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Firms have widely participated in financial technology (Fintech) in recent years. Through a proprietary dataset of listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, we find that Fintech positively contributes to firm access to bank loans, and such link is stronger among private firms, non‐manufacturing firms or those in regions of better marketisation. Further tests suggest that enhanced trust underlies our primary findings, and that Fintech also positively contributes to loans without collateral, longer maturity and lower costs. In addition, Fintech may effectively curb firm's overinvestment. Our findings may have policy implications for firm investment behaviour and financing activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both state-led and market-led institutional arrangements have been experimented in China to form collaborative governance among diverse stakeholders in participatory urban regeneration. Relatively less is known about how institutional arrangements as structural constraints impact the formation of collaborative governance. Building upon Giddens' structuration theory and collaborative governance theory, this paper develops a novel framework that converges on the reciprocity between structural and agency elements and applies it to two residential regeneration cases in Shenzhen. The findings reveal that in residential regeneration, the state-led institutional structure has a greater capacity than the market-led structure to create relational links for community participation. Various factors, including variations in land property rights, path dependencies and institutional certainties, explain the findings. The formation of collaborative governance relies on the shaping effect of structural elements on agents' behaviors in institutional design, including well-designed rules to regulate sanctions, constitute common meaning and premium-allocated resources in accordance with stakeholders' responsibilities. These findings contribute to a better understanding of collaborative governance and help improve participatory urban regeneration policymaking in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classification of urban functional areas plays an important role in urban planning and resource management. Although previous studies have confirmed that different urban functional areas have different morphological structures and Land Surface Temperature (LST) characteristics, these two types of characteristics have rarely been fully integrated and used for functional area classification. In this paper, a new framework for classifying urban functional areas is proposed by combining urban morphological features and LST features. First, metrics are constructed from three levels, namely, building, road and region, which are used to portray urban morphology; LST is retrieved using thermal infrared remote sensing to reflect LST features with four metrics: the average temperature, maximum temperature, temperature difference and standard deviation of temperature. Then, the functional areas are classified into four categories: service/public land, commercial land, residential land and industrial land. A random forest algorithm is used to effectively fuse the features of these two categories and classify the functional areas. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is tested in the study area of Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province. The results show that the combined classification accuracy of the proposed classification method is 0.85, which is 0.26 higher than that of the classification model based on urban morphology and 0.1 higher than that of the classification model based on LST features. The proposed framework verifies that the integration of LST features into urban functional area classification is reliable and effectively combines urban morphology and LST features for functional area classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's historical mixed-ownership reform (the Reform) has prioritized enhancing the efficiency and financial performance of its large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) through introduction of partial private-sector equity ownership. However, the presence of a significant gap between China's private enterprises' corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and those of its SOEs suggests potential for Reform-related ownership changes to negatively impact economy-wide CSR performance. We therefore examine the Reform's impact on private acquirer firms' CSR practices. We use a proprietary data set of firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, covering the 2011–2015 period. Our findings identify that private firms can enhance their economic and political status through acquiring equity in state-controlled or SOEs and, following this, improve their CSR practices. Our findings have policy implications in the context of the world's largest emerging market and, more generally, for SOE ownership reform in emerging and transition economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a proprietary dataset of listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, we establish a positive link between firms' financial technology (Fintech) business and their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Such a link can be more pronounced among firms of stronger political connections, lower agency costs, and better internal control. Enhanced supply of bank loans, internal capital market, public scrutiny, and firms' strategic differences are underlying the link. Fintech business may also effectively curb firms' corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) behaviour. Fintech business may have become a strategic endeavor to sustain long-term economic growth in the digital age. • Fintech business positively contributes to firm CSR practices. • The impact is strengthened by political connections, lowered agency costs, and internal control. • Bank loans, internal capital market, public scrutiny, and strategic differences are underlying elements. • Fintech business also curbs corporate social irresponsibility behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At 11:40 a.m., December 20, 2015, a catastrophic landslide occurred in Shenzhen, Guangdong, Southeast China. Seventy-seven people were killed, and 33 buildings were buried or damaged, which were in the direct path of the landslide at the Guangming New District. The landslide involved 2.73 million m of the municipal solid waste (MSW) and had a horizontal runout distance of 1100 m, over a vertical