The Impact of Ownership Reform in Chinese Industry, 1995-2001

During the 1980s, the restructuring of Chinese industry was driven principally by the entry of new enterprises into the enterprise system and by the restructuring of managerial incentives. In 1993, China’s leadership formally inaugurated the shareholding experiment. This paper examines the impact on eight performance measures of the conversion of both state- and collective-owned enterprises to shareholding enterprises. The analysis distinguishes between the direct effect of conversion and the induced effect, involving the attraction of non-state investment, which reduces the proportion of state assets and state control rights. We find evidence for SOEs that both conversion and a decline in the share of state-owned assets motivate rising productivity and R&D intensity. While rising proportions of non-state assets motive lower employment and rising wages, the initial conversion effect is associated with higher employment and lower wages. These latter impacts may result from agreements with workers as part of the conversion process. The SOE conversion process exhibits selection bias in which SOEs with high rates of capital productivity and profitability, high tax burdens, and comparatively low wages and smaller labor forces are more likely to be selected for conversion. No similar selection bias is evident in the collective sector.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39927/3/wp542.pd

Comparative Research on China and Taiwan’s Legal Systems: From the View of the Agent Right of Daily Household Matters

The agent right of household matters is one of an important aspect of personal rights and also a personal interest that cannot be ignored. As early as in late Qing dynasty, Chinese legal workers had paid attention on the agent right of household matters. Related legislations can be found in Civil Law Draft of Qing Dynasty (Family Chapter) and the Civil Law Draft of the Republic of China. Due to the social traditions at that time, these laws just stipulated wife’s agent right but not the husband’s. Until in the 1930 Civil Law issued by Nanking National Government, the provisions governing spouses’ rights were transplanted from foreign civil laws and the system of agent right of household matters was first time established. However, because China followed Soviet’s legal mode after the founding of the state, the agent right of household matters was replaced by marital property regime. Ever since that time Taiwan and Chinese mainland’s legal provisions on this right differs. The main aim of this paper is to provide some useful research for settling continuous disputes in modern society through comparative study on China and Taiwan’s agent right of household matters legislation emphasis, subjects, limitations, and burdens

The Impact of Ownership Reform in Chinese Industry, 1995-2001

During the 1980s, the restructuring of Chinese industry was driven principally by the entry of new enterprises into the enterprise system and by the restructuring of managerial incentives. In 1993, China’s leadership formally inaugurated the shareholding experiment. This paper examines the impact on eight performance measures of the conversion of both state- and collective-owned enterprises to shareholding enterprises. The analysis distinguishes between the direct effect of conversion and the induced effect, involving the attraction of non-state investment, which reduces the proportion of state assets and state control rights. We find evidence for SOEs that both conversion and a decline in the share of state-owned assets motivate rising productivity and R&D intensity. While rising proportions of non-state assets motive lower employment and rising wages, the initial conversion effect is associated with higher employment and lower wages. These latter impacts may result from agreements with workers as part of the conversion process. The SOE conversion process exhibits selection bias in which SOEs with high rates of capital productivity and profitability, high tax burdens, and comparatively low wages and smaller labor forces are more likely to be selected for conversion. No similar selection bias is evident in the collective sector.

Quantification of the influence of drugs on zebrafish larvae swimming kinematics and energetics

