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Recent legislation in Europe and North America encourages women’s participation in corporate boards based on the belief that gender-diversified boards contribute positively to firm performance and increased competitiveness. Contrary to the West, the women’s participation rate in business has been traditionally high in China. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether gender-diverse corporate boards of Chinese automotive firms perform better financially than gender-homogeneous boards.

By drawing on data from the Chinese Government and Bloomberg, the authors compare and analyze the differences in financial performance (return on equity, asset growth, sales growth) and risk behavior (debt risk, R&D expenditure) of Chinese automotive firms with and without women on their corporate board.

There is significant evidence that firms with women on the board perform better across all three categories, with the exception of return on equity, for which they found no significant differences among the analyzed firms.

While women’s participation in corporate boards in China is low, the results of this study suggest to policy makers and firms alike to implement measures that support gender-diversified boards in order to take advantage of their potential to increase corporate performance.

So far, the performance of corporate boards of countries with a traditionally high share of female participation in the workforce has rarely been analyzed. Research focusing on the Chinese automotive industry is new and underrepresented, although China is the largest automotive market worldwide and a key industry of the domestic economy. This investigation contributes to the literature stream on board diversity in as well as to industry-related studies. With the example of the Chinese automotive industry, it provides empirical evidence of better performance of firms with gender-diversified boards within the categories tested.

This study investigates how food safety trust works as a critical moderator in the Chinese online fresh agricultural market based on an extended technology acceptance model.

The authors propose a research model that integrates attributes from the technology acceptance model, perceived product quality, logistics service quality, risk, and food safety trust. Structural equation modeling was applied to estimate the causal relationships using data from 851 Chinese customers.

The results indicated that perceived usefulness, product quality, and logistics service quality significantly enhance Chinese customers' intention to shop online for fresh agricultural products. Further, the positive effects increase when customer trust in food safety changes from low to high. In contrast, perceived risk reduces Chinese customers' willingness to engage in online shopping, but the negative influence is weaker for customers with high trust in food safety than for those with low trust. However, perceived ease of use plays an insignificant role in predicting online purchase intention and the impact does not vary depending on food safety trust.

This study suggests managers should consider the important moderating role of food safety trust to make effective strategies for fresh agricultural e-commerce development in China.

This paper aims to clarify the effects of motivations on negative online customer reviews (OCRs) behavior in an integrative framework and to identify the moderating role of monetary compensation and psychological compensation in the Chinese food and beverage industry.

Data were collected from 377 consumers who posted a negative review online. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the research hypotheses.

The authors identified some characteristics of the consumers who posted negative online reviews in the Chinese food and beverage industry and found evidence that reveals the positive effects of emotional venting motivation and altruism motivation on posting negative customer online reviews. Economic motivation and self-enhancement motivation were not significantly connected to negative OCRs behaviors. Service recovery strategies can moderate the relationship between certain motivations and behaviors. The absence of psychological compensation will aggravate the influence of emotion venting motivation on consumers’ negative online reviews, while monetary compensation can restrain the influence of altruism motivation on negative online rating behavior.

This paper did not explore the effect of the fairness and timeliness of service recovery on negative OCRs behavior. This paper did not consider the different restaurant types and customers' characteristics, and future research can test similar models with different and more diverse samples.

When implementing service recovery strategies, it is important to consider the psychological component of recovery. The absence of psychological compensation aggravates the influence of high levels of emotion venting motivation on consumers’ negative OCRs, leading to a lower rating, more word comments and negative photos. High levels of monetary compensation can restrain the influence of altruism motivation on negative online rating behavior.

The current paper contributes to the hospitality management literature by investigating the motivations behind consumer decisions to post negative OCRs in a food and beverage context. In addition, the moderating effect that service recovery strategies have on this relationship was also explored in depth.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the policy and trends in rural education in China over the past 40 years; and also discuss a number of challenges that are faced by China’s rural school system.

The authors use secondary data on policies and trends over the past 40 years for preschool, primary/junior high school, and high school.

The trends over the past 40 years in all areas of rural schooling have been continually upward and strong. While only a low share of rural children attended preschool in the 1980s, by 2014 more than 90 percent of rural children were attending. The biggest achievement in compulsory education is that the rise in the number of primary students that finish grade 6 and matriculate to junior high school. There also was a steep rise of those going to and completing high school. While the successes in upscaling rural education are absolutely unprecedented, there are still challenges.

This is descriptive analysis and there is not causal link established between policies and rural schooling outcomes.

The authors illustrate one of the most rapid rises of rural education in history and match the achievements up with the policy efforts of the government. The authors also explore policy priorities that will be needed in the coming years to raise the quality of schooling.

This is the first paper that documents both the policies and the empirical trends of the success that China has created in building rural education from preschool to high school during the first 40 years of reform (1978-2018). The paper also documents – drawing on the literature and the own research – the achievements and challenges that China still face in the coming years, including issues of gender, urbanization, early childhood education and health and nutrition of students.

The missing employee voice has become a salient topic in China. This paper aims to document the newest developments relating to the topic by reviewing the recent literature on employment relations and employee voice. The findings of this paper suggest that the purposes of and channels for the employee voice in China have been undergoing significant changes. Different stakeholder groups have approached the issue. ‘Democratic management’ in China, the country’s home-grown concept of employee voice, has been resurrected to encourage more effective employee representation. Apart from this top-down influence from the government and All-China Federation of Trade Unions, this paper also identifies the bottom-up approach driven by the workers, and the external influence from the global corporate social responsibility campaign and nongovernmental labour organizations. Based on the review of the newest developments in workplace democracy and the employee voice in China, this paper proposes a stakeholder framework incorporating these developments. The authors also suggest some directions for future research.

