3,418 research outputs found

    An indigenous perspective on institutions for sustainable business in China

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    An indigenous perspective on institutions for sustainable business in China

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    Forum Selling and Forum Marketing in International Commercial Disputes

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    In recent years, international commercial courts are mushrooming across the world. Examples include the Netherlands Commercial Court or the Singapore International Commercial Court. These courts are national courts specializing in cross-border, commercial disputes. Their multiple innovative features, such as the use of English as the court language or the appointment of foreign nationality judges, distinguish them from ordinary courts and have attracted the attention of academic literature. In addition, commentators have noted that, unlike ordinary courts, international commercial courts are part of broader state policies to attract foreign investment or dispute resolution and therefore aim at attracting cases. However, little is known on how this aim is actually shaping the courts’ practices, rules and case law. This research studies international commercial courts from a novel perspective; that of forum marketing and forum selling. It explores why and how exactly international commercial courts are engaging in forum selling and forum marketing. Drawing from interviews with lawyers and judges, the study of case law as well as academic literature it presents a comparative analysis of how different international commercial courts make themselves more attractive to prospective litigants and identifies forum marketing and forum selling practices. Finally, the research explores how forum marketing and forum selling reshape civil procedure and their implications on access to justice. While acknowledging that international commercial courts may improve international commercial dispute resolution, it highlights that under circumstances the courts’ practices may have negative implications with regard to access to justice and the role of courts as public institutions.<br/

    Placental origins of health &amp; disease:Therapeutic opportunities

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    Structuring the State’s Voice of Contention in Harmonious Society: How Party Newspapers Cover Social Protests in China

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    During the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) campaign of building a ‘harmonious society’, how do the official newspapers cover the instances of social contention on the ground? Answering this question will shed light not only on how the party press works but also on how the state and the society interact in today’s China. This thesis conceptualises this phenomenon with a multi-faceted and multi-levelled notion of ‘state-initiated contentious public sphere’ to capture the complexity of mediated relations between the state and social contention in the party press. Adopting a relational approach, this thesis analyses 1758 news reports of ‘mass incident’ in the People’s Daily and the Guangming Daily between 2004 and 2020, employing cluster analysis, qualitative comparative analysis, and social network analysis. The thesis finds significant differences in the patterns of contentious coverage in the party press at the level of event and province and an uneven distribution of attention to social contention across incidents and regions. For ‘reported regions’, the thesis distinguishes four types of coverage and presents how party press responds differently to social contention in different scenarios at the provincial level. For ‘identified incidents’, the thesis distinguishes a cumulative type of visibility based on the quantity of coverage from a relational visibility based on the structure emerging from coverage and explains how different news-making rationales determine whether instances receive similar amounts of coverage or occupy similar positions within coverage. Eventually, by demonstrating how the Chinese state strategically uses party press to respond to social contention and how social contention is journalistically placed in different positions in the state’s eyes, this thesis argues that what social contention leads to is the establishment of complex state-contention relations channelled through the party press

    Placental origins of health &amp; disease:Therapeutic opportunities

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    Analysis and Design of Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) Techniques for Next Generation Wireless Communication Systems

