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Paper mill sludge (PMS) is featured with a high content of cellulose and hemicellulose, and using its characteristics to make paperboard can achieve a high-value utilization of PMS, which has attracted growing interest. In this study, currently prevalent landfill, incineration technologies (generating heat and electricity by incineration), and three paperboard technologies (medium density fiberboard, pulp board, and corrugated paper) were evaluated and compared via life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) methods. LCA results show that the PMS-to-pulp board outperforms others with an energy conservation and emission reduction (ECER) value of − 2.86 × 10−8, while the landfill exhibits the highest overall environmental impact with an ECER value of 4.80 × 10−9. LCC results reveal that the PMS-to-pulp board delivers the highest economic profit with $257.357, while the landfill is the lowest with $ − 35.63. The PMS paperboard technologies are more economically friendly than the incineration technologies due to additional electricity/steam consumption during the PMS pre-drying process in incineration. In addition, different scenarios were set up to explore national GHG emission reduction potential by increasing paperboard technologies application rate and reducing the proportion of landfill and incineration. The scenario analysis suggests that replacing 90% of landfill and incineration ratio with PMS paperboard technologies could tremendously improve the overall emission reduction performance with − 9.08 × 1010 kg CO2 eq. This result indicates that the PMS treatment technology transformation has a significant favorable impact on the achievement of the "carbon neutrality" target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congestion is a well-known economic phenomenon in which excessive inputs lead to a decrease in the maximum possible outputs. This study analyzes the relationship between congestion and overinvestment using a data envelopment analysis framework to reveal that some congestion can be eliminated by increasing inputs. The proposed approach classifies congestion into two categories, relative and absolute congestion, depending on the possibility of eliminating congestion by increasing inputs. Corresponding methods for identifying and measuring congestion are proposed and employed for empirical analyses examining China's papermaking and paper products industry. We find that most congestion in 2013–2016 is in the relative congestion and could be eliminated by increasing inputs. The primary causes of congestion are identified based on our analysis and corresponding policy suggestions are proposed for eliminating congestion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive daytime radiative cooling (PRDC) is a promising technology providing a cooling strategy that radiates heat directly into outer space without additional energy consumption, a crucial consideration in controlling construction energy consumption. However, the preparation of PRDC materials with controlled radiative properties is still challenging because the radiative interface must be maintained in a clean environment. Herein, a densely distributed porous hybrid aerogel with controlled radiative properties was fabricated using the wollastonite and cellulose as building blocks for building energy-saving applications. To do this, the cellulose pulp was obtained by using waste paper as raw material. Then, the hybrid aerogels, comprising paper cellulose and wollastonite particles, were fabricated by combining the acrylic acid polymers (PAA) bonding, freeze drying and vapor deposition modification. The radiative cooling hybrid aerogel exhibits high solar reflectivity (94.6%) and high atmospheric emissivity (95.1%), due to the laminated design of wollastonite randomly dispersed in the radiative hybrid aerogel. The excellent PRDC capability is also proven by outdoor tests where practical temperature difference is ~ 6.3 ℃ and the maximum cooling power of 147.4 Wm−2 under direct sun irradiance. Wettability test infers that the hybrid aerogel has a static water contact angle of 144.07° ± 2°, thereby indicating its hydrophobicity. In addition, based on the Energyplus simulation, the hybrid aerogel exhibits an average annual cooling energy saving of 8% in buildings across China. The excellent radiative cooling and self-cleaning properties of hybrid aerogel make it durable for long-term outdoor PRDC applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Eliminating congestion in China's papermaking and paper products industry: from both the perspective of increasing and decreasing inputs" published in the Journal of Productivity Analysis. The authors acknowledge that there is overlap and duplication between their paper and a previously published paper, and they apologize for not acknowledging this in their article. The correction notice provides the correct citation for the original article and states that the authors regret the lack of transparency regarding the similarities between the two papers. [Extracted from the article]

Green bonds, a new green financial instrument, encourage enterprises to achieve high-quality development through green technology innovation. However, a lack of research is currently being conducted into the effect of green bond issuance in China. Can green bonds effectively empower enterprises to green innovation? What is the underlying mechanism? In the context of carbon-neutral strategies, it is significant to answer these questions scientifically. This paper uses a quasi-natural experiment of the launch of the green bond market in China in 2016 to conduct empirical studies based on the panel data of 1 558 non-financial Chinese-listed enterprises from 2015 to 2020 with the multi-period difference-in-difference model. The results show that ① issuing green bonds can significantly empower enterprises' green technology innovation. The empowering effect is mainly for green utility patents rather than green invention patents. This result remains after dynamic heterogeneity analysis, placebo test, and other tests. In addition, the effect has a lag. ② Heterogeneity tests show that this empowerment effect varies across enterprises with different property rights, industries, and regions. ③ In terms of the mechanism of action, green bonds can enhance enterprises' ability to innovate green technology by increasing the proportion of long-term loans and improving their debt structure. This paper broadens the relevant literature on the economic consequences of green bonds and the influencing factors of enterprises' green technology innovation and provides policy suggestions for further improving the analysis of green bonds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the theory of developmental evaluation, this paper develops a new development-oriented research evaluation model called "four abilities", with "basic development ability", "process development ability", "achievement ability" and "influence ability" as key dimensions, which can be applied in different situations such as recruitment, performance appraisal, promotion evaluation, tenure review, and selection of honorary academic awards. Based on the data from the Youth Fund of the Ministry of Management Science of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) from 2014 to 2018, this paper takes the developmental evaluation of early career researchers as an example, treating the existing research output as the development goal and the "development ability" of early career researchers as the explanatory factor. Then the propensity score matching method (PSM) method is adopted to control the sample self-selection bias in the way of reverse order evaluation, so as to explain whether the guiding indicator "development ability" is conducive to the development of researchers. The results indicate that strong "process development ability" of newly recruited researchers in the first 3 years of employment period can significantly promote their future research performance, which has important implications for the current evaluative culture overemphasizing short-term output. Through the application of the "four abilities" model integrating various dimensions composed of potential, capacity, output and impact, researchers at different career stages are guided to concentrate more on long-term academic mission and to achieve better career development based on their differentiated development needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy shortage and excessive carbon emissions have become the main constraints to the sustainable development of China's logistics industry. Improving the efficiency of the logistics industry is crucial to promoting regional ecological environment protection and sustainable development of the logistics industry. In this paper, the efficiency of China's logistics industry in 2013–2019 is evaluated by using the non-oriented EBM model considering the unexpected output, and then the influencing factors of the efficiency of the logistics industry in the central region are analyzed by using the panel Tobit model. The results show that the logistics industry in the central region is at a low efficiency level. Factors, such as the level of economic development, industrial structure and technical level have a significant positive