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Challenges from the urban–rural disparity immensely burden the world's progress fulfilling Sustainable Development Goals and the goals' central promise, particularly for developing countries experiencing rapid structural change and urbanization. A knowledge gap lies between the epistemology of urban–rural disparity and the practice of integrated urban-rural development. This paper aims to provide a new approach to bridge the knowledge gap based on the recent Chinese experience.

This qualitative research reviewed major economic and multidisciplinary studies regarding urban-rural development and the growth-equality tradeoff. Chinese experience is employed to showcase concrete challenges from the urban–rural disparity and how the proposed approach works for urban-rural integration.

Theoretical and practical approaches with urban bias largely fail to counter the challenges. Building on China's recent practice probing beyond urban bias, IFPRI (2019) proposes the term rurbanomics with a highlight of equalized urban-rural economic partnership, whereafter Zhou and Chen (2021) enrich the term into a conceptual framework. This paper further improves rurbanomics as a new viable approach to integrated urban-rural development under the overarching goal of common prosperity. The approach prioritizes driving forces in the economic, demographic, eco-environmental, social institutional and technological aspects for the policy community to leverage. Long-term mechanisms are decerned to link urban-rural integration to common prosperity.

China has leveraged ingredients of the rurbanomics approach in the political deployment to integrated urban-rural development. However, the application of this approach is yet to be adapted with local heterogeneities and live up to application's potential. Long-term mechanisms recommended by the rurbanomics approach will need to be carried out. Future improvements will need substantial theoretical extension and micro-level empirical studies.

This paper streamlines the epistemological shreds regarding pursuits, challenges, global experiences and theoretical approaches of urban-rural development. The paper also develops rurbanomics to navigate urban-rural integration, Sustainable Development Goals and common prosperity. By decerning long-term mechanisms in the Chinese case accordingly, this paper provides clues for other economies to employ the new approach.

The author attempts to examine the existence and pattern of coalitions in international relations across countries, and investigates whether international relations of coalition partners influence a country's enaction of agricultural non-tariff measures (NTMs).

The author adopts a machine learning technique to identify international relation coalition partnerships and use network analysis to characterize the clustering pattern of coalitions with high-frequent records of global event data. The author then constructs a monthly dataset of agricultural NTMs against China and international relations with China of each importer and its coalition partners, and designs a panel structural vector autoregressive (PSVAR) model to estimate impulse response functions of agricultural NTMs with regard to international relation shocks.

The author finds countries to establish coalition partnerships. Two major clusters of coalitions are noted, with one composed of coalitions primarily among “North” countries and the other of coalitions among “South” countries. The United States is found to play a pivotal role by connecting the two clusters. The PSVAR estimation reveals reductions of NTMs against China following improved international relations with China of both the importer and its coalition partners. NTM responses are more substantial for measures that are trade restrictive. These results confirm that coalitions in international relations lead to coordination of agricultural NTMs.

The author provides international political insights into agricultural trade policymaking by showing interactions of NTM enaction across countries in the same coalition of international relations. These insights offer useful policy implications to predict and cope with hidden barriers to agricultural trade.

As technical barriers gradually become the important tools of trade protection, it is important to understand whether intensified enforcement of border controls is adopted as a hidden tool of trade protectionism and differs across periods and industries.

This article applies a panel structural vector autoregression (PSVAR) model to investigate the potential role of trade protectionism motives in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) import refusals on China's agricultural exports, utilizing newly constructed monthly data at the industry level.

The results show that import refusal is mainly driven by the inspection history, highlighting the importance of the intrinsic product quality and maintaining an excellent inspection history in border inspection. The novel finding is that US employment contractions would also lead to a small increase in FDA import refusals, especially those taking place within ten months and made without sampling tests. Such an association is driven by industry-specific employment shocks and becomes stronger after the financial crisis. It is also more evident in industries where the US lacks competitiveness against China, being manufactured without mandatory safety regulations, and with negative skewness of employment growth.

This research is one of the preliminary attempts to understand whether the de facto border controls are worked as a hidden tool of protectionism to agricultural products, and what the specific trajectory and duration of the impacts at the monthly level. This study provides empirical evidence showing the role of protectionism motives in FDA import refusals and is heterogeneous across industries, which generate new insights and policy implications to predict and cope with additional barriers on agricultural trade.

The purpose of this paper is to extend empirical investigations of the relationship between real exchange rates and agricultural exports to the firm-product-country level with the use of disaggregated panel data of China’s food industry. In particular, the study aims to explore heterogeneities in the export response to real exchange rates across firms, destinations and products, as well as to differentiate responses on the intensive and extensive margins.

This paper utilizes a merged panel data set of firm-product-country level transaction records of China’s agricultural exports with firm-level survey data of the food industry. Panel regression models are constructed to identify empirical relationships.

Real appreciations are found to reduce export quantities and the probability to enter destination markets. These impacts are enhanced in 2005 when China unexpectedly depegged yuan from the USD. In addition, real appreciations in 2005 also reduced the yuan-denominated export price and increased firms’ probability to exit destination markets. Taking the exchange rate reform as a natural experiment, evidence suggests that the negative exchange rate effects on exports are robust to the endogeneity issue. Finally, heterogeneous export responses are identified with respect to firm productivities and ownerships, income levels and locations of destination markets, as well as product groups.

This paper provides first-hand evidence on how real exchange rates influence agricultural exports at the firm-product-country level. A featured contribution is that China’s exchange rate reform in 2005 is utilized to alleviate the typical concern of endogeneity. Findings may benefit policy makers, for example, by identifying firms most vulnerable to real appreciations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of service quality on perceived positive and negative social impact of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.

