xinhua News Agency, which is regarded as an authority of news in China. To prevent the readers in China of reaching such ‘invalid information’, the links to the ‘invalid information’ that is regarded by the government would be reset by a firewall, known as GFW. The service of Google would down for minutes when such volatility is detected.

The reset by the GFW greatly reduce the user experience of Google. To reconcile for this action, Google.cn, a special edition of Google in China is coming out. His result is artificially intervened and all the ‘invalid information’ would be excluded. By using Google.cn instead, the user experience is much better, but, the accuracy for the result is totally lost. Frankly, the result presented by the Google.cn is biased, which is criticized by numerous mediums overseas.

i don’t know if it is the criticism or some other reasons promote Google for an announcement on his official blog this morning. According to the announcement, from today, the Google.cn would stop his artificial intervene and provide unbiased result consistent to the Google.com, his global site. And the Google.cn would be abandoned if the government refuse to accept this decision. It is obviously a good news for most users of Google. However, it means much more than only a piece of good news and the freedom for Internet in China.

Abandoning the Google.cn can directly be regarded as its abandon of markets in China. For Chinese users, Google.com would be their only choice, as what we did prior to the release of Google.cn. But don’t forget that the domain of Google.com can be locked by a firewall, just like what they have done for YouTube, Flicker, Face book, etc. Problems can be more serious if the IP of Google.com is located in the black list for Email service providers in China. Such action can prevent most Gmail users to the friends in China if they are using the mailbox provided by an national ISP. It is of some probability to happen due to the official announcement from Google, which shows evidence on the concerns of Email accounts from some persons from the Chinese government.

Besides Email, numerous services would also be unavailable once Google is locked in China. For webmasters of certain websites, including myself, the Google Adsense, Google Analytics, Google Webmasters would out of use. For academic and graduate students, they would never expect the Google Scholar for certain academic references. The life would be totally changed, and we are forced to seek for numerous alternatives for these services. The transition cost can be expected to be large.

I don’t know who would this even further go, but I do appreciate the excellent services that Google has bring us. It is hard to imagine how the life would be once Google is prohibited. Let’s just wait for the governmental response for this announcement.

Accounting Theory: Positive or Narrative?

Since the development of contemporary research of accounting in 1992, when numerous HK scholars started to conduct the empirical researches under the Chinese stock market, a discussion between the traditional (We call Narrative Accounting Theory) and the contemporary (We call it as Positive Accounting Theory, PAT) theory has been started for decades until recent years. Now the empirical research has been a popular trend in China, which can be easily observed from the conference proceedings, working papers and published papers, especially those from young scholars.

But apparently the research nowadays in China is losing its way. Grounded on the accounting research framework that is introduced by the William R. Scott (2006) and Watts and Zimmerman (1986), two popular textbooks for contemporary accounting research, the directions has been lost. You can easily find the similarity of the papers from the scholar of accounting and those from other fields like banking, finance and economics. Taking the recent hot topics like political connection, lend contracts for example, which are both based on the corporate finance, has little connection to the fundamental understandings of the field of accounting, for both the accounting professors and accountants who are working as role of practitioners. For a brief introduction on books of accounting theory, refer to a post published previously.

The reason for this bias may come from the development process itself. For most researchers, they are in fact quite familiar with the traditional theories and thus can write good papers with such stuff. But the transition of methodology changed their way. A preliminary assumption for empirical research is its good competence on computer programming and sufficient understanding on econometrics and statistics. Frankly, it is a disaster for most scholars who seldom receive strict training on quantitative analysis when they were graduate students. Such problem even exists for the new generation students like us. The lack of training on fundamental instruments can cause great problems on research design, that can partially explain why so many errors on modeling of accounting papers. And, besides the fundamental theory, some new theories in finance and economics are introduced, like asset pricing, market efficiency, etc.