The use of zebrafish larvae has aroused wide interest in the medical field for its potential role in the development of new therapies. The larvae grow extremely quickly and the embryos are nearly transparent which allows easy examination of its internal structures using fluorescent imaging techniques. Medical treatment of zebrafish larvae can directly influence its swimming behaviours. These behaviour changes are related to functional changes of central nervous system and transformations of the zebrafish body such as muscle mechanical power and force variation, which cannot be measured directly by pure experiment observation. To quantify the influence of drugs on zebrafish larvae swimming behaviours and energetics, we have developed a novel methodology to exploit intravital changes based on observed zebrafish locomotion. Specifically, by using an in-house MATLAB code to process the recorded live zebrafish swimming video, the kinematic locomotion equation of a 3D zebrafish larvae was obtained, and a customised Computational Fluid Dynamics tool was used to solve the fluid flow around the fish model which was geometrically the same as experimentally tested zebrafish. The developed methodology was firstly verified against experiment, and further applied to quantify the fish internal body force, torque and power consumption associated with a group of normal zebrafish larvae vs. those immersed in acetic acid and two neuroactive drugs. As indicated by our results, zebrafish larvae immersed in 0.01% acetic acid display approximately 30% higher hydrodynamic power and 10% higher cost of transport than control group. In addition, 500 μM diphenylhydantoin significantly decreases the locomotion activity for approximately 50% lower hydrodynamic power, whereas 100 mg/L yohimbine has not caused any significant influences on 5 dpf zebrafish larvae locomotion. The approach has potential to evaluate the influence of drugs on the aquatic animal’s behaviour changes and thus support the development of new analgesic and neuroactive drugs

IEEE 802.20 Based Broadband Railroad Digital Network – The Infrastructure for M-Commerce on the Train

The broadband wireless access is emerging as a promising technology to meet the ever-increasing demand of M-commerce on the train. The traditional railroad communication system (RCS) is not only in charge of the traditional train scheduling, but also offers broadband WLAN services to passengers and provides the network platform to the intelligent railroad information system. This imposes a major challenge on the capability of the RCS in response to the increasing application requirements, particularly, the one for ubiquitous Internet access. To take the advantage of the rapid evolving mobile communication technology, this paper proposes an IEEE 802.20 based broadband railroad digital network, namely BRDN, for the next generation RCS. The paper further presents the scenario how BRDN operates and identifies the IP mobility as the major technical issue to be solved for BRDN. The predictability of mobile IP for the train-based applications will ease the difficulties in implementing BRDN. With the availability of IP standard for the next generation Internet - IPv6, BRDN will eventually become a reality

Employing Synergetic Effect of Doping and Thin Film Coating to Boost the Performance of Lithium-Ion Battery Cathode Particles

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has evolved as an important technique to coat conformal protective thin films on cathode and anode particles of lithium ion batteries to enhance their electrochemical performance. Coating a conformal, conductive and optimal ultrathin film on cathode particles has significantly increased the capacity retention and cycle life as demonstrated in our previous work. In this work, we have unearthed the synergetic effect of electrochemically active iron oxide films coating and partial doping of iron on LiMn1.5 Ni0.5O4 (LMNO) particles. The ionic Fe penetrates into the lattice structure of LMNO during the ALD process. After the structural defects were saturated, the iron started participating in formation of ultrathin oxide films on LMNO particle surface. Owing to the conductive nature of iron oxide films, with an optimal film thickness of ~0.6 nm, the initial capacity improved by ~25% at room temperature and by ~26% at an elevated temperature of 55 °C at a 1C cycling rate. The synergy of doping of LMNO with iron combined with the conductive and protective nature of the optimal iron oxide film led to a high capacity retention (~93% at room temperature and ~91% at 55 °C) even after 1,000 cycles at a 1C cycling rate

Political Economic Analysis of China's Economic Trends: Reasons and Solutions for Successive Declined Growth for 5 Years

Among the methods for analyzing China's economic trends, both demand analysis and supply analysis have advantages and disadvantages. The correct method is mainly using theories and methods of Marxist political economics analysis while drawing lessons from the reasonable theories and effective methods in Western economics. Although it has declined for five consecutive years, China's economy will not collapse, as the overall economic trend is going well and the economic growth has huge potential. The proximate causes of the economic downturn are oversupply and lack of effective supply, insufficient demand, weakness of investment, export and consumption, especially insufficient consumption demand resulted from huge income gap and low labor income. The deep-seated causes are imperfection of ownership system, distribution system, market system, economic management system, and so on. In addition to a series of important strategic policies implemented by the nation, such as the comprehensive deepening reform, expanding domestic demand, improving supply, and optimizing structures, China should also actively, steadily, and reasonably deepen the reform of the systems relevant with distribution to stabilize growth