A field study was conducted in Rio de Janeiro, and data were collected from residents who attended the Olympic Games through a self-administered questionnaire (n=519). The questionnaire included measures of perceived service quality, positive and negative social impact. A confirmatory factor analysis analysed the psychometric properties of the constructs, and a subsequent structural equation model examined the relationships between service quality and social impact perceptions.

The results show good psychometric properties of a multidimensional construct of service quality composed of the technical, functional, aesthetic, access, accommodation and complementary events dimensions. The service quality construct was significantly related to both positive social impact (city image and community pride enhancement, social experiences and public infrastructures) and negative social impact (social conflicts and costs) perceptions.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the role of service quality in sport mega-events and testing on different facets of social impact. The findings highlight that social atmosphere and new experiences in the Olympic Games are critical when planning these events.

This paper aims to study the effect of chloride ions concentration on the corrosion behavior of carbon steel in methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) aqueous solution in the sight of different process parameters of purification plant.

Due to the decrease of filtration efficiency and separation efficiency, the chloride ion in the desulfurization solution is enriched. The corrosion behavior of carbon steel under chloride ion enrichment environment was studied by weight-loss method, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, cyclic polarization curve, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy.

The results show that temperature and hydrogen sulfide loads are the main factors of corrosion in CO2-MDEA-H2O-H2S environment. The enrichment of chloride ions reduces the corrosion rate at low temperature but promotes the corrosion rate at high temperature. The chloride concentration should be controlled below 3000 mg/L, and no pitting corrosion was found under the experimental conditions.

The effect of chloride ion enrichment on MDEA solution corrosion shows that at low temperature, the increase of chloride ion will reduce the acid gas load and increase the density of corrosion products, so as to reduce the corrosion; on the contrary, at high temperature, the density of corrosion products will decrease and the corrosion will be intensified as well. It is believed that the chloride ion should be controlled below 3000 mg/L according to the results of the tests.

The purpose of this study is to provide a micro-nano chip automatic alignment system. Used for micron and nanometer channel alignment of microfluidic chip.

In this paper, combined with the reconstructed micro–nanoscale Hough transform theory, a “clamp–adsorb–rotate” chip alignment method is proposed. The designed alignment system includes a microscopic identification device, a clamping device and a suction device. After assembly, the straightness of the linear slide rail in the horizontal and vertical directions was tested, respectively. The results show that in the horizontal and vertical directions, the linearity error of the linear slide is +0.29 and 0.30 µm, respectively, which meets the requirement of chip alignment accuracy of 15 µm. In the direction of rotation, the angular error between the microchannel and the nanochannel is ±0.5°. In addition, an alignment flow experiment of the chip is designed. The results demonstrate that the closer the angle between the microchannel and the nanochannel is to 90°, the fluid fills the entire channel. Compared with the conventional method, the method and the assembly system realize fully automatic double-layer chip alignment.

A mechanical device designed by Hough transform theory can realize microfluidic chip alignment at nanometer and micron level.

The automatic alignment device adopts Hough transform principle and can be used for microfluidic chip alignment.

The Chinese construction industry is experiencing a rapid growth these days. Due to the requirements of energy conservation, emission reduction and construction waste management, the development of prefabricated buildings (PBs) has attracted much attention in the Chinese construction industry. However, the development of PBs are still in their infancy in China, which have been negatively impacted by many obstacles. It is of great significance to clarify and analyze these obstacles for the purpose of promoting the development of PBs in China. Due to the wideness and complex features of obstacles, the existing literature exploring the research topic lacks comprehensiveness. The purpose of this paper is to systematically identify and discuss the obstacles that hinder the development of PBs in China.

This paper adopts the method of news report analysis based on the news reports retrieved from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and nine major portals in China. The Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) method of content analysis was used to rank the obstacles according to their importance.

A total of 79 obstacles to the development of PBs in China are identified, and the 79 obstacles are divided into 8 dimensions. Among the Top 20 obstacles, the government dimension accounted for the highest number of 5, the market and consumer dimension and development organization dimension were 4, Manufacturing Enterprise of Prefabricated Components (PCs) dimension, construction organization dimension and design organization dimension were 2, logistics enterprise dimension was 1, and industry association dimension was 0. Among them, the biggest obstacle is the high transportation costs.

First, data collection may not be very comprehensive. Second, this paper is only based on the obstacles in the development of PBs in China, and the universality of the management conclusions needs to be further strengthened.

The research results help the stakeholders in the Chinese PBs industry to better understand the barriers hindering the industry development in a systemic way, which will help propose appropriate strategies to address these barriers.

This paper clarifies the obstacles of China's PBs and makes an analysis, which is of great value to the development of China's PBs.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the interactions of factors impacting the widespread adoption of prefabricated building technologies and the intervention strategies to facilitate the development of prefabrication based on fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs).

Through in-depth interviews with six stakeholder groups, namely, the government, developers, designers, contractors, manufacturers and researchers, 13 critical factors were identified and used to construct stakeholder-grouped FCMs, which were further aggregated into a collective FCM. The complexity and density of the collective FCM and the centrality of factors in the FCM were examined. Subsequently, a series of “what-if” simulations of the collective FCM were conducted to analyze the effectiveness of different interventions in promoting prefabrication.

The results show that three factors including market demand, cost, and policies and regulations have been mentioned by all stakeholder groups. However, these factors were ranked differently by stakeholder groups, implying that different stakeholder groups perceive the barriers to prefabricated building technologies differently. FCM simulations show that strengthening policies and regulations yield the strongest overall effect stimulating prefabrication, alleviating the organizational and environmental barriers more than the technological barriers, while improving the knowledge and expertise alleviate the technological barriers more. These measures need to be accompanied by other approaches, such as reducing cost and improving quality.

It is a tough task to promote prefabrication as it is affected by numerous barriers