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Background: In the last two decades, Kenya's development agenda has focused on Vision 2030's aim of transforming the country into an industrialised, modern-middle-income state. To fulfill this desired economic growth, the government has emphasised infrastructure improvement, a move that has prompted heavy borrowing, especially from China. Despite the numerous studies on China's involvement in road construction, there has been no attempt to look at how the Kenya Road Classification System can inform and influence the choice of road projects. In addition, limited studies have illustrated the theoretical standpoint of China-Kenya road improvement projects. Objective: Therefore, this paper explores the interest of China in road construction in Kenya through the analysis of the Kenya road classification system. In addition, it examines how the Kenya-China road construction projects can be described from a neoliberal standpoint. Method: The paper draws from an analysis of grey literature, including newspapers, blogs, and internet archives, and ethnographic fieldwork on national infrastructure projects, particularly roads in Kenya. Conclusion: The findings suggest that China's primary focus is on trunk roads (class =A' roads), which play a critical role in regional access to resource-rich regions and provide strategic geopolitical and territorial positioning. We argue that the Kenya National and Highway Authority's Road Classification System can reveal the political and economic interests in road construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, modern science had been dominated by a handful of Western countries. However, since the turn of the millennium, the global science landscape has undergone dramatic changes. The number of nations where a significant proportion of research done is of high international standard has now increased considerably. China particularly stands out and is today one of the leading science nations in the world. Overall, Chinese research collaborations with countries in the Western world exemplify the general trend towards increasing complexity in the global research landscape. It has gradually become obvious that differences between institutional settings need to be managed more systematically to promote cross-border research cooperation for shared benefits, from individual to institutional levels. An informed discussion of managing complex conditions necessitates an understanding of the relationship-level dynamics of research collaborations. In order to identify what aspects of international research collaborations are the most pertinent to systematically manage at individual and institutional levels, this paper investigates projects in a bilateral Swedish–Chinese funding program. The paper finds that the majority of collaborations funded had yielded positive impact in terms of publications, strengthened research capacity in research groups, and resource accumulation. The challenges found in the collaborations are related to needs such as improving transparency, ethical concerns, and imbalances in reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genomic research lies at the core of national bioeconomies and is a strategic area for national scientific competitiveness. Drawing on the UK’s latest national vision on genomic research and my participation in one of China’s policy consultations on its implementing rules on human genetic resources, this paper demonstrates how China’s conception of ‘biosovereignty’ may be counterproductive, both to its scientific competitiveness and to the health of its people. The key argument is that ‘biosovereignty’ is not a property of an individual, a community, or an institution. Rather it is a powerful assemblage of ideals, infrastructures and network of capitals that steers our collective future. It is simultaneously a social contract and a social construct, both of which are evolving with socio-technical realities. The paper provokes reflections on the role of the state in promoting equitable genomic research and the question on what ‘biosovereignty’ means and how it should be represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China manifests as a major player in the international arena with economic and military power. It seeks to establish a multi-polar world order that would be an alternative to the unipolar system on which the United States alone sits. As a result, China is becoming a strong economic competitor to the United States. The Chinese economic power hided by state funded institution are offering an alternative to the current international world order hided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the Palestinians can benefit from the economic expansion of China. Thus, can the Palestinians shift their economic reliance on China to achieve an independent Palestinian economy? The Palestinians should rely on both the historical relationship and strengthening their economic ties with China. This paper will analyze the economic assistant -foreign aid sources-that Palestinians receive to determine whether it is possible to shift the economic reliance on China. The paper concluded that China cannot be a better alternative to the United States and the European powers. Nevertheless, it should play a parallel role to the United States. This will aid the Palestinians in achieving their legitimate goal of establishing an independent Palestinian economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intangible cultural heritage (ICH) concept has been operational in China for almost 20 years. One integral part of China's ICH landscape is a range of exhibition spaces and museums that specialise in the display, performance, and transmission of ICH. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork at different exhibition sites, this paper provides insights into what these exhibition spaces look like, how they function, how ICH is exhibited within them, and what exhibitions mean to different heritage actors. The article shows how ICH exhibitions have themselves become a sociocultural phenomenon, bringing together a variety of actors who experiment with different forms of display and types of exhibitions in an ad hoc, spontaneous, and unregulated way. The paper also contributes to the broader discussion on ICH as a political intervention that transforms the cultural practices and expressions it normatively sets out to safeguard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork, this study proposes "aspirational taste regime" as a critical concept through which to examine the emergence of a discursively constructed normative system in China's Pick-Up Artist (PUA) training programs. By unpacking how taste is practiced both digitally and corporeally in these programs, the paper argues that Chinese PUA learners carefully curate taste for an illusionary, at times even deceptive, presentation of idealized masculinities to increase their matrimonial chances. In doing so, this paper extends the literature on taste regimes by moving beyond its typically Western focus. It directs attention to an aspirational taste regime that capitalizes on young men's aspirations for idealized masculinities and prescribes a seemingly effortless but in fact highly curated online presentation of cultural-capital-oriented consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty alleviation has attracted extensive attention worldwide. This paper investigated the spatial agglomeration effect and dynamics driving rural education levels (namely, primary education, junior secondary education, and senior secondary education) and rural poverty in 27 provinces of China in 2010-2017. The results of a spatial autoregressive (SAR) model revealed that different education levels have distinct effects on rural poverty, and the impact of compulsory education on rural poverty is greater than that of senior secondary education. We further found that rural poverty in a region is clearly not only internally driven but also impacted by the poverty rate in the surrounding provinces, suggesting that regional poverty alleviation policies should combine regional education differences and learn from poverty alleviation through education experience in surrounding areas. Thus, the findings established in this paper have significant implications for targeted poverty alleviation measures in China by improving education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The situation of the human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is frequently reported in the Western media and it has gained a central place in the Euro-Atlantic political discourse which condemns Beijing's attitude towards human rights at home. However, the sanctions adopted by both the US and the EU in relation to the treatment applied by the Chinese government to the Uyghurs in the XUAR are strongly discouraged and limited by the economic dependencies