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Since the outbreak of COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019), the Chinese government has taken strict measures to prevent and control the epidemic. Although the spread of the virus has been controlled, people's daily life and work have been affected and restricted to varying degrees. Thus people have different sentiments, these may affect people's implementation and compliance with the policies, thus affecting the effectiveness of epidemic prevention and control. At present, few pieces of literature have analyzed the relationships between people's feelings, policies, and epidemic trends. The object of this paper is to analyze the text content on social media, to find out the impact of the epidemic blockade policy on the public mood and the concerns expressed by the public about policies changes, and the interaction between policies and epidemic states at different stages of the epidemic. In this paper, we collected the posts of two cities where the epidemic occurred at the same time for analysis and comparative study. On the one hand, we revealed the changes in public attention and attitudes in the two regions during the epidemic, the other hand, it also reflects the differences in public sentiment between the two regions, as well as the correlation between emotions and policies and epidemic trends when different policies are adopted under different circumstances. The obtained results have a certain guiding significance for public health departments to formulate reasonable epidemic prevention policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work explores China's African public relations and image‐building effort, focusing on Nigeria. Thus, the paper's purpose is twofold: first, to investigate whether China's conduct of public diplomacy through its soft power resource—development assistance—has effectively shaped positive Nigerian public perception of China, and second, to determine the media's role in advancing China's public diplomacy in Nigeria. Specifically, it explores the interaction of economic development assistance, media, and public relations. I do this by comparing China's foreign direct investment (FDI) in Nigeria (2010–2019) with the public's perception of the FDI's influence on the Nigerian economy (2016 and 2020) and the media's role in shaping public support toward the investments. Utilizing a range of datasets, I find that Chinese economic investment alone is insufficient to substantially shape positive Nigerian public perception of China. Within a framework of mediated public diplomacy, I demonstrate that the Chinese image‐building effort in Nigeria would likely enhance when the country links economic investments with public relations to make the investments more visible through effective media representation. Related Articles: Ayhan, Kadir Jun, and Nancy Snow. 2021. "Introduction to the Special Issue—Global Korea Scholarship: Empirical Evaluation of a Non‐Western Scholarship Program from a Public Diplomacy Perspective." Politics & Policy 49(6): 1282–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12440. Hodzi, Obert, and John H. S. Åberg. 2020. "Introduction to the Special Issue: Strategic Deployment of the China Model in Africa." Politics & Policy 48(5): 804–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12378. Huijgh, Ellen. 2017. "Indonesia's 'Intermestic' Public Diplomacy: Features and Future." Politics & Policy 45(5): 762–92. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12221. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Chinese government's response to four epidemic crises, including COVID-19, and analyzes the similarities and differences in these responses. It argues that while the Chinese government learned from previous epidemics and improved its handling of subsequent outbreaks, a significant variation occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a detrimental impact globally. Existing scholarly research on China's epidemic responses has often been limited in scope, focusing on individual crises and neglecting the central-local government relationship in crisis decision-making. By adopting a comprehensive approach, this paper delves into the nuanced dynamics of China's responses to these epidemics. It highlights the variations in responses, attributing them to the Chinese government's fear of undermined legitimacy and its consideration of its international image. The government's recognition of the importance of public perception and trust, both domestically and globally, has shaped its crisis management strategies. Through a detailed analysis of these factors, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the variations observed in China's epidemic responses. It emphasizes the significance of the central-local government relationship and the government's international image in determining its actions during epidemics. Recognizing these factors can provide policymakers and researchers with insights to shape future epidemic response strategies and foster effective global health governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The information released by the public on various social media platforms can assist experts in decision-making, thus improving the reliability of the decision-making results and increasing their likelihood of gaining public support. However, the determination of how to fully integrate public opinions with expert opinions and in what aspects to realize the integration is a research topic worthy of attention. Based on this, this paper proposes a multi-subject weighted information fusion method that fully considers public opinion. First, the Bayesian subject model is used to obtain the attribute set of public opinion, and the sentiment analysis technique is used to calculate the reference attribute weights. Second, public opinion is utilized to improve the traditional best–worst method to determine the subjective attribute weights of experts at a faster rate. Third, expert weights are determined using "knowledge" and attribute weights are defined at the aggregate level. Fourth, the cluster weights are determined according to the proximity of the clustered opinions to the public opinions, and the clustered opinions are then summarized to get the overall decision-making information, thus scientifically realizing the synergistic decision-making between the public and experts. Finally, the case of a rainstorm emergency in Henan Province, China, is used to analyze and determine the best plan that matches with the actual situation, and the