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The fast-paced and large-scale Chinese urban development since 1980 is unprecedented in China's urban history. Much of the credit has to be attributed to a nascent local property industry which itself is the product of the economic reforms. Two factors—building commodification and marketization, and state-owned-enterprise (SOE) reforms—have germinated a local property industry, with the facilitation of inward foreign capital, in the context of transition from a static and rigid planning system to a dynamic market-oriented economy. Nevertheless, the gradualist economic reforms and piecemeal SOE transformation, which are intended to transform the Chinese urban economy by increment and experimentation, complicate the evolution of the property industry, which has developed unique characteristics in the transitional time between plan and market. The presence of inequality in the market and absence of measures for hardening soft budget constraints have moulded a market in the making. Market efficiency is compromised and a dual plan—market system puts the competitiveness of the growing property industry in jeopardy.

Online political advertising has grown rapidly over the last two decades and played an important role in campaigns and elections. Arising with it are concerns around issues such as data privacy and transparency, which have sparked calls for regulation. Whilst change has begun to be implemented, in many contexts moves to regulate online political advertising have been limited. In this article, we explore one such case, asking whether attempts to regulate have been hindered by the particular characteristics of digital technology or by wider political factors. Presenting new interview data examining the experiences and perceptions of regulators, policy makers, civil servants, civil society groups and academics in the United Kingdom, we distil three barriers: political reticence, logistical challenges and conflicting policy proposals. Our findings suggest that efforts to regulate online phenomena need to apply a media and politics-centric lens, considering how the technological traits of digital media and political factors can affect efforts to regulate.

The authors, one from China and one from the United States, present a theoretical framework for understanding the discursive fields of citizenship education as composed, in large part, of the discourses of nationalism, globalization, and cosmopolitanism. The framework is illustrated by examples from citizenship education in China and the United States. Citizenship education in these examples is largely influenced by the discourse of nationalism. The discursive fields are fractured, context-specific, and dynamic. In conclusion, the authors call for awareness of how these discourses operate, and propose that the discourses of globalization and cosmopolitanism merge and strengthen within citizenship education. The effect could be a new citizenship education that is responsive to the current needs of local and global democratic communities.

Immediately after Xi Jinping assumed the position of party secretary general (PSG), he launched a large-scale top-down antiwaste campaign amongst the Chinese cadre corps. Compared with similar policies announced by Xi's predecessors, this campaign has distinct features that entail substantial political risk for the PSG. Why did Xi choose this politically risky strategy? Drawing on recent literature on authoritarian regimes, we argue that, amongst all possible objectives, an authoritarian leader such as Xi can use this type of policy campaign to demonstrate his power. In particular, the inherent importance of informal politics, the recent developments in Chinese politics, and Xi's personal background have increased his incentive and capacity to signal power by implementing such a campaign. A comparison with Xi's two predecessors, interviews, and statistical analyses support this argument. Our theoretical framework also sheds light on the literature on the power sharing of authoritarian political elites. ; postprint

Panel T06 - Special Topic: abstract no. T06-08 ; Corruption, commonly defined as the abuse of public office for private gain (Nye 1967), undermines the economy, public trust in government, and regime legitimacy (Seligson 2002; Villoria, Ryzin, and Lavena 2013). Governments sometimes, to combat corruption, launch intensive campaigns (e.g. Manion 2004; Quah 1999), which involve extraordinary mobilization of administrative resources under strong political sponsorship (Liu, Lo, Zhan, and Wang 2015). In addition to strengthening regulatory enforcement, governments during anticorruption campaigns also aim to signal commitment against corruption and boost pubic support. While existing literature often focuses on evaluating the campaign effectiveness in terms of increasing policy compliance (e.g. Wedeman 2005), not much research has studied how well intensive anticorruption campaigns can help government win popular support. We attempt to fill . ; postprint

Institutional disincentives often discourage major actors, such as politicians, corporate leaders, and the public, from taking practical steps to protect the environment in China. By using the crackdown on crime in the Chinese megacity of Chongqing as a case study, we argue that despite the strength of these disincentives, they are nevertheless highly susceptible to changes in the macro political environment, which can temporarily alter the regular preference order of these major political-economic actors and reduce industrial pollution. We employed the difference-in-differences approach and observed that the quality of surface water in Chongqing improved during the anticrime campaign because of reduced industrial wastewater discharge. However, after the campaign, the political atmosphere relaxed and the surface water quality declined. These findings suggest that reforming the institutions that shape the incentives of the major actors in environmental protection is critical to improving environmental protection in the long term. ; postprint

This paper examines factors that shape people's perceptions of government corruption in China. We are particularly interested in how people acquire information on local corruption, given the general lack of pertinent first-hand experience. We combine the data from a national survey in Mainland China with a self-compiled dataset on the number of corruption cases reported in Chinese provincial newspapers. The results of Probit and Heckman Selection models show that indirect formal and indirect informal information sources have diverging effects. While coverage of corruption by newspapers controlled by the authoritarian regime reduces people's perceptions of corruption, exposure to grapevine news significantly increases perceived corruption. Moreover, access to media controlled by the government can significantly dilute the negative impact of grapevine news on perceptions of corruption. ; postprint

Innovation is often driven by changes in government policies regulating the industries, especially true in case of the automotive. Except weight savings, the strict EU regulation of 95% recyclable material-made vehicles drives the manufactures and scientists to seek new 'green materials' for structural applications. With handing at two major drawbacks (production cost and safety), ECHOSHELL is supported by EU to develop and optimise structural solutions for superlight electric vehicles by using bio-composites made of high-performance natural fibres and resins, providing enhanced strength and bio-degradability characteristics. Flax reinforced tannin-based composite is selected as one of the candidates and were firstly investigated with different fabric lay-up angles (non-woven flax mat, UD, [0, 90°]4 and [0, +45°, 90°, −45°]2) through authors' work. Some of the obtained results, such as tensile properties and SEM micrographs were shown in this conference paper. The UD flax reinforced composite exhibits the best tensile performance, with tensile strength and modulus of 150 MPa and 9.6 MPa, respectively. It was observed that during tension the oriented-fabric composites showed some delamination process, which are expected to be eliminated through surface treatment (alkali treatment etc.) and nanotechnology, such as the use of nano-fibrils. Failure mechanism of the tested samples were identified through SEM results, indicating that the combination of fibre pull-out, fibre breakage and brittle resins failure mainly contribute to the fracture failure of composites.