The transition on both supporting theory and instruments cost too much time and energy for both scholars and researchers in this field. Given the publication as a key standard of promotion, an easy way for publication but without deep thinking on its fundamentals are needed. Admittedly, this is a necessary step that can hardly be avoided. In fact, I did such foolish things in the past two years. Comparing to the papers discussing accounting policy and methods, such as recognition on loss and revenue, the topics on corporate finance can be much easier to understand for both researchers and readers. That’s why we can see many corporate finance papers in the journal of accounting these years, but few papers on financial accounting can be found. What’s more, quite a lot of scholars are not from the major of accounting as their undergraduate major, and they may have missed essential courses to help them understand the core accounting questions.

In fact, by doing accounting research on accounting itself, rather than the corporate finance, though it may be more attractive to most scholars, a scholar may face the coherence on the PAT and narrative accounting theory. The narrative accounting theory help us understand how an optimized accounting plan would be, and the PAT showed us the incentives from multi-parties that can affect this optimization. In fact, William R. Scott is just trying his best to build up this link, providing us the understanding of the fundamental theory that is not presented in a published paper, whose work is of significance to the graduate students like us.

Many discussion on the conflicts between these two types of theory, presented on both blogs and academic journals, even in quite a lot of books, are quite superficial. Only when linking both these theories can the high quality research be produced. Though, I am also still thinking about how to. Just like a previous post that I wrote in this blog, we need to think real questions and do real research. The link on these theories, in fact, provides its preliminary step.

NOTE; THIS ARTICLE ONLY REPRESENTS MY OWN OPINION AND CAN BEAR NUMEROUS FAULTS. FOR ANY DISAGREEMENT OR FURTHER DISCUSSION, YOU ARE WELCOMED!

Internet Constraints: Sounds Kidding but Real!

It is quite amaze to hear that there are some country that are trying to constrain the usage of the internet from their citizens, with the reason of preventing them from the ‘bad things’. But it is really happening now, and increasingly famous software are obeying this governmental willing. The failure of some largest firms, like Wal Mart and Bol-China, both tell us the importance of running a business with political connections in China.

When checking the hotmail box, I got a strange mail from TwitOnMSN, a robot that I use for twitter. Since the forbidden on twitter, this has been the only way to use my twitter, though I doubt its protection on my accounting information. Do read the suggestions in this mail, you will find something strange.

Hi,

As you may noticed, people who added TwitOnMSN to their contact list, occasionally fail to login Windows Live Messenger Chinese Version since 3rd of Dec.

If you are suffering a landing problem on WLM with a good network, you could try the following measures to resolve it:

* If you can, please reinstall your WLM in English version or other non-Chinese version. They should work just fine.

* If not, you need to login your account with other client, like meebo , and remove TwitOnMSN from your contact list. Then you might can login again in a couple of hours or a day.

We do not know the specific reason why this happens. We are terribly sorry for the problem and hope it would go away soon.

FYI. We are making a survey about TwitOnMSN. Please come in to help us to improve it:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFlmSkVYdUVaVVVBUUlBUFlYa3lnOXc6MA

Thank you so much for your time!

Best regards,

TwitOnMSN Team

For people with elementary knowledge on programming, it is clearly to see the language adapted on the user interface can hardly affect the usage of the program itself. Such difference can render only when there are differences on raw code. A reasonable interpretation in this way is that TwitOnMSN has been forbidden in a MSN Messenger of Simplified Chinese.

I don’t know how to comment on this event, but the fact is that many bloggers has changed their domain names to the international ones with registrars without China, like Godaddy and Name.com.

I am sorry to write this in English, but I don’t want my blog be forbidden in China due to its content in Chinese that are officially unwelcomed!