impact on the efficiency of the logistics industry in the central region, while factors such as government support and logistics infrastructure have a significant negative impact on the efficiency of the logistics industry in the central region. Finally, the paper puts forward some targeted recommendations for the sustainable development of the logistics industry in the central region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of society, the number of female-headed households is on the rise. Based on the data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) in 2019, this paper establishes a Tobit model to study the influence of female-headed households on household debt risk. Results indicate that female-headed households can substantially reduce household debt risk, and this conclusion still holds after overcoming endogeneity issues. Further tests on the mediating effect reveal that risk aversion and housing property holding have partial mediating effects and masking effects, respectively, in the path of female-headed households affecting household debt risk. In addition, the heterogeneity analysis indicates that the influence of female-headed households on household debt risk is more significant in third-tier cities, as well as in families without children, families without elderly members, and families with more than two elderly members. The conclusions of this paper provide a reference for the relevant policy measures to reduce household debt risk and promote gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the exogenous shock of China's formal implementation of the environmental information disclosure system in 2008 to construct a quasi-natural experiment. Based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2019, the propensity score matching and difference in difference (PSM-DID) approach was used to systematically evaluate the impact of environmental information disclosure on energy efficiency. Overcoming the difficulties in measuring environmental information disclosure and the endogenous problem, this paper investigates the energy-saving effect of environmental information disclosure and illustrates its mechanism for the first time. The results show that environmental information disclosure significantly improved energy efficiency, and public participation played an important role in energy conservation, a conclusion that remained true after a series of robustness tests. The test of the impact mechanism shows that environmental information disclosure can achieve the goal of improving energy efficiency by promoting industrial structure upgrading and technological innovation. This paper enriches the discussion on the relationship between environmental information disclosure and energy efficiency, and provides useful policy inspiration for improving the level of energy efficiency and achieving sustainable economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the internal heterogeneity within the informal economy by examining the working conditions of migrant informal workers in China. It presents the first attempt to test the WIEGO model on the relationship between informality, income, poverty and gender. Based on 107,020 samples of informal workers from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), economic, social and occupational health components of working conditions of migrant informal workers in five employment-status tiers are analysed. The results show the significant heterogeneity within informal workers in terms of their income, working intensity, labour contracts, social security, union and community support. The relationships between the informal employment tiers and income, poverty and gender show a pattern that is not fully in line with the WIEGO model, suggesting the complexity and plurality of heterogeneities in informal employment. The paper concludes by calling for research on regional varieties of the heterogeneity in informal employment worldwide to better understand the unfolding of the inequality-informality nexus in specific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deep sea has abundant resources and is regarded as the "sixth continent" that humans can use. Although research on the deep sea has made some progress, its exploration is not deep enough. The acquisition and analysis of deep-sea images can provide important technical means for deep-sea exploration and the acquisition of information. However, there is currently no complete underwater image dataset. For this reason, this paper is the first deep-sea visual dataset of the South China Sea, contains over 100 TB videos and 1 million high quality images. This paper also applies the dataset to underwater image enhancement and image superresolution, and the experiment proves the effectiveness of the dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to enlighten current and future research trends on political connections by providing complete bibliometric mapping through network studies on political connections. Utilizing Biblioshiny, the Bibliometrics R package, multi-perspective research publications on political connections from 2003 to the third quarter of 2023 were discovered and analyzed. This bibliometric analysis provides valuable insights regarding current and future publications on political connections. The most prolific contributors, the most used keywords, the most productive countries and sources, the most cited publications, and the most productive sources of information are network analysis data about co-occurrence networks. The discourse revolves around issue mapping data on political connection studies. The search method used to find related literature is the Scopus database. This research contributes valuable information to help other researchers map ongoing and future investigations into political connections. This bibliometric analysis of 294 documents is the first regarding political connections known to researchers. This evaluation emphasizes annual publication trends, authors, publications, countries, organizations, and most productive sources, determining potential future research objectives. The research on political connections was published in early 2003. No papers were released on this subject for 3 years after 2003 (2003–2005), which shows that the growth of this academic field slowed down for ten years. There were significant changes in 2011, and many more linked papers have been released. Authors from the USA and China significantly contributed to the initial scientific journal papers on their political connections. Hong Kong, China, and Australia are recognized as leading nations in scholarly contributions to studying political connections. Chinese scholars spearheaded the collaborative publication effort focused on political connections, with the USA and Australian experts following suit. Based on indexed terms, political connections, sustainable development, and financial performance are trending keywords. These results show possible directions for further research into political connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on China's political influence in international affairs, as mediated by Chinese economic integration with the BRI countries. We propose that the BRI plays a role in influencing partner countries to support China's presence in the international community, and the economic integration of the BRI positively mediates the willingness of partner countries to align with China in international affairs. This paper uses panel data from 147 BRI countries collected between 2009 and 2020, and the difference-in-differences method, to estimate the political influence of the BRI. The results suggest that the BRI motivates partner countries to support the growth of China's influence in international affairs. The results of the causal mechanism analysis indicate that a significant and positive association between the implementation of the BRI and China's influence is mediated by promoting Chinese contracts, trade overseas, and outward FDI. The examinations of heterogeneity demonstrate that BRI countries that are developing, non-landlocked, non-neighboring, having signed the memorandum of understanding or cooperation memorandum of understanding, or lacking a Chinese investment guide are more likely to support China's political presence. This paper concludes with insights into how China implements the BRI to enhance its political ascent in the global order by facilitating economic integration of the BRI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the Chinese government has initiated assertive centralization efforts in its approach to environmental governance. However, the efficacy of these initiatives demonstrates marked variability across different sectors. While the central-local relational framework has traditionally been employed to elucidate these disparities, its explanatory power is showing signs of strain. This paper, through policy analysis and field interviews, investigates regulatory conflicts in land use for ecological and agricultural purposes within China. The findings highlight instances of overlapping jurisdictions and discordant policy objectives among agencies responsible for delineating ecological spaces and agricultural zones. While these conflicts seem to stem from the dynamics between the central and local governments, they more accurately reflect the inherent