The following is an edited transcript of the Macau University of Science and Technology's 23^rd Anniversary Honorary Doctoral Lecture by Kishore Mahbubani on March 27, 2023. In this lecture, Mahbubani argues that while Asia has made great leaps in economic strength and influence in recent decades, political, normative, and cultural power remains overwhelmingly in the West, creating structural global imbalances which need to be corrected. At the same time, Asia's ascendancy could be jeopardized by regional divisions caused by great power contest. If Asia is to return to its historical economic dominance in the 21^st century, not only must Asian countries continue to grow their economies, they must also work with each other and with other non-Western countries to create a more equitable world order.

Household waste classification has been considered as the most effective way to solve the problem of Household Solid Waste. However, due to the lack of funds and residents' awareness in developing countries, it has been challenging to implement household waste classification in society for a long time. In this connection, this paper constructs a game model between the government and residents to analyze the government's optimal charging decision and the residents' optimal behavior on household waste classification. The research shows that household waste classification behavior relates to the government's charging policy; self-generated environmental protection awareness; and classification cost. The government can guide and promote residents to classify household waste through publicity and procedures to reduce household solid waste. For developing countries, the government's implementing fixed charges can effectively enhance residents' awareness of household waste classification and improve the social environment.

This thesis dialectically draws on the reasonable core of the Qing dynasty's Redology criticism, and analyzes the meaning of the text of Dream of the Red Chamber by employing Yijing critical approach. It concludes that this book, while critiquing Confucianism's ideology of ritualism, also tends to affirm and return to the original Confucian ideology. This article first briefly reviews the Yijing study in the history of Redology, trying to discuss the feasibility and necessity of Yijing approach in Redology studies. It then argues that the methodological basis for the interpretation of Yijing lies in the “harmony of meaning”. Finally, it applies Yijing critical approach to interpret the characters Qin Keqing and Prince Beijing in Dream of the Red Chamber, demonstrating how the inner implication align with the hexagram “Gou” and “Fu” respectively. The relation of two hexagram also reflects actual connection between the two characters in the book. Therefore, it turns out that Yijing approach has a significant practical value in understanding the deeper meaning within the text of Dream of the Red Chamber. The meaning of the two characters derived from Yijing's critical approach will be instructive for the further understanding of the purpose and ideological tendencies of this book. And it also has certain reference value for further re-evaluating the profound connection between “Dream of the Red Chamber” and Confucianism.

Toni Morrison's A Mercy unveils the history during the colonial period of the 17^th century when slavery dawned and racial and sexual conflicts rose in the new world America. Mainly centering on Florens and her experience, this paper adopts black feminist standpoint theory to study the black girl's trip that transforms her from a timid and ignorant girl to a strong and independent woman. Daughter Jane and the black smith, who play the role of Outsiders Within, empower Florens by destroying her old understanding of the world and replacing it with a new perspective in viewing herself, other marginalized people, and slavery, which leads to the self-definition and the self-valuation of her identity as a black woman. Finally, through writing on the floors of Jacob's mansion, she adds an African female slave's perspective on slavery to the mainstream white patriarchal worldview. This new knowledge gives a voice to the marginalized colored women.

Geoff Childs, Gareth Barkin and Ben Kingstone, carried out field research on the marriage and love situation of overseas Tibetans in 2004 and 2014 , and wrote “Reproducing Identity: Using Images to Promote Pronatalism and Sexual Endogamy among Tibetan Exiles in South Asia” and “Dating in Dharamsala the Tibetan Exile Dating experience”. The time gaps between the two articles are ten years, The contents reveal the constantly changing in marriage and love behaviors of South Asian Tibetans. This article is inspired by the changes presented in two articles. Based on my field experience in the Tibetan community in Nepal, as well as other Tibetan communities in India and Bhutan, this article focusing on intermarriage circle to explore the patterns and characteristics of overseas Tibetan groups with different backgrounds in choosing spouses? Through participant observation and interviews, follow-up tracking and argument, this paper draws the following conclusions: under the “soul summoning” of special history, traditional customs and taboos, nationalism and politics, overseas Tibetans have developed a nationalism marriage circle structure; However, cross regional and cross ethnic marriages that take “capital” and “habitat” as considerations have become the trend. This paper consists of five parts, which are: introducing overseas Tibetans, raising questions, going through previous studies, then introducing ethnography cases, and finally making a summary. Through my previous field works, expounding and proving, this paper confirms the conculsions that the scattered overseas Tibetan groups and their diaspora history have stimulated various motivations of intermarriage and the diversification of marriage landscape; presents a hierarchical chart of mate selection based on capital and habitat indicators; The circle chart is characterized by diachronic changes from low mobility, strong nationalism and strong collectivism to strong mobility, weak nationalism and strong individualism.

Collocation and colligation are crucial components of second language vocabulary acquisition, with colligation representing an abstract categorization of word combinations, and collocation serving as its concrete manifestation. Employing a corpus-based interlanguage contrastive analysis methodology, this study examines the exemplification of collocations and colligation of the verb「進行」 within Chinese learners' dictionary. Through empirical analysis of this commonly used verb in Modern Chinese and investigating errors, the findings offer insights and inspiration for the compilation of Chinese learners' dictionary. The investigation is twofold: first, analyzing the collocation and colligation of 「進行」 among Chinese learners to assess their acquisition status; and second, exploring the characteristics of how collocations and colligation information are presented in Chinese learners' dictionary. The analysis reveals significant differences between Chinese learners and native speakers in the use of collocations and colligation with the verb 「進行」. It also identifies deficiencies in the typicality of collocational exemplifications, detail of collocation information, and the scope of semantic differentiation in Chinese learners' dictionary as well as issues with the visibility and learner relevance of colligation information presentation.

This paper presents an experimental phonetic study on the production of Mandarin lexical tones and disyllabic sequences containing the third tone by 12 intermediate-level Chinese learners from Laos. The monosyllabic experimental materials covered all the four lexical tones in Mandarin, with four words for each tone. In addition, eight groups of disyllabic sequences were designed to cover all scenarios where the third tone appears as either the first or second syllable, and within each group, both real words (existing words) and wug words (non-existing words formed by two real characters) were included. The results show that, although the Laotian intermediate-level Chinese learners had an overall narrower pitch range and an obviously shorter duration in the third tone compared to native Chinese students, they could generally grasp the contour of the four lexical tones and distinguish between the third tone and the second tone in the production of monosyllabic words. In the disyllabic sequences, most of the Laotian students could master the tone sandhi rules related to the third tone, but their accuracy in producing wug words was lower than that in producing real words. Specifically, the error rate was highest for the "third tone + third tone" combinations, with the first third tone often mispronounced as a half-third tone, and the second third tone often mispronounced as a high-rising tone. Among the three variants of the third tone, the half-third tone was the best acquired by the Laotian intermediate-level learners, followed by the full third tone, and finally the rising tone, indicating that the learners had not fully internalized the phonological knowledge related to the Mandarin third tone. By utilizing a wug test in the production experiment of disyllabic sequences, this study fills in the gap of research on Laotian intermediate-level Chinese learners' tonal acquisition and provides an in-depth examination of the production of the third tone and its related sandhi forms by this particular group of learners. The study comprehensively reveals the errors these learners make when producing the Mandarin third tone and its variants, offering a basis for teaching strategies for the third tone and its tone sandhi.