A macroeconomic perspective on the rise of second-tier cities in the national and globalizing context of China

Since China’s economic reforms in the late 1970s, foreign investments have initially flooded the so-called “first-tier cities” including Shanghai, Beijing, or even Shenzhen or Guangzhou. Due to rising labour costs, growing constraints over natural resources, long-term inflation and environmental issues among others (Zhuang et al. 2012; Zuojun, 2012), they have been undertaking structural economic adjustments in order to shift from a “late-developing advantage” to a “first-mover advantage” model. This requires concentrating resources on modern services industry, strategic emerging industries and entrepreneurship rather than relying on foreign investments for technology, management skills and know-how (Liu, 2015). This process of economic restructuring and upgrading has initiated industrial relocation into the hinterland. As a consequence, several cities have emerged as new engines of economic growth in the past decade: Many second-tier cities have several millions inhabitants, the most performing achieved above 15% economic growth over the past decade, and many of them have been benefiting from massive public investments and preferential policies in order to accelerate their development path (China Briefing, 2010). Yet, the definition of a second-tier city is highly contextual and rather depends on the geographical scale we look at it. Therefore, this innovative research paper proposes to study the rise of second-tier cites in the national and globalizing context of China. In the national context, we undertake a comparative macroeconomic analysis between first-tier and second-tier cities in order to understand if the general environment is conducive to business investments. In the globalizing context, we focus our attention on the rise of secondary cities in Yangtze River Delta, a large emerging global city-region. More precisely, we study how Shanghai has become an urban vector for FDI into secondary cities, and thus stimulating their economic development by promoting industrial restructuring, upgrading and relocation. Ultimately, we conclude that the socio-economic development of second-tier cities are led by the first-tier city, which together benefit the overall sustainable development of China. In such a fast-changing and highly competitive business environment, second-tier cities shall be fully integrated to the strategic expansion plan of companies operating in China. Whether to achieve competiveness and cost optimization to better serve international markets or to increase revenue by supplying goods or services to Chinese consumers, decision makers shall take active anticipation and think ahead, so that the company can stand out in the market very rapidly

The signature of tidal disruption phenomena in the vicinity of a black hole

Tidal effects on clumps of material during random non-stationary accretion onto a black hole produce phenomena with distinct temporal characteristics in observed light-curves. During such non-stationary accretion events, the shape of the accreting object evolves in time, and observable quasi-periodic phenomena with variable quasi-periods are produced. A number of characteristic light-curves, obtained with numerical simulations, will be shown. Their relevance to observed phenomena will be briefly discussed.Comment: 3 pages, 8 figure

Do flares in Sagittarius A* reflect the last stage of tidal capture?

In recent years the case for the presence of 3-4 10^6 M_sun black hole in our Galactic Center has gained strength from results of stellar dynamics observations and from the detection of several rapid X-ray and IR flares observed in the Sagittarius A* from 2000 to 2004. Here we explore the idea that such flares are produced when the central black hole tidally captures and disrupts a small body - e.g. a comet or an asteroid.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figures, acknowledgments added, to appear in the Proceedings of the Albert Einstein's Century International Conference, Paris 200

Clumps of material orbiting a black hole and the QPOs

Clumps of material orbiting a black hole may be disturbed, somewhat like comets in the Kuiper belt, to relatively small periastron orbits. Each periastron passage changes the orbital parameters in such a way that the orbit becomes more and more eccentric and the angular momentum approaches the critical value for tidal capture. When this value is reached, the body is suddenly caught by the relativistic potential to the last periastron (occurring at two Schwarzschild radii for a non rotating black hole). In this process the transfer of orbital into internal energy heats the body before it makes a few more turns toward the horizon of the black hole. Because of strong relativistic effects this last bright message from the object is seen as a quasi-periodic flare. Assuming that a black hole may be fed by a large number of such small debris we calculate light curves expected from such events. We investigate the resemblance of the Fourier spectra of such light curves with those of observed QPOs.Comment: 3 pages, 6 figure