characteristics of fragmented authoritarianism. This paper aims to expand the theory of fragmented authoritarianism by incorporating the dimension of inter-departmental competition into environmental governance, moving beyond the traditional binary analysis framework of central-local relations. It seeks to understand and critique its limitations from a broader perspective, emphasizing the role of departmental competition within fragmented authoritarianism. By analyzing this internal mechanism, the paper reveals a more nuanced governance landscape, essentially replacing the traditional central-local paradigm with a model that situates departmental competition within the overall context of fragmented authoritarianism. We propose two models for delineating competition among governmental institutions: the bureaucratic model and the charisma model, thereby advancing and deepening the application of fragmented authoritarianism theory in China's environmental governance. This provides new theoretical insights for understanding the current challenges and developments in China's environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How has China's privacy protection strategy been developed, with its broad scope and stringent requirements for data localization and cross-border data flows? What are the broader geopolitical implications of its divergence from Western models of data privacy? This paper argues that China's privacy protection strategy, characterized by its comprehensive regulatory framework and government access to data, is redefining the contours of global data governance and creating new geopolitical fault lines. Drawing on official documents, laws, regulations, and a case study, this paper highlights the evolution of the regulatory framework in response to emerging challenges posed by technological innovations and the wider geopolitical environment. This paper contributes to the broader discussion regarding the implications of China's privacy protection approach, highlighting potential normative clashes with countries that favor a more open digital economy. China's efforts in developing its own privacy protection strategy have also resulted in the formulation of global standards for data privacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental protection supervision is an important manifestation of ecological accountability system reform. Taking the implementation of China's central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) policy as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper applies the time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) model to identify the impact of the CEPI policy on the likelihood of enterprises' environmental violations. The main conclusions include: (1) the implementation of CEPI policy is conducive to inhibiting environmental violations. After a series of robustness tests, including the parallel trend test, the placebo test, the exclusion of policy interference, and the replacement of explained variables, the result remains robust. In terms of dynamic perspective, there is a lag in the impact of CEPI policy on enterprises' environmental violations. (2) The effect of CEPI policy is more prominent on samples of large enterprises, enterprises with highly concentrated equity, enterprises that polluted heavily, enterprises owned by executives with a political background, and enterprises that are situated in regions with higher level of marketization and more developed information infrastructure. (3) The CEPI policy can restrain the environmental violations of enterprises by a dual mechanism of releasing punishment and deterrence signals from the external governance, and forcing enterprises to enhance environmental management system from the internal governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carrying out low-carbon economic cooperation under the belt and road initiative (BRI) is an important measure to actively respond to climate change and maintain global ecological security. With the continuous development of national strength, the Chinese government should actively fulfill environmental responsibility in the BRI economic cooperation. Existing studies have pointed out that the Chinese government can promote low-carbon economic cooperation in BRI through outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), and emphasized the significance of the Chinese government's participation. However, they have not revealed the relationship between China's environmental responsibility and the construction of a green BRI. To fill this gap, this paper analyzes the strategic choices and relevant influencing factors of the Chinese government, governments of countries along the BRI, and Chinese OFDI enterprises in the BRI low-carbon economic cooperation. Through parameter assignment and simulation, this paper draws the following conclusions: (1) The Chinese government should decide whether to take the initiative to fulfill environmental responsibility according to the economic development level of countries along the BRI; (2) The Chinese government fulfilling environmental responsibility is positive and effective for the responsible investment of Chinese OFDI enterprises; (3) The Chinese government fulfilling environmental responsibility can enhance the initiative of countries along the BRI to positive governance, but this enhancement is not last. More importantly, the environmental responsibility of the Chinese government is not simply to provide subsidies to countries along the BRI. Various measures must be taken by the Chinese government to fulfill its environmental responsibility in the BRI economic cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To understand the current status of research in the field of metaverse, and to analyze the research progress and evolutionary trends in this field. Methods: Based on the bibliometric analysis, a total of 921 papers were obtained by searching the Web of science core database for the keyword "metaverse". CiteSpace was used to visualize and analyze the current status and trends of metaverse research in China. Results: Ireland is currently the country with the highest research impact. China is currently the country with the largest number of publications in this field, but the impact of the research is insufficient. The current research in the highly cited literature focuses on technical and history reviews of the metaverse as well as its development in the field of education. Artificial Intelligence and utaut2 are the underlying clusters of cited literature in this research area. Several research hotspots have been formed, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, digital twins and artificial intelligence. Conclusion: The current research on metaverse in various fields is basically in its infancy, but has a great potential for future development and will gradually penetrate into many different directions with many challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Durability is one of the technical bottlenecks restricting fuel cell electric vehicle development. As a result, significant time and resources have been invested in research related to this area worldwide. Current durability research mainly focuses on the single cell and stack levels, which is quite different from the usage scenarios of actual vehicles. There is almost no research on developing durability test cycles on the fuel cell system level. This paper proposes a universal model for developing a durability test cycle for fuel cell system based on the China automotive test cycle. Large-scale comparison tests of the fuel cell systems are conducted. After 1000 h test, the output performance degradation of three mass-produced fuel cell system is 14.49%, 9.59%, and 4.21%, respectively. The test results show that the durability test cycle proposed in this paper can effectively accelerate the durability test of the fuel cell system and evaluate the durability performance of the fuel cell system. Moreover, the methodology proposed in this paper could be used in any other test cycles such as NEDC (New European Driving Cycle), WLTC (Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure), etc. And it has comprehensive application value and are significant for reducing the cost of durability testing of fuel cell systems and promoting the industrialization of fuel cell electric vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship education (EE) has rapidly evolved within higher education and has emerged as a pivotal mechanism for cultivating innovative and entrepreneurial talent. In China, while EE has made positive strides, it still faces a series of practical challenges. These issues cannot be effectively addressed solely through the efforts of universities. Based on the triple helix (TH) theory, this study delves into the unified objectives and practical content of EE in Chinese higher education. Through a comprehensive literature review on EE, coupled with educational objectives, planned behavior, and entrepreneurship process theories, this study introduces the 4H objective model of EE. 4H stands for Head (mindset), Hand (skill), Heart (attitude), and Help (support). Additionally, the research extends to a corresponding content model that encompasses entrepreneurial learning, entrepreneurial practice, startup services, and the entrepreneurial climate as