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Describes four vehicles for continuing education in the People's Republic of China: correspondence education, broadcast and television education, self-study and state examinations, and the workers' college. Considers the special characteristics of each system. (DMM)

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how trust and communication at the personal level relationships conform to trust and communication at the organizational level relationships and which role do the two different level relationships play in influencing firms' commitment, performance and propensity to stay in long-term relationships. Design/methodology/approach: A face-to-face questionnaire study was conducted using a sample of 209 in Mainland China companies, which were surveyed in nine exhibitions. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Findings: The results support the bottom-up effect of interpersonal trust and communication on inter-organizational trust and communication. Interorganizational trust has a more powerful total effect on firm commitment. Interpersonal communication has a more powerful total effect on inter-organizational trust and communication and firms' operational performance. Interpersonal communication, inter-organizational trust and communication have comparably high impacts on firms' propensity to stay in long-term relationships. Research limitations/implications: This paper selects Mainland China as the research context and targets a single boundary spanner in each respondent firm to evaluate both the interpersonal and inter-organizational relationships. A cross-sectional approach was used. Practical implications: This paper suggests that business people should pay attention to the role of human factors in a firm's relational exchanges with SC partners and effectively use the positive effects of these factors to create relationship-building benefits. Originality/value: This paper conducts cross-level research, which has been called for in recently published inter-organizational literature. It develops and provides empirical evidence for a bottom-up model from interpersonal relationships to inter-organizational relationships and identifies their impacts on organizational outcomes simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although studies have increasingly linked air pollution to specific health outcomes, less well understood is how public perceptions of air quality respond to changing pollutant levels. The growing availability of air pollution measurements and the proliferation of social media provide an opportunity to gauge public discussion of air quality conditions. In this paper, we consider particulate matter (PM) measurements from four Chinese megacities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu) together with 112 million posts on Weibo (a popular Chinese microblogging system) from corresponding days in 2011–2013 to identify terms whose frequency was most correlated with PM levels. These correlations are used to construct an Air Discussion Index (ADI) for estimating daily PM based on the content of Weibo posts. In Beijing, the Chinese city with the most PM as measured by U.S. Embassy monitor stations, we found a strong correlation (R = 0.88) between the ADI and measured PM. In other Chinese cities with lower pollution levels, the correlation was weaker. Nonetheless, our results show that social media may be a useful proxy measurement for pollution, particularly when traditional measurement stations are unavailable, censored or misreported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the development and baseline data of a vignettes-based measure of gender equality. Methods: Vignettes were developed through 3-day long focus groups. After piloting in 13 sites and repiloting a revised version in 6 countries, responses were categorized by the construct tapped and a scoring system developed. Finalized vignettes were then tested in DR Congo, Ecuador and China. Results: Young adolescents can successfully respond to vignettes; and can differentiate self from hypothetical protagonists of same and opposite sex. Response differences by sex of respondent and protagonist were statistically significant across a range of scenarios and settings. Conclusion: This is the first vignettes-based measure for young adolescents assessing young adolescent perceptions of relationships differentiated by sex of the protagonist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents an exploratory study investigating the patterns of communication and the contents of the messages of an electronic messaging system set up specifically for teenage students in Hong Kong. The results of this investigation suggest that this undirected and unco-ordinated public messaging network was used both for socializing and information exchange. There was in general a lack of in-depth communication and the network users were not keen to involve themselves in serious discussions. It is suggested that a co-ordinator is needed to facilitate in-depth and task-specific discussions in a public messaging system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explain how individuals’ self-perceived long-term mate value influences their mate preference and mate choice, two hypotheses have been presented, which are “potentials-attract” and “likes-attract”, respectively. The potentials-attract means that people choose mates matched with their sex-specific traits indicating reproductive potentials; and the likes-attract means that people choose mates matched with their own conditions. However, the debate about these two hypotheses still remains unsolved. In this paper, we tested these two hypotheses using a human’s actual mate choice data from a Chinese online dating system (called the Baihe website), where 27,183 users of Baihe website are included, in which there are 590 paired couples (1180 individuals) who met each other via the website. Our