results are then compared with the findings of existing research to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, China has become increasingly influential in Africa, and the US policy pivoting to confront domestic challenges and withdrawing from its role in international fora has raised many concerns. Based on this global context, this paper examines the US-China soft power competition through foreign aid. It takes a relational lens to analyze their aid to the African countries. It first looks at how foreign aid could be transformed into soft power assets, and then innovatively puts the two countries side by side and examines the relational powers of their foreign aid and the impacts on the other's national image. The paper uses ordered (Ordinary Least Squares) OLS, ordered logit, and IV regression to analyze aid data and opinion poll data. The results show that foreign aid can promote the African perceptions of both countries. It also finds that Chinese aid has a negative impact on the image of the US in Africa, while American aid has no significant effect on African perception of China. This conclusion aligns with the competitive nature of the US–China relationship. China's model of aid may be preferred by Africans, while the US may need to revisit its approaches in Africa in order to turn this situation around. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Left‐behind children who live away from their migrant parents in rural China have received widespread media attention, especially around their vulnerability and delinquency. To examine the media construction of this population and responsibility attribution for the incidents occurring to them, we used the phronetic iterative approach to analyse 348 news reports published by The Paper, one of China's leading digital media outlets. Our findings revealed that the media constructed a stereotypical portrayal of these children and their families. Moreover, structural inequalities existing in social policies were shifted into personal responsibility in media discourses. This study offers empirical support for the role of news media in shaping public perceptions through their construction and framing processes. We highlight the need to identify structural factors that affect media portrayals of rural families and call for more social support for left‐behind children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the population aging, on May 31, 2021, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) proposed the policy that a couple can have three children and rolled out more supportive measures to further optimize fertility policies, which is another major initiative following the universal two-child policy introduced in November 2015. Currently, a series of population policy innovations have aroused great attractions among the public and triggered a hot debating on the Internet. People’s fertility attitude tendency under different related policies can reflect their current fertility intentions. Based on the fact, this paper firstly classifies the sentiment of online comment data on the three-child policy and analyzes people’s sentiment tendency toward the three-child policy from the spatio-temporal perspectives. Secondly, people’s points of view on the three-child policy are summarized by using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) thematic clustering. The reasons for the change in people’s fertility attitude tendency under different fertility policies are analyzed by comparing the change in people’s fertility attitude tendency with the change in people’s attentions. Finally, a multiple regression equation is constructed to analyze the key factors influencing people’s intention to have three children by using public opinion data and its extension data. The findings demonstrate: (1) people’s fertility attitudes toward the three-child policy are negative and similar among different regions; (2) compared to the two-child policy, the percentage of negative and neutral attitudes toward the three-child policy increases, while the percentage of positive attitudes decreases; (3) the increase in fertility costs, the deterioration of women’s employment environment, and the change in the concept of marriage and childbirth become important reasons for the negative change in people’s fertility attitudes toward different policies. Therefore, the government should take measures to reduce the burden of childbirth and guide the correct concept of marriage and childbirth to improve people’s fertility intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important means of communication, sports public opinion has been paid more and more attention by the country. This article will focus on the emergency events of sports events as the main object and research and analysis of the communication function and law in the public opinion of sports events and analyzes the characteristics of public opinion communication. This paper holds that the media play the "should be" roles in different periods, such as network public opinion monitoring and early warning, public opinion information processing and interpretation, consensus builder highlighting the mainstream, and introspection of public opinion events, and there is a media role cycle in the secondary public opinion period. Spreading law of public opinion in sports events in China: trigger-conduction-outbreak mechanism. At present, the diversified interactive mode of sports events in China makes the communication environment of public opinion in sports events more and more three-dimensional and multidimensional, and it is also convenient for us to make better use of the current regulation means of public opinion in sports events. Sports network public opinion can easily go to "post-truth." In order to strengthen the monitoring of sports public opinion and improve the ability to respond to network public opinion, using interdisciplinary thinking, this paper proposes a network public opinion guidance strategy for sports events. The experiment is aimed at the disadvantage that the trend of sports public opinion analysis and tracking is not clear. The optimization method is proposed, and the accuracy is improved by 87.