tools for achieving the objectives. Based on a single-case approach, this study empirically explores the application of the content model at T-University. Furthermore, this paper elucidates how the university plays a role through the comprehensive development of entrepreneurial learning, practices, services, and climate in nurturing numerous entrepreneurs and facilitating the flourishing of the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem. This paper provides important contributions in its application of TH theory to develop EE within the Chinese context, and it provides clear guidance by elucidating the core objectives and practical content of EE. The proposed conceptual framework serves not only as a guiding tool but also as a crucial conduit for fostering the collaborative development of the EE ecosystem. To enhance the robustness of the framework, this study advocates strengthening empirical research on TH theory through multiple and comparative case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective forecasting of energy consumption structure is vital for China to reach its "dual carbon" objective. However, little attention has been paid to existing studies on the holistic nature and internal properties of energy consumption structure. Therefore, this paper incorporates the theory of compositional data into the study of energy consumption structure, which not only takes into account the specificity of the internal features of the structure, but also digs deeper into the relative information. Meanwhile, based on the minimization theory of squares of the Aitchison distance in the compositional data, a combined model based on the three single models, namely the metabolism grey model (MGM), back-propagation neural network (BPNN) model, and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, is structured in this paper. The forecast results of the energy consumption structure in 2023–2040 indicate that the future energy consumption structure of China will evolve towards a more diversified pattern, but the proportion of natural gas and non-fossil energy has yet to meet the policy goals set by the government. This paper not only suggests that compositional data from joint prediction models have a high applicability value in the energy sector, but also has some theoretical significance for adapting and improving the energy consumption structure in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of global urban development, there are urgent ecological security and environmental pollution problems, green development is the fundamental way for urban sustainable development, economic transformation and mitigation of ecological and environmental problems. Based on the panel data of 283 cities at prefecture level and above in China from 2003 to 2017, this paper analyzes spatial–temporal evolution characteristics of urban green development efficiency (UGDE) and the peer effects of UGDE between cities of different grades. It is found that during the study period, in terms of temporal evolution, the average UGDE in China increased from 0.47 in 2003 to 0.61 in 2017, with a cumulative growth rate of 29.79%, showing a rising trend in general. In terms of spatial evolution, the number of low-efficiency cities and medium-efficiency cities continued to decrease. The eastern region has always been the main distribution area of higher-efficiency cities and high-efficiency cities; in the central region, UGDE in most cities improved significantly; in the western region, UGDE has always lagged behind that in the eastern and central regions. In addition, the center of gravity of UGDE presented a trend of northwest migration in general, with a total displacement of 100.07 km, and UGDE showed a spatial dispersion trend. The empirical results indicate that the improvement of UGDE in large cities has a driving effect on that in neighboring medium cities and small cities through the positive peer effect, and the growth of UGDE in medium cities has a promoting effect on that in neighboring small cities through the positive peer effect; the increase of UGDE in medium cities has a positive peer effect on that in neighboring large cities, and the growth of UGDE in small cities has a positive peer effect on that in neighboring medium cities; UGDE promotes each other between large cities through the positive peer effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ming Great Wall Military Defense System is the most complete ancient military cultural heritage in China, which is of great significance to the study of China's ancient military defense mechanism and pattern. Military settlement is an important carrier of this mechanism. The estimation and in-depth understanding of its value can further excavate the profound connotation of the military defense system and the Great Wall spatial pattern in the Ming Dynasty. This paper adopts the AHP-CRITIC weighting approach to determine the weights of the historical value, scientific value, social value, cultural value and artistic value of the settlement heritage, so as to construct the value evaluation model of military settlements, and takes 34 Ming Great Wall military settlements in the Liaoxi Corridor as an example for evaluation. The results of the evaluation identified the priority settlements for conservation and development, and also explored their relationship with historical status, urbanization processes and official policies. The evaluation model constructed in this paper has a certain universality, and can also be followed in the evaluation of other military settlements in the Ming Great Wall Defense System, so as to obtain the overall cognition of the settlement system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an ethnographic study of Chinese IT professionals who integrate a form of data culture into the digital platforms they design, maintain, and operate daily within one of China's tech giants, this paper reveals numerous overlaps and interrelations between the data practices of Chinese IT professionals and the broader social implications that arise from them. The aim is to foster a more productive dialogue between the social studies of quantification and platform studies. This original research proposes the backstage as a potent methodology for inquiring into the role of Chinese IT professionals and domestic tech giants in advancing measuring systems and audit culture. This paper concludes by suggesting that such an approach can also be applied to wider studies of the paradox in quantification between its general claims and specific effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the state government of China has vigorously supported the export of cultural projects. As the carrier of cultural output, television dramas carry important missions of cultural communication. In the age of convergence when the practice of watching television involves more viewer engagement, audience reception investigates how audiences may engage in a broad range of interactive experiences and activities. This paper focuses on the reception of Chinese television dramas streamed overseas on two prominent video streaming sites, YouTube and Rakuten Viki. Adopting a corpus-based approach, it first identifies the top ten most popular Chinese television dramas on the two sites. Subsequently, user-generated reviews and comments for the selected dramas are collected, and a corpus analysis is conducted on the data derived from the two platforms. The findings reveal that a) viewers exhibit a notable preference for Chinese contemporary dramas, and in particular, modern romance dramas; b) the predominant concerns underlying the reception of Chinese television dramas revolve around storylines, actors/characters and subtitles; c) reviews and comments related to subtitling can be categorized into distinct themes, which reveal the major concerns of international viewership. Through the investigation, this paper attempts to promote the translation and reception of Chinese television dramas and expand the export market of Chinese productions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the efficacy of corporate digital transformation on a firm's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) decoupling. Adopting the text analysis method and using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2019, this paper finds that digital transformation can significantly alleviate ESG decoupling, and this relationship persists after robustness tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that digital transformation reduces ESG decoupling by improving information processing ability and relieving information asymmetry. The relationship between corporate digital transformation and ESG decoupling is stronger among companies in eastern China and firms that do not follow GRI guidance. The economic consequence analysis suggests that corporate digital transformation promotes firms' high-quality development by reducing ESG decoupling. This study helps reveal corporate digital transformation's empowering role and governance role in ESG decoupling and contributes to the growing literature on ESG decoupling and corporate digital transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon emission reduction is an important means of achieving climate policy goals. However, the literature has neglected consideration of the carbon emission