main results show that not only the relationship between individuals’ own attributes and their self-stated mate preference but also that between individuals’ own attributes and their actual mate choice are more consistent with the likes-attract hypothesis, i.e., people tend to choose mates who are similar to themselves in a variety of attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicting and analyzing behaviors of investors is of great value to financial institutions. This paper uses survey data from about 9,000 individual investors across China to explore the predictability of decision behaviors by studying demographic characteristics that are relatively easy to obtain. After applying Pearson’s chi-squared test, Spearman rank correlation test, and several data mining methods, we verified that demographic characteristics are closely linked to decision behaviors, and it would be an economical and feasible solution for financial organizations to build initial behavioral prediction models especially when investors’ behavioral data are insufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For all the popular interest in "wolf warrior diplomacy," scant attention has been paid to the internal logics and mechanics of representative communications, notably the intersection with grassroots cyber-nationalism. Centring the connections between official and unofficial actors, we situate Chinese diplomatic communications within the domestic nationalist cyberspace cultures that demand and nourish the "dare to fight" orientation of formal Chinese diplomacy on the international stage. We argue that there is a synergistic interaction between officials and popular nationalism that creates bottom-up incentives to adopt a "wolf warrior" posture, distinct from simultaneous top-down pressures from the central leadership under Xi Jinping to appropriately represent China's "confident rise." We show through case studies involving MoFA spokesperson and archetypal "wolf warrior" Zhao Lijian, that this interaction extends to sharing unofficial content and ideas in a mutually reinforcing cycle that facilitates a harder edge to diplomatic communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second half of nineteenth century, a small transnational British and foreign community grew up in the treaty ports scattered along China’s coast, a community literally caught between the great inner Asian empire of the Manchu Qing and British-dominated informal empire in Asia. Although scholars often contend that few major developments occurred in the foreign sector of the treaty port world until the very end of the nineteenth century, this article joins recent revisionist scholarship seeking to better understand the growth of this transnational treaty port community through a study of the Shanghai Municipal Council’s local post office in the context of informal empire prior to the rise of muscular Chinese nationalism in the early twentieth century. As an institutional history of the virtually unknown local post office, this article is a study of the decades-long process by which the foreign settler community of Shanghai slowly built up the administrative capacity, trading networks and communications infrastructure of informal empire and semi-colonial order in the nineteenth-century treaty ports. The history of the local post office is largely unknown not because of its insignificance, but because we have not paid enough attention to the institutions that facilitated the emergence of transnational expatriate and settler communities throughout the world of British informal empire and the global and local influences that shaped them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: With the increasing awareness of the importance of oral health, patients have an increasing need for integrated care from dentists. In China, the dentistry examination consists of two parts: a practical skills examination and a comprehensive medical examination; to date, no assessment methods that are based on specialized dentistry competencies, unlike the United States, Canada, and other countries, have been established. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to construct a competency model for dentists in China in order to guide the development, admission, training and assessment of dentists. Methods: Using a literature review, focus group interviews and in-depth personal interviews, a dentist competency index was developed with an expert consultation questionnaire. A panel of 20 specialist experts was chosen from ten national medical universities to carry out two rounds of Delphi expert analysis, using the boundary value method to filter the indicators and the Analytic Hierarchy Process to calculate the weights of the primary indicators. Results: Two rounds of Delphi results showed that the expert authority, enthusiasm, and coordination coefficients were high. Constructs of the competency model that included seven primary indicators and 62 secondary indicators determined the weight of each index. The seven primary indicators included the following: clinical skills and medical services, disease prevention and health promotion, interpersonal communication skills, core values and professionalism, medical knowledge and lifelong learning ability, teamwork ability and scientific research ability. Conclusion: In conclusion, the use of the Delphi method to construct an initial model of Chinese physician competency is scientific and feasible. The initial competency model conforms to the characteristics and quality requirements of dentists in China and has a strong scientific basis. The dentist competency model should be used in the National Dental Licensing Examination in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks play an important role in our daily lives. However, social ties are rather elusive to quantify, especially for large groups of subjects over prolonged periods of time. In this work, we first propose a methodology