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microblog has become the "first scenario" under which the public learn about the epidemic situation and express their opinions. Public sentiment mining based on microblog data can provide a reference for the government's information disclosure, public sentiment guidance and formulation of epidemic prevention and control policy. In this paper, about 200,000 pieces of text data were collected from Jan. 1 to Feb. 26, 2020 from Sina Weibo, which is the most popular microblog website in China. And a public sentiment analysis framework suitable for Chinese-language scenarios was proposed. In this framework, a sentiment dictionary suitable for Chinese-language scenarios was constructed, and Baidu's Sentiment Analysis API was used to calculate the public sentiment indexes. Then, an analysis on the correlation between the public sentiment indexes and the COVID-19 case indicators was made. It was discovered that there is a high correlation between public sentiments and incidence trends, in which negative sentiment is of statistical significance for the prediction of epidemic development. To further explore the source of public negative sentiment, the topics of the public negative sentiment on Weibo was analyzed, and 20 topics in five categories were got. It is found that there is a strong linkage between the hot spots of public concern and the epidemic prevention and control policies. If the policies cover the hot spots of public concern in a timely and effective manner, the public negative sentiment will be effectively alleviated. The analytical framework proposed in this paper also applies to the public sentiment analysis and policy making for other major public events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, co-production serves as a crucial approach to promote sustainable neighborhood rehabilitation. However, in China, where the governance system is characterized by strong state discourse power and a lack of public participation tradition, neighborhood rehabilitation encounters significant challenges, leading to project postponements or even failures due to unsuccessful co-production activities. To reveal the hidden problems, this paper aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the stakeholders' co-production roles and their participation structure in the co-produced sustainable neighborhood rehabilitation process from multiple dimensions. Using the case in Chongqing, the data was collected through questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews. Social network analysis was utilized as the research method, and one-mode and two-mode networks were established to depict six relationship types with using diverse network indicators. This study revealed the high complexity of stakeholder structure, the awkward role of grass-rooted government, the dilemma of public voices and perceptions, uneven involvement in the co-production process, and the dynamic path of co-production formation. Drawing upon co-production theory, this paper elucidates the intricate mechanism of co-produced neighborhood rehabilitation in China. It offers valuable implications for policymakers and urban planners for project promotion, and contributes empirical insights to research in similar governance systems across the global context. • Stakeholder structure in co-produced sustainable neighborhood rehabilitation is highly complex. • Grass-roots government sectors have low discourse power in practice. • Resident-initiated organizations may not always accurately represent the views and interests of in-situ residents. • Uneven involvement of stakeholders can result in a downplayed co-design process and a weak role for investors. • Six network types are interconnected and interdepend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can the enforcement of policies in the past influence a society's future adoption of information communication technologies (ICTs)? In this paper, we tackle this question by exploring how past e‐governance policies influence citizens' willingness to use the health QR code, which is a COVID‐19 tracing app widely used in China's pandemic control. Past policies regarding smart‐city development in China involve two aspects: the construction of electronic infrastructure and the applications of specific technologies. Empirical analysis based on a nationwide dataset in China suggests that past policies exhibit persuasive effects and influence citizens' acceptance of the health QR code. Specifically, e‐governance applications in cities significantly enhance citizens' acceptance through the demonstration of their usefulness. However, the construction of e‐governance infrastructure per se does not have the same impact on citizens' acceptance. By connecting citizens' acceptance of new technology with past e‐governance policies, the study illustrates a nuanced policy feedback mechanism through which past policies can substantially reshape public opinion by policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, the existing influence evaluation algorithms often ignore network structure attributes, user interests and the time-varying propagation characteristics of influence. To address these issues, this work comprehensively discusses users' own influence, weighted indicators, users' interaction influence and the similarity between user interests and topics, thus proposing a dynamic user influence ranking algorithm called UWUSRank. First, we determine the user's own basic influence based on their activity, authentication information and blog response. This improves the problem of poor objectivity of initial value on user influence evaluation when using PageRank to calculate user influence. Next, this paper mines users' interaction influence by introducing the propagation network properties of Weibo (a Twitter-like service in China) information and scientifically quantifies the contribution value of followers' influence to the users they follow according to different interaction influences, thereby solving the drawback of equal value transfer of followers' influence. Additionally, we analyze the relevance of users' personalized interest preferences and topic content and realize real-time monitoring of users' influence at various time periods during the process of public opinion dissemination. Finally, we conduct experiments by extracting real Weibo topic data to verify the effectiveness of introducing each attribute of users' own influence, interaction timeliness and interest similarity. Compared to TwitterRank, PageRank and FansRank, the results show that the UWUSRank algorithm improves the rationality of user ranking by 9.3%, 14.2%, and 16.7%, respectively, which proves the practicality of the UWUSRank algorithm. This approach can serve as a guide for research on user mining, information transmission methods, and public opinion tracking in social network-related areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expanding profile