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China's shadow banking has been rising rapidly in the last decade, mainly driven by regulations for banks, the Fiscal Stimulus Plan in 2008 and credit constraints in restrictive industries. This sector has continued growing although the regulators repeatedly attempted to impose new regulations on banks and nonbanks. The existence of shadow banking fulfills the high demand for funding. The standard view is that it poses risks to financial stability. However, in China, this is not necessarily the case. Entrusted loans, implicit guarantees from nonbanks, banks or government may provide a second‐best arrangement in funding risky projects and improving welfare.

China's Sponge City Program (SCP) envisions a city's surface water management system to function like a sponge to absorb, store, infiltrate, and purify rainwater, and release it for reuse when needed. It emphasizes the use of natural and natural-engineering hybrid measures to mimic natural water cycle, thus offers Nature-Based-Solutions (NBS) to urban surface water management. The SCP has become a flagship sustainability program, applied across 30 pilot cities in mainland China since 2014. Significant progress has been made with three years of start-up financial support from the central government. At present, securing adequate financial resources to support further construction, operation, and maintenance of relevant green/blue infrastructures becomes the key challenge to extending the SCP within pilot cities and to other cities. Green finance, referring to local, national, or transnational financial investments from public, private, and alternative sources flowing into environmental and sustainability initiatives, has been experimented in the EU member countries and identified as one of the key business models to NBS, could be a viable solution to further the uptake of China's SCP concept and its implementation. In this context, the emergence of Hong Kong as an Asia-Pacific green finance hub offers a gateway for the SCP to secure financial resources. This paper describes the financial challenge of the SCP and the emerging development of green finance in China and compares it with the EU's experience in NBS green finance. It then explores how Hong Kong could take advantage of its well-established international standards and favourable geopolitical position as a key financial hub to channel green capital into China's SCP from interested investors. To do so requires overcoming current barriers in financial regulations and jurisdictional regimes between mainland China and Hong Kong. A stable and transparent cross-border green finance platform should be established to actively engage investors interested in the SCP ...

Abstract. This paper presents a validation and confutation analysis using the methods of the robust satellite data analysis technique (RST) to detect seismic anomalies within the bi-angular Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) data based on spatial/temporal continuity analysis. The distinguishing feature of our method is that we carried out a comparative analysis of seismic anomalies from bi-directional observation, which could help understanding seismic thermal infrared (TIR) anomalies. The proposed method has been applied to analyse bi-angular AATSR gridded brightness temperature data with longitude from 5 to 25° E and latitude from 35 to 50° N associated with the earthquake that occurred in Abruzzo, Italy, on 6 April 2009, and a full data set of 7 yr data from 2003 to 2009 during the months of March and April has been analysed for validation purposes. Unperturbed periods (March–April 2008) have been considered for confutation analysis. Combining with the tectonic explanation of spatial and temporal continuity of the abnormal phenomena, along with the analysed results, a number of anomalies could be associated with possible seismic activities, which follow the same time and space. Therefore, we conclude that the anomalies observed from 29 March 2009 to 5 April 2009, about eight days before the Abruzzo earthquake, could be earthquake anomalies.

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Ecosystem services (the benefits to humans from ecosystems) are estimated globally at $125 trillion/year [1, 2]. Similar assessments at national and regional scales show how these services support our lives [3]. All valuations recognize the role of biodiversity, which continues to decrease around the world in maintaining these services [4, 5]. The giant panda epitomizes the flagship species [6]. Its unrivalled public appeal translates into support for conservation funding and policy, including a tax on foreign visitors to support its conservation [7]. The Chinese government has established a panda reserve system, which today numbers 67 reserves [8, 9]. The biodiversity of these reserves is among the highest in the temperate world [10], covering many of China's endemic species [11]. The panda is thus also an umbrella species [12]—protecting panda habitat also protects other species. Despite the benefits derived from pandas, some journalists have suggested that it would be best to let the panda go extinct. With the recent downlisting of the panda from Endangered to Vulnerable, it is clear that society's investment has started to pay off in terms of panda population recovery [13, 14]. Here, we estimate the value of ecosystem services of the panda and its reserves at between US$2.6 and US$6.9 billion/year in 2010. Protecting the panda as an umbrella species and the habitat that supports it yields roughly 10–27 times the cost of maintaining the current reserves, potentially further motivating expansion of the reserves and other investments in natural capital in China. Wei et al. estimate that the value of ecosystem services of the giant panda and its nature reserves was US$2.6–US$6.9 billion/year in 2010. Protecting the panda and its habitat yields roughly 10–27 times the cost of maintaining the current reserves, potentially motivating expansion of the reserves and other investments in natural capital in China.