Graduate Students in China: Depression Only

摘要：如果说人生是一场戏，那么在天朝上研究生将会是您人生重要的一课。本文以经济学基础理论为理论依据，通过非现实，调侃等非正常逻辑思维和手法展现了我天朝研究生生活之特色。本文发现，同发达国家，以及大多数新兴市场的研究生生活相比，我们的生活充满了更多的激情与刺激，同时也需要更多的博弈过程。限于篇幅，本文仅抛砖，并未提供严格数理分析以及福利分析。此等可作后续研究之方向。

或许我就是一个后知后觉的人，以至于到了研究生快毕业的时候才对研究生生活，尤其是中国研究生的悲哀，有了一次初步的了解。话说，做学术的人需要淡泊名利，更需要有那种执着到犯傻的地步。现在我懂了。因为在你能够真正的看破红尘之前，想做很好的研究真是难上加难。高水平研究本身已经对人的智商和体能是一个严峻的考验，但是要做到完全抗干扰，却是万万难以办到的。在这里，我们终于知道了一般均衡严格假设在现实条件下的苍白无力，也知道了Nash教授几十年前那薄薄的几张纸的毕业论文所包含的能量。

在转型经济和新兴市场中，监管往往是非常薄弱的，而薄弱的监管往往会带来一大堆的问题，比如人性的丑恶可以极大的得到发挥。因为在这个环境里，具有强制性的法律对过度的行为并没有约束力，而基于人性最本质判断的道德标准则可能由于人文素质等原因而趋于消逝。这其实是一种很危险的状态，因为秩序已经不再存在，任何人都可以做本性的决策。而亚洲教授，无论是在北美，欧洲，大洋洲还是亚洲本身，口碑都不是很好，或许就是基于这样一种制度背景吧。难怪某BBS上有位哥们说，在亚洲出生不是我们的错，但是在亚洲上学那就真是我们自己的不对了。但是在预算约束下，这种行为无疑成为了“被次优化”的一个结果。

作为转型经济的一个特例，我们伟大的天朝，则是更是发扬了这种曲折不挠的精神。基于人民是XX主人的原则，研究生们也就理所当然的成了学校和自己的主人。在亚洲其他地区的那种高额奖学金加补助来招纳Push对象的资本主义策略是我们所不耻的。更多的，我们是自觉的新新人类。我们自己支付自己的学费，然后感激涕淋的领到了10%的回扣，我们享受着1.3-1.5倍的平均物价和房租，享受着农民工般的待遇。更有甚者，著名的投入产出模型在此也失去了诺贝尔奖的光辉，因为这个模型实在无法解释在产出几乎为0的情况下，却有着高额货币资本和劳动力资本的双重投入。此种状况，想必凯恩斯教授从坟墓里爬出来都没法解释啊。算了，还是去求脚下马克思教授和恩格斯专家吧，或许资本论的第四卷题目可以是：Higher Education in Socialism: Asymmetric Role on Input and Output

这里还是个博弈论的试验场。博弈论的精髓“根据对方的策略来决定自己的策略”得到了完美的诠释，贝叶斯均衡在这里有着完美的用武之地，因为你发现先念概率永远是笑话。想考博士么？来吧，我们绝对“以人为本”。怎么说？你有丰富的科研经历？你有很好的外语基础？哈哈，对不起，亲爱的，以”人”为本说的可不是你，是你的推荐人。没有推荐人？你以为你是商鞅？没人推荐，恐怕您的一身武艺只能自己拿个DV拍下来看着玩了。再说了，就算是商鞅，他老人家还不是照样被完美分解了。同样，这里也需要转型经济理论来说事儿。在转型经济下，（省略若干字），Relationship可是最重要的，跟美国教授拿着自己的声誉去推荐人是两码事儿。要知道，我们是礼仪之邦，我们讲究礼尚往来，同时要求迎来送往。

不过既然是转型经济，那就不是个均衡状态，就会有发生转变的时候。事实也如此，在某些经济和人文素质已经发展到了一定水平的某些区域，此类单纯的犯傻行为已经得到了逐步的纠正。Output已经不再是0，货币资本终于开始由方程的一方挪到了另一方。严重倾斜的天平慢慢开始平躺。但是新问题也来了。基于这些地区特殊的治理结构，这些地区中的学校开始了蜜月期。什么叫做蜜月期？非诚勿扰！

谨以此文献给同在一条战壕里的兄弟姐妹们！

注：对阅读此文深感困惑的朋友们而言，尝试一下研究生生活将有助于促进您对本文的理解。

声明：此文系头脑发热胡思乱想基于非理性思维所作，仅供饭后消遣，持不同观点者请绕道。

Short Address Forbidden: Internet or Intranet?