of Chinese international development aid has generated strong academic and policy interests. A growing literature has emerged on Chinese foreign aid's motivations, modalities, and impact. However, a significant lacuna remains in the domestic politics relating to this phenomenon. This gap is especially glaring in public opinion concerning China's growing foreign aid programs. By analyzing empirical data gathered from a variety of sources, including a well-established online forum, social media sites of two influential media organizations, and multi-year surveys of residents of Beijing, this paper presents a nuanced picture of what the Chinese public thinks of Chinese foreign aid and tests two popular explanations of public opposition to foreign aid—perceived budgetary trade-offs and more general dissatisfaction with government policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a contingent sub-public sphere promoted by a group of former critical journalists in China during the coronavirus outbreak at the beginning of 2020. During the initial outbreak of coronavirus in China, the observed former journalists, who left the field of critical journalism during the re-structure of Chinese news industries under Xi Jinping's leadership, drew on their knowledge of Chinese politics and censorship to contest information cover-up by the state, online censorship, and the state's discourses of China as a successful model of combating the virus. Their activities effectively engaged mass participation of Chinese people and promoted critical opinions of the public. The paper bears the primary aim to deepen the understanding of the episodic formation of elite-driven public spheres in China by investigating the nuances of each case. I therefore, in this particular case study, explore concepts of habitus and capital from Bourdieu's field theory as analytical tools in the investigation of the persistence of political participation and government scrutiny by former critical journalists on social media after leaving the field of critical journalism. The empirical research combines materials collected through 15 former critical journalists' WeChat accounts between January and May 2020, along with in-depth interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper selects the core content of recently released Market Patterns and Investment Insights of China's Digital Content Industry in 2020–2021, and this series of reports has been published in four consecutive volumes (2015, 2017–2018, 2019–2020, 2021–2022). Based on the latest developments of the digital content industry in China, this paper probes into the market development, competitive landscape, investment and financing volume, investment hotspots, policies and public opinion environment of 10 sub-sectors, including online games, animation, online videos, short videos, live streaming, online music, digital reading, news & information apps, online education, and knowledge payment, provides an insight into the status quo of China's digital content industry in 2020–2021 and ten major development trends of the industry. Furthermore, the investment value of 10 sub-sectors is assessed from two dimensions—internal factors and external factors, with a total of 7 primary indicators and 11 secondary indicators, and the results are compared with those of the previous two editions to observe market changes. Research conclusions are as follows: (1) From the perspective of development trends: the scale expansion of China's digital content industry has slowed down; short videos continue to increase; user value operation becomes a new test under routine pandemic prevention and control; the competitive landscape among sub-sectors tends to be stable; leading enterprises expand their business territory via investment, merger and acquisition (M&A) for the integration of upstream and downstream industrial chain. (2) From the results of investment value assessment and investment trends: live streaming and online games lead the way of investment forward in the digital content industry, thanks to their mature cash realization model and huge market space, with the investment value ranking rising to the top two; in the video field, vertical content creation of short video, online video-related intelligent technology and digital marketing are worthy of attention; and in the digital reading field, focus can be placed on original content creation and novel/comic reading platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines depictions of Africans in China during the period when China moved to establish diplomatic relations across the African continent – the foundation of what would become Africa–China relations today. Chinese posters were early forms of mass visual interaction with (the image of) foreign nationals. They reflect how Chinese society viewed itself in relation to others as it developed a global awareness through domestic mobilization. This study investigates how Africa and Africans are depicted in Chinese posters and how they shaped and/or reflected discourses of the period. It also examines motivations behind the inclusion of Africans in Chinese posters, arguing that this largely had a domestic rationale. By historicizing the meaning-making process of the image of Africa in 20th-century Chinese posters, this paper demonstrates that Chinese posters informed public opinion by defining friend and foe, focused more on China and her Cold War entanglements than on Africa, and simultaneously challenged and reinforced some widely held stereotypes about the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With over one billion Internet users in China, a large amount of public opinion is spreading rapidly in breadth and depth at an unprecedented speed in social networks. The establishment of an accurate public opinion dissemination (POD) model is vital for predicting and maintaining the construction of online civilization. On the basis of the traditional SIR model, a fractional-order differential is combined to solve the problem of "anomalous dissemination" in the process of actual POD. The influence of web hypers on POD in social networks is also discovered, and the S1 super-spreading node is introduced. In this paper, we propose a fractional-order SS1IR POD prediction model. The experimental results show that the model fits real data well and has small errors. Therefore, our model can play an aggressive and significant role for predicting POD in social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between people's concern for the environment and their attitudes toward marine