for extracting social ties from long spatio-temporal data streams, where the subjects are 17,795 undergraduates from a university of China and the data streams are the 9,147,106 time-stamped RFID check-in records left behind by them during one academic year. By several metrics mentioned below, we then analyze the structure of the social network. Our results center around three main observations. First, we characterize the global structure of the network, and we confirm the small-world phenomenon on a global scale. Second, we find that the network shows clear community structure. And we observe that younger students at lower levels tend to form large communities, while students at higher levels mostly form smaller communities. Third, we characterize the assortativity patterns by studying the basic demographic and network properties of users. We observe clear degree assortativity on a global scale. Furthermore, we find a strong effect of grade and school on tie formation preference, but we do not find any strong region homophily. Our research may help us to elucidate the structural characteristics and the preference of the formation of social ties in college students’ social network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing is among the most pressing issues in urban China and has received considerable scholarly attention. Researchers have primarily concentrated on identifying the factors that influence residential property prices and how such mechanisms function. However, few studies have examined the potential factors that influence housing prices from a big data perspective. In this article, we use a big data perspective to determine the willingness of buyers to pay for various factors. The opinions and geographical preferences of individuals for places can be represented by visit frequencies given different motivations. Check-in data from the social media platform Sina Visitor System is used in this article. Here, we use kernel density estimation (KDE) to analyse the spatial patterns of check-in spots (or places of interest, POIs) and employ the Getis-Ord method to identify the hot spots for different types of POIs in Shenzhen, China. New indexes are then proposed based on the hot-spot results as measured by check-in data to analyse the effects of these locations on housing prices. This modelling is performed using the hedonic price method (HPM) and the geographically weighted regression (GWR) method. The results show that the degree of clustering of POIs has a significant influence on housing values. Meanwhile, the GWR method has a better interpretive capacity than does the HPM because of the former method’s ability to capture spatial heterogeneity. This article integrates big social media data to expand the scope (new study content) and depth (study scale) of housing price research to an unprecedented degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In China, spouse caregivers of cancer patients (SCCPs) are involved in all aspects of patient care and experience psychological distress which could result in sleep disturbance and fatigue. However, few studies have explored the differences between SCCPs and the general population, or what factors affect SCCPs' sleep. This study aims to (1) Compare the differences in sleep disturbances and fatigue severity between SCCPs and the age- and gender-matched general population, and (2) Identify selected personal characteristics, including coping style that affect sleep disturbances in SCCPs. Methodology/Principal Findings: The Stress and Coping Model was used to guide this study. Participants were recruited from the northeast part of China and included 600 people from the general population and 300 SCCPs. Participants completed a socio-demographic form, Fatigue Scale-14, trait Coping Style Questionnaire, and Symptom Checklist-90. Results: The majority of the participants were middle age, most of whom (78.7%) spent more than 8 hours each day taking care of their spouses. Compared to the general population, the SCCPs experienced significant sleep disturbances with a mean of 7.30 (SD = 1.27), and fatigue severity with a mean of 8.11 (SD = 3.25). Among the selected SCCPs' personal characteristics, current poor health status (β = 0.14, P<0.001), having a spouse under mixed treatment (β = 0.13, p<0.001), and financial burden (β = 0.14, P<0.001) are the significant predictors for sleep disturbances. Positive coping is the predictor for fewer sleep disturbances (β = 0.27, P<0.001). Those who reported sleep disturbances also experienced higher physical and mental fatigue severity (P<0.001). Conclusion: Intervention to improve coping style in SCCPs is needed. Further research is also needed to explore the other mediators and moderators that regulate sleep disturbance and health outcomes in the SCCPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although China ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control [FCTC] in 2005, the partial ban on tobacco advertising does not cover the internet. Weibo is one of the most important social media channels in China, using a format similar to its global counterpart, Twitter. The Weibo homepage is a platform to present products, brands and corporate culture. There is great potential for the tobacco industry to exploit Weibo to promote products. Methods: Seven tobacco industry Weibo accounts that each had more than 5000 fans were selected to examine the content of Weibos established by tobacco companies or their advertising agents. Results: Of the 12073 posts found on the seven accounts, 92.3% (11143) could be classified into six main themes: traditional culture, popular culture, social and business affairs, advertisement, public relations and tobacco culture. Posts under the theme of popular culture accounted for about half of total posts (49%), followed by ‘advertisement’ and ‘tobacco culture’ (both at 12%), ‘traditional culture’ and ‘public relations’ (both at 11%), and finally ‘social and business affairs’ (5%). 33% of posts included the words ‘cigarette’ or ‘smoking’ and 53% of posts included the tobacco brand name, indicating that tobacco companies carefully construct the topic and content of posts. Conclusions: Weibo is an important new online marketing tool for the Chinese tobacco industry. Tobacco industry use of Weibo to promote brands and normalize smoking subverts China's ratification of the WHO FCTC. Policy to control tobacco promotion needs reforming to address this widespread circumvention of China's tobacco advertising ban. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