This post is quite occasional, I don’t even plan to discuss the GFW again since it can repeat my previous article on this related topic. It is Bill again, that told me some errors occur on my short link posted to the Twitter when updating my newly posted articles. Though due to some faults he temporarily closed his personal blog, he kept the professional perspicacity as a software engineering. Thanks for his help on helping me fix numerous faults since the start of this blog.

It is due to some political reasons, though I can hardly identify what they are indeed, that the world-famous Twitter was forbidden. But we were still able to use a gadget to login based on the Gmail. While today,I eventually find the gadget is forbidden as well. And the technology for this filtering is great improved. Any links with the word ‘twitter’ is definitely forbidden. And great piles of products that can be applied on Twitter are also enjoying the same treatment, including the short links, twitterfeed, are totally forbidden.

To solve this problem, some posted an article that describes the process of building up a private platform with Python based on Google App Engine. Here is a solution and introduction written by William Long (in Chinese). But which is a great trick that, the official site of Python was later forbidden as well. The reason why I call it as a trick is that Python is only a programming language, i really cannot explain the potential harm from a language to the security of the country. If anyone can provide a reasonable answer, do tell me!

I really don’t know if we are using the internet or just intranet. Since the beginning of this year, many great service has been forbidden, including Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Youtube.com, etc. And now, the Twitter and its byproducts are forbidden as well. Wish one day our Email and instant messaging can be forbidden as well, then there would be no child get addiction to the internet!

Nobel For Chinese Scholars: Is It Still Far?

今天早些时候，瑞典皇家科学院宣布了今年（2009年度）的诺贝尔物理学奖得主。其中我们再一次看到了华人的身影。黄锟，作为一名在光纤通讯领域做出了卓越贡献的物理学家，他继早年的杨振宁，李政道，以及近年的朱棣文之后，又一位华裔物理学奖得主。让我大感意外的是，今年物理学奖的两个项目均是对现当代数码生活起到了极大促进作用的成果。光纤通讯技术极大提高了数据传送的效率，使得国际通讯的成本变得低廉；而CCD的发明，则使得我们今天数码相机的使用成为了可能。与杨振宁、李政道和朱棣文他们的研究项目偏重于理论相比，今年的成果无疑具有更大的实际意义。

按照惯例，在每年的这时候，各类媒体都会大张旗鼓的来讨论诺贝尔奖，其中已经讨论了多年的一个话题就是中国何时能够产生诺奖得主。其中有褒有贬。而解释无非有中国的教育体制路后，实验室设备落后，科研能力低下，没有创新精神等。但是很奇怪的是，这类文章往往出自于媒体之手。本人并不反对媒体的讨论，但是事实上，很多的问题往往非业外人士所能了解，正如陶渊明所言“不足为外人道也”。于是本人决定从自身经历出发，继续老调重弹一番。

不可否认的是，我们的教育制度的确是有些问题的。但是也不尽然。以初等教育为例，我国以及东亚地区的学生（包括日本，韩国和我国台湾）往往都具有很好的基础。这源于这些地区的严格的初等教育。笔者数年前曾在Times亚洲版看到过一篇介绍韩国（South Korea）的孩子们如何痛苦的文章，其中所涉及的韩国，日本等教育与中国大同小异。正是如此严格的基础教育，使得他们在高中毕业之时已经有了相当不错的英语，数学，物理，化学，地理，历史等方面的基础。或许有人说美国的学生在大学里可以非常努力，然后赶上我们的水平，使得我们大学生的毕业水平并不高于他们。