life remains ambiguous, especially in developing countries such as China. This paper reports results from an online survey (n = 500) conducted in 22 Chinese coastal cities regarding the relationship between public attitudes toward marine life and environmental concern, as well as environment-related behavior. The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale was used to assess respondents' environmental concern. Attitudes toward marine life protection were measured using a revised version of the Animal Attitude Scale (AAS). Including some questions on demographics and environment-related behaviors and preferences, the survey also aimed to investigate human–marine life interactions in coastal Chinese society. The data revealed that people living in coastal China mostly endorsed a pro-ecological worldview, but they were rather passive in environmental public participation. All five dimensions of environmental concern were positively correlated with marine life attitude and associated with selected AAS content categories (human moral dominance, food, medical research, and hunting/fishing) to varying degrees. Anti-anthropocentrism was found to be the most important dimension of NEP in understanding marine life protection and the use of marine life. It was also discovered that some environment-related behaviors, such as beach visits, NGO membership/donations, and transportation preferences, were predictors of attitudes toward marine life and marine life usage. The findings from this study highlight three significant concepts in shaping public perception of marine life: the recognition of human domination, moderation, and potential environmental risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: In the case of uneven distribution of map features, the density difference breaks the visual balance and reduces the beauty of the map. A large number of spatial features are concentrated in the small area, resulting in the contradiction between the display of features and the size of the area. Map details are not prominent, which increases difficulties in obtaining spatial information and is not conducive to decision analysis. The uneven distribution of feature density in mapping area increases the difficulty of map expression. Conventional map expression cannot solve the problem of visual imbalance.Methods: Based on Gastner-Newman cartogram algorithm, this paper proposes a map transformation algorithm that balances the feature density and achieve consistent public perception. Various cartograms can be generated through five steps: Designing deformation unit scales, configuring density weight combination of features, applying linear diffusion equation, constructing deformation grids and mapping discrete control points. Results: Taking Qingxiu district of Nanning city, China as the research area, we select two scale deformation units of subdistrict and custom grid, and configure density weights with different combinations of point of interest and road network geometry features to generate various cartograms. The deformation measurement values of the deformation map are calculated respectively. After cognitive experiments, 56 questionnaires were ob‐ tained. Regarding the morphological control of the administrative map of Qingxiu District in Nanning, the parameters configurations should be controlled as in Sperimeter>0.975, Sperimeter area ratio>0.961 and Sshape ratio> 0.966. In this way, public cognition can be consistent. Conclusions: This study provides a new idea to solve the problem of uneven density of map features. The deformed map reaches visual balance.The area where the original features are dense increases while the area where the features are sparse decreases. By adjusting the deformation weight parameters to maintain the consistency of public map cognition. Subsequent‐ ly, we will further study how to determine the optimal parameter combination to achieve the optimal defor‐ mation expression and cognitive effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese government's cover-up of the origins of the new coronavirus, and its more openly prideful and aggressive foreign and human rights policies, triggered a dramatic deterioration of foreign views of China in 2020. That year also witnessed a significant increase in anti-Chinese/Asian prejudice around the world. Could the former have shaped the latter? Drawing on theories of prejudice and ideology, and using an Autumn 2020 13-nation European survey about China, this paper explores whether increasingly negative attitudes toward Chinese government policies prejudiced European views of local Chinese students, tourists, and communities. It finds substantial evidence of a spillover effect, an effect which is stronger among conservative Europeans than among progressive Europeans more motivated to avoid prejudice. The paper concludes with thoughts on the danger that China's prideful "wolf warriors" pose for Chinese students, tourists, and local Chinese communities confronting prejudice in Europe today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of China's recent massive surveillance initiative often present it as evidence of a path to an Orwellian state with omnipresent fear and discontent among its citizens. However, based on a 2018 survey of a nationally representative sample, this paper finds that a large majority of Chinese citizens support various forms of state surveillance. CCTV surveillance receives the highest support (82.2%), followed by e-mail and Internet monitoring (61.1%). Even the most intrusive policy – collecting intelligence on everyone in the country – receives support from more than 53% of citizens. Further, support for surveillance is positively associated with an individual's preference for social stability, regime satisfaction, and, to a lesser extent, trust in government. Unlike in Western societies, concerns about information exposure and terrorism do not have any significant correlations with citizens' attitudes toward surveillance in China. These findings might help explain why the Chinese state can expand its surveillance capacity without much open resistance from the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has China delayed commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops over the last decade given its heavy public R&D investment in biotechnology and maturing GM capacity? Further, imports of GM products for consumption are allowed while similar domestic GM‐crops cannot be commercialized. The paper analyzes, from a political economy perspective, how the delay of commercialization arises from the