reduction mechanism from the perspective of technology risk spillovers in international trade. To explore this mechanism, this paper expands the classical linear model of foreign trade technology risk spillovers into a nonlinear spatial Durbin model. We construct a novel technology risk spillover index to forecast the magnitude of carbon emissions in agricultural trade across different regions. To validate our model, we consider the dual connotation of the spatial diffusion of disembodied technology communication (DTC) to map the relationships between different geographic and economic regions that are adjacent. The results suggest that disembodied technology risk spillover could promote carbon emission reductions. Specifically, technology risk spillovers from agricultural trade reduce agricultural carbon emissions by 0.79–1.16% in the local region. Disembodied technology risk spillovers also reduce agricultural carbon emissions by 2.85–11.57% in geographically adjacent regions and 4.9% in economically adjacent regions. Based on these conclusions, this paper proposes improving the closed and backward situation of rural areas in China's central and western regions, promoting the transition toward the high end of the global agricultural industry chain and developing productive agricultural services and the rural cultural tourism industry to expand rural employment channels and stabilize farmers' income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution poses a great danger to human health and economic development, and understanding people's willingness to pay for improved air quality (WTPA) impacts environmental protection. This paper investigates WTPA based on the perspective of subjective well-being (SWB) and analyzes the mediating role of social interaction on the relationship between the two. This paper distinguishes social interactions into online and offline interactions and analyzes whether the mediating effect of the two different interactions on SWB and WTPA exists separately. Using data from the 2018 China General Social Survey (CGSS), we find that SWB has a significant positive effect on WTPA, individuals with higher well-being have higher pro-environmental willingness; there is no age, education level, sex of the person, or regional heterogeneity in the effect of SWB on WTPA; offline social interactions play a partially mediating role between SWB and WTPA, while online social interactions failed to mediate between the two. This paper's policy implication is that improving residents' subjective well-being is both an important development goal and an essential way to resolve the conflict between economic development and environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, with the development of DC transmission projects in China, the number of converter stations has increased. Fire accidents in converter stations have also become more frequent. Transformer insulating paperboard, as a typical combustible material in converter station equipment, poses a greater fire risk. So in this paper, flame spreading behaviors, including experimental visual characteristics, fire spreading rate, mass loss with time and mass loss rate, of transformer insulating paperboard with different thickness and different inclined angles are investigated. The results show that: (1) In downwards flame spread, that is, in the case of positive angle, the flame height and width gradually decrease with the increase of angle; in the case of negatively inclined angles, the flame length shows an increasing trend with the decrease of inclined angles, and the flame thickness gradually becomes thinner. (2) In upwards flame spread, that is, in the case of negative angle, the fire spreading rate of the insulating paperboard decreases sharply with the increase of the angle; In the case of a positively inclined angle, the change of flame spreading rate is not obvious with the increase of inclined angles as compared with the conditions in negative angles. The paperboard thickness also has a significant impact on the flame spreading rate, and the flame spreading rate will decrease significantly with the increase of paperboard thickness. (3) In upwards flame spread, the mass loss rate of insulating paperboard will decrease significantly with the increase of inclined angles; in downwards flame spread, the change of mass loss rate is not obvious with the increase of inclined angles as compared with those in condition of negative angles. At the same time, the mass loss rate will increase significantly with the increase of paperboard thickness. (4) The mass loss rate and fire spread rate of the insulating paperboard have a strong correlation with the flame length and the length of the pyrolysis zone. A heat transfer process model about characteristic length scale and mass loss rate is established. In order to simplify the model, a dimensionless relation about angle is defined to replace the feature length and to explore the relationship between angle and mass loss rate. Based on the inherent relationship between fire spread rate and mass loss rate, the relationship between fire spread rate and angle is found. And the result shows satisfactory agreement between the predictions and experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate prediction of sea level height is critically important for the government in assessing sea level risk in coastal areas. However, due to the nonlinear, time-varying and highly uncertain characteristics of sea level change data, sea level prediction is challenging. To improve the accuracy of sea level prediction, this paper uses a new swarm intelligence algorithm named the sparrow search algorithm (SSA), which can imitate the foraging behavior and antipredation behavior of sparrows, to determine optimal solutions. To avoid the algorithm falling into a local optimal situation, this paper integrates the sine–cosine algorithm and the Cauchy variation strategy into the SSA to obtain an algorithm named the SCSSA. The SCSSA is used to optimize the parameter values of the CNN-BiLSTM (convolutional neural network combined with bidirectional long short-term memory neural network) model; finally, a combined neural network model (named SCSSA-CNN-BiLSTM) is proposed. In this paper, the time series data of seven tidal stations located in coastal China are used for experimental analysis. First, the SCSSA-CNN-BiLSTM model is compared with the CNN-BiLSTM model to predict the time series data of SHANWEI Station. With respect to the training and test sets of data, the SCSSA-CNN-BiLSTM model outperforms the other models on all the evaluation metrics. In addition, the remaining six tide station datasets and five neural network models, including the SCSSA-CNN-BiLSTM model, are used to further study the performance of the proposed prediction model. Four evaluation indices including the root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and coefficient of determination (R2) are adopted. For six stations, the RMSE, MAE, MAPE and R2 of SCSSA-CNN-BiLSTM model are ranged from 20.9217 ~ 27.8427 mm, 9.4770 ~ 17.8603 mm, 0.1322% ~ 0.2482% and 0.9119 ~ 0.9759, respectively. The experimental analysis results show that the SCSSA-CNN-BiLSTM model makes effective predictions at all stations, and the prediction performance is better than that of the other models. Even though the combination of SCSSA algorithm may increase the complexity of the model, indeed the proposed model is a new prediction method with good accuracy and robustness for predicting sea level change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, biochar application research has emerged as a hot topic in water treatment studies, which made biochar adsorption one of the primary wastewater treatment strategies. This paper presents a global bibliometric analysis of 2673 publications from the Web of Science database, spanning 2011–2022. For a comprehensive understanding of the research status and trends in biochar adsorption for wastewater treatment, the advanced quantitative and visual analysis tools (i.e., CiteSpace and ArcGIS) were employed. The results showed that China emerged as the leading country with the most published articles. The key research area is on the magnetic adsorption of biochar in wastewater. The articles summarized in the review demonstrated unequivocally that biochar can treat a wide range of wastewater even though the adsorption mechanisms of biochar on heavy metals, inorganic salts and organic pollutants in wastewater are not entirely consistent. The review further analyzes the factors affecting the performance of biochar in adsorbing pollutants from wastewater and the improvement measures of biochar functional characteristics, proposing the future research directions focusing on the improvement of the adsorption capacity of biochar products. The information synthesis and discussion would provide valuable insights on the historical, current, and future trends in biochar research, beneficial to solve the practical problems of water pollution and improve the quality of the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the path of sustainable development, the key to achieving green and low-carbon transformation lies in green technology innovation (GTI), and how to effectively coordinate the relationship between green finance (GF) and GTI is an issue worth studying. This paper constructed an