Until the late nineteenth century, the history of international law was remarkably Eurocentric. In the early twentieth century, however, a number of Chinese intellectuals examined and demonstrated existence of international law through the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period in China. They used international law as a symbol of civilisation to express a gesture of resistance toward the Western imperial oppression and cultural invasion. In this way, Chinese intellectuals hoped to maintain, publicise, or even resurrect China’s rich cultural tradition in a global order governed by the West. Their endeavour represented an important variable in the European imperialist expansion process and constituted political interaction with western ideas to create a truly universal discourse. Unfortunately, most of their efforts have almost been forgotten. What the readers could perceive from these faded writings are not only academic assertions, but also the final splendour of an aged empire.

Grazing restoration succession of the degraded grassland is an important aspect in community ecology. Field experiment was carried out to examine how major species restore in first four years restoration following 11 consecutive grazing under different stocking rates in Inner Mongolian steppe. A. frigida and P. acaulis are the most important two species in the all treatments (NG, LG, MG and HG) after four years restoration, although they had high fluctuation. The biomasses of these two species account for 40-90% of total biomass. Especially in no grazing area, which was exclosured since 1990, A. frigida and P. acaulis are still the most important two species in the community. These results suggested A. frigida and P. acaulis conununity are quite stable, and will keep long-time if no special measurements were taken during the restoration of the degraded grassland.

To explore the relationship of species diversity and aboveground productivity in grazing ecosystem is very important to manage grassland. We used the four years' data to check this relationship and to look how abiotic factor affect species diversity and aboveground productivity. We found a good linear relationship between species diversity and aboveground productivity in all previous grazing sites, while no any relationship was found in the no grazing site. From our results, we concluded that drought affects aboveground productivity more than grazing, while heavy grazing affects species diversity more than drought in Inner Mongolian steppe.

Background : Invitro antioxidant activity, polyphenol and flavonoid aglycone contents in black and green tea products of balloon flower leaves were investigated to provide valuable information for the further development and utilization of resources of Platycodon grandiflorum. Methods and Results : Flavonoid aglycone contents were investigated using HPLC (SHIMADZU, Japan) with a hypersil ODS column (125 mm × 4 mm, 5-μm particle, HP). DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activities were measured by method of Lee & Lee (2004) with slight modification. Antioxidant activity, polyphenol and flavonoid contents in green tea were significantly higher than these in black tea. PC analysis indicated that first principal components explained 79.9% of the total variability for five traits investigated. PC2 explained 19.7% of the variation. Conclusion : It can be concluded from these results that these characteristics can reveal the active compound variation of black and green tea products of balloon flower leaves. These results provide scientific evidence for the utilization of balloon flower leaves.