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Based on the conceptual design of seismic resistance in buildings, this study aims to put forward a new construction structure energy-saving block structure with invisible multiribbed frame.

The structure is composed of energy-saving block wall panels with invisible multiribbed frames, lightweight partition wall plates and cast-in-place reinforced concrete floor slabs. The structure design is simple and the construction is convenient and fast. The comprehensive economic index of the structure is better than that of brick-and-concrete composite construction. The self-weight of the energy-saving blocks that make up the wall is only about 25% of that of solid clay bricks. The thermal insulation and energy-saving effects of the structure can meet the national energy-saving requirements of buildings.

This new structure meets the requirements of national technology and economy, wall deformation, thermal insulation and energy-saving, and can be used mainly for multistory and mid- to high-rise residential buildings. For the core components of the new structure energy-saving block and invisible multiribbed frame composite wall, as the axial compression ratio increases in the test parameters range, the peak bearing capacity and ductility of the wall increase and the initial stiffness of the wall decreases. The axial compression ratio has a significant effect on the energy dissipation capacity of the wall. The displacement ductility coefficients ν are all greater than 2, indicating the optimal seismic performance of the wall.

This structure is a new, economical, lightweight, energy-saving, seismic resistant, multistory and mid- to high-rise structure that fully conforms to national conditions.

The government has included social media technology applications in the public sector as part of the fifth wave of information and communications technology adoption. Academic interest in social media in the government sector has been increasing. But there has been little empirical research on the assimilation of social media in the local government. To fill this gap, based on technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, this study aims to investigate the key technological, organizational and environmental factors that affect the assimilation of social media in local government agencies.

To empirically test the model, a survey study was conducted. Data were collected from 150 government employees in the government department of X municipal government in China. The collected data were analysed quantitatively to answer five hypotheses using structural equation model.

The findings suggest that technology competence, top management support, perceived benefits and citizen readiness significantly influence assimilation of social media in local government agencies. Top management support is the strongest predictor of social media assimilation in a government agency.

This study is one of the first attempts that adopted the TOE framework to understand assimilation of social media in the local government. In addition, the effect of the four factors that include one technological factor, two organizational factors and one environmental factor, namely, technology competence, top management support, perceived benefits and citizen readiness, on intention to assimilate social media was investigated.

This study explores the effect of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on corporations' environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and values in the Chinese financial market.

This study collected data covering 158 Chinese listed companies that have successfully completed at least one M&A activity between 2011 and 2020. Fixed effect and random models based on the Hausman test are adopted to mitigate potential heterogeneity issues in the selection.

Results show that acquiring targets with high ESG performance can help increase their own ESG performance, which in turn increases their market values. Heterogeneity and robustness tests also provide consistent results. Findings further confirm the bidirectional correlation between ESG and M&As, and then enrich related literature by suggesting the importance of utilizing M&As as a driver to increase corporate ESG performance.

This study embodies the practical implications of ESG and M&A. Managers, investors and policymakers can highly benefit from the results through practical applications.

Before the turn of the century, taking overseas students was more about a diplomatic issue dominated by the state in China, for which reason this section is relatively independent within the higher education system. However, evidence from a series of new policy documents and their impacts suggests that international student mobility (ISM) has been intensively shaped by the central government in the desire to promote its national strategy, namely the belt and road initiative. ISM policy, although with a significant proportion marketized, was introduced for a clear purpose of cultural diplomacy. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Looking beyond the debate of market-driven vs state-dominated, this paper attempts to provide a thorough understanding of this changing pattern based on examination of key changes of policy statements along with official data analysis.

This paper argues that the new pattern must be understood against a context of a hierarchy of higher education institutes in contemporary China: a sector led by a small number of prestigious universities generously funded by the central government with a large number of ordinary universities underfunded and eager to generate income. Prestigious institutes enroll international students to satisfy performance indicators listed by policies like “Double First-rate”; other universities, benefiting from the reputation and momentum generated by the top ones, take self-funded students for profit.

By making good use of both performance indicators and market motives, the country managed to move a state-dominated ISM policy in the twentieth century into the existing state-steering marketization model and made China a major destination for overseas study.

The purpose of this paper is to provide reference for researchers by reviewing the research advances and trend of agricultural product price forecasting methods in recent years.

This paper reviews the main research methods and their application of forecasting of agricultural product prices, summarizes the application examples of common forecasting methods, and prospects the future research directions.