of the two Western giants on China. The goal of this paper is to discuss the effectiveness of the economic sanctions in supporting the human rights international regime in the context of current economic interdependence between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), on one side, and China, on the other side. The hypothesis of the paper is that the asymmetrical economic interdependence is undermining the effectiveness of the economic sanctions in supporting the human rights international regime. When there is an increased interdependence between a supporter and promoter of human rights, in this case the US and the EU, and a great economic power that does not regard the human rights as having a universal value in the current international order, the effects of the economic sanctions are inefficient in addressing this problem due to the high economic and political costs for both their issuers and their targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Identifying the risk regions of human–wildlife conflict is a pertinent topic in current human–wildlife conflict research. Most of the existing studies obtained their wildlife incident information through field surveys to identify risk regions. However, field surveys require a lot of personnel, time, and money. Therefore, they are generally used for meso- and microscale studies as they are difficult to apply to macroscale explorations. In this paper, we attempted to expand the data sources of wildlife incident information to enable macroscale wildlife incident risk region identification more efficiently and at a lower cost. We chose wild boar incidents in China as an example and used web crawling technology to obtain reports of wild boar incidents from internet databases. We then extracted the spatial location information of wild boar incidents from the reports. Subsequently, a system of environmental variables was constructed. Finally, the Maxent model, which provides predictions with higher accuracy and requires less location information, was applied to identify the risk regions of wild boar incidents in China. We observed that approximately 12.18% of China was at a high-risk level, mainly on the eastern side of the Huhuanyong Line. The risk of wild boar incidents was related to the climate, landscape, and topography as well as human disturbance. Variables such as the annual precipitation, GDP index, mean annual temperature, distance from forestland, distance from cultivated land, and elevation strongly influenced the risk of wild boar incidents. The objectives of this study were to identify the risk regions of wild boar incidents in China and to draw a risk map. Risk maps can be used to plan the prioritization of preventive measures, increasing management effectiveness from both a short- and a long-term perspective. We used a web crawler (web information access technology) to obtain reports of wild boar incidents from China's largest search engine (Baidu) and obtained 196 valid geographic locations of wild boar incidents from the reports. Subsequently, a system of environmental variables—with climate, topography, landscape, and human disturbance as the main variable types—was constructed, based on human–land-system thinking. Finally, the Maxent model was applied to predict the risk space of wild boar incidents in China by integrating the geographic location information for wild boar incidents with the environmental variables. We observed that the types of environmental variables that contributed to wild boar incidents were in the descending order of climate (40.5%) > human disturbance (25.2%) > landscape (24.4%) > topography (9.8%). Among the 14 environmental variables, annual precipitation, the GDP index, and the mean annual temperature were the main environmental variables. The distance from woodland, distance from cultivated land, and elevation were the secondary environmental variables. The response curves of the environmental variables demonstrated that the highest probability of wild boar incidents occurred when the annual average temperature was 16 °C, the annual precipitation was 800 mm, and the altitudes were 150 m and 1800 m. The probability of wild boar incidents decreased with an increase in the distance from cultivated and forested land, and increased sharply and then levelled off with an increase in the GDP index. Approximately 12.18% of China was identified as being at a high risk of wild boar incidents, mainly on the eastern side of the Huhuanyong Line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments worldwide have announced stimulus packages to remobilize the labor force after COVID-19 and therefore to cope with the COVID-19-related recession. However, it is still unclear how to facilitate large-scale work resumption. This paper aims to clarify the issue by analyzing the large-scale prefecture-level dataset of human mobility trajectory information for 320 million workers and about 500,000 policy documents in China. We model work resumption as a collective behavioral change due to configurations of capacity, motivation, and policy instruments by using qualitative comparative analysis. We find that the effectiveness of post-COVID-19 recovery stimulus varied across China depending on the fiscal and administrative capacity and the policy motivation of the prefecture. Subnational fiscal and procurement policies were more effective for the wholesale and retail sector and the hotel and catering sector, whereas the manufacturing and business services sectors required more effort regarding employment policies. Due to limited prefectural capacity and wavering policy motivation, the simultaneous adoption of fiscal, employment, and procurement policy interventions endangered post-COVID-19 work resumption. We highlight the necessity of tailored postcrisis recovery strategies based on local fiscal and administrative capacity and the sectoral structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian regimes in the 21st century have increasingly turned to using information control rather than kinetic force to respond to threats to their rule. This paper studies an often overlooked type of information control: strategic labeling and public statements by regime sources in response to protests. Labeling protesters as violent criminals may increase support for repression by signaling that protests are illegitimate and deviant. Regime sources, compared to more independent sources, could increase support for repression even more when paired with such an accusatory label. Accommodative labels should have opposing effects—decreasing support for repression. The argument is tested with a survey experiment in China which labels environmental protests. Accusatory labels increase support for repression of protests. Regime sources, meanwhile, have no advantage over non-governmental sources in shifting opinion. The findings suggest that negative labels de-legitimize protesters and legitimize repression while the sources matter less in this contentious authoritarian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-2000s, the Russian Far East (RFE) has seen a revival of agriculture accompanied by rapid agrarian transformation that has taken a unique form because of the area's proximity to China. However, the existing literature either does not recognize Chinese presence or only studies it in terms of capitalist relationships transplanted directly from China and isolated from local realities. This paper seeks to remedy this oversight by exploring the influence of the multifaceted Chinese presence on RFE agriculture. We use the concept of social topology to demonstrate how different forms of economic life have not evolved as "Russian" or "Chinese," but instead present a bundle of capitalist and non-capitalist relationships that are continuously changing and rewriting themselves. We also explain the observed effect of China's simultaneous presence and absence in RFE's agriculture: Chinese agricultural practices are tightly embedded in local social networks and are loosely tethered to local infrastructure, but the Chinese presence also manifests in perceptions and imaginaries that influence and determine the strategies of the Russian state, agroholdings, and Russian farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A thorough understanding of carbon lock-in is an essential precondition for the effective design and continuous improvement of climate policy. Based on a balanced panel dataset of 30 provinces in China during the period 2002–2021, we explore the nexus between smart transportation and carbon lock-in using the System-Generalized Method of Moments (SYS-GMM) model. We also investigate the heterogeneous, asymmetric, and threshold effects among the above two issues, and examine three internal impact mechanisms. We thus arrive at the following four main conclusions: (1) Smart transportation significantly reduces carbon lock-in, highlighting its importance in