evaluation system of GF and GTI and combined them with the coupled coordination degree model to explore their coordination of Chinese provinces from 2012 to 2019. Then, the core network evolution and spatial structure characteristics of GTI and GF were studied using the modified gravity model. Finally, based on the link prediction, the general future network prediction is made to provide guidance and direction for the future GTI and GF development and construction. The results found that the coordination level between GF and GTI has been continuously improved from 0.356 to 0.436. The core network structure is keeping changing with their connection becoming more complex, and there is still room for optimization. Network centrality characteristics show that the spatial spillover effects are stronger in the more economically developed regions. The overall network possibility prediction shows the potential network connections in different urban agglomerations. This paper provides a certain reference role for China and developing countries to predict the GF and GTI cooperation network development in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The carbon emission trading pilot policy is an important initiative to achieve synergistic economic-environmental development. Based on the data of 268 cities in China from 2006 to 2020, this paper analyzes the impact of carbon emission trading pilot policy on urban innovation capacity by using a time-varying difference-in-difference model. The study shows that, first, the implementation of the CETP improves the innovation capacity of cities, and the robustness test confirms the above findings. Second, the effect of the policy on enhancing urban innovation capacity is heterogeneous between the type of innovation and city type: the promotion of innovation capacity is stronger for utility model patents and non-capital cities. Third, there is a positive spillover effect of the implementation of the CETP on the promotion effect of the urban innovation capacity, which can lead to the improvement of the innovation capacity of neighboring cities. This paper has some reference value for building a unified carbon emission trading market and promoting low-carbon economic development within China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, disasters caused by climate change have brought marked losses to individual economic agents. To cope with fluctuating climate risks, climate policies have witnessed frequent adjustments worldwide, resulting in heightening uncertainty on climate policies that have become an important factor affecting business operations. This paper uses a fixed-effects model to study the role of climate policy uncertainty on the financialization of China's A-share listed enterprises. Our results find that a rise in climate policy uncertainty has a dampening effect on corporate financialization, while energy-intensive enterprises are most affected. Although climate policy uncertainty negatively impacts the size of enterprises' financial assets, the impact varies for different types of financial assets. We recommend that the government should maintain a robust climate policy to prevent frequent policy changes from harming company operations. This paper fills the gap by investigating the relationship between climate policy and corporate financialization. Under the backdrop of a rising climate policy uncertainty, our findings possess important implications for the improvement in enterprises' business strategies and policy effectiveness against global climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food consumption has resulted in great carbon emissions in recent years. China has been facing the new mitigation challenge of carbon emissions with its emerging middle-income groups, especially in urban areas. This paper analyzes and predicts carbon emissions from food consumption (CEFC) of middle-income groups in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), which has a higher emerging middle-income group and the highest economic corridor in China. Few studies address CEFC analysis from middle-income groups perspective; thus, this paper calculates urban–rural CEFC of middle-income groups spanning 2010–2018 and predicts them in 2025, 2030 and 2035 using the extended IPAT model. Results are as follows: (1) YREB's urban–rural CEFC of middle-income groups show an upward trend and present a spatial pattern of "low–high–low–high" from the western region to the eastern region. Urban CEFC of middle-income groups are significantly higher than that of rural areas; (2) rural CEFC of middle-income groups in the YREB will first increase in 2025 and then decrease in 2030 and 2035. The growing trend of urban CEFC of middle-income groups will show a significant downward from 2025 to 2035. The growing proportion of urban CEFC of middle-income groups will exhibit an objective growth in 2035. Understanding the changing trend of CEFC of middle-income groups provides governments with differentiated and forward-looking suggestions toward coordinating middle-income groups' expansion and carbon emissions reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents the increase in the number of global billionaires from mainland China between 2004 and 2018. One of the key findings is that under conditions of an open economy, grassroots billionaire entrepreneurs (e.g., Jack Ma) could mitigate political economy as well as financial frictions via capital injections from foreign venture capitalists. By building a unique database, I report that (i) the politically unconnected billionaire entrepreneurs financed by foreign venture capitalists are more likely to go public their companies outside mainland China (mainly in Hong Kong and the USA), use offshore financing vehicles, and enter the innovation sector and (ii) the politically connected global billionaire entrepreneurs, however, are closely associated with a record of state-owned enterprise (SOE) restructuring. Plain English Summary: The increase in the number of billionaire entrepreneurs (e.g., Jack Ma) from mainland China between 2004 and 2018 is a new phenomenon, which necessitates a reassessment of the crony capitalism arguments, the types of entrepreneurs, and the sources of innovation. This paper has important implications for future research on entrepreneurship in a global economy and the design of relevant policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining user data and constructing web user profiles of older adults from the perspective of elderly services is conducive to understanding their behavioral habits, needs, and usage preferences on the web, which provides more targeted elderly care services. In this paper, IGA-SOMK + + , which is a novel clustering method for constructing web user profiles of older adults, is proposed based on the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey data, which include 6596 older adults aged greater than 60 years. The selected data aspects include basic information, work situation, health situation, living habits, and web use services. To describe the web user profiles of older adults, a hybrid method based on improved genetic algorithm (IGA) feature selection, self-organizing feature maps (SOM), and K-means + + is proposed. Data on older adults' web use behaviors are first processed, and IGA is used for feature selection based on the adaptive crossover and mutation probabilities. SOM is then used to determine the initial center vectors of K-means + + for further clustering, which is referred to as SOMK + + (SOM-K-means + +). The results of IGA-SOMK + + are compared with those of the state-of-the-art methods, including the K-means, mini batch K-means, Agnes, K-modes, FCM, K-means + + , SOMK + + , and IHPSO-KM. In addition, the significance and robustness of IGA-SOMK + + are analyzed. The experimental results show that the IGA feature selection reduces the influence of the redundant feature factors and improves the performance of the clustering algorithm. SOMK + + overcomes the sensitivity of K-means to initial cluster centers. Moreover, IGA-SOMK + + has the best clustering effect among the compared algorithms in terms of silhouette coefficient (SC), calinski-harabaz (CH) index, and davies-bouldin (DB) metrics. For example, it increases the SC from 0.280 to 0.629. Finally, by analyzing the results, the user group of older adults is segmented to perform the deep mining of CFPS data, which verifies the feasibility of the user profile model. This paper summarizes the basic situation of the current web access of older adults in China in terms of web use services, as well as the importance of the web in their lives and in the information channels. It also provides suggestions for the current problems of older adults in accessing the web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yangtze River (hereafter referred to as the YZR), the largest river in China, is of paramount importance for ensuring water resource security. The Yangtze River Basin (hereafter referred to as the YRB) is one of the most densely populated areas in China, and complex human activities have a significant impact on the ecological security of water resources. Therefore, this paper employs theories related to ecological population evolution and the Driving Force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) model to construct an indicator