1) It is the trend to use hybrid models to predict agricultural products prices in the future research; 2) the application of the prediction model based on price influencing factors should be further expanded in the future research; 3) the performance of the model should be evaluated based on DS rather than just error-based metrics in the future research; 4) seasonal adjustment models can be applied to the difficult seasonal forecasting tasks in the agriculture product prices in the future research; 5) hybrid optimization algorithm can be used to improve the prediction performance of the model in the future research.

The methods from this paper can provide reference for researchers, and the research trends proposed at the end of this paper can provide solutions or new research directions for relevant researchers.

Tourism is a labor-intensive sector with extensive links to other industries and plays a vital role in creating employment. This study aims to propose a new framework to analyze the intrinsic structure of the employment effects of tourism-related sectors and their drivers.

This study uses input–output and structural decomposition analysis (IO-SDA) to quantify the employment effects of tourism-related sectors and their driving mechanisms based on China’s I-O tables of 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017.

The results show a declining trend in the intensity of direct or indirect employment effects in tourism-related sectors, indicating a decreasing number of jobs directly or indirectly required to create a unit of tourism output. Among tourism-related sectors, catering has the highest intensity of indirect employment effects over the study period. Catering stimulates the indirect employment of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery and food and tobacco manufacturing. The decomposition analysis reveals that final demand is the largest contributor to the increase in tourism employment, while technological progress shifts from an employment-creation effect in 2002–2012 to an employment-destruction effect in 2012–2017.

This study proposes a new analytical framework to investigate the structural proportional relationship between the direct and indirect employment effects of various tourism-related sectors and their dynamic changes. Doing so, it provides valuable references for policymakers to promote tourism employment.

旅游相关部门就业效应的驱动因素：以中国为例

摘要

旅游业是一个劳动密集型部门, 与其他国民经济部门有着广泛的联系, 这在创造就业方面发挥着重要作用。本研究旨在建立一个框架, 分析旅游相关部门就业效应的内在结构及其驱动因素。

本研究基于中国2002年、2007年、2012年和2017年的投入产出表, 引入投入产出和结构分解分析（IO-SDA）法量化了旅游相关行业的就业效应及其变化的驱动机制。

旅游相关部门的直接或间接就业强度呈下降趋势, 可见创造一个单位的旅游产出所需的直接或间接工作数量在减少。在旅游相关部门中, 餐饮部门在研究期内的间接就业效应强度最高, 主要带动了农、林、牧、渔业和食品及烟草制造业的间接就业。旅游就业效应变动的驱动因素中, 最终需求是旅游就业效应增加的最大贡献者, 技术效应从2002-2012年期间的就业创造效应转变为2012-2017年期间的就业破坏效应。

本研究建立了一个全新的分析框架, 可以揭示各个旅游相关部门的直接和间接就业效应之间的结构比例关系及其动态变化。对旅游就业效应的驱动因素分析可以为政策制定者提供针对性的建议, 以促进旅游就业。

Factores que impulsan los efectos del empleo en los sectores relacionados con el turismo: El caso de China continental

Resumen

El turismo es un sector intensivo en mano de obra con amplios vínculos con otras industrias y desempeña un papel vital en la creación de empleo. Este estudio propone un nuevo marco para analizar la estructura intrínseca de los efectos en el empleo de los sectores relacionados con el turismo y sus impulsores.

Este estudio utiliza el análisis de entrada-salida (input-output) y de descomposición estructural (structural decomposition) (IO-SDA) para cuantificar los efectos sobre el empleo en los sectores relacionados con el turismo y sus mecanismos impulsores, basándose en las tablas input-output de China de 2002, 2007, 2012 y 2017.

Los resultados muestran una tendencia a la baja en la intensidad de los efectos directos o indirectos del empleo en los sectores relacionados con el turismo, lo que indica un número cada vez menor de puestos de trabajo directos o indirectos necesarios para crear una unidad de producción turística. Entre los sectores relacionados con el turismo, la restauración tiene la mayor intensidad de efectos indirectos sobre el empleo durante el periodo de estudio. La restauración estimula el empleo indirecto de la agricultura, la silvicultura, la ganadería, la pesca y la fabricación de alimentos y tabaco. El análisis de descomposición revela que la demanda final es la que más contribuye al aumento del empleo turístico, mientras que el progreso tecnológico pasa de ser un efecto de creación de empleo en 2002-2012 a un efecto de destrucción de empleo en 2012-2017.