eradicating carbon lock-in. (2) Smart transportation has the most pronounced impact on carbon lock-in in the central region, and can effectively mitigate all aspects of carbon lock-in, especially industry lock-in and institution lock-in. (3) Smart transportation is more effective in alleviating carbon lock-in in provinces with a higher level of carbon lock-in. Moreover, a threshold of environmental regulation exists between smart transportation and carbon lock-in, with stricter environmental regulation leading to a stronger carbon lock-in reduction effect of smart transportation. (4) Smart transportation indirectly influences carbon lock-in through three channels of economic scale, industrial structure upgrading, and technological innovation. Based on these findings, we propose some policy recommendations for smart transportation development and carbon lock-in mitigation. • This paper examines the carbon unlocking effect of smart transportation. • Smart transportation significantly alleviates carbon lock-in in China. • Smart transportation exerts heterogeneous and asymmetric effects on carbon lock-in. • The nexus between smart transportation and carbon lock-in has an environmental regulation threshold effect. • Scale, structure, and technology effects are three influence channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessments of treatments for 'subjective symptoms' are problematic and potentially contentious. These are symptoms without ascertainable pathophysiology, also referred to as 'medically unexplained.' Treatments of them may be assessed from different perspectives, and an assessment as seen from one perspective may be discrepant with an assessment as seen from another perspective. The observational study described in the paper represents one perspective. Patients in the study were treated with acupuncture for the subjective symptom of low back pain in a Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic in China; acupuncture is a form of TCM, which is indigenous to China. Shortly after treatment began and six months afterward, patients reported 'clinically important improvements' on a variety of standard, cross‐culturally validated outcome measures, including pain intensity, physical functioning, and emotional functioning; this assessment is consistent with numerous assessments of acupuncture in China and other Southeastern Asian countries. On the other hand, clinical trials represent another perspective from which to assess acupuncture. Although assessments based on trials are not uniform, several assessments based on them, including those published in journals such as Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine, conclude that acupuncture is not effective. These trials, however, were mainly situated in the U.S., western European countries, and other WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) countries. This is notable, because the population of China, the indigenous context of acupuncture, is greater than populations of WEIRD countries combined. Patients' expectations of a treatment such as acupuncture and their prior familiarity with it vary among contexts, and patients' experiences of treatment outcomes may vary accordingly. In short, although clinical trials constitute a test of truth in biomedicine and inform authoritative assessments in WEIRD countries, they do not necessarily represent the truth from the perspective of those experiencing outcomes of especially indigenous treatments for subjective symptoms in non‐WEIRD contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education to improve knowledge of animal welfare is not a universal component of training for zoo staff, and little is reported about the perspectives of zoo staff on the need for such education. This paper reports results from structured telephone interviews of a diverse sample of eight Chinese and eight European zoo staff about aspects of zoological animal welfare, education and zoological practices. These qualitative data were thematically analyzed and key themes generated. Similar themes emerged across regions: Zoo staff consider professional attributes including motivation and enthusiasm to be important alongside formal training, zoo staff value learning opportunities but don't always feel supported, and contextual information including wild animal ecology was considered important content in zoo animal welfare education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) was resuscitated in November 2017, it was framed as a minilateral grouping of liberal democratic countries to build a free and open Indo-Pacific in the shadow of China's growing assertiveness. However, this Quad 2.0 had not taken collective action until 2021. The four states neither held leaders' summit meetings nor issued joint statements after lower-level meetings. They took no joint quadrilateral actions to deter China either. From a constructivist perspective, this paper addresses this puzzle by critically revisiting the alleged common identity of the four states. It argues that India's national identity has not been built on the ontological difference between liberal democracy and autocracy but on a complex amalgamation of non-alignment, post-imperial ideology, Hindu nationalism and Indian exceptionalism. India, having held a vision of establishing an India–China partnership in Asia, did not regard China as its significant Other until the deadly border clashes between them in June 2020. China's expansionism has challenged India's identity as the pre-eminent power in South Asia and its vision of an equal China–India partnership. Despite India's increased cooperation with its Quad partners since then, the Quad is built more on geopolitical pragmatism than on shared liberal norms and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's manufacturing industry has emerged as a major contributor to both the nation's economic growth and global trade. Achieving high-quality development in this sector is not only crucial for China's sustainable progress but also holds significant implications for the global economy. Considering the importance of Chinese manufacturing industry, this paper establishes a framework for exploring the mechanism of manufacture industry's high-quality development in China's three economic regions based on the Driver-Pressure-State-Response (DPSR) model and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). SEM is established for analyzing the multiple paths of manufacture industry's high-quality development in the eastern, middle and western economic region of China. The findings reveal distinct patterns in each region. In the eastern region, a unidirectional path of "Driver-Pressure-State-Response" is confirmed, with a particular emphasis on quality improvement and efficiency increase. The middle region exhibits a leapfrog path characterized by "Driver-Pressure-State" and "Pressure-Response," where quality improvement and dynamic conversion play critical roles. Conversely, the western region demonstrates an interrupt path of "Pressure-State-Response," highlighting the significance of structural rationalization and dynamic conversion. Based on these results, sustainable solutions and suggestions for promoting high-quality development in the manufacturing industry are proposed, providing valuable targeted insights for the transformation and advancement of China's manufacturing sector. This study makes a novel contribution by developing a DPSR-SEM model and expands literature and knowledge in high-quality development of manufacturing industry. Practically, this study can guide decision-makers, managers, and stakeholders in understanding the interactions between driving forces, pressures, states, and responses in the context of manufacturing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many studies on variables related to burnout among preschool teachers, but the results of these studies are inconsistent. This study explored the variables most associated with preschool teachers' burnout through meta-analysis. The researchers conducted an extensive search of the China Knowledge Network (CNKI), Vip journal, and Wanfang databases. A total of 59 papers were included through strict inclusion criteria, and a total of 14 variables were analyzed. The results indicate that the variables that have large effect sizes with burnout are turnover intention (r = 0.7124), job stress (r = 0.4744), teacher efficacy (r = −0.4331), and job satisfaction (r = −0.4229). This study provides a data reference for the prevention and improvement of burnout among preschool teachers in China, and will also provide directions for further research to follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plants of the lycophyte genus Phlegmariurus contain the chemical compound Huperzine A, the effective medicinal component treating Alzheimer’s disease, thus with huge economic value. To protect the natural resources, plants of the whole genus