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Russia accords high priority to developing its Northern Sea Route while acknowledging substantial investment needs. China has shown increasing interest in Arctic shipping and has finance and technology. Infrastructure cooperation has been highlighted in the context of the warming relationship between the two countries. Russian scholars express considerable concern regarding China's long-term goals in the Arctic and reluctance to allow China's influence, but expectations of investment remain high. Chinese scholars have been optimistic about prospects for cooperation, although not satisfied with the conditions Russia seems willing to offer. This background may help to explain the almost total lack of Sino–Russian cooperation in maritime infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how artists have engaged with the issue of air pollution in Beijing, where poor air quality has become a serious public health matter. Artists have utilized various mediums including performance art, photography, and painting to represent smog. Through generating media and online attention this work has contributed to a relatively vibrant "green public sphere" (Yang and Calhoun, 2007) of air pollution discourse. In contrast to much resistance in China that relies upon making specific claims to government officials, artistic expression bypasses the authorities and appeals instead to public opinion. Artists utilize ambiguity to portray air pollution in novel ways that subtly question the structures that produce and sustain it. In this way, artists can challenge popular perceptions of smog and raise public awareness, thus intensifying support for policies that tackle smog. Yet art can also embody deep frustration at the powerlessness that artists, and the public more widely, experience when confronted by severe air pollution. Art therefore serves both as a form of activism and as an expression of curtailed agency in a politically restrictive environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deepening globalisation and worldwide availability of free information and ideas raise concerns of the communist China's political leadership about the stability of the regime and the sustainability of the state ideological orthodoxy. Therefore, the state's tightening control of the public communication to curtail the domestic criticism and occasional public discontent is becoming framed and legitimised in terms of cultural security as a non-traditional security concern. This study argues that the restrictive impacts of the politicisation of culture in the centralised agenda of President Xi Jinping reinvigorate China's anti-Western narratives and attitudes. The research focuses on the state's cultural security-related and applicable strategy in the political and institutional agenda and media. Moreover, the study also traces the state cultural security policy in the field of the civic and non-governmental sector, religious and ethnic minorities policy, literature, film and audiovisual sectors. The findings assess the concern that the intellectually anachronistic, self-restraining and internationally hostile policy devaluates China's cultural potential and complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of the former Eastern Bloc and China's ways of dealing with the social implications of rock music as an alien cultural import from the West reveals significant analogies. The paper traces the process of politicisation of rock music and compares the two different cultural spaces by mapping each space's state ideology, aesthetic traditions and identities, and discriminative political and economic tools used to marginalise rock. Here the term politicisation refers mainly to the polarisation between the communist regimes' restrictive policies, and the attempts of the rock scenes to sustain their discriminating characteristics and relationship to protest. While in European communist states rock played a relevant subversive role, conversely, in China any 'rocking' of the state has largely been averted. The Chinese rock scene as an off-mainstream urban subculture has received less popular support than its counterpart in Europe and has also proved less politically significant. This comparative case study discusses the relationship between popular music and politics by tracing analogies and differences between the former Czechoslovakia, where the ideologisation and politicisation of rock reached the highest point in the Eastern Bloc, and contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, Chinese citizens, judges, and prosecutors have started to take action against industrial pollution, pluralizing a regulatory landscape originally occupied by administrative agencies. Regulatory pluralism here has an authoritarian logic, occurring without the retreat of party-state control. Under such logic, the party-state both needs and fears new actors for their positive and negative roles in controlling risk and maintaining stability. Consequently, the regime's relation to regulatory pluralism is ambivalent, shifting between support and restriction. This prevents a development of a regulatory society that could bypass the regulatory state. Theoretically, this special edition argues for a subjective definition of regulation in a context of pluralism. Moreover, it finds that regulatory pluralism need not coincide with a decentring of regulation. Finally, it highlights how entry onto the regulatory landscape affects the non-regulatory roles of new actors, creating unintended consequences for regulatory pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese view of hard and soft power in foreign policy differs from the Western understanding of these terms. The authorities’ hard-power practice of mobilizing expatriates to back up Chinese diplomacy and suppress critics overseas undermines China’s soft-power efforts in the West. The street clash that occurred during President Hu Jintao’s visit to Slovakia in 2009 is a case in point. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Analysis of causal evidence for effect of zoning on built-up land expansion. • Zoning effectively contained built-up land expansion in Zhangzhou City. • We observed a time-lag effect during plan implementation. • Zoning became ineffective at the end of plan implementation. • Causal inference and the influence of time should be emphasized in plan evaluation. The increasing impacts of built-up land expansion on sustainable development have heightened the use of spatial planning as a policy tool to contain built-up land expansion. However, causal evidence for the effect of spatial planning on built-up land expansion has largely remained unexplored. In this study, we used a difference-in-difference model with propensity score matching to estimate the average and annual effect of built-up land zoning (subsequently called zoning) on built-up land expansion in Zhangzhou City, China between 2010 and 2020. Results on the average effect show that zoning was effective in containing built-up land expansion. Specifically, zoning prevented 27.02 km2 of built-up land expansion outside the development-permitted zones between 2010 and 2020, which accounts for 32.46% of the observed built-up land expansion outside the development-permitted zones. We found a time-lag effect, with zoning starting to have an effect after 2013. Furthermore, zoning became ineffective in containing built-up land expansion at the end of plan implementation. Based on our findings, we recommend that future evaluations of the effect of spatial planning on land-use change use causal inference and that they explore the influence of time on the effect of plans in greater detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the prospects for new European Union (EU) member countries in pursuing their foreign policy objectives in relations with China. Both the Czech Republic and Slovakia cherished an idea of making China an alternative economic partner. However, after 1989, China perceived these states as minor, almost unimportant partners, regardless of their efforts. Their profile was raised by EU accession but there was little change in their strength in terms of bilateral relations with China. The article investigates the failures and partial successes of the Czech and Slovak relationships with China, comparing their different approaches to the balance between focusing on political and human rights issues and the pursuit of economic and business interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the economic relationship between China and the Czech Republic. Consequence of political involvement in support of Chinese human rights protection; Reasons for the failure of economic activities; Course of economic reform.

