Evaluating a Potential US-China Bilateral Investment Treaty: Background, Context and Implications

[Excerpt] This paper, prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit for the US-China Economic and Security Council, summarises the context, current discussions and implications of a potential US-China bilateral investment treaty (BIT). The paper is organised in six sections: I. Existing US BITs II. China’s current BITs with other countries III. The potential US-China BIT IV. Major regulatory and transparency issues V. Implications for the US economy VI. Interviews Simply defined, a BIT is a treaty between two countries designed to promote and protect investments between the two signatory states. A BIT provides investors with a safer and more transparent investment environment by guarding against the risk of expropriation by the host state. Many countries, especially the larger economies, sign BITs with their main trading partners, both to ensure that companies from their country receive proper protection when they make investments abroad and to ensure that their rights can be protected and enforced through binding international arbitration

Digital near source accelerograms recorded by instrumental arrays in Tangshan, China. Part I (1982.7-1984.12)

The ultimate goal of earthquake hazard mitigation research is to gain sufficient understanding of the phenomena involved in an earthquake to minimize the loss of life and property resulting from such an event. In order to design safe, economical structures and facilities in seismic areas, it is necessary to understand the nature of the ground motion generated by an earthquake. This understanding can ultimately come only from the measurement of the strong ground motion resulting from actual damaging earthquakes. In order to facilitate the acquisition of strong ground motion data world-wide, an International Workshop on Strong Motion Earthquake Instrument Arrays was held in 1978 in Hawaii. Participants in the Workshop appealed to the earthquake-threatened countries of the world to undertake a concerted effort to establish strong-motion accelerograph arrays and networks. In response to the appeal of these experts in earthquake hazard mitigation, and in accord with the "China-U.S. Protocol for Scientific and Technical Cooperation in Earthquake Studies," a joint research project on strong ground motion measurement has been established in China. In the first phase of this project, from April 1981 to December 1984, 22 Kinemetrics PDR-1 Digital Event Recorders equipped with FBA-13 Force Balance Accelerometers, and 18 Kinemetrics SMA-1 Analog Accelerographs were deployed in China. Of this total, 13 PDR-1 and 3 SMA1 instruments were deployed in a surface array and a three-dimensional array in the aftershock region of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. These two arrays recorded a total of 1053 near-source accelerograms from 416 earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from ML = 1.2 to 5.7. The source-station distances ranged from 2 to 45 kilometers. Most of the records contain the complete P- and S-wave motion along with accurate absolute time. Both the volume and quality of the accelerograms are much greater than ever before obtained in China. The largest event recorded was the ML = 5.7 Lulong earthquake of October 19, 1982. Nine instruments were triggered by this event. The epicentral distance from the recording stations ranged from 5 to 41 kilometers, and the corresponding peak horizontal acceleration ranged from 0.217 to 0.008g. Accelerograms were recorded by the three-dimensional array from twenty-eight events. Measurements were made to a depth of 900 meters below the ground surface. The records obtained provide a unique source of data for the study of the propagation of seismic waves near the earth's surface. In order to make these data more useful, they will be published along with site data in a separate volume. In this report, 218 of the most significant accelerograms; are published. The data was obtained from earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from ML = 2.3 to 5.7. All of the data reproduced in this report is available on 9-track computer tape

Do leaders matter? : Chinese politics, leadership transition and the 17th Party Congress

The opaque nature of decision making in China has generated considerable interest in the internecine machinations of elite politics. Particularly, but not only, when it comes to issues of leadership transition, considerations of factional formation and conflict come to the fore. This is partly to explain the transition process itself, but also out of concern for how new leaders might change the direction of Chinese policy. This paper suggests that whilst leaders and leadership changes do matter, they matter less than they once did. This is partly a result of the de-ideologicization and increasing diverse nature of elite interests and group formation. But it is also partly a result of the changed nature of China’s political economy; in short, there is less desire and less ability for new leaders to impose a clear paradigm shift

