Trust and investment corporations in China

A description of the formation and expansion of Chinese trust and investment corporations, including an account of their current problems and recommendations for solving them.China

Secure Data Provenance in Home Energy Monitoring Networks

Smart grid empowers home owners to efficiently manage their smart home appliances within a Home Area Network (HAN), by real time monitoring and fine-grained control. However, it offers the possibility for a malicious user to intrude into the HAN and deceive the smart metering system with fraudulent energy usage report. While most of the existing works have focused on how to prevent data tampering in HAN's communication channel, this paper looks into a relatively less studied security aspect namely data provenance. We propose a novel solution based on Shamir's secret sharing and threshold cryptography to guarantee that the reported energy usage is collected from the specific appliance as claimed at a particular location, and that it reflects the real consumption of the energy. A byproduct of the proposed security solution is a guarantee of data integrity. A prototype implementation is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of the proposed solution

Mapping Accessibility and Shortage of the Protestant Church in China: Applying Two Spatial Research Methods

The issues of church accessibility and church shortage are critical for understanding religious market and religious economy in China. Assisted by GIS, this article uses and compares two spatial research methods, the Two Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) and the Network Analysis Method (NAM), to examine the church accessibility and church shortage in the thirty-one provincial capital cities of China. Despite the two different methods, this article sets up a common criterion in determining the geographic area of church shortage, or rather determining the number of Protestants who cannot reach the nearest churches from their residential locations within 30 minutes through driving or public transportation. The research findings discovered by both methods have identified nine provincial capital cities in the three regions of China as the areas of church shortage and low church accessibility

Multicell Edge Coverage Enhancement Using Mobile UAV-Relay

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted communication is a promising technology in future wireless communication networks. UAVs can not only help offload data traffic from ground base stations (GBSs) but also improve the Quality of Service (QoS) of cell-edge users (CEUs). In this article, we consider the enhancement of cell-edge communications through a mobile relay, i.e., UAV, in multicell networks. During each transmission period, GBSs first send data to the UAV, and then the UAV forwards its received data to CEUs according to a certain association strategy. In order to maximize the sum rate of all CEUs, we jointly optimize the UAV mobility management, including trajectory, velocity, and acceleration, and association strategy of CEUs to the UAV, subject to minimum rate requirements of CEUs, mobility constraints of the UAV, and causal buffer constraints in practice. To address the mixed-integer nonconvex problem, we transform it into two convex subproblems by applying tight bounds and relaxations. An iterative algorithm is proposed to solve the two subproblems in an alternating manner. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm achieves higher rates of CEUs as compared with the existing benchmark schemes

Culture shapes how we look: Comparison between Chinese and African university students

Previous cross-cultural studies find that cultures can shape how we look during scene perception, but don’t mention its condition and limited to the East and West. This study recruited Chinese and African students to testify the cultural effects on two phases. In free-viewing phase: Africans fixated more on the focal objects than Chinese, while Chinese payed more attention to the backgrounds than Africans especially on the first fourth and fifth fixations. In recognition phase, there was no cultural difference on perception, but Chinese recognized more objects than Africans. Based on chosen subjects, we conclude that cultural differences exit on scene perception under conditions of no task and more clearly in its later period, but that differences may be hidden in a deeper way (e.g. memory) in task condition

Mapping the Historical Development and Perceptions of Democratic Elections in China Since 1949

One of the key measures for reforming the Chinese political system is to establish the checks and balances within the Communist Party. Doing so in turn requires an open, competitive and comprehensive democratic intraparty election. This article focuses on the historical development of intraparty elections and the practice of a checks-and-balances system in China since 1949. The article examines five main perceptions of the current political situation in China, including the urgent need to hold intraparty elections, the necessity of implementing the multi-candidate election, the positive impact of competitive elections and effective supervision mechanism, the capability of tolerating competitive interest groups within the party, and the integration of the state and party policies on building a people-oriented harmonious society. The article argues that building a democratic mechanism is contingent upon competition, which requires public campaign and transparent elections. Only in this way will the Chinese Communist Party prove itself to be adaptable and resilient

Mapping Accessibility and Shortage of the Protestant Church in China: Applying Two Spatial Research Methods

The issues of church accessibility and church shortage are critical for understanding religious market and religious economy in China. Assisted by GIS, this article uses and compares two spatial research methods, the Two Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) and the Network Analysis Method (NAM), to examine the church accessibility and church shortage in the thirty-one provincial capital cities of China. Despite the two different methods, this article sets up a common criterion in determining the geographic area of church shortage, or rather determining the number of Protestants who cannot reach the nearest churches from their residential locations within 30 minutes through driving or public transportation. The research findings discovered by both methods have identified nine provincial capital cities in the three regions of China as the areas of church shortage and low church accessibility

Digital Study of the Protestant Market: Taipei and Provincial Capital Cities in China's Southeast Coast as Case Studies

Addressing the digital and spatial study of the Protestant market in Taiwan and mainland China is pioneering attempt to enhance the Christian study in Asia. The article selects Taipei and China's five additional provincial capital cities in the southeast coast to calculate and map the supply-side and demand-side of the Protestant market in the early of 21st century. Utilizing the digital and spatial methods, the article provides a comparative perspective in measuring the Protestant density, accessibility and availability of Taipei and five capital cities in China's southeast coast. The article concludes that in light of a democratic society with a religious freedom policy, Taipei has enjoyed a healthy Protestant market demonstrated by its better Protestant density, accessibility and availability