其实这个解释就有问题。我们可以做如下假设：假定人的努力程度有限。而大学期间水平的提高就是关于努力程度的一个函数。为了方便分析，我们忽略掉方法所导致的效率差异，即我们认为学生努力无差异。基于此，如果两者学习努力程度接近，那么水平提高程度应该类似。而事实上，两者的提高水平差异巨大。这就不能不利用努力程度来解释了。其实作为80后的大学生，我们可以扪心自问，我们在大学期间，本科也好，研究生也罢，我们都做了什么。我们学到了什么，我们的大学老师都在讲些什么？作为一个市场经济环境下的教学机构，适当的面向市场并没有错。但是，当一所大学或者学院，甚至研究生院，开始套用职业技术学院的价值观的时候，我们不得不为这个制度感到悲哀了。我实在不清楚这类教育中的短视行为是否是转型经济的特点？望相关专业读者赐教。

正如Joseph和TJ所言，很多问题都可以归集到制度层面去解决。而这个问题也不例外。以今年的两位物理学家的项目为例，他们的研究成果距今已经有了几十年，充分经历了社会的考验，确被证明为对人类做出了巨大贡献。这说明，一个好的研究，需要花时间去做，同时也需要花时间去验证。倘若没有一个开放，自由和包容的学术环境，这是万万不可能的。大家或许不会忘记五十年代的“大跃进”，而事实上，现今的中国学术界正在经历着“大跃进”。从高校老师的职称到研究生的奖学金评定，一律都按照论文来说事。我并不反对这种科研评价方法，只是，他们已经承受了他们不能承受之重。对理科生而言，这种压力更大。于是就产生了从定题到投稿SCI期刊只需短短两三个月的奇迹。尽管说研究是站在巨人的肩膀上，但这种只在肩膀上跳舞，却不会更上一层楼的研究本身就让研究的意义打了折扣。

从浙江大学的贺海波，到武汉理工大学的周祖德，我们都发现了上述“大跃进”的影子。而在这样的环境下，学术道德直接被无视。而作为一个学者，正直和良心是他们的核心竞争力。如果做不到这两点，就不配做一个真正的学者。可是很不幸，我们看到，在出现问题时，教授把所有的责任都推给了学生。试问，这样的教授可能培养出诺奖的得主么？答案诸位心中自有分量。

现如今的中国，已经不比从前。科研的条件和实验器材已经好于过去百倍，甚至于有实验室都已经达到了国际水准。在硬件问题可以得到保障的情况下，我们是否该考虑下人性本身的问题呢？只有这些问题都做好了，我们才有可鞥培养出自己的诺奖得主。否则只能是任重而道远。

Patriotism: Your Home and Your Country

It is hard to tell whether it is the years of political education in China seems to be too boring that the new generation of 80s and 90s are starting to show some antipathy to such terms, including socialism and patriotism, which used to be sacred terms for our parents. And meanwhile, we are caring more on the shadows of our living environment, and we can read more arguments and commentaries on legal unfairness, partially distributed wealth, asymmetric role on medical treatments between those in power and plebeians, etc. Frankly speaking, we are living in complaints.

However, the military review held this morning in Tiananmen Square seems to be a good opportunity to help the civilians to remind of the patriotism. To some person, the patriotism seems to be far from their lives. The military review, though criticized by some reviewers as bravado, does bring people courage and confidence on their livings. A main function for the military is to keep the security of the territories. Though unfortunately, very few people care about the soldiers only when the aggression comes and their lives and wealth are threatened. For those who are prone to pragmatism and regard the military review as insignificance to their daily lives, the floats can be attractive since they exhibit the generality of developments and progress in the past years on both economy and technology.

