Country-level impact of global recession and China’s stimulus package

A dynamic computable general equilibrium model is developed to assess the impact of the recent global recession and the Chinese government’s stimulus package on China’s economic growth. The model is first used to capture the actual sector-level economic growth in 2008 and the possible economic performance in 2009 without the intervention of the Chinese government through its stimulus package. Under this global recession scenario, the GDP growth rate in 2009 falls to 2.9 percent mainly as a result of the sharp drop in exports of manufactured goods, while the agricultural sector is more crisis-resilient. Because export-oriented manufacturing sectors are often import-intensive, the weakened economy is accompanied by a reduction in Chinese firms’ import demand for materials, intermediates, and capital goods. The model also shows that without government intervention, the negative effect of a one-year shock on the Chinese economy would last for many years. Also, over the next five to six years, China is unlikely to replicate its strong economic performance of the past two decades. China’s stimulus package is modeled through increased investment financed by government resources. With additional demand on investment goods, growth in the investment-related production sector is stimulated. Through the cross-sector linkages in a general equilibrium model, the demand for other noncapital goods increases, thus stimulating growth in these sectors. As production of more industrialized sectors starts to grow, so will households’ income and consumption, providing market opportunities for those agricultural and service sectors that mainly produce for the domestic market. Under the stimulus scenario, the Chinese economy is expected to grow 8–10 percent in 2009 and the succeeding years. The growth engine in this case differs from that before 2008: growth is led by domestic demand, while trade still falls significantly in 2009 (instead of the double-digit growth before 2008). Domestic demand-driven stimulus growth creates jobs, and hence it increases income for both urban and rural households. The model is also used to measure the overall gains of the stimulus package by comparing GDP between the two scenarios. Without considering the productivity-enhancing role of public investment as part of the stimulus package (which is important for long-term growth but unlikely to happen in the short run), the cumulative difference of the GDP between the two scenarios over the next seven years is about RMB76 trillion, which is about three times more than the GDP in 2007.China stimulus package, Development strategies, general equilibrium modeling, global financial crisis,

Biomass-derived three-dimensional porous N-doped carbonaceous aerogel for efficient supercapacitor electrodes

Functionalized carbonaceous materials with hierarchical structure and developed porosity are highly desired in energy storage and conversion fields. In this work, a facile and scalable hydrothermal methodology was established to synthesise three-dimensional (3D) N-doped carbonaceous aerogels using biomass-based starting materials and polypyrrole as N-source. The effect of different calcination temperatures on the structural properties, type and content of N-species and electrochemical performance of the 3D N-doped carbonaceous aerogels were uncovered. Thanks to the combinatorial effect of the appropriate N content and porous structure, the obtained samples exhibited excellent electrochemical performance, in particular, an outstanding specific capacitance of 281.0 F g-1 achieved on the sample calcined at 600 °C. This methodology offers a new fabrication strategy to prepare nanoscale carbonaceous materials with desirable morphology and hierarchical architecture of great potentials for the applications in energy fields

English-plus or English-only: The Affordances and Constraints of Reading using Translanguaging among Chinese Students at a Private University

Private higher education plays a vital role in its transition to a knowledge society. However, it is also facing a challenge to mitigate the local tension between access, equity, and quality. Recently, translanguaging as pedagogy has emerged in an emancipatory manner for teachers in English medium instruction contexts, like the Chinese private university, where the students are not able to perform in English-only classrooms. However, although pedagogical translanguaging in English reading is acknowledged by bilingual educators, we have little knowledge about the students’ attitudes toward it. Students are the real actors of translanguaging practices. Their attitudes and stances are decisive to their further application of this translanguaging approach. The study aims to explore Chinese private university students’ attitudes toward pedagogical translanguaging as a classroom norm in an English reading classroom. The data were collected through two debriefing interviews before and after translanguaging as intervention. A thematic analysis of the affordances and constraints was carried out to examine their perceptions about translanguaging. The findings showed that translanguaging practices among Chinese private university students have not been completely independent of monolingual ideology. Yet their appreciation of translanguaging informed the possibility of fortifying translanguaging awareness and thus establishing an ecological and democratic translanguaging classroom

An Attitude Determination Method for Comprehensive Inspection Vehicle Based on Track Profile Registration

The attitude of the comprehensive inspection vehicle is one of the important factors that affect the accuracy of the inspection of metro line infrastructure, meanwhile the metro environment restricts the employment of common attitude determination methods. A new method of attitude determination is presented in this paper, which takes the track as reference and employs non-contact measurement to acquire the track profile simulta-neously. By registration of measurement track profile and the standard track profile, the relative position between the vehicle and the track reference can be calculated; and the instantaneous attitude of the vehicle can be determined by the matrix inverse calculation. The performance of the method is verified by an experiment using the road-rail comprehensive inspection vehicle

Making health insurance pro-poor: evidence from a household panel in rural China

BACKGROUND: In 2002, China launched the largest public health insurance scheme in the world, the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS). It is intended to enable rural populations to access health care services, and to curb medical impoverishment. Whether the scheme can reach its equity goals depends on how it is used, and by whom. Our goal is to shed light on whether and how income levels affect the ability of members to reap insurance benefits. METHODS: We exploit primary panel data consisting of a complete census (over 3500 individuals) in three villages in Puding County, Guizhou province, collected in 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2011. Data was collected during in-person interviews with household member(s). The data include yearly gross and net medical expenses for all individuals, and socio-economic information. We apply probit, ordinary least squares, and tobit multivariate regression analyses to the three waves in which NCMS was active (2006, 2009 and 2011). Explained variables include obtainment, levels and rates of NCMS reimbursement. Household income is the main explanatory variable, with household- and individual-level controls. We restrict samples to rule out self-selection, and exploit the 2009 NCMS reform to highlight equity-enhancing features of insurance. RESULTS: Prior to 2009 reforms, higher income in our sample was statistically significantly related to higher probability of obtaining reimbursement, as well as higher levels and rates of reimbursement. These relations all disappear after the reform, suggesting lower-income households were better able to reap insurance benefits after the scheme was reformed. Regression results suggest this is partly explained by reimbursement for chronic diseases. CONCLUSIONS: The post-reform NCMS distributed benefits more equitably in our study area. Making health insurance pro-poor may require a focus on outpatient costs, credit constraints and chronic diseases, rather than catastrophic illnesses