So far, many studies on educational games have been carried out in America and Europe. Very few related empirical studies, however, have been conducted in China. This study, combining both quantitative with qualitative research methods, possibly compensated for this regret. The study compared data collected from two randomly selected classes (out of 13 classes) under computer game-based instruction (CGBI) and non-computer game-based instruction (NCGBI), respectively, in a senior high school located in Nanjing, Capital of Jiangsu Province, in China. The participants were 103 students, composed of 52 boys and 51 girls (aged 17-18 years old). The following conclusion was reached: (1) participants under CGBI obtained significantly greater learning achievement than those under NCGBI; (2) participants were significantly more motivated by CGBI compared with NCGBI; (3) there were no significant differences in learning achievement between boys and girls; although (4) boys were significantly more motivated by CGBI than girls. Both disadvantages and advantages were discussed, together with directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent event-related potential research has reported a N200 response or a negative deflection peaking around 200 ms following the visual presentation of two-character Chinese words. This N200 shows amplitude enhancement upon immediate repetition and there has been preliminary evidence that it reflects orthographic processing but not semantic processing. The present study tested whether this N200 is indeed unrelated to semantic processing with more sensitive measures, including the use of two tasks engaging semantic processing either implicitly or explicitly and the adoption of a within-trial priming paradigm. In Exp. 1, participants viewed repeated, semantically related and unrelated prime-target word pairs as they performed a lexical decision task judging whether or not each target was a real word. In Exp. 2, participants viewed high-related, low-related and unrelated word pairs as they performed a semantic task judging whether each word pair was related in meaning. In both tasks, semantic priming was found from both the behavioral data and the N400 ERP responses. Critically, while repetition priming elicited a clear and large enhancement on the N200 response, semantic priming did not show any modulation effect on the same response. The results indicate that the N200 repetition enhancement effect cannot be explained with semantic priming and that this specific N200 response is unlikely to reflect semantic processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop an efficient learning strategy of Chinese characters based on the network of the hierarchical structural relations between Chinese characters. A more efficient strategy is that of learning the same number of useful Chinese characters in less effort or time. We construct a node-weighted network of Chinese characters, where character usage frequencies are used as node weights. Using this hierarchical node-weighted network, we propose a new learning method, the distributed node weight (DNW) strategy, which is based on a new measure of nodes' importance that considers both the weight of the nodes and its location in the network hierarchical structure. Chinese character learning strategies, particularly their learning order, are analyzed as dynamical processes over the network. We compare the efficiency of three theoretical learning methods and two commonly used methods from mainstream Chinese textbooks, one for Chinese elementary school students and the other for students learning Chinese as a second language. We find that the DNW method significantly outperforms the others, implying that the efficiency of current learning methods of major textbooks can be greatly improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese microblogs have drawn global attention to this online application’s potential impact on the country’s social and political environment. However, representative and reliable statistics on Chinese microbloggers are limited. Using a random sampling approach, this study collected Chinese microblog data from the service provider, analyzing the profile and the pattern of usage for 29,998 microblog accounts. From our analysis, 57.4% (95% CI 56.9%,58.0%) of the accounts’ timelines were empty. Among the 12,774 non-zero statuses samples, 86.9% (95% CI 86.2%,87.4%) did not make original post in a 7-day study period. By contrast, 0.51% (95% CI 0.4%,0.65%) wrote twenty or more original posts and 0.45% (95% CI 0.35%,0.60%) reposted more than 40 unique messages within the 7-day period. A small group of microbloggers created a majority of contents and drew other users’ attention. About 4.8% (95% CI 4.4%,5.2%) of the 12,774 users contributed more than 80% (95% CI,78.6%,80.3%) of the original posts and about 4.8% (95% CI 4.5%,5.2%) managed to create posts that were reposted or received comments at least once. Moreover, a regression analysis revealed that volume of followers is a key determinant of creating original microblog posts, reposting messages, being reposted, and receiving comments. Volume of friends is found to be linked only with the number of reposts. Gender differences and regional disparities in using microblogs in China are also observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]