This reminds me of the home, a simpler organization comparing to the country, but of similar function and formations. More importantly, home owns a coherent relationship to the individual’s life, performing as a harbor for people to avoid the coming tsunami in their life. Like the departments of a country works for the policies on democracy and diplomats, people are making decision with the unit of a home, referring to the investment, daily cost, medical insurance and education for offspring. Under the framework of a traditional Chinese cultural background, as well as the home structure, all parents are making full efforts to promote their offspring, ranging from cloth, diet to education and even marriage.

Thus, even if we are holding the tolerance of ignoring patriotism, seldom of us can forgive the ignorance of families. It is the home, the parents that definitely contributes to our growth and development, and it is the home that brings us the anchor after a challenge to the wave and wind. Loving your home is the initial step to be patriot, and it is a must that can hardly be overlooked.

We are taking the pride of the country, but more broadly, we are taking the pride of our families, our home! They share our passion equally.

Personal Website in China: How Far Can It Go?

China, quite an unique country that owes dual standards on the information regulations. That is, the restriction on the public discussion on some political affairs and issues tend to be mitigated when there are some large international conference holding, like the passing-by Olympics. But for other days, all these restrictions remain. The access to various websites, including blogspot.com, wordpress.com, and facebook are totally abandoned. However, the restriction can be far more than this if you are holding a website for yourself, and unfortunately, you are using a domain hosted by Chinese companies and they are settled on a server in China (Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau are excluded). The government can offer you strict supervising especially when you are writing political articles.

Bill, a good friend of mine, who is also a fan on programming and internet, stopped his website recently due to the delete of his account by his ISP, 000space. Unlike the previous accidents that he suffer, his confidence and courage on working for his cheerful site eliminates. A notice about this has been put under his domain. I am quite depressed to see this happen, with the reason that, the blogs that we build-up, as the only free space for our minds and thoughts, has gone totally. I really cannot tell why he can suffer this, illegal contents? That cannot be a good answer, since he is a man that never overlook the protection on copyrights. The only explanation can be available is the attitude from the ISPs overseas to the customers in China.

As is discussed above that when constructing a website in China, more broadly, constructed by Chinese citizens, the web site needs to apply for a license from the government as well. For blogs, there can be some additional measures besides the basic one for all the websites in China. The absence of such a license for the website in China can be serious:

The space host for your website can stop the service of your site unless you successfully applied the license for it. It is a sufficient way to enforce the webmasters to apply such license. Still remember the crash in 2005 when plenty of website were closed in quite the same period?
If your domain is hosted by an agent in China, they can stop your service as well due to the similar reasons. What’s more, your domain can even be forbidden and your whois record be deleted when the regulator regard it as necessary. Several examples like this are available through the internet.

Based on these reasons, most webmasters take the following steps to avoid the supervises from the government since it can seldom bring managers benefit but only trouble.

Take the international domains, but not the Chinese ones with ‘.cn’ at the end. With suitable coupons, the annual fee for a .com domain can be as cheap as 3 to 4 dollars, or even cheaper. And you will never have to worry about the stopping of the service unless you are willing to.
Host the websites overseas. For most webmasters who are not willing to apply for a national license, this is quite a substantive way. Some wealthy managers can purchase paid spaces for their sites, but for the others like me, we can only afford the free space. Then the problem on the stability of the website comes. Some websites can be deleted only depending on the mood of the ISP and you can hardly get any compensation from them. There is quite a large opportunity that you must hold, especially for the users of free space.

It is really a hard job for the webmasters in China to maintain their own sites. It is a kind of job that can hardly bring in any commercial benefit especially at the very beginning. The only factor that promoted the development of such sites in China is merely on the persona interest. I really don’t know how far the website for the Chinese web managers can go? More practically, how long can my blog maintain? It is a difficult question to answer.

As a final, wish all the web managers good fortune and enjoy the pleasure during the challenges to the difficulties.