government balancing interests and conflicts among vested interests to keep social stability based on comprehensive secondary data and unique primary survey data. Anti‐GMO activists have, over time, been able to shape the public perception of biotechnology. Their efforts have garnered widespread acceptance among interest groups and have been sufficient to raise the specter of underlying social instability, which is always near the top of mind for China's government. As a result, no movement on commercialization has been made since 2010—more than a decade ago. The failure to commercialize is important because food production would increase considerably if China were able to commercialize GM crops and the resolution of the biotechnology issue has broad implications for food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a significant decision support tool, Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has been legally necessitated since 2003 when the Environmental Impact Assessment Law of the P.R. China was put into effect. However, the different national development targets and the social and economic development gaps between the western region and the eastern region of China greatly influence the SEA implementation. This paper demonstrates the differences in the SEA implementation between the western region and the eastern region of China and discusses the reasons for the disparities. Reviewing government policies and conducting in-depth interviews are selected as the two main research methods. The disparities of SEA implementation existing in intervention time, alternatives, public participation, and monitoring are presented. The differences are caused by the impacts of local SEA regulations and policies, institutions and experts, public attitudes, local government attitudes, strength of Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB), funding, national government strategies, and policies and regulations of environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actual environmental pollution will worsen people's perception of environmental problems, which may affect people's perception of government corruption, and thus affect the governments' credibility and social stability. From the micro perspective of residents' comprehensive feelings on environmental issues, this paper uses panel data for the period 2014–2018 obtained from a large‐scale dynamics survey in China to investigate the impact of environmental issues on corruption perception. The empirical results suggest that residents' perception of environmental problems has a significantly positive linear correlation with their corruption perception. Moreover, the causal explanation of this correlation is strengthened after the introduction of exogenous environmental condition variables that profoundly affect residents' environmental perception and after mitigating endogenous bias via the instrumental variable method. The findings of this study deeply reveal the political value of environmental governance, suggesting that the deterioration of environmental problems can increase public perception of government corruption, and this relationship is distinct in different demographic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Announced in 2013 and since then dubbed a game-changer, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a multifaceted project that holds the potential to influence Pakistan's state and society. This paper examines, in particular, the CPEC's potential to expand Chinese soft power to win Pakistanis' hearts and minds. It focuses on what I term the 'soft end' of China's soft power to offer a case study of the country's use of higher education as a soft power instrument. To demonstrate Beijing's practices in this regard and shed light on how they are received by the Pakistani government and the public, I draw on selected academic literature triangulated with primary sources such as public opinion polls, media and semi-structured interviews with Pakistani academics and graduates. This case study exposes the non-material aspects of China's international connectivity and thereby contributes to understanding China's growing role in South Asia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political-economy of capital controls in China. We argue that the global policy context influences domestic political debates over capital controls, which, in turn, can shape public attitudes toward the subject. Policy entrepreneurs on each side of the capital controls debate can point to capital account policies in other countries as evidence for the desirability of their position. This issue framing strategy, in turn, influences domestic preferences on capital controls. We present qualitative evidence showing that the international policy context features heavily in domestic political debates about capital controls in China. Next, using original survey data, we show that information about other countries' policy choices influences mass public attitudes about capital controls in China. The evidence indicates that growing global use of capital controls can strengthen public support for this policy. More broadly, these findings suggest that a complete understanding of policy diffusion requires greater attention to the role played by domestic policy entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and communication technologies occupy a central position in the Covid-19 pandemic. Public response has been deemed extremely important, with social media platforms playing a key role in both institutional and bottom-up information sharing processes. The emerging field of platform studies has shown that platforms increasingly influence how society works; however, such studies often adopt a highly Western-centric approach. By focusing on Twitter and Weibo use in the early stages of the pandemic, the paper presents an exploratory study that comparatively explores the role of the two platforms for both Western and Chinese publics. Our findings indicate that during the Covid-19 outbreak, Weibo worked as a propaganda tool to unite the Chinese people and promote public policies under the control of the government and the guidance of the mainstream media. Twitter functioned more like a public discourse platform open to personal expression, often showing the influence of defined partisan political discourses. We argue that the participatory dynamics characterizing Weibo and Twitter conversations at the outbreak of the pandemic at least partially mirrored the different 'platforms societies' currently developing in China