Every day and everywhere, China figures prominently in global attention: companies and banks weigh billions in investments; hedge fund managers assess and speculate on downside risks; commodity ...traders and natural resource producers salivate over China's energy appetite; intelligence agencies carefully track China's growing global footprint; militaries monitor China's growing military capabilities; diplomats grapple with a new assertiveness in China's diplomatic posture; scholars try to understand the shifting dynamics and sources of China's behaviour; while journalists track the latest changes in China's economy, polity, and society.
Charting China's Future provides informed analysis on the complexities of today's China, and where these complexities may lead, from some of the world's leading Asia experts. The contributors have provided clear, intelligible, and forward-looking analyses, free of social science jargon and extensive footnotes. Probing into many of the key domestic and external issues facing China today from political, economic and social perspectives the book proffers a forward-looking analysis that will appeal to anyone with a professional, academic or personal interest in the big issues facing today's China and its interaction with the world. Readers will find much to contemplate about China's future in this volume, and will gain a clearer sense of the key variables and possible trajectories of one of the most consequential countries on the planet.
Banking on Growth Models contends that China's rapid economic rise from the late 1970s to today has been built on and shaped by a highly politicized and inefficient bank-centric financial system. ...Stephen Bell and Hui Feng argue that if the Chinese growth model drives how key economic sectors interact, no amount of incremental reform can have much impact on the financial system—meaningful reform can stem only from a revised growth model. For a time after the global financial crisis, it appeared that the expansion of a more market-oriented shadow banking system might help sustain China's economic growth. Since around 2015, however, Xi Jinping's regime has reversed this trajectory and placed China's financial system under heavy state control, resulting in slowed economic development and skyrocketing national debt. China's market transition and economic rebalancing are now in doubt, as is the fate of the nation's economy. By pinpointing finance as a vital element of the growth model, Bell and Feng provide a convincing assessment of financial risks and the prospects for economic rebalancing in China. Banking on Growth Models demystifies the world of Chinese banking and finance as it investigates an ever-rising national debt, a declining rate of economic growth, and the possibility of dire and drastic reform by the Asian superpower's government.
Methods that predict membrane helices have become increasingly useful in the context of analyzing entire proteomes, as well as in everyday sequence analysis. Here, we analyzed 27 advanced and simple ...methods in detail. To resolve contradictions in previous works and to reevaluate transmembrane helix prediction algorithms, we introduced an analysis that distinguished between performance on redundancy‐reduced high‐ and low‐resolution data sets, established thresholds for significant differences in performance, and implemented both per‐segment and per‐residue analysis of membrane helix predictions. Although some of the advanced methods performed better than others, we showed in a thorough bootstrapping experiment based on various measures of accuracy that no method performed consistently best. In contrast, most simple hydrophobicity scale‐based methods were significantly less accurate than any advanced method as they overpredicted membrane helices and confused membrane helices with hydrophobic regions outside of membranes. In contrast, the advanced methods usually distinguished correctly between membrane‐helical and other proteins. Nonetheless, few methods reliably distinguished between signal peptides and membrane helices. We could not verify a significant difference in performance between eukaryotic and prokaryotic proteins. Surprisingly, we found that proteins with more than five helices were predicted at a significantly lower accuracy than proteins with five or fewer. The important implication is that structurally unsolved multispanning membrane proteins, which are often important drug targets, will remain problematic for transmembrane helix prediction algorithms. Overall, by establishing a standardized methodology for transmembrane helix prediction evaluation, we have resolved differences among previous works and presented novel trends that may impact the analysis of entire proteomes.
The European Parliament and The Council of the European Union have established the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) for all European Union member states to achieve, at least, “good” ecological ...status of all water bodies larger than 50 hectares in Europe. The MultiSpectral Instrument onboard European Space Agency satellite Sentinel-2 has suitable 10, 20, 60 m spatial resolution to monitor most of the Estonian lakes as required by the Water Framework Directive. The study aims to analyze the suitability of Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument data to monitor water quality in inland waters. This consists of testing various atmospheric correction processors to remove the influence of atmosphere and comparing and developing chlorophyll a algorithms to estimate the ecological status of water in Estonian lakes. This study shows that the Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument is suitable for estimating chlorophyll a in water bodies and tracking the spatial and temporal dynamics in the lakes. However, atmospheric corrections are sensitive to surrounding land and often fail in narrow and small lakes. Due to that, deriving satellite-based chlorophyll a is not possible in every case, but initial results show the Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument could still provide complementary information to in situ data to support Water Framework Directive monitoring requirements.
After the 1978 Economic Reform, China's economic development has been on a fast track ever since. Later on, the successful accession into the WTO in 2001 accelerated China's economic transformation ...and made it more integrated with the world. Today, as the second-largest economy in the world, China has earned herself a leading role on the world stage beyond dispute. This book provides readers with answers to why and how China functions as a leader in the world economy.
Stephen Morgan provides a comprehensive analysis of China's unprecedented economic transformation and the specifics of its development, including issues such as well-being and human capital, ...inequality, ageing, urbanization and sustainability, consumerism, health, education and the environment.
Tracing a practice called "playing American" through the stages of videogame development, gameplay, and reception, this book delineates how aspects of American culture are reproduced transnationally ...through popular open-world videogames. Case studies of the Grand Theft Auto, Watch Dogs, and Red Dead Redemption franchises highlight different figurations of this phenomenon.
The phrase ‘New Normal’ captures the ongoing shift in the pattern and drivers of China’s economic growth. China’s new growth rate is both slower and imposing difficult structural change. These new ...economic conditions are challenging yet offer opportunities for China and its economic partners. Reforms must be deepened but also make growth more inclusive and environmentally sustainable, over this decade and beyond. This year’s Update offers both global context and domestic insight into this challenging new phase of China’s domestic economic transformation. How are policymakers elevating migrant workers concurrent with increasing consumption? Is China’s government spending enough on education and R&D to ensure it can achieve its aspirations to ascend the global manufacturing value chain and avoid the middle-income trap? Are energy market reforms reducing or increasing the price of gas and electricity in China? What are the consequences of China’s financial reforms and expanding Renminbi trading for foreign banks? What does China’s new growth model mean for the international resources economy and for Africa? Do SOEs face market conditions and are they dominating China’s fast-rising outbound investment? What is China’s strategy for navigating fragmented international trade policy negotiations?
Everyday life in China is increasingly shaped by a novel mix of neoliberal and socialist elements, of individual choices and state objectives. This combination of self-determination and socialism ...from afar has incited profound changes in the ways individuals think and act in different spheres of society. Covering a vast range of daily life-from homeowner organizations and the users of Internet cafes to self-directed professionals and informed consumers-the essays inPrivatizing Chinacreate a compelling picture of the burgeoning awareness of self-governing within the postsocialist context.
The introduction by Aihwa Ong and Li Zhang presents assemblage as a concept for studying China as a unique postsocialist society created through interactions with global forms. The authors conduct their ethnographic fieldwork in a spectrum of domains-family, community, real estate, business, taxation, politics, labor, health, professions, religion, and consumption-that are infiltrated by new techniques of the self and yet also regulated by broader socialist norms.Privatizing Chinagives readers a grounded, fine-grained intimacy with the variety and complexity of everyday conduct in China's turbulent transformation.
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