are listed as the National Key Protected Wild plants in China. In this paper, we revised the taxonomy of Phlegmariurus distributed in China based on morphological, ecological, and geographical evidence. We recognized 21 species from China, and organized them into four sections. Sect. Fargesiani X. C. Zhang ＆ R. H. Jiang is newly established, and the other three sections were revised based on previous studies, i.e., Sect. Hamiltoniani C. Y. Yang, emend. X. C. Zhang ＆ R. H. Jiang; Sect. Phlegmariurus; and Sect. Squarrosurus（Herter） X. C. Zhang ＆ R. H. Jiang, comb. ＆ stat. nov. We reduced the following taxon names to synonymies of various species of Phlegmariurus: Huperzia medogensis, Phlegmariurus austrosinicus, P. changii, P. nylamensis, P. cancellatus var. minor, P. qiongzhongensis, and P. shangsiensis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural green development is an essential direction for global sustainable agriculture. The academic literature, however, needs to place greater emphasis on studying the factors influencing agricultural green development performance and how such performance can be improved. A theoretical framework for agricultural green development performance was constructed in this paper using the Super-SBM model, which considers undesirable outputs, to measure the agricultural green development performance of 330 cities at or above the prefecture level in China (excluding Tibet Autonomous Region, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan of China) from 2007 to 2018. Furthermore, the influencing mechanism of agricultural green development performance was then analyzed using a spatial econometric model. The results show that: 1) from 2007 to 2018, China's agricultural green development performance experienced three stages of evolution: 'rise, decline and rise'. 2) The regions with high performance agricultural green development are mainly distributed in eastern China, northeastern China, and southern Qinghai Province. 3) The agricultural economic level, industrialization process, and labor quality play significant roles in promoting local agricultural green development performance, while such performance is obviously inhibited by the openness level and the government's environmental regulations. Local agricultural green development performance is significant inhibited by the agricultural economic level and accelerated industrialization process in neighboring cities, while significantly promoted by the agricultural industrial structure in neighboring cities. Some suggestions for improving agricultural green development performance are proposed based on these research results, which can provide scientific references for promoting sustainable agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the rapid development of TNHE over the past decade, research studies on students' perceptions and experiences of teaching and learning at TNHE programmes in China are very limited. Using both surveys (328) and follow-up interviews (40) from students at two Anglo-Sino programmes, this study explores students' perceptions and experiences of teaching and learning in TNHE in China. Drawing on the five components of the intercultural dialogue framework, this paper reveals that Chinese students' experience of teaching was fragmented not least through a mixture of cultural approaches to pedagogy including a teacher-centred approach by the local Chinese teachers and a student-centred approach by the foreign teachers, with the latter generally preferred by the students. The findings yield several important implications for contextualized curriculum and careful consideration of the TNHE learning environment in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the gateway of China's opening to the outside world, port forms a gateway-city system with hierarchical and functional division through interaction with carrier cities. Based on the port data of 2001 and 2018, this paper measures the gateway function changes of port cities by transforming the urban flow model, so as to reveal the evolution characteristics and laws of China 's gateway system since the 21st century. The research shows that: (1) Since the start of new century, the external service level of gateway-city has significantly improved, the external service function and value of passenger transport and freight have increased by 4 and 8 times compared with those in 2001. But the external service value of freight is less than that of passen‐ ger transport. Although passenger transport and freight are gradually decreasing in the whole country, the decline of freight in East China has been steeper than the other three regions. There are also significant regional and urban differences in external passenger and freight services in different transport sectors. (2) China's gateway-city property indexes have formed a regional evolution pattern of eastern leading, central and western strengthening and northeast weakening. Using the Dagum Gini coefficient method found that the regional spatial gap of gateway proper‐ ty has been reduced, and the main source for the spatial differentiation of gateway function in China is the disparity among regions. (3) All gateway cities can be divided into four grades: na‐ tional gateway cities, regional gateway cities, provincial gateway cities and local gateway cities, the hierarchical structure of China gateway-city shows a stable 'pyramid' shape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 5–10 years, a growing number of Chinese scholars and policy experts have sought to theorise the 'development' of other peoples and places in the Global South. These intellectual efforts include building temporal frameworks for describing development processes, and often, an implicit set of directives for effecting positive change. Drawing on eight months' fieldwork in Beijing, this paper examines the representational practices of depicting development and its temporal dimension that have been mobilised in the ongoing production of Chinese international development thinking. In particular, it is concerned with the ways in which temporal distance and proximity have been constructed to provide a theoretical and moral justification for China's intensifying geopolitical and economic preoccupations. We argue that more than a system of explanations, current Chinese thinking contains and expresses a recalibrated will to geopolitical power, which has had a conditioning effect on the enframing of the meanings and relations of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper responds to the contributions to the review symposium on How China Escaped Shock Therapy. I discuss the strategy of economic system reform that started from the non-essential parts of the industrial system in order to eventually transform the commanding heights; the spatial dimension of reform in relation to "dual circulation" and the coastal development strategy; the nature and meaning of Chinese gradualism; and China's price stabilization strategies of the 1980s in relation to later inflationary challenges. Finally, I reflect on the symposium as a dialogue between economic geography and a history of ideas in action that I pursued in my book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical engagement with Isabella Weber's fascinating new book, How China Escaped Shock Therapy. It foregrounds the book's contributions to knowledge on a hitherto under-explored topic – why shock therapy advocates were unsuccessful in launching all-out price liberalisation across China during the 1980s – and introduces new questions through assessing Weber's analysis vis-à-vis three geographical aspects of Chinese political-economic evolution: (a) the role of landownership control and redistribution in stabilising the Chinese economy following the Communist Party of China's (CPC) revolutionary victory in 1949; (b) the path-dependent effects of Mao-era (1949-1976) landownership institutions on economic reforms during the 1980s; and (c) Deng Xiaoping's approach to the multi-dimensional emergence of coastal-oriented industrialisation. These three aspects collectively accentuate how the territorial configuration and regulation of the Chinese political economy, so fundamental for producing and sustaining CPC regime durability, undermined the neoclassical bias towards price liberalisation. Understanding the geographical preconditions that underpin post-1949 Chinese political-economic evolution is therefore crucial for understanding why shock therapy was ultimately deemed incongruent with CPC rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze recently collected data that conducts a unique assessment of high school student performance for over two thousand students from five Chinese provinces. Across three domains of scientific intelligence tested, we document heterogeneous gender gaps in academic performance. These differences generally arise due to differential productivity of