Regulatory capacity building and the governance of clinical stem cell research in China

While other works have explained difficulties in applying ‘international’ guidelines in the field of regenerative medicine in so-called low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in terms of ‘international hegemony’, ‘political and ethical governance’ and ‘cosmopolitisation’, this article on stem cell regulation in China emphasises the particular complexities faced by large LMICs: the emergence of alternative regulatory arrangements made by stakeholders at a provincial level at home. On the basis of ethnographic and archival research of clinical stem cell research hubs, we have characterized six types of entrepreneurial ‘bionetworks’, each of which embodies a regulatory orientation that developed in interaction with China’s regulatory dilemmas. Rather than adopting guidelines from other countries, we argue that regulatory capacity building is more appropriately viewed as a relational concept, referring to the ability to develop regulatory requirements that can cater for different regulatory research needs on an international level and at home

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE): Flows, Quantities, and Management—A Global Scenario

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Natural ventilation potential for residential buildings in a densely built-up and highly polluted environment. A case study

The application of Natural Ventilation (NV) as a measure to improve comfort conditions in transition and summer periods has been a topic of research on the spotlight for years. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how the combined effect of a dense urban layout with high pollutant concentrations may affect its potential. This paper addresses this gap by running detailed thermal simulations for a typical apartment flat located in the Yuzhong district of Chongqing city (China) using a holistic approach that makes use of: i) wind pressure coefficients on building facades from urban-scale CFD simulations, ii) hourly measured values of PM2.5 concentrations and weather variables and iii) indoor environment measurements for validation purposes. Scenario analysis revealed the average amount of air change rates achievable in a year varies from 8 to 15 ACH according to the windows orientation. These figures drop down to around 2 ACH when taking into account reduced windows opening time when outdoor PM2.5 concentrations are too high. The resulting natural ventilation potential of the case study decreases from 4234 h when outdoor pollution is neglected to 2707 and 529 h when considering the exposure thresholds set by the Chinese government and the WHO respectively

The synergistic effect of cigarette taxes on the consumption of cigarettes, alcohol and betel nuts

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Consumption of cigarettes and alcoholic beverages creates serious health consequences for individuals and overwhelming financial burdens for governments around the world. In Asia, a third stimulant – betel nuts – increases this burden exponentially. For example, individuals who simultaneously smoke, chew betel nuts and drink alcohol are approximately 123 times more likely to develop oral, pharyngeal and laryngeal cancer than are those who do not.</p> <p>To discourage consumption of cigarettes, the government of Taiwan has imposed three taxes over the last two decades. It now wishes to lower consumption of betel nuts. To assist in this effort, our study poses two questions: 1) Will the imposition of an NT$10 Health Tax on cigarettes effectively reduce cigarette consumption? and 2) Will this cigarette tax also reduce consumption of alcoholic beverages and betel nuts? To answer these questions, we analyze the effect of the NT$10 tax on overall cigarette consumption as well as the cross price elasticities of cigarettes, betel nuts, and alcoholic beverages.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To establish the Central Bureau of Statistics demand function, we used cigarette, betel nut, and alcoholic beverage price and sales volume data for the years 1972–2002. To estimate the overall demand price elasticity of cigarettes, betel nuts, and alcoholic beverages, we used a seemingly unrelated regression analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We find that the NT$10 health tax on cigarettes will reduce cigarette consumption by a significant 27.22$10 health tax on cigarettes will reduce betel nut consumption by 20.07% and alcohol consumption by 7.5%.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The assessment of a health tax on cigarettes as a smoking control policy tool yields a win-win outcome for both government and consumers because it not only reduces cigarette consumption, but it also reduces betel nut and alcoholic beverage consumption due to a synergistic relationship. Revenues generated by the tax can be used to fund city and county smoking control programs as well as to meet the health insurance system's current financial shortfall.</p