Spatial planning has been globally developed as a policy tool to govern built-up land expansion. However, causal evidence of the effect of spatial planning on built-up land expansion is limited, which raises doubts on the credibility of spatial planning and hinders theoretical developments in land-system science. We evaluated the effect of the Major Function Oriented Zone (MFOZ), the first strategic spatial plan in China, on built-up land expansion in Fujian Province over three time intervals (2013–2015, 2013–2018 and 2013–2020). Propensity score matching (PSM) was applied to overcome selection bias and obtain causal evidence. We implemented a conventional conformance evaluation as a reference for the PSM-based conformance evaluation, to demonstrate the problem of selection bias. The conventional conformance evaluation showed that the MFOZ effectively governed built-up land expansion in the three time intervals. The PSM-based conformance evaluation showed the smaller effect of the MFOZ and the effect was significant only in the time period 2013–2018 and 2013–2020. That is, the conventional conformance evaluation results in an initially ineffective effect of the MFOZ being estimated as effective in 2013–2015 and exaggerates the effect of the MFOZ on built-up land expansion in 2013–2018 and 2013–2020. In aggregate, Fujian's MFOZ prevented a total of 79.31 km2 of built-up land within the development-restricted zone between 2013 and 2020. To conclude, we recommend a wider application of the PSM-based conformance evaluation in evaluating the effect of spatial planning on land-use change, since this method accounts for selection bias and provides more accurate results regarding causality than conventional conformance evaluations. • Causal effect of spatial planning on built-up land expansion was estimated. • Major Function-Oriented Zone effectively governed built-up land expansion in Fujian Province, China. • Temporal variation in the causal effect of Major Function-Oriented Zone was found. • Propensity score matching can handle selection bias inherent in planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the 14th Chinese International Symposium on Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition Symposium in from Wuhan, China April 15 to 18, 2004. Speakers; Topics discussed; Significance of the event.

Rapid expansion of built-up land is widespread and often does not follow established zoning regulations. This non-conforming expansion of built-up land may exacerbate social and environmental problems and has emerged as an important sustainability concern. In this study, we first evaluated the non-conforming expansion of built-up land to zoning in Zhangzhou City, China from 2010 to 2020. Non-conforming expansion of built-up land accounted for 67.61% of the newly developed built-up land area. These non-conformances mainly were edge expansion, via conversions from arable land and forest to industrial/mining/transportation land. We then used spatial autoregressive models to estimate five types of peer effects on non-conforming built-up land expansion among local governments. The geographical, political, economic, geographical-economic, and political-economic peer effects significantly increased the expansion area of non-conforming built-up land among 307 villages. Our findings improve our understanding, from the perspective of inter-governmental interactions, of why the extent of built-up land often was beyond the permitted limits of zoning regulations. Our research also has policy implications and suggests constraining the peer effects of local government land-use behaviors that violate zoning regulations. We recommend the establishment of closer interdisciplinary collaborations between spatial planning and land-system science to address non-conforming land-use changes. • Non-conforming expansion of built-up land to zoning was 67.61% in Zhangzhou City. • Non-conforming built-up land was mainly used to industry/mining/transportation. • Peer effects led to non-conforming built-up land expansion among 307 villages. • Primary motivation for villages to violate zoning is to compete for economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relationship between European Union and The People's Republic of China declared in 2003 as the "strategic partnership" attracts attention as a new and remarkable phenomenon within post-bipolar international framework. This article reviews essentials and motives of both partners' mutual and deepening relations by pointing at their growing economic interdependence, upgrading political relations, and further developing their cultural, science and technology, academic, environmental etc. cooperation. However, while critically analysing EU-China basic agenda of the strategic partnership and its real outcomes, this article points at poor Chinese human rights record, persistence of EU arms embargo, mutual trade disputes, Chinese failure at obtaining the EU's Market Economy Status, as well as insufficient intellectual property and trade mark protection in China. This study concludes with finding an attaining the real EU-China strategic partnership questionable, considering that as a mere term of official-level politeness, lacking behind expectations and potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]