inputs to the education production process and not differential levels of inputs. At many quantiles of the achievement distribution, girls perform better than boys when identifying scientific issues, whereas the converse holds on the portion of the assessment that measures whether one can apply scientific evidence. These differences may partially explain the subsequent gap in decision to major in specific STEM disciplines in college. Further, our results imply caution from using a single summative gender achievement gap measure when gender gaps in subject knowledge are not constant across each domain of intelligence examined within the test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks a deeper understanding of how principals strive for instructional leadership with organisational management strategies in China today. Drawing from 116 interviews of district supervisors and school principals from two regions, we first conduct qualitative analysis to map the dimensions and sub-dimensions of Chinese principal practices inductively, then compare them with extant conceptual frameworks designed to capture instructional leadership, learner-centred leadership, and organisational management. We find that the Chinese principal leadership conception and the Western frameworks converge on important aspects that cover curriculum, instruction, teacher professional development, and school climate. We also find that to reach instructional leadership effectiveness, Chinese school leaders use a distinctive set of management tactics that prioritise building tiered organisational structures, developing teacher leadership, responding to top-down mandates, and leveraging external networks. Our study contributes to the cross-cultural research of school leadership under different and dynamic social, political, and cultural conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's structural changes have brought new challenges to its regional employment structures, entailing labour redistribution. Until now, Chinese migration research with a forward-looking perspective and on bilateral longitudinal determinants at the prefecture city level is almost non-existent. This paper investigates the effects of job prospects on individual migration decisions across prefecture boundaries. To this end, we created proxy variables for wage and employment prospects, introduced reference-dependence to a dynamic discrete choice model, and estimated corresponding empirical specifications with a unique quasi-panel of 66,427 individuals from 283 cities during 1997–2017. To address multilateral resistance to migration resulting from the future attractiveness, we exploited various monadic and dyadic fixed effects. Multilevel logit models and two-step system GMM estimation were adopted for the robustness check. Our primary findings are that a 10% increase in the ratio of sector-based employment prospects in cities of destination to cities of origin raises the probability of migration by 1.281–2.185 percentage points, and the effects tend to be stronger when the scale of the ratio is larger. Having a family migration network causes an increase of approximately 6 percentage points in migratory probabilities. Further, labour migrants are more likely to be male, unmarried, younger, or more educated. Our results suggest that the ongoing industrial reform in China influences labour mobility between cities, providing important insights for regional policymakers to prevent brain drain and to attract relevant talent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Group Model Building (GMB) is a participatory system dynamics method increasingly used to address complex public health issues like obesity. GMB represents a set of well-defined steps to engage key stakeholders to identify shared drivers and solutions of a given problem. However, GMB has not yet been applied specifically to develop multi-duty interventions that address multiple inter-related issues such as malnutrition in all its forms (MIAIF). Moreover, a recent systematic review of empirical applications of a systems approach to developing obesity interventions found no published work from non-western, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In this paper we describe adaptations and innovations to a common GMB process to co-develop systemic MIAIF interventions with Chinese decision-makers. Methods: We developed, piloted and implemented multiple cultural adaptations and two methodological innovations to the commonly used GMB process in Fang Cheng Gang city, China. We included formal, ceremonial and policy maker engagement events before and between GMB workshops, and incorporated culturally tailored arrangements during participant recruitment (officials of the same seniority level joined the same workshop) and workshop activities (e.g., use of individual scoring activities and hand boards). We made changes to the commonly used GMB activities which enabled mapping of shared drivers of multiple health issues (in our case MIAIF) in a single causal loop diagram. We developed and used a 'hybrid' GMB format combining online and in person facilitation to reduce travel and associated climate impact. Results: Our innovative GMB process led to high engagement and support from decision-makers representing diverse governmental departments across the whole food systems. We co-identified and prioritised systemic drivers and intervention themes of MIAIF. The city government established an official Local Action Group for long-term, inter-departmental implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the co-developed interventions. The 'hybrid' GMB format enabled great interactions while reducing international travel and mitigating limitations of fully online GMB process. Conclusions: Cultural and methodological adaptations to the common GMB process for an Asian LMIC setting were successful. The 'hybrid' GMB format is feasible, cost-effective, and more environmentally friendly. These cultural adaptations could be considered for other Asian settings and beyond to address inter-related, complex issues such as MIAIF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of China's land border cultural heritage, aiming to offer guidance for its protection and development. The study compiled a comprehensive database of heritage sites and analyzed their mathematical characteristics based on quantity, type, and quality. The spatial pattern of the cultural heritage was described using kernel density analysis, spatial variability, and spatial correlation, while the driving mechanism was measured based on Geo-Detector model. The findings revealed that the land border areas of China have a total of 1227 cultural heritage, comprising two main types and 18 subtypes. National cultural heritage accounted for 22.74%, with ancient city ruins being the largest type of cultural heritage. The Southwest and Northeast regions of China exhibited high-high clusters and low-low clusters, respectively. Moreover, the study identified history of administrative succession, evolution of historical and cultural, altitude, distance from the city, population density, minority population ratio, urbanization process, and per capita GDP as significant factors impacting the spatial pattern of land border cultural heritage in China. Based on these findings, the study suggests that the government should invest more in border cultural heritage, improve transportation infrastructure in border areas, ensure dynamic inheritance and protection of cultural heritage, and promote the joint development of different types of cultural heritage. The research results will provide data support and decision-making reference for the sustainable development of cultural heritage in land border areas, and can provide a new perspective for the management of cultural heritage in similar areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governance of urban shrinkage has recently become an important topic for geographers and urban planners. However, a comprehensive exploration of the various spatial problems and governance paths in shrinking cities remains a huge gap in urban shrinkage governance literature. Building on the review and induction of extensive literature, this paper constructs a theoretical framework for the spatial governance of urban shrinkage from four perspectives: conceptual connotations, influencing factors, paths, and effects. By field investigation and policy interpretation, it takes Jixi City as a case, a coal-based shrinking city in China, to explore the policy response of the government and their effects. We find that the spatial governance of Jixi is a process of multisubject participation and multielement integration focusing on various spatial issues, which confirms the rationality of the analytical framework. Also, there are both similarities and differences in the spatial governance of urban shrinkage between Western countries and Chinese. This