Peking University, Beijing

With globalization, the Internet, and the general shrinking of time and space, cross- cultural interaction has become a necessity in people’s everyday lives. This course is designed to interrogate different aspects of cross-cultural communication and cultural differences: family life, social relationships, the workplace, government, education, gender, romance, and religion. Throughout exploring these topics, we will strive to engage in personal self-reflection, hands-on experience, and to understand the connections to larger social structures.

Private and public sector firms increasingly use marketing strategies to engage their customers and stakeholders around social impact. To do so, managers need to understand how best to engage and influence customers to behave in ways that have positive social effects. This course focuses on social marketing strategies for changing the behavior of a target segment of consumers on key issues in the public interest (e.g., health behaviors, energy efficiency, poverty reduction, fundraising for social causes). In addition, it examines the growing role of social enterprises and benefit corporation (B corp) play in today’s marketplace. This class also offers students an opportunity to work on a real business problem that are tied to social initiatives.

This course provides a rigorous treatment of the core concepts and skills in security investments and portfolio management. The main focus is on the trade-off between risk and return, which is analyzed in a mean variance framework. Along this line, two main theories of asset pricing are explained: the Capital Asset Pricing Model and Arbitrage Pricing Theory. The empirical tests of these two theories are discussed. A team based project asks students to exercise skills of security analysis, portfolio construction, and management. 

An introduction of chinese buddhist history, including important events , main figures and schools.

This course includes:

 (1) A comprehensive overview of the history of Chinese Buddhism based on the stages of its spread and development in early China;

 (2) Introduction to the translation, annotation, and dissemination of Buddhist classics; 

(3) Selective explanation of the main ideological thoughts, religious sects, and their theoretical characteristics in Chinese Buddhism through reading original materials; 

(4) Exploring the exchange and integration between Buddhism and traditional Chinese culture in the context of Chinese social and cultural backgrounds. Additionally, based on classroom teachings, selected readings will be organized, followed by open discussions.

This course provides an overview of the history, current status, and mitigation strategies for atmospheric environment. It covers the following contents: Formation of the atmosphere Urban atmospheric environment and environmental regulations Human activity and ozone hole After taking the course, you will be able to answer the following questions. Why do we have oxygen in the atmosphere? How does PM2.5 in Beijing form? How did ozone hole form? How have we been resolving these environmental issues in the atmosphere? 

This class will introduce Mindfulness Intervention for Emotional Distress. It includes concept of Mindfulness and evidence for Mindfulness intervention. It will teach the common practice of mindfulness, including body scan, mindfulness siting, body stretch, mindful walking, mindful eating. Students need complete 15 minutes mindfulness practice daily, and other relative tasks. The object of this class: through study and practice, students will learn mindfulness practice, the strategies of reduction of emotional distress.

Domestic and global financial systems are comprised of a variety of interlinked institutions whose interactions create the form and structure of the financial system. These institutions range from central banks, commercial and investment banks, institutional investors, and financial markets for stock, bond and other assets to currency regimes, the global balance of payments, and fiscal and regulatory policies that affect monetary conditions. The main objective of this class is to help construct a conceptual framework of the financial markets for finance students and to ensure that they are able to develop for themselves a context in which to place their more specialized finance classes. In this class we will attempt to outline and develop a “geography” of China’s financial system and its links to the global system in order to develop a framework within which to understand the Chinese financial system, its future development, and its role within the current global crisis. We will consider the purpose of a well-functioning financial market, the necessary components of such a market, the role of financial balance sheets in the way the system responds to shocks, and the implementation of monetary policy. We will examine the different kinds of financial markets and their inter-relationships.

This course aims at improving the ability of academic writing in Chinese for international students. This course consists of three parts: 1. Learning the features, format, writing style of Chinese academic papers, as well as the features of related language expressions, including vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraphs etc. 2. From the aspect of language expression, you will be provided with the writing methods which are frequently used in academic writings, including explanations, descriptions, making statements and examples, comparisons and arguments. 3. You will be provided with exercises related to academic writing, including the topics and subtitles, abstract and key words, introduction, literature review, arguments (eg. quotes), conclusion, reference, appendix as well as concluding remarks. This course will connect writing techniques with your language ability training. By reading examples and making analysis of common mistakes, students will get some ideas about the features of Chinese academic papers, will understand the differences of academic and non-academic Chinese, and will study the general guideline for writing Chinese academic papers. As students understand certain necessary procedures and skills of academic writing, they will be capable of writing academic papers independently.