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    The current surge in wireless connectivity, anticipated to amplify significantly in future wireless technologies, brings a new wave of users. Given the impracticality of an endlessly expanding bandwidth, there’s a pressing need for communication techniques that efficiently serve this burgeoning user base with limited resources. Multiple Access (MA) techniques, notably Orthogonal Multiple Access (OMA), have long addressed bandwidth constraints. However, with escalating user numbers, OMA’s orthogonality becomes limiting for emerging wireless technologies. Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), employing superposition coding, serves more users within the same bandwidth as OMA by allocating different power levels to users whose signals can then be detected using the gap between them, thus offering superior spectral efficiency and massive connectivity. This thesis examines the integration of NOMA techniques with cooperative relaying, EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart analysis, and deep learning for enhancing 6G and beyond communication systems. The adopted methodology aims to optimize the systems’ performance, spanning from bit-error rate (BER) versus signal to noise ratio (SNR) to overall system efficiency and data rates. The primary focus of this thesis is the investigation of the integration of NOMA with cooperative relaying, EXIT chart analysis, and deep learning techniques. In the cooperative relaying context, NOMA notably improved diversity gains, thereby proving the superiority of combining NOMA with cooperative relaying over just NOMA. With EXIT chart analysis, NOMA achieved low BER at mid-range SNR as well as achieved optimal user fairness in the power allocation stage. Additionally, employing a trained neural network enhanced signal detection for NOMA in the deep learning scenario, thereby producing a simpler signal detection for NOMA which addresses NOMAs’ complex receiver problem

    Measuring the Impact of China’s Digital Heritage: Developing Multidimensional Impact Indicators for Digital Museum Resources

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    This research investigates how to best assess the impact of China’s digital heritage and focuses on digital museum resources. It is motivated by the need for tools to help governing bodies and heritage organisations assess the impact of digital heritage resources. The research sits at the intersection of Chinese cultural heritage, digital heritage, and impact assessment (IA) studies, which forms the theoretical framework of the thesis. Informed by the Balanced Value Impact (BVI) Model, this thesis addresses the following questions: 1. How do Western heritage discourses and Chinese culture shape ‘cultural heritage’ and the museum digital ecosystem in modern China? 2. Which indicators demonstrate the multidimensional impacts of digital museum resources in China? How should the BVI Model be adapted to fit the Chinese cultural landscape? 3. How do different stakeholders perceive these impact indicators? What are the implications for impact indicator development and application? This research applies a mixed-method approach, combining desk research, survey, and interview with both public audiences and museum professionals. The research findings identify 18 impact indicators, covering economic, social, innovation and operational dimensions. Notably, the perceived usefulness and importance of different impact indicators vary among and between public participants and museum professionals. The study finds the BVI Model helpful in guiding the indicator development process, particularly in laying a solid foundation to inform decision-making. The Strategic Perspectives and Value Lenses provide a structure to organise various indicators and keep them focused on the impact objectives. However, the findings also suggest that the Value Lenses are merely signifiers; their signified meanings change with cultural contexts and should be examined when the Model is applied in a different cultural setting. This research addresses the absence of digital resource IA in China’s heritage sector. It contributes to the field of IA for digital heritage within and beyond the Chinese context by challenging the current target-setting culture in performance evaluation. Moreover, the research ratifies the utility of the BVI Model while modifying it to fit China’s unique cultural setting. This thesis as a whole demonstrates the value of using multidimensional impact indicators for evidence-based decision-making and better museum practices in the digital domain

    CODED SOCIAL CONTROL: CHINA’S NORMALIZATION OF BIOMETRIC SURVEILLANCE IN THE POST COVID-19 ERA

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    This article investigates the longevity of health QR codes, a digital instrument of pandemic surveillance, in post-COVID China. From 2020 to 2022, China widely used this tri-color tool to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. A commonly held assumption is that health QR codes have become obsolete in post-pandemic China. This study challenges such an assumption. It reveals their persistence and integration - through mobile apps and online platforms - beyond the COVID-19 public health emergency. A prolonged, expanded and normalized use of tools which were originally intended for contact tracing and pandemic surveillance raises critical legal and ethical concerns. Moreover, their functional transformation from epidemiological risk assessment tools to instruments of behavior modification and social governance heralds the emergence of a Data Leviathan. This transformation is underpinned by a duality of underlying political and commercial forces. These include 1) a structural enabler: a powerful alliance between political authorities and tech giants and 2) an ideological legitimizer: a commitment to collective security over individual autonomy. In contrast to the rights-centric approach embraced by Western democracies to regulate AI-driven biometric surveillance, China adopts a state-industry dominance model of governance
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