Huizu Between Religious Control and Freedom in Communist China: A Study of Chinese Muslim Minority

The freedom of religion in communist China is an ambiguous notion as the communist party understands religion as a reminiscent of backwardness and simultaneously proclaims the freedom of religion in the country. Islam, religion practiced by Hui minority, is included among the recognized religions of China and its adherents are granted rights to follow it. This paper argues that the Communist party has employed a disguised policy of controlling religious belief through establishing state controlled religious organizations and imparting freedom to practice religion. The slow and steady mind-making through these institutions train Hui youth to withdraw from their religion and to facilitate this withdrawal, the previously extant correlation between Hui ethnicity and religion (Islam) has been eliminated by the state and Hui ethnicity has nothing to do with religious affiliation anymore. The data for this research has been collected through ethnographic research upon the Hui community of Xi’an, employing unobtrusive observation as well as intensive interviewing.

Study of Energy Dissipation Capacity of Rc Bridge Columns under Seismic Demand

Field studies were carried out to investigate various parameters of bridges found in northern part of Pakistan. After the large Kashmir earthquake of M w7.6 in 2005, detailed field investigations to study the seismic performance of bridges was also undertaken. A mathematical function to define the functionality of bridges was developed which is helpful for quantifying the seismic resilience of bridges. Criterion for minimum required functionality for different bridges and limit states were defined for extremely large rare earthquake and for moderate occasional earthquakes. From the field data, typical parameters of reinforced concrete bridges were established. A series of experimental studies were undertaken in the laboratory on four scaled models of a typical bridge that consists of pier having single column. The pier column was of low strength concrete with solid circular cross section. The objective of the study was to experimentally determine the energy dissipation capacity of low strength concrete piers. Two types of tests were done on the four bridge piers: quasi-static cyclic tests and free vibration tests before, during and after the quasi-static tests. From the experimental results on four scaled low strength bridge piers damping was seen to decrease with increase in damage, natural period of piers doubled near failure, energy degradation was seen to be more in low strength piers. Energy based strength degradation and pinching is predominant in low strength concrete piers along with large permanent deformations. Response modification (R) factors based on natural period of bridge are found to better represent the energy dissipation and are accordingly proposed. The values of R-factor calculated for low strength concrete piers are lower than AASHTO LRFD 2007 thus more conservative. The fragility curves plotted for the bridge columns indicate that for peak ground accelerations (PGA) of seismic Zone 3 and above of the seismic hazard map of Pakistan (for 475-years return period) pushes the bridge in to damage state that is allowed for large earthquakes only (with return period of 2,500 years). Mathematical function for the quantification of seismic resilience of bridges is proposed for the first time. It is demonstrated that using the general guidelines of AASHTO LRFD 2007 quantification of seismic resilience is possible.