Recent Development of China-ASEAN Trade and Economic Relations

The development of China-ASEAN trade and economic relations within the recent 15 years has of great significance not only for both sides but also for the whole East-Asia region. This paper intends to discuss the latter that is regional implications of 15 years development of China-ASEAN trade and economic relations and provide some further consideration for both sides trade and economic relations.China, ASEAN, Trade and Economic Relations

Openness of China’s Manufacturing Sectors and its APEC Policy

Chinas domestic market is finally in the process of being integrated into the international market. Trade liberalization will play an important role in this process. It will expand Chinas trade opportunities further, lead Chinas manufacturing sectors to participate extensively in the international division of labor and to shift its trade patterns and industrial structure. On the other hand, it will increase the pressure of competition on domestic enterprises from imports and foreign-funded enterprises. If Chinas manufacturing sectors can not improve their international competitiveness in time, trade liberalization will not bring benefits, but rather threats, to the development of Chinas manufacturing sectors.China, Manufacturing Sector, Openess, APEC policy

MNCs’ Ownership Advantage, Developing Countries, And New Regionalism

Since the mid-1980s, more regional trade arrangements (RTAs) have arisen between developing and developed countries than before. The evidence shows that MNCs are the major driving force of the new regionalism. The puzzle presented in this paper is why MNCs would like to propel new RTAs between developing and developed countries. The paper believes that the emergence and development of new regionalism is, to a great extent, related to the situation that MNCs wish to enter into developing countries markets. However, it is not easy for MNCs to access to this developing market. MNCs still have to be faced with challenges brought about by both their more and more public-good-like ownership advantages and the increasing cost of producing ownership advantages. If MNCs did not extend their market to the developing countries, they would not spread the cost of producing ownership advantages. However, if they did, they would face the risk that their property of public goods is freely ridden by developing countries due to no effective intellectual property protection (IPP). Therefore, MNCs have to produce much demand for building up new RTAs including developing countries to protect their ownership advantages, especially when they meet the difficulties in multinational negotiation in IPP.Regional Trade Agreements, Multi-National Corporations, East Asia

Industrial Agglomeration, Production Networks and FDI Promotion The Case Study of China

Chinas Industrial clustering is a distinguished economic phenomenon over the last 20 years. It began to enter into its fast track in the mid-1990s and developed rapidly in recent years. Both market-driven force and government-driven force contribute to Chinese industrial clusters. The opening and stable macroeconomic policies create a favorable climate for the industrial clustering. Local government has made its contribution to construction on both hardware and software environments for industrial clusters. The major contribution of FDI to the local industrial clustering lies in helping integrating Chinese domestic industries into international division of labor and at the same time forging a relatively integrated production chain for Chinese domestic industries. At present, China has stepped into the new phase of industrial clusters upgrading. Chinese government is gradually improving the local software infrastructure for industry clustering.Industrial Agglomeration, China, Production Networks, FDI, foreign direct investment

Complex Dynamical Behavior of a Predator-Prey System with Group Defense

A diffusive predator-prey system with prey refuge is studied analytically and numerically. The Turing bifurcation is analyzed in detail, which in turn provides a theoretical basis for the numerical simulation. The influence of prey refuge and group defense on the equilibrium density and patterns of species under the condition of Turing instability is explored by numerical simulations, and this shows that the prey refuge and group defense have an important effect on the equilibrium density and patterns of species. Moreover, it can be obtained that the distributions of species are more sensitive to group defense than prey refuge. These results are expected to be of significance in exploration for the spatiotemporal dynamics of ecosystems

Finding the LQR weights to ensure the associated Riccati equations admit a common solution

This paper addresses the problem of finding the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) weights such that the associated discrete-time algebraic Riccati equations admit a common optimal stabilising solution. Solving such a problem is key to designing LQR controllers to stabilise discrete-time switched linear systems under arbitrary switching, or stabilise polytopic systems (e.g., Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems and linear parameter varying systems) in the entire operating region. To ensure problem tractability and reduce the searching space, this paper proposes an efficient framework of finding only the state weights based on the given input weights. Linear matrix inequality conditions are derived to conveniently check feasibility of the problem. An iterative algorithm with quadratic convergence and low computational complexity is developed to solve the problem. Efficacy of the proposed method is illustrated through numerical simulations of systems with various sizes

Safe and robust data-driven cooperative control policy for mixed vehicle platoons

This article considers mixed platoons consisting of both human-driven vehicles (HVs) and automated vehicles (AVs). The uncertainties and randomness in human driving behaviors highly affect the platoon safety and stability. However, most existing control strategies are either for platoons of pure AVs, or for special formations of mixed platoons with known HV models. This article addresses the control of mixed platoons with more general formations and unknown HV models. An innovative data-driven policy learning strategy is proposed to design the controllers for AVs based on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications. The policy learning strategy is embedded with the constraints of control input, inter-vehicular distance error and V2V communication topology. The strategy establishes a safe and robustly stable mixed platoon using prescribed communication topologies. The design efficacy is verified through simulations of a mixed platoon with different communication topologies and leader velocity profiles