Is China Systematically Buying Up Key Technologies? Chinese M & A transactions in Germany in the context of “Made in China 2025”. Bertelsmann Stiftung GED Study 2018

“Made in China 2025” (MIC 2025) is the Chinese central government’s main industrial policy strategy aimed at turning China into the global leader of the fourth industrial revolution. Chinese M & A transactions abroad explicitly belong to the instruments for implementing MIC 2025. Germany is an attractive location for Chinese M & A transactions and offers tailor-made know-how for MIC 2025 due to its large number of “hidden champions”, i. e. technological world market leaders in highly specialized niches. 64 percent or 112 of the 175 analyzed Chinese M & A transactions with a share of at least ten percent in German companies between 2014 and 2017 percent can be assigned to one of the ten key sectors in which China aims to assume global technology leadership with the help of MIC 2025. On the one hand, there is a clear focus on the MIC 2025 sectors of “energy-saving and new-energy vehicles”, “electrical equipment” and “high-end numerical control machinery and robotics” – i. e. sectors in which Germany can in part demonstrate significant competitive technological advantages. Even before the introduction of MIC 2025 in 2015, however, these sectors were already a focus of interest for Chinese investors in Germany. On the other hand, key sectors that played little or no role for Chinese M & A transactions in Germany have also become increasingly important since the introduction of MIC 2025. This is particularly evident in the MIC 2025 sector of “biomedicine and high-performance medical devices”. The majority of the 112 Chinese M & A transactions (just under 60 percent) that are relevant for MIC 2025 are distributed across only three German states: Baden-Württemberg (26), North Rhine-Westphalia (22) and Bavaria (18) – the very regions in which the majority of the German “hidden champions” are located. State-owned investors make up 18 percent of the Chinese M & A transactions examined, and are therefore a minority. However, taking into account only the M & A transactions that can be assigned to the MIC 2025 sectors, their share rises to around 22 percent – a possible indication of state stakeholders’ greater interest in acquiring know-how abroad for the implementation of MIC 2025. However, the formal type of ownership of Chinese companies does not show the full picture of potential state influence due to the complex interplay between the state and companies in China. Therefore, the great challenge for Germany consists in the forms of state influence that are not or only insufficiently reflected in the majority ownership type of Chinese investors

Interpreter of maladies: a commonplace for cultures

Imagine living a double life – being pulled in all different directions, between your past and your present, your family and your friends, your two different cultures. Jhumpa Lahiri knows that double existence and shows individuals living it in her book Interpreter of Maladies. Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of short stories that focuses on Indian and American cultures and the people who get caught between the two

The correlation of secondary school records with college records

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

The Architect and the Ditch Digger

“You have an architect and a ditch-digger working together on a construction project. Who gets paid more, and why?” Does a tendency toward abstraction and quantification, a pretense of objectivity, obscure the character, situation and bias from which all economic and political theorems stem? Following the principle that arguments neither arise nor persist in a vacuum, that they live and die by their context and character, we can describe two sorts of response corresponding to two rather timeless worldviews, along with their accompanying “mind-sets”. The degree to which these views indicate differing “kinds” in human nature, beyond which there can be no further reduction to common ground, whether conversely they simply reflect historical and economic circumstance, or to what extent they are both, will be left to the reader. One might discern in the sensibilities described some alignment along traditional epithets of “bourgeois” vs. “working class”, but this is not necessarily so. I will therefore avoid overwrought labels, but admit that such family resemblances speak to a longer historical view and a persistent problematic

Generalized Slow Roll for Large Power Spectrum Features

We develop a variant of the generalized slow roll approach for calculating the curvature power spectrum that is well-suited for order unity deviations in power caused by sharp features in the inflaton potential. As an example, we show that predictions for a step function potential, which has been proposed to explain order unity glitches in the CMB temperature power spectrum at multipoles l=20-40, are accurate at the percent level. Our analysis shows that to good approximation there is a single source function that is responsible for observable features and that this function is simply related to the local slope and curvature of the inflaton potential. These properties should make the generalized slow roll approximation useful for inflation-model independent studies of features, both large and small, in the observable power spectra.Comment: 13 pages, 21 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Sign-changing bubble-tower solutions to fractional semilinear elliptic problems

We study the asymptotic and qualitative properties of least energy radial sign-changing solutions to fractional semilinear elliptic problems of the form $$\begin{cases} (-\Delta)^s u = |u|^{2^*_s-2-\varepsilon}u &\text{in } B_R, \\ u = 0 &\text{in }\mathbb{R}^n \setminus B_R, \end{cases}$$ where $s \in (0,1)$, $(-\Delta)^s$ is the s-Laplacian, $B_R$ is a ball of $\mathbb{R}^n$, $2^*_s := \frac{2n}{n-2s}$ is the critical Sobolev exponent and $\varepsilon>0$ is a small parameter. We prove that such solutions have the limit profile of a "tower of bubbles", as $\varepsilon \to 0^+$, i.e. the positive and negative parts concentrate at the same point with different concentration speeds. Moreover, we provide information about the nodal set of these solutions

A Case for Developing Spiritual Intelligence in Leaders through Equine Facilitated Learning

Unpredictable circumstances, growing stresses in an ever-increasing global market, and ubiquitous ennui have left organizations and today’s leaders in government, industry, and academia without the necessary tools to transition to change in a principled manner. The authors explain that the development and maintenance of genuine leadership skills — adaptive to the dictates of the modern world — must be borne from one’s inner self, a retreat to spirituality. One available method of achieving this is through Equine Facilitated Experiential Learning (EFEL), a technique whereby leaders develop critical management skills by working with horses