study enriches the theory of urban shrinkage governance, shows Chinese characteristics in urban governance, and provides governance enlightenment for other shrinking cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion is permitted in China, but its practice is tightly regulated by the state. This paper uses individual‐level longitudinal data to investigate the association between religious regulation and religious outcomes in China. Measures of regulation are constructed from instances of state action against Christians as well as Christian perceptions of unfair treatment by the government. In summary, as regulation increases, an individual is less likely to identify with a religion and less likely to say that religion is important. For those individuals without religious identification in either wave, regulation is negatively associated with religious importance. Yet, for those individuals with identification in one or two waves, regulation is either unassociated or even positively associated with importance. These findings contribute to research on regulation of religion and religion in China. More broadly, they demonstrate the state can wield considerable power over people's private lives but also that this power has limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Old residential area regeneration has long been integral to China's urban planning, construction, and governance. This paper divides its history in China into four periods based on the policy and its positioning in the socio-economic pattern: slow development as a non-productive sector (1949 to late 1970s), housing marketization under unified planning (late 1970s to early 2000s), a livelihood-oriented transitional period (early 2000s to early 2010s), and a large-scale comprehensive project (early 2010s to the present). It summarizes the positioning, purpose, type, actor, and research characteristics in each period and points out that the old residential area regeneration in China has always been in dynamic interaction between the state, market, and society, presenting complicated characteristics. This process is like a pendulum oscillating between the dual attributes of urban regeneration and housing policies, and relevant studies exploring the Chinese path since 1949 are featured by pragmatism and policy implication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-term height-resolved wind trend in China under global warming still needs to be discovered. To fill this gap, in this paper we examined the climatology and long-term (1979–2021) trends of the wintertime wind speed at the near-surface and upper atmosphere in China based on long-term radiosonde measurements. At 700, 500, and 400 hPa, much higher wind speed was found over eastern China, compared with western China. At 300, 200, and 100 hPa, maximum wind speed was observed in the latitude zone of around 25–35°N. Furthermore, westerly winds dominated most parts of China between 20°N and 50°N at altitudes from 700 hPa to 100 hPa. A stilling was revealed for the near-surface wind from 1979–2003. From 2004 onward, the near-surface wind speed reversed from decreasing to increasing. This could be largely due to the joint impact of reduced surface roughness length, aerosol optical depth (AOD), and increased sensible heat flux in the ground surface. The decrease of AOD tended to reduce aerosol radiative forcing, thereby destabilizing the planetary boundary layer (PBL). By comparison, the wintertime wind in the upper atmosphere exhibited a significant monotonic upward trend, albeit with varying magnitude for different altitudes. In the upper troposphere, the wintertime maximum wind was observed along a westerly jet stream, with a pronounced upward trend within the zone approximately bounded by latitudes of 25–50°N, particularly above 500 hPa. This accelerating wind observed in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere could be closely associated with the large planetary-scale meridional temperature trend gradient. Besides, the direction for the wind at the near-surface and lower troposphere (925 and 850 hPa) exhibited a larger variance over the period 1979–2021, which could be associated with the strong turbulence of PBL caused by the heterogeneous land surface. For those pressure levels higher than 850 hPa, large wind directional variance was merely found to the south of 25 °N. The findings from long-term radiosonde measurements in winter over China shed light on the changes in wind speed on the ground and upper atmosphere under global warming from an observational perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid growth in the Chinese construction industry is exposing many design professionals to elevated stress levels with negative implications for their health and well-being, and in-turn project outcomes. However, it is surprising that there has been little research into job stressors affecting design professionals in the construction industry. The aim of this paper is to help address this gap in knowledge by reporting the results of research that explored the job stressors of design professionals and how they vary across various personal and workplace characteristics. Data was collected via a survey of 408 design professionals in the Chinese construction industry, supported by in-depth sensemaking interviews with nine Chinese design professionals. Survey data was analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics combined with qualitative analysis of interview transcripts. Results indicate that task-related stressors are the leading sources of job stress for design professionals in the industry. Managing job workload, job requirements, and job ambiguity are the main task-related stressors and are linked to time pressures, working overtime, high workload, balancing multiple projects, and high levels of responsibility. Results also indicate that gender, marital status, age, education background, years of design experience, design discipline, position, and professional title are mediating factors in a design professional's job stressor profile. Being the first large-scale empirical investigation of the job stressors among design professionals in the Chinese construction industry, the findings provide new empirical and conceptual insights into an increasingly important yet under researched problem and concludes with practical recommendations to reduce job stress for design professionals in the industry, which has broader relevance in other countries. The current research findings have important practical implications for Chinese design professionals and for managers of design organizations and construction projects in China that involve design professionals. By providing new insights into the critical stressors that affect design professionals and the influence of personal and workplace characteristics on their job stressors, this research provides a strong empirical foundation for new evidence-based stress management initiatives and policies to reduce job stressors in this critically important professional group. For example, this may include involving design professionals or design organizations in the redesign of their jobs and working environments and the development of flexibility policies that enable better work-life balance, such as working remotely, paternity leave, and shorter work weeks. More importantly, the findings point to the importance of changing the demanding nature of work in the construction industry and developing more targeted measures to improve individual resilience and stress-coping capabilities for design professionals, especially those subgroups to which the results indicate are subject to stronger job stressors. These groups include electrical design professionals, design professionals with a higher level of education or job position, and professionals with family caring responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to position socialist China in the mobility of global socialism in the context of Cold‐War politics. It examines how the techno‐politics of China and the Soviet‐bloc's socialist tropical architecture differently reconfigured thermal exchanges between the environment, human body and a series of other multi‐scalar things in Africa during the 1960s−1980s. Drawing on the theories of thermal material culture, techno‐politics and science and technology studies (STS), it constructs a cross‐cultural comparison between China and Soviet‐bloc, aiming to achieve a more nuanced techno‐political understanding of mid‐late twentieth century socialist architecture in the Global South. It also hopes to contribute to recent scholarship about thermal comfort and governance in the context of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space and bodies have been conceptualized as products and producers of social relations. They are woven together to shape identities, belongings, and cultures. This paper links culture to the mutual construction