system for the ecological security of water resources in the YRB. The report evaluates the ecological security status of water resources in each province of the YRB from 2010 to 2019, clarifies the development trend of its water resource ecological security, and proposes corresponding strategies for regional ecological security and coordinated economic development. According to the results of the ecological population evolution competition model, the overall indicator of the ecological security of water resources in the YRB continues to improve, with the safety level increasing annually. Maintaining sound management of water resources in the YRB is crucial for sustainable socioeconomic development. To further promote the ecological security of water resources in the YRB and the coordinated development of the regional economy, this paper proposes policy suggestions such as promoting the continuous advancement of sustainable development projects, actively adjusting industrial structure, continuously enhancing public environmental awareness, and actively participating in international ecological construction and seeking cooperation among multiple departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To obtain a consistent estimate of the impact of digital economy on the carbon total factor productivity (CTFP) is important not only in the academic field but also for the policymakers. However, the existence of endogeneity issue makes it challenging. This paper constructs a novel analysis framework that can measure the CTFP as well as the impact of digital economy simultaneously after addressing the endogeneity. By employing the endogenous stochastic frontier analysis method, the findings indicate that digital economy has a positive and significant effect on CTFP, which persists when different production functions and instrumental variables are employed. Mechanism analysis reveals that the positive impact is facilitated by changes in production methods and improvements in urban environmental regulatory governance. Moreover, the effect of digital economy on CTFP is more pronounced in regions with higher environmental awareness among residents, lower resource abundance, and higher levels of human capital. The results provide valuable policy insights into the utilization of the digital economy to achieve green and high-quality development in China, including to promote the regional balanced development of digital economy and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amount of actively cultivated land in China is increasingly threatened by rapid urbanization and rural population aging. Quantifying the extent and changes of active cropland and cropping intensity is crucial to global food security. However, national-scale datasets for smallholder agriculture are limited in spatiotemporal continuity, resolution, and precision. In this paper, we present updated annual Cropland Use Intensity maps in China (China-CUI10m) with descriptions of the extent of fallow/abandoned, actively cropped fields and cropping intensity at a 10-m resolution in recent six years (2018–2023). The dataset is produced by robust algorithms with no requirements for regional adjustments or intensive training samples, which take full advantage of the Sentinel-1 (S1) SAR and Sentinel-2 (S2) MSI time series. The China-CUI10m maps have achieved high accuracy when compared to ground truth data (Overall accuracy = 90.88%) and statistical data (R2 > 0.94). This paper provides the recent trends in cropland abandonment and agricultural intensification in China, which contributes to facilitating geographic-targeted cropland use control policies towards sustainable intensification of smallholder agricultural systems in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research scrutinizes the trends and dynamics of Intellectual Property Protection (IPP) of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in China, utilizing a dataset of 91 papers from the CNKI database spanning 2011 to 2020. The study uses CiteSpace software to visualise and analyse the literature across multiple dimensions, including article count, authorship, institutional affiliations, and keyword co-occurrence. Findings indicate a lack of robust collaboration among authors and institutions in IPP and ICH, with a scarcity of active cooperative groups. Critical research hotspots identified encompass intangible cultural heritage, intellectual property protection, inheritors, legal protection, copyright, intellectual property law, and geographical indications, with the legal safeguarding of ICH's intellectual property, digital conservation, traditional cultural expressions, and original authentication emerging as the leading research frontiers. This investigation provides a holistic view of China's IPP and ICH landscape, offering essential scientific insights for ongoing scholarly discourse. This study mainly benefits policymakers and stakeholders in the cultural heritage sector, underscoring the necessity of enhanced authorial and institutional collaboration and the prioritization of legal and digital protection mechanisms to safeguard China's intangible cultural legacy for posterity. The analysis is critical, informing policy formulation and strategic planning to bolster ICH's protection and sustainable management in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the severity of global climate change escalates, carbon peak and carbon neutrality have emerged as international imperatives. Green taxation, a crucial fiscal strategy promoting the transition to a green low-carbon economy, demands thorough investigation regarding its efficacy and operational mechanisms. Predominantly, existing research has concentrated on the macroeconomic implications of green taxes, while their influence on regional green growth and innovation remains underexplored. This paper delineates green taxation in both a broad and narrow sense, elucidating its essence and potential in stimulating regional green progress and innovation. Utilizing panel data from 30 provinces in China spanning 2004 to 2021, a bidirectional fixed-effects model was developed for empirical analysis. Moreover, an impact mechanism model was constructed to delve into how green taxation specifically affects regional green development and innovation. Findings reveal that green taxation significantly fosters regional green growth and markedly enhances green innovation. Nonetheless, due to the resource crowding-out effect, it adversely impacts the comprehensive innovation capabilities of regional enterprises. This insight offers a fresh perspective on the paradoxical effects of green taxation, underscoring the necessity for a balanced approach in policy design and implementation. Drawing on these conclusions, the paper presents tailored policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "welfare-to-work" program is a comprehensive supportive policy in the 14th five-year plan period in China. In this paper, a systematical assessment of the long-run effectiveness of the welfare-to-work policy on poverty reduction is of great significance to stimulate the internal impetus of people who are lifted out of poverty to achieve income growth and prosperity and promote regional economic development. Based on the data at the county (city) level in China from 2000 to 2019 and the sustainable development theory, in this paper, a county-relative poverty evaluation system was constructed. Besides, the double difference method was employed to evaluate the effect of the welfare-to-work policy on poverty reduction and test its action mechanism. The findings are as follows: (1) the welfare-to-work policy has a significant poverty reduction effect and presents an inverted "U" shape. In addition, significant achievements have been made in "maintaining employment stability, ensuring income, strengthening skills, and supporting the economy" ; (2) the welfare-to-work policy boosts poverty reduction in counties through infrastructure construction, fiscal intervention, and financial tools; however, the financial tools play a positive role in poverty reduction in the northwest region and suppressed role in the southwest region, and has an insignificant effect in the central region; and (3) there are differences in the effect of poverty alleviation policies of the counties with different sustainable development levels, and the regions with higher development level have a stronger driving effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates pollution reduction by rationalization hypothesis in China. We study the heterogeneous firm's export effect on water pollution in China. We use China's firm-level data from 2000 to 2012 to estimate the firm's heterogeneity of export effect, composition effect, and technique effect on water pollution. We find that intra-industry agglomeration produces a competition effect, and more productive firms can export with less polluted water. More productive firms can export with less polluted water by reallocating more productive labor from dirty firms. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between a firm's productivity and water pollution. Intra-industry agglomeration drives up labor productivity; higher productive firms export while producing more polluted water initially. When a firm's productivity is increasing, export activity produces less polluted water. More export induces less water pollution for high productivity firms. We conclude that the mechanism of pollution reduction by rationalization hypothesis does exist for water pollution in China. Trade liberalization causes some firms to become cleaner, even though we observe relatively clean exporting firms and relatively dirty domestic producers at different productivity stages. Productivity-induced rationalization causes water pollution to fall with high firm productivity. Water pollution in different regions has disparities. Eastern area in China is more likely to produce more polluted water than the rest of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper systematically presents the development process of studying ancient Chinese ethnic scripts over the past seven decades since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, including the establishment of related research institutions and academic disciplines. Firstly, it records the establishment of the Chinese Association for Ethnic Paleography, the emergence of ancient scripts of ethnic groups in China as an academic discipline, and the conduction of a comprehensive and in-depth study of ancient Chinese ethnic literature in history. Secondly, this paper outlines the establishment of the National Leading Group for Compilation and Publication Planning of Ancient Ethnic Books, the census of ancient books written in ethnic scripts, the specialized preservation and conservation of ancient ethnic books in Xizang and Xinjiang, the promotion of compiling and publishing ancient ethnic books, and how the promotion further drives the protection of and research on ancient books written in ethnic scripts. Thirdly, the paper lists many innovative outcomes in studying ancient ethnic books. Fourthly, the paper proposes to conduct further censuses and in-depth research in this area, establish a grading system for ancient ethnic books, and utilize the resource of ancient ethnic books written in ethnic scripts in a modern context to further promote the excellent cultural heritages of the Chinese nation and enhancing ethnic unity and national unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research interest in organic food consumption has increased significantly worldwide, but a systematic analysis of this phenomenon in China is still lacking. The existing studies in this area are wide-ranging and fragmented, and there is a lack of comprehensive research into the drivers and barriers specific to the Chinese context. Based on a literature review of 26 articles spanning from 2011 to 2021, this article employs the consumption values theory and the innovation resistance theory to discern patterns on the drivers and barriers of organic food consumption in China. The findings show that the most explored drivers include the functional values of healthiness and safety. Within the social value realm, environmental concern and symbolic value emerge as important influences on Chinese consumers. Conditional values shed light on factors such as perceived healthiness and certification/organic labeling. Regarding barriers, an aspect of research less analyzed, the article finds key obstacles being price sensitivity, perceived uncertainty, lack of knowledge or information, lack of reliability, and lack of availability or visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic and comprehensive understanding of stakeholder relationships is the key component for achieving social sustainability of brownfield regeneration (BR), which has not been recognized by existing researches. Based on the widely acknowledged idea of social networks, this paper proposes a systematic research framework for the analysis of stakeholder relationships, with a focus on the dynamic and networked nature of relationships. The relationship network of stakeholders in BR is considered from three aspects: identifying the stakeholders and relationships among them, quantifying stakeholder relationships, and analyzing relationships network structure. The proposed stakeholder relationships analysis framework uses empirical methods (i.e., interviews and surveys), rationalistic methods (i.e., fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and social network analysis (SNA)) to analyze stakeholder relationships. To demonstrate the usability of the proposed framework, we apply it to the BR in China. The results show that: (1) it is feasible to mine the relationships of stakeholders from the social network perspective; (2) from the individual network aspect, the government, developers, government are at the core of the network with the highest network centrality during the recycling and contamination treatment stage, the construction stage and the use stage, respectively; (3) from the local network aspect, different cohesive subgroups with strong linkages are formed throughout the life cycle of BR; (4) from the overall network aspect, the highest density of the use stage means that there is good cohesion among stakeholders at this stage; the centralization of the construction stage is the highest, indicating that the stakeholders have relatively concentrated network power and loose relationships. The paper puts forward suggestions for improving the network structure of stakeholder relationships, including strengthening the network relationship between the government and environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs), improving the monitoring efficiency and network status of news media, establishing a construction consulting platform that effectively serves the public and end-users, forming the alliances among end-users, the public and ENGOs and enhancing the relationship network stability. Overall, this study helps to clarify stakeholder relationships by providing a systematic framework to encourage better stakeholder engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism has become a major driver of China's economic growth and consumes much energy causing environmental pollution problems. This paper combines the LMDI (logarithmic mean Divisia index) method and K-means clustering to analyze the factors influencing tourism energy consumption in seven Chinese provinces and discusses strategies for energy consumption in tourism. Specifically, firstly, this paper decomposes the tourism energy consumption factors in each province into six factors and identifies the driving forces of different factors on energy consumption. Secondly, K-means clustering method is used to classify different provinces into three categories using the latest dynamic influencing factors as clustering factors and provincial targeted suggestions are made according to the characteristics of different categories. This paper combines the LMDI model with cluster analysis to find targeted energy optimization strategies for the energy consumption of the Chinese tourism industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper complicates the classic security dilemma by considering the notions of ontological security and relational deterrence. It studies how the ontological security dilemma has emerged between the US, China, and Taiwan from the relational perspective and how these spiral chains will further develop in the future. The paper incurs the literature on relational analysis to expound on how different ontological security concerns allude to relational deterrence between the three actors. Taiwan's separatism is more of a threat to China's relational self than to physical security because the separatist does not belong to any already agreed relationship. A geometric model and a few simulations yield three unconventional findings. 1) The less advantaged the US military is over China, the less likely armed unification will occur. 2) The US anti-Chinese tendency is irrelevant in determining the probability of armed unification. 3) What may escalate the spiral are China's anti-Taiwan independence and Taiwan's anti-unification. Case sensitivity indicates the ontological sensibilities of a security dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early twentieth century, traditional handicraft was challenged by the latest technology in China. It is reflected by ethnic costumes combining new and old, as in the waistcoat of this study. This waistcoat made at Gyalrong Tibetan area in Sichuan, China, displays unique local features in terms of its brilliant colors and comprehensive craftsmanship. This study employs techniques such as optical microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope and high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to investigate various aspects of this waistcoat, including its fabrics and dyes. The results showed that the waistcoat was primarily made of cotton and silk, with a bamboo paper layer, and that silk as well as twisted gold and silver threads were employed for the embroidery. Various embroidery techniques were applied, with patterns, color combinations, and characteristics being consistent with those of Tibetan and Shu (蜀) embroidery. In terms of dyeing technology, a wide range of colors were achieved through multi-step dyeing processes using natural dye stuffs like pagoda bud, and synthetic dyes like magenta. These findings indicates that modern technologies were well integrated into traditional garment manufacture in the early twentieth century in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]