Este estudio propone un nuevo marco analítico para investigar la relación estructural proporcional entre los efectos directos e indirectos del empleo de varios sectores relacionados con el turismo y sus cambios dinámicos. De este modo, proporciona valiosas referencias para que los responsables políticos promuevan el empleo en el sector turístico.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the Chaozhou-speaking communities in northeast Guangdong Province dealt with new barriers of border control during the 1950s, and how they circumvented these institutional obstacles to leave China for Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. The emigration process was reshaped by new social and political forces in Maoist China. How did the Chaoshan people apply for the travel permit to leave China? How did they enter the hosting countries? How did the emigration experience influence the identity formation of Chaoshan Chinese in the 1950s?

This paper draws on archival sources, memoirs and interviews to demonstrate the ways in which Chaoshan people pursued new strategies of emigration during the 1950s.

In Maoist China, the application for an entry-exit permit was a rather complicated bureaucratic process for ordinary people. One needs to consider the class status, geographical origins and overseas connections of the applicants as well as the changing official policies toward overseas Chinese.

This paper emphasizes on the impacts of emigration experience on the identity formation of Chaoshan people and the incremental transformation of these emigrant communities in Guangdong Province.

This scholarly finding throws light on the transformation of Chaoshan from a fluid, mobile maritime environment to an increasingly state-centric agrarian society during the 1950s.

This paper is an original scholarly study of the history of Chaoshan communities in South China and their emigration to Southeast Asia.

This study adopts the perspective of dynamic capabilities to investigate influencing factors and proposes improvement strategies of supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction.

The structural equation model (SEM) is used to identify and verify the relationship between factors influencing supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction from the perspective of dynamic capabilities. The system dynamics (SD) model is constructed to dynamically simulate the specific effects of different influencing factors.

Results indicate that: (1) An evaluation index system for supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction containing five first-level indicators and 36 second-level indicators is constructed; (2) Ability to anticipate, ability to respond, ability to adapt, ability to recover and ability to learn are positively correlated with the supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction and (3) ANT3 (information system), RES1 (quick response), ADA3 (buffer stock) and LEA4 (trust) are the most leading factors influencing supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction over time.

This study fulfills the need for an in-depth exploration of the various influencing factors on supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction from the perspective of dynamic capabilities. Furthermore, this study provides improvement strategies to enhance supply chain resilience of prefabricated construction in China.

This study aims to develop a polymer cement-based waterproof coating with self-healing capability to efficiently and intelligently solve the building leakage caused by cracking of waterproof materials, along with excellent durability to prolong its service life.

Ion chelators are introduced into the composite system based on ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer emulsion and ordinary Portland cement to prepare self-healing polymer cement-based waterproof coating. Hydration, microstructure, wettability, mechanical properties, durability, self-healing performance and self-healing products of polymer cement-based waterproof coating with ion chelator are investigated systematically. Meanwhile, the chemical composition of self-healing products in the crack was examined.

The results showed that ion chelators could motivate the hydration of C₂S and C₃S, as well as the formation of hydration products (C-S-H gel) of the waterproof coating to improve its compactness. Compared with the control group, the waterproof coating with ion chelator had more excellent water resistance, alkali resistance, thermal and UV aging resistance. When the dosage of ion chelator was 2%, after 28 days of curing, cracks with a width of 0.29 mm in waterproof coating could fully heal and cracks with a width of 0.50 mm could achieve a self-healing efficiency of 72%. Furthermore, the results reveal that the self-healing product in the crack was calcite crystalline CaCO₃.

A novel ion chelator was introduced into the composite coating system to endow it with excellent self-healing ability to prolong its service life. It has huge application potential in the field of building waterproofing.

This study examines the relationship between internal control and corporate environmental responsibility.

Unlike US studies that concentrate solely on internal control over financial reporting, this study uses a comprehensive index that encompasses internal control over financial reporting, operations, and compliance. Corporate environmental responsibility is measured by environmental investments. Our research sample comprises Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2018.

The results demonstrate a positive correlation between internal control and corporate environmental investments. Furthermore, we find that firms with high-quality internal control can improve their financial and environmental performance through environmental investments. After decomposing internal control into its five components, we show that the control environment, control activities, and information and communication components exhibit stronger effects on environmental investments than the risk assessment and monitoring components. Finally, the cross-sectional analyses reveal that the positive effect of internal control is more pronounced in private firms and in firms that are subject to weaker environmental regulation.

By focusing on the effect of a comprehensive internal mechanism on corporate environmental responsibility in China, this study contributes to the literature in developed-country settings that overwhelmingly focuses on the impact of external stakeholders and regulations.