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China is ranked as the number one maritime connected country in the world. This study attempts to analyse the characteristics of its 155 maritime trading partners. Five components of maritime connectivity have been used for the analysis. A hierarchical clustering technique is applied to group the trading partners into distinct meaningful clusters. As China's main maritime competitors within the East Asian region, the analysis is also applied to Singapore and Hong Kong. The clustering technique produces three distinct clusters for China and Singapore and two for Hong Kong. The results reveal the importance of direct maritime connectivity, with China having the highest number of trading partners with zero transhipment (including its top 15 trading partners), compared to Singapore and Hong Kong. The analysis is further extended by applying ordered logistic regression. The results show that the logistic performance index (LPI) and exports/imports have a positive and significant influence on clusters. Conclusions are drawn as to the potential for implementing strategies and policy interventions on the basis of the emergent clusters, particularly the need for Hong Kong to improve all five components of maritime connectivity in order to compete with China and Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various topics within the issue, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on social workers in Australia, posttraumatic growth (PTG), and the preparedness of social workers in Israeli hospitals for the next pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic, an exceptional crisis, sparked the introduction of new digital infrastructure to halt the novel coronavirus's spread. This paper explores how such digital infrastructure's impact might reverberate over the long term, by comparing Singapore, Hong Kong, and mainland China's utilization of digital technology in response to the 2003 SARS outbreak, and their responses to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. We find that advancements in digital technology since 2003 have boosted governments' surveillance and segregation abilities substantially—most dramatically so in China. Even though some of these new digital interventions are ostensibly designed to be temporary ones to address the needs of the immediate crisis, we argue that the resultant extensions of state power experienced during COVID-19 are likely to have profound long-term effects because they fundamentally affect sociopolitical contexts, institutional capabilities, and digital cultures. We also find that the extent to which governments can extend digital surveillance and segregation abilities during the pandemic is contingent on their respective sociopolitical, institutional, and digital cultural contexts. • COVID-19 pandemic sparked calls for a new digital infrastructure. • We compare 2003 SARS outbreak to COVID-19 pandemic. • New digital technologies increased governments' ability to surveil and segregate. • Their impact on surveillance and segregation will persist post COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]