Accounting Research in China: Graduate Students

It has been approximately two years since the very first touch on the contemporary research of accounting through a talk to my present tutor, Prof. Wang, a young scholar. Until then I found the existence of a new methodology called “Empirical Research”, a kind of methodology that adapts the data from the capital market for some test on the conclusions from other kind of papers, usually analytical ones in US and narrative ones in China. But the popularity of such methodology apparent brings the students of accounting, like us, great challenge with following reasons:

Most graduate students of accounting here in China, is mostly owning the background of arts, that is, they seldom getting full and sufficient training on science, such as computer programming skills and mathematical models. But unfortunately, the very fundamentals of empirical research requires skills on programming and mathematics, otherwise, you may have to confront great trouble when dealing with data and models.
Without sufficient knowledge on mathematics, they seldom have good opportunity to take some course on branches of mathematics, such as real analysis, game theory, differential equations, etc. These courses provide fundamentals for research tools in the subject of economics, which is widely used in analytical accounting research. That can partially explain why there is little analytical researches in China.
Unlike the students in US that are entitled of excellent computer competence, we feel great trouble on programming due to insufficient trainings in high school and college. Undoubtedly, most modules that we use are available through the internet, but we fail to get a chance for some modifications that promote our efficiency. And, improper program sometimes can even abandon a good works that should have been published sometimes. The only cause for this is the poor computer competence.

Though so many problems occur, they can hardly be obstacles for researchers in accounting, except for the students like us. The limitation on skills of data management and statistical model selection can be easily solved through the cooperation among scholars, which is getting popular in China. But such cooperation among students is still quite seldom to see. I personally interpret it as the following reasons:

Very few students can fully master the knowledge needed for a qualified research under a present style of higher education that enforce much on books but seldom focus on usage.
Cooperation can cause some conflicts, such as the name rank for publications, which are to be crucial criteria for researchers and students.

Besides the problems on technology and background knowledge, funding should also not be overlooked. As a graduate student, getting the chance for some top-level academic conference seems to be beneficial. But such opportunity is quite rare in China especially for the students who are qualified and willing to join some international conferences. For this, I often admire my friends in Hong Kong and Taiwan since their abundant funding from their department. An apparent example for this is the refusal of funding for my participation of APJAE symposium from a leader of my department last year, with the only reason that I am a student, but not a faculty!

For followers who are willing to pursue their masters’ and PhD degree on accounting, you are suggested to get a good professor, and prepare yourself sufficiently for fundamental knowledge. They are both easy to solve. But once you are willing to learn more from others from conferences, it can be difficult under most occasions unless you are following a good professor who are about to pay the travelling cost for you.

Flight Change: An Alternative Choice

There are only 3 days left for my summer vacation due to my schedule of going back to Wuhan to continue my preparation for GRE and my admission to the graduate school. Everything seems quite okay and I am just wondering what to do as my plan when back. But everything changed when I get a short message from the China Southern Airline that my scheduled flight has been delayed due to some reason to 9 p.m. And two choices are offered: I can either accept the change, quite arbitrary, or to cancel that seat.

If there is nothing urgent as my classmates, such as GRE exams, I would directly postpone this flight but continue to stay at home. But now I have to go back on time, since I don’t want to suffer the same situation as that happened in June. A direct consideration on train directly draw me to a check on the timing schedule, but unfortunately, the only train to Wuhan would be arrived at 10:30 p.m in Hankou, no earlier than my flight.

While fortunately I get the flight from qunar.com, a famous search engine in China for hotels and air tickets, that there is a 300-yuan ticket from Xiamen Airline to Wuhan. Though it is a bit expensive and I have to go to Hangzhou to take that flight, it is acceptable, comparing to the price that can be twice of much from other airlines. Wish this flight would not be cancelled. I really don’t want to stay in a bar at the airport for hours.

So I firstly asked the refund from the China Southern Airline.

And then make an new order from Xiamen Airlines, frankly speaking, their website and ordering system needs to be improved.

Comparing to the delay that I suffered, the informing in advance is a progress on their service, but in fact, some compensation to the customers should be offered as well according to the conventions of airlines overseas. For this, the companies in China needs to be improved. And, why not send me an email but a short message to my cell phone?