of space and bodies to spatialize the embodied lives of rural Chinese boys. Stories from a qualitative study of two middle schools illustrate how these rural boys experience embodied exclusions during the making of a learning space. These students also redefine the dominant meaning of the school space through an embodied-discursive construction of their lives. They shift their interests away from academic learning and move to emphasize social knowledge that focuses on social relations and social abilities. However, their re-appropriation of the space is interpreted as a gendered expression of noncooperation, which leads to their further marginalization within the academic-oriented space. This analysis examines in which body and which space is the rural boys' resistance produced. Turning to spatiality and embodiment provides an alternative interpretation of the counter-school culture of rural Chinese boys, which helps us more fully recognize the need for re-placing rural bodies in the Chinese education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, the central government enjoys paramount authority in (re)writing national history, and its interpretation is promoted through various channels to shape people's national identity. Over the past two decades, the Chinese government has promoted a nationalistic history to promote a Han‐dominant Chinese identity. This nationalistic approach to Chinese history stands in contrast to China's multicultural society and the government's affirmation of multicultural aims as the core values and future goals of the nation. It was expected that the government would rethink and revise nationalistic history to recognize diverse groups and accommodate their needs in the Xi Jinping era. However, this paper shows that the current government continues to emphasize a version of national history that encourages a nationalistic sentiment and discourse. This approach to Chinese history risks strengthening xenophobic sentiments and behaviour in China, and could become coercive for Chinese people who hold different interpretations or expect a more comprehensive interpretation of national history. I argue that a critical multicultural approach can help develop a more inclusive and balanced national history and identity in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1990, the participation of China in the global imports of Latin America (LAC) was incipient, while by 2019, China had become the second largest supplier of the region. This paper uses a sample of 14 LAC countries, estimates the effects of imports from China on each LAC country's economic growth, and verifies if these effects are evidenced in these countries' non-exporting or exporting sectors. This study proposes a Seemingly-Unrelated-Regressions (SUR) system for each sector. Results show that before China entered into World Trade Organization (WTO), LAC imports from China positively affected the economic growth of some LAC countries. However, beneficiary countries increased after China's adhesion to WTO. Imports from China drive the economic growth of the non-exporting sectors of Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and El Salvador, the exporting sector of the Dominican Republic, and both sectors of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Except for the Dominican Republic, the countries whose export sectors benefit from China's imports are primary exporting countries. Adverse or null effects are estimated for the rest of the countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's west has long been framed as an undeveloped frontier, set apart by poverty and a resource-based economy. Since the 2000s, however, utility-scale renewable energy infrastructure has expanded rapidly in western China, promising local economic benefits tied to national low-carbon transition. This paper contends that these benefits have been precarious and unevenly distributed. I argue that utility-scale renewable energy has remade western China as a "low-carbon frontier," a resource-rich region that generates low-carbon value for the national green economy. I highlight three features of low-carbon frontiers: they are constructed as spaces of exploitable low-carbon resources, creating an investment boom; they are enclosed through new land arrangements and infrastructure construction, rapidly and with little coordination; and they are reliant on external markets and policy decisions, entrenching dependency. These conditions make it difficult for frontier regions to capture sustained economic development benefits from the boom in the absence of persistent central state supports. I analyse these features by comparing two sets of technologies with similar, but ultimately diverging, trajectories: small and large hydropower in China's south-west, and solar and wind in the north-west. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the carbon neutrality goals set post-Paris Climate Conference (COP21), this study delves into the relationship between green technology innovations, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions in China, spanning the period of 1990 to 2021. The objective of this paper is to creatively present the idea of a low-carbon digital economy from the viewpoint of digital technology. Utilizing the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model, we scrutinize this relationship, employing unit-root testing to verify the integrative attributes of the variables, inclusive of structural break data. Further analysis using the bootstrap Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing method corroborates the relationship between these key variables. The study reveals unidirectional co-integration over time among green technology innovations, renewable and non-renewable energy, per capita income, population, and CO2 emissions as per the Granger causality test. Interestingly, our findings suggest that while green technology innovation, per capita income, and renewable energy contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions, non-renewable energy consumption and population growth exacerbate them. These insights offer valuable guidance for policymakers in formulating comprehensive strategies to enhance environmental quality through the promotion of renewable energy and green technology innovations, with a specific emphasis on the Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States (U.S.) and China are key to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and reaching carbon neutrality by around mid-century. Despite differences, carbon neutrality will be met more rapidly if the two countries coordinate and facilitate synergies in carbon-neutral technologies and policy development and implementation. Building on long-term pathway models in the U.S. and China, current emissions trends and sources, and a policy analysis, this paper puts forward a novel framework for U.S.-China coordination on carbon neutrality. The analysis reveals similar technology and policy pathways, policy gaps, and shared milestones for decarbonization in 2030, 2040, and 2050-2060. The main technological pathways focus on reductions in energy demand and non-energy-related CO2 emissions, decarbonization of electricity and fuels, and increases in electrification rates and CO2 sequestration. Given existing domestic policies and opportunities for further action, areas for coordination on carbon neutrality include common policy milestones; dialogue and technical exchange; research, development, and demonstration (RD&D); and international climate leadership. Despite escalated tensions between the U.S. and China, and challenges for climate cooperation, coordination between both countries on carbon neutrality is both possible and necessary. Carbon neutrality will be met more swiftly if the U.S. and China coordinate and facilitate synergies in carbon-neutral technologies and policy. Despite the rise in geo-political tensions between the U.S. and China, coordination on carbon neutrality is both possible and necessary. An analytical framework for U.S.