distance of 113 m, which was equivalent to a Fahrböschung of 6°, and covered an area of 0.38 km. Basic post-failure characteristics are described in this study. Dynamic simulation software (DANW) and rheological models were used to simulate the runout behavior of the displaced landslide material, in order to provide information for the hazard zonation of similar types of potential MSW landslides. The simulated results revealed that a combination of the frictional model and Voellmy model is able to provide the best performance in simulating this landslide. Also, the results showed that this landslide had a duration of about 50 s, with a maximum velocity of 22.4 m/s. It was expected that these models and parameters could improve the accuracy of future hazard assessments of areas with geological, topographical, and climatic features similar to the Shenzhen Hong'ao landfill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Introduced an accessibility perspective to assess urban heat risk. • Applied the MSPA analysis method to identify stable heat sources. • Identified the heat risk areas and affected population in different months. • Compared the accessibility measurement method with the traditional method. A heat risk assessment in complex urban areas is important to mitigate the impact of the urban heat island (UHI) and to accurately implement cooling measures. Previous studies have focused on a single 'heat source' or 'resident' oriented assessment method, with fewer assessments and lack of appropriate theoretical approaches that consider both the distribution of residents and heat core areas. This study combined a morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) and a two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) model to identify UHI patches and heat cores, assessed the accessibility of residents to heat core areas at the neighbourhood scale, and constructed a new framework for assessing the heat risk from an accessibility perspective. A case study of Shenzhen City indicated that the heat core area accounted for 5.5%, 7.8%, 10%, and 7.1% of the whole study area in February, May, August, and November, respectively. The relationship between the areas with a heat risk and UHI patches, and the dominant factors for the formation of different high-risk aggregations had a high spatial heterogeneity. The differences between the accessibility-based assessment results and conventional methods were also discussed, and the heat risk in conventional assessment methods was found to be in error. The accessibility-based heat risk assessment framework can accurately identify heat core areas and high heat risk areas, and provide effective planning guidance for mitigating the negative effects of UHI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audit quality usually refers to the quality that the auditing services accounting firm auditors provide to an enterprise in the form of an audit report. This study empirically analyzes the impact mechanism of smog pollution on audit quality, based on the data of A-share listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges during the period 2013 to 2017 and the air quality monitoring data released by the China National Environmental Monitoring Centre covering the period 2013 to 2018. First, the empirical results show that smog pollution can lead to a decline in audit quality. Second, audit time plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between smog pollution and audit quality. Further analysis indicates that the negative impact of smog pollution on audit quality and the intermediary role played by audit time are only significant in the sample of "top 10" accounting firms. Third, the enterprise′s internal control level positively moderates the mediating effect of audit time on smog pollution and audit quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Offering a new governmental mechanism that can strengthen perceived tenure security. • Adding a new approach to regenerating problematic urban villages. • Revealing a new social-psychological effect underlying the operation of urban informality. Urban informality and informal settlements, as research concepts rooted in the global south, have the potential to reveal the relationship between property improvement, tenure security, uneven distribution of resources and asymmetric power relations embedded in urban studies. Investigations of urban villages in China are also inspired by these ideas. The present study of the Ningmeng Apartment project in Shuiwei Village, Shenzhen, China, aims to contribute to these exciting research fields by (1) offering a new governmental mechanism – government-backed informal formalizing of informality – that can strengthen perceived tenure security; (2) investigating a new approach to regenerating problematic urban villages; and (3) revealing a new social-psychological effect underlying the operation of urban informality: perceived formal informality. These three dimensions can be interpreted as government-backed methods of laundering the grey, ways in which state actors use informal operations to strengthen the perceived tenure security and upgrade the spatial quality of informal properties to achieve governmental goals. Based on these three academic contributions, interactions between rule-breaking innovations and a pre-innovation environment emerge from the examination of the Ningmeng project. Such interactions may reflect the experience of China during its post-1978 reform and may inspire new policy practices in other developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The rapid urbanization of China during the past decades has led to the emergence and development of urban villages. Existing literature has largely focused on the lack of state regulations in the development of urban villages. This paper comprehensively identifies and investigates the institutional constraints on land development in urban villages in China based on a property rights framework and a comparative study on two representative cases in Shenzhen. The key institutional constraints on the land development in urban villages include 1) land insecurity caused by the possibility of government expropriation, 2) unequal access to credit because of unequal land rights, and 3) absence of state regulations on collective land transactions because of the lack of de jure property rights. These institutional constraints weakened the land-related investment incentives and ability of villagers, and resulted in inferior infrastructure and poorly constructed environment in urban villages. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]