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While Western foreign correspondence is retreating, Chinese central media and correspondents, resourced by the government's financial backing for media's role in public diplomacy, are taking the opportunities to expand overseas bureaus, hire experienced local employees, enhance the quantity and quality of international news reporting, use digital technologies in newsgathering and dissemination, and receive Western-style trainings. Against this backdrop, this paper studies the identities, media cultures, and journalistic practices of Chinese foreign correspondents, as well as the international news output, and media-audience and media-foreign policy relationships. In doing so, we propose a new six-level theoretical model: (1) journalists' identities; (2) cultures; (3) practices; (4) news output; (5) news dissemination, reception, and audiences' interactions; and (6) the impacts of international news coverage. Based on semi-structured interviews with Chinese resident journalists over eight years, we argue that the media-audience and media- foreign policy relationships in China have become more interactive, dynamic, and complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expenditure on R&D in China's construction industry has been relatively low in comparison with many developed countries for a number of years-a situation considered to be a major barrier to the industry's competitiveness in general and unsatisfactory as regards industry development of the 31 regions involved. A major problem with this is the lack of a sufficiently sophisticated method of objectively evaluating R&D activity in what are quite complex circumstances considering the size and regional differences that exist in this part of the world. A regional construction R&D evaluation system (RCRES) is presented, aimed at rectifying the situation. This is based on 12 indicators drawn from the Chinese Government's R&D Inventory of Resources in consultation with a small group of experts in the field, and further factor analysed into three groups. From this, the required evaluation is obtained by a simple formula. Examination of the results provides a ranking list of the R&D performance of each of the 31 regions, indicating a general disproportion between coastal and inland regions and highlighting regions receiving special emphasis or currently lacking in development. The understanding on this is vital for the future of China's construction industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]