and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2008, a negative image of China has prevailed in Europe, leading to the country's image crisis in the region. The state has implemented several policies to improve such a perception. This paper aims to examine the major tools of China's attempts at influence in Europe, targeting the media and public opinion. Applying the concept of soft power and public diplomacy, we analyse the tools China uses to modify and shape public opinion about itself in Europe. The research framework comprises secondary resources on China's foreign policy, soft power, public diplomacy and media strategy in Europe. We distinguish four primary influence tools: China buys European media outlets to prevent negative information about itself; it pays for inserts in leading European newspapers; it signs cooperation agreements with media organisations and holds media forums; and it limits access to its market to affect media, film and academic content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the controversies surrounding the " niangpao " (effeminate men or "sissy boys") in the context of the debates surrounding Asian values, Confucianism and family values. These debates are ostensibly about what constitutes correct Chinese male behaviour. But the vehemence with which they are expressed betray their inherent patriarchal bent. Traditional masculinist mindsets cannot be practiced so easily now, partly because gender roles are changing and Chinese women and young activists are more assertive, and they have large followings on social media. For example, the resurrection of Confucian ideals saw the return of emphasis placed on educational achievements. But whereas traditionally successful examination candidates (always men) were guaranteed good careers, both male and female graduates now feel short-changed. It is in this environment that the niangpao polemics are carried out. I argue that despite sanctions from authorities, much of public opinion continues to uphold notions of gender diversity and respect. • Analyses the recent niangpao (sissy men) controversies in China. • Contextualizes these controversies in the changing ideological and social superstructures in China. • Such superstructures include "Chinese characteristics" (new Confucianism), the family and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unit pricing for domestic waste, or pay-as-you-throw (PAYT), affords a promising policy option for waste classification and reduction at source. As an emerging economy, China intends to adopt the sophisticated instrument of unit pricing. The public attitude to this policy is of high relevance for its actual implementation. For the first time in China, this paper quantitatively examined the acceptability of the policy among urban residents by randomly delivering 632 questionnaires by taking Beijing, a megacity expected to introduce the practice, as an example. Based on the ordered logit model, determinants of acceptability were empirically tested including intrinsic, external and demographic factors. The results show that the acceptability rate of PAYT in Beijing is less than half, with the proportion of firm support reaching only 42.6%. The respectively low acceptability rate indicates substantial compliance costs, due to intensive resistance to policy implementation and more resources to be invested to promote acceptability. Empirical analysis further indicates that (1) regarding demographic features, aged or less educated residents tend to accept unit pricing, (2) as for intrinsic factors, a friendly environmental attitude, deeper understanding of charging policy and better social perception can significantly improve the public acceptability of the policy, and (3) in terms of external factors, better property services and transparent funding mechanisms play significant roles in enhancing public acceptability. These findings are further confirmed by replacing the dependent variable with either the willingness to pay for household waste disposal or the acceptability of the operated sewage treatment fee. The status of residents' preference for specific pricing methods is further investigated with underlying reasons being revealed. For developing regions with an urgent demand for waste reduction, it is proposed to install unit pricing in time to avoid possible growing social acceptability costs. Specific measures are proposed including changes in intrinsic factors, paying attention to focus groups, and building social consensus for unit pricing. [Display omitted] • Public acceptability of unit pricing policy is quantitatively examined in Beijing. • A random face-to-face survey is designed and conducted by covering 632 households. • The acceptability rate is only 42.6%, indicating high policy compliance costs. • Demographic, intrinsic and external factors play roles in improving acceptability. • Specific suggestions are proposed for regions like Beijing to introduce the policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sudden-onset disasters put forward new requirements for on the state authorities' ability to analyze public opinion sentiment. However, traditional sentiment analysis methods ignore the contextual semantic relationships and out-of-vocabulary words, and their computational resource utilization is excessive compared to their expected accuracy. In this paper, an ALBERT-based model combined with a text convolution neural network, a hierarchical attention mechanism and the latent Dirichlet allocation is proposed to create a hybrid model enhanced with topic knowledge for sentiment analysis of sudden-onset disasters. Weibo text data from a rainstorm disaster in China are used to evaluate the model's performance. Compared with the XLNet, DistilBERT and RoBERTa models, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of achieving better performance by incorporating external topic knowledge into the language representation model to compensate for the limited vocabulary data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public low-carbon travel is of great significance for achieving carbon neutrality and mitigating climate change. Therefore, taking the Chinese public as the research object, this paper discusses the impact of public awareness of climate policy on low-carbon travel. First, based on stimulus-organism response (SOR) theory, this paper constructs a theoretical model to study the impact of public perception of climate policy on low-carbon travel. Then, environmental emotion is used as a mediating variable in the model. Finally, 419 respondents were selected for a questionnaire survey to collect data. It is found that public awareness of climate policy affects low-carbon travel by triggering environmental emotions. Positive environmental emotions have a significant positive impact on low-carbon travel, while negative environmental emotions have a significant negative impact on low-carbon travel. In addition, positive environmental emotions have a greater impact on low-carbon travel than negative environmental emotions. Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward the following specific suggestions: in-depth publicity of climate policy, cultivation of positive environmental sentiment, strengthening the public's responsibility to respond to climate change concerns, etc. • The effect of climate policy cognition on low-carbon travel is explored. • Offers solutions by identifying the mediating role of environmental emotion. • Positive environmental emotion is more influential than negative environmental emotion on low-carbon travel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) exert great potential in reducing carbon emissions, improving air quality and reducing the dependence on petroleum products, and are also essential in realizing the social transformation toward a low-carbon society. Since public are the principal users and stakeholders of NEVs, it's vital to understand their acceptance of NEVs and discuss the influencing factors of public acceptance, so as to promote the development of NEVs. Based on the survey data of Gansu Province, this paper analyzes the public perception and acceptance of NEVs in underdeveloped regions, and explores main factors affecting their acceptance by adopting Structural Equation Model. The results show that the public acceptance of NEVs is relatively higher, with only 51.99% residents are willing to accept NEVs. And there are differences of public acceptance of NEVs among different groups. The acceptance of females, young and less educated public are relatively higher, decreases with aging and increases with education attainment. Perceived risk and perceived cost are significantly negative correlated with public acceptance of NEVs, while subjective norm and the quality of NEVs positively correlated with public acceptance. In addition, support policy is significantly positively correlated with perceived cost while perceived cost is positively corelated with perceived risk. Finally, this paper proposes countermeasures and suggestions on improving the public acceptance of NEVs in underdeveloped regions. • We conducted the NEVs acceptance of 1356 residents in Chinese underdeveloped regions. • 51.99% of the public in underdeveloped regions of China were willing to accept NEVs. • Perceived risk, perceived cost, and NEVs' quality are the key influencing factors. • Support policy, knowledge have significant indirect impact on acceptance of NEVs. • Enhancing subsidies and supporting facilities were effective ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use the improved event study method to analyze the changes in the systemic risk trends of various financial sectors after the outbreak of COVID-19. The analysis is based on the daily return data of 45 Chinese financial institutions from January 2, 2019, to November 30, 2020. The improved event study method is also used to explore the horizontal, trend, and public opinion effects of the systemic risk. The empirical analysis results show that: (1) the occurrence of COVID-19 will increase the level and volatility of systemic risk in the financial industry. (2) After the outbreak of COVID-19, there is no horizontal effect in all financial industries. The banking and securities industries have significant and longer-lasting positive trend effects, and from the perspective of trend effects, in the face of external shocks, the banking industry is more stable than the securities industry. (3) After the outbreak of COVID-19, the banking and securities industries have a public opinion effect, which is gradually weakened; but there is no public opinion effect in the insurance industry. • A network public opinion index based on web crawlers and text analysis is constructed. • Improved traditional event study method using dummy variables is proposed. • The horizontal, etc. effects of the COVID-19 on the systemic financial risks are analyzed. • No horizontal effect in banking, securities, and insurance industries is found. • Banking and securities have a positive and relatively long-lasting trend effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Assessing Chinese public attitudes to alternative meat in a fine-grained manner. • Employing data science in social media data exploration of consumer attitudes. • Comparing transfer learning and machine learning models for sentiment analysis. • Conspiracy theory identified as the main reason for opposition to alternative meat. • Instead of the booster, vegetarian substitutes are recognized as competitors. The emerging social media serves as a complementary source for consumer behavior analysis with spontaneous data it generates. However, most studies employ time-consuming content analysis or lexical sentiment analysis. Considering the richness of data and progress of data science, in this paper, we propose a transfer learning based method to explore public attitudes towards alternative meat (AM) using data from social media in China to provide an alternative perspective. We compare traditional machine learning models: Naive Bayes and Support Vector Machine with our BERT-based Alternative Meat (BAM) model on the annotated sample. BAM model outperforms others in terms of macro F1 score and accuracy and is employed on the whole dataset later. The sentiment analysis result shows that among 41782 related posts we accumulated, about 42.10% of posts are personal posts consisting of negative, neutral, and positive feelings towards AM with a proportion of 28.77%, 22.91%, and 48.32% respectively. It is less promising compared with the consensus previous studies reach that over half of the Chinese people are positive and few Chinese are negative towards AM. Our findings add to the blooming body of studies suggesting the relationship of people's willingness to try or purchase AM and factors including gender, geography, price, veganism, and food safety. Conspiracy theory is identified for the first time as the main reason for opposition to AM among Chinese consumers. Instead of the booster, traditional vegetarian substitutes especially tofu turn out to be an obstacle for accepting AM with much resemblances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]