-China coordination on carbon neutrality, includes technology and policy pathways, and common milestones of key sectors' decarbonization for 2030, 2040, and 2050-2050. The two countries could coordinate on common policy milestones, dialogue and technical exchange, research and development, and international climate leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In autocracies facing widespread corruption, the allocation of the scant attention available for fighting corruption strongly affects corruption control. Although research has found that authoritarian regimes tend to fight corruption selectively, it is unknown whether and how autocracies allocate attention across different policy areas to combat corruption. We propose that single‐party authoritarian regimes can steer anticorruption attention to the policy domains prioritized by the central authority through the mechanism of cross‐organizational policy coordination. Using original datasets compiled from Chinese governmental and procuratorial policy papers from 1998 to 2016, we demonstrate that Chinese prosecutors direct anticorruption attention to the policy domains accentuated in the central government's major reforms. Our field interviews support this finding and reveal possible disruption of anticorruption efforts in policy domains falling off the central government's top list. Thus, we extend the research on political influence over anticorruption agencies and show that single‐party regimes can instrumentalize anticorruption to serve the government's policy agenda, driving the allocation of limited anticorruption attention across policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban areas mediate climate transformations and generate new forms of climate urbanism. Looking at climate action in the twelve fastest-growing cities in China with under one million people, this paper proposes a perspective on urban climate politics 'from elsewhere' that foregrounds the potential role of smaller urban areas in mediating climate transformations. The analysis reveals three climate action strategies that reflect practical, institutional, and personal spheres of climate transformations. Planning action in the personal sphere provides opportunities for urban transformations. A perspective 'from elsewhere' calls for greater attention to planning for diverse change strategies for climate transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following economic reforms, China has become one of the premiere destinations for foreign capital; however, the benefits of this spectacular growth are not evenly distributed. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the Chinese government has designed and implemented policies to encourage foreign investment in central and western provinces to help decrease the significant distributional differences in regional industrial value-added, with limited success. In contrast to previous literature, this paper uses Panel Least Squares method to analyze empirically the impact of industrial sector FDI on Chinese regional inequality in industrial value-added 2003–2013, using three Chinese regions. The lack of prerequisite institutional structure to aid in FDI absorption affects location choices. Despite government policies to support inland regional economic development, foreign firms still prefer to invest in coastal provinces, further illustrating the effects of regional clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to investigate the opposing trends in Chinese urban and rural household savings rates observed in the micro data during the period 1995-2013. Using the Chinese Household Income Project Survey (CHIPS) data, we find that the average urban household savings rate has consistently risen while the average rural household savings rate has gone the opposite direction during the same period. Using a variant of Deaton-Paxson decomposition analysis, we find that urban and rural households displayed vastly different life-cycle savings rate profiles. Results from the median regression and Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition suggest that the increasing urban savings rate can be explained by the continuously rising household income and increased precautionary savings for health shocks, whereas the shifts in household characteristics examined were not able to account for the decrease in rural household savings rate. The urban-rural savings disparities can be fully explained by the urban-rural income gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent formulations of state capitalism tend to present it as a distinct system, anchored in China, in opposition to a neoliberal model represented by the United States and its global armatures. As an alternative to this binarism, this paper argues for Gillian Hart's relational-comparative approach to the geographies of the new state capitalism. It outlines three of Hart's theoretical-methodological principles—multiple trajectories, conjunctural analysis, and articulation—and demonstrates how they can be used to analyze the interrelations between "statist" and "liberal" development trajectories, through an empirical account of conjunctural struggles in and between China and the World Bank during the Tiananmen Square crisis. It argues that Tiananmen was an inflection point in the relation between the development trajectories of the Chinese state and the World Bank, where conflicts over the continuity of economic reform were simultaneously struggles over the boundaries of the state. Examining these institutions conjuncturally shows that China's "state capitalism" is not an opposite of the Bank's liberal model, but has been, in part, produced through power-laden contests over the meaning and materiality of state and market in multiple arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the sustainability of the Chinese transportation sector by examining the relationship between energy consumption (and CO2 emissions), transportation modes, and macroeconomic variables. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Neural Networks (NN) are combined using monthly data from January 1999 to December 2017. Our goal is to propose a model that links China's transportation footprint to major macroeconomic factors while simultaneously controlling each mode of transportation. Inflation and credit policies exert relatively weak effects on the explained variable. In contrast, trade and fixed asset investments, as well as monetary and fiscal policies, show a positive and significant impact. The use of waterways and airways plays an imperative role in sustainable development compared to the use of roads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influences of human activity on regional climate over China have been widely reported and drawn great attention from both the scientific community and governments. This paper reviews the evidence of the anthropogenic influence on regional climate over China from the perspectives of surface air temperature (SAT), precipitation, droughts, and surface wind speed, based on studies published since 2018. The reviewed evidence indicates that human activities, including greenhouse gas and anthropogenic aerosol emissions, land use and cover change, urbanization, and anthropogenic heat release, have contributed to changes in the SAT trend and the likelihood of regional record-breaking extreme high/low temperature events over China. The anthropogenically forced SAT signal can be detected back to the 1870s in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau region. Although the anthropogenic signal of summer precipitation over China is detectable and anthropogenic forcing has contributed to an increased likelihood of regional record-breaking heavy/low precipitation events, the anthropogenic precipitation signal over China is relatively obscure. Moreover, human activities have also contributed to a decline in surface wind speed, weakening of monsoon precipitation, and an increase in the frequency of droughts and compound extreme climate/weather events over China in recent decades. This review can serve as a reference both for further understanding the causes of regional climate changes over China and for sound decision-making on regional climate mitigation and adaptation. Additionally, a few key or challenging scientific issues associated with the human influence on regional climate changes are discussed in the context of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, a frequent claim among speakers of local Chinese languages (called fangyan in Chinese) is that their native languages preserve the language of antiquity better than the Beijing-based national language, Mandarin. This paper explores the origin of these claims and probes their significance in the making of the Han ethnoracial collective identity. I argue that claims of linguistic proximity to the imagined ancient origins of Chinese civilization represent a form of "hegemonic Han-ness"—an idealized form of the Han collective identity that was both internally hegemonic, in that it was meant to supersede other expressions of Han-ness, and externally hegemonic, in that it was meant to uphold the superiority of the Han people over other ethnoracial groups. From Zhang Taiyan, whose work provided a model for drawing linguistic connections between contemporary local languages and the language spoken at the dawn of Chinese civilization, to local gazetteer authors, who used linguistic data to prove their mother tongues directly had preserved the language of antiquity without being adulterated by the languages of non-Han peoples, this paper explores how various groups drew upon the cultural power of an idealized Han-centered past to challenge the authority afforded to the national language by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]