The modernization of China’s economy is an integral part of Chinese-style modernization. According to the principle of unifying theoretical, historical and practical logic, theoretically explaining the modernization of China’s economy is both a political necessity and a higher scientific requirement.

Following this evolutionary line – from modes of production to the general economic development mechanism and then to patterns of economic operation and development – this paper employs the principal contradiction analysis method to offer an interpretation of China’s economic modernization from the broad Marxist political economy perspective.

In economic terms, “get organized” primarily refers to the development and mutual promotion of team-based and market-based division of labor organizations, as discussed by Karl Marx. “Get organized” (specifically the development of team-based division of labor organizations) acts as the engine of China’s economic modernization and serves as the historical logical starting point. Division of labor is the theoretical logical starting point for interpreting China’s economic modernization. The two of them are congruent, achieving the unity of theoretical and historical logic at the starting point. The development and mutual promotion of these “two types of division of labor” inherently generate the general mechanism of economic development first comprehensively discussed by Marx and Friedrich Engels, which involves the division of labor development and market expansion accumulating cyclically and reinforcing each other. This mechanism drives both the high-speed and high-quality development of China’s economic modernization.

The broad Marxist political economy paradigm facilitates explaining China’s economic modernization theoretically, historically and practically with unified logic. “Get organized” serves as both the engine and the realization mechanism of this modernization, with the Communist Party of China (CPC) consistently being the core force of this organizational effort.

The new Silk Road provides cross-border-e-commerce firms with an opportunity to widen their markets. Under this circumstance, the preference recognition of countries and inventory allocation among overseas warehouses both become critical issues to solve. Three Chinese smartphone brands, including HTC, Huawei, and MI, are selected in this chapter for their relatively enormous sales. DHgate and AliExpress websites are chosen as platforms to analyze the sales for data availability. This chapter first depicts key features of the sales and then, based on which, divide countries into several groups according to their preference for phones by cluster analysis. Then, based on the results of cluster analysis, this chapter further models the inventory assignment among the seven major overseas warehouses that were built by AliExpress in 2015. The results show that the HTC seems to be pursuing the “high value with high price” strategy, while the other two companies seem to be pursuing a hybrid strategy of “low-price” strategy and “high value with low price” strategy. This chapter also provides an assignment pattern of inventory among the overseas warehouses based on the real data of sales and costs.

By distinguishing between core business service and value-added service in mobile payment applications, this paper aims to incorporate point mechanisms (point rewarding and point exchanging) into these two separated roles of services to understand user loyalty formation. Specifically, this study aims to examine the mediating role of need satisfaction and perceived value in the relationships between point mechanisms and user loyalty.

Drawing upon self-determination theory and perceived value lens, this study develops a theoretical model that examines the mediation effects of multiple psychological outcomes on the relationships between point mechanisms (point rewarding and point exchanging) and user loyalty in the context of mobile payment. Data were collected from 731 users of a leading mobile payment application in China through an online survey. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the hypothesized relationships.

Empirical results suggest that point rewarding enhances users’ need satisfaction of core service, whereas point exchanging increases users' perceived value of additional value-added service. Results also reveal that need satisfaction and perceived value mediate the relationships between point mechanisms (i.e. point rewarding and point exchanging) and user loyalty. In sum, the findings enhance our understanding of user loyalty formation from a dual channeling perspective.

This study informs the managers of mobile payment applications on how to build user loyalty by enhancing users' experience of core business service and value-added service through point mechanism implementation.

This study highlights the importance of both core business service and value-added service in mobile payment applications and provides new insights into the effects of point mechanisms on user loyalty by considering different service routes. Additionally, this study uncovers the mediation mechanisms of users' need satisfaction of core service and users' perceived value of additional value-added service on the two service routes, which further enrich our understanding regarding the user loyalty formation of mobile payment applications.

Twenty-two coal samples and eleven parting samples were taken from Gashun Coal Mine, Hoxtolgay coalfield, Xingjiang Autonomous Region, and the samples were analyzed by using optical microscopy. The results indicate that the dominant macerals are vitrinite (av. 76.6%) with minor amounts of inertinite (av. 18.84%) and low liptinite (av. 2.7%), along with low content of mineral matters (av. 1.86%). All GI, TPI, VI, GWI values and two facies diagrams indicate that the main coal facies are in limnic area. Meanwhile, the overall petrographic composition and coal facies types indicate that the coal formed in strong wet reducing peat accumulating conditions which were the lacustrine marshes.

The purpose of this study is to provide a highly efficient method to obtain the kinetics of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) on metal electrodes in an alkaline solution and to analyze the effect of thiourea addition on HER under the same cathodic overpotential.

A novel method based on hydrogen permeation tests, potentiodynamic polarization tests and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was put forward to characterize the HER kinetics on metal electrode.

The study found that adding thiourea accelerated the Volmer, Heyrovsky and Tafel reactions associated with HER. In addition, it reduced the hydrogen surface coverage and increased the hydrogen permeation steady-state current density. As a result, thiourea facilitated HER, promoted the diffusion of hydrogen atoms into iron and reduced the number of hydrogen atoms in the adsorbed state.

This work provides novel insights into the influence of thiourea on HER kinetics, demonstrating that thiourea addition can significantly enhance HER efficiency by altering reaction dynamics and promoting hydrogen atom diffusion into iron. This has implications for hydrogen energy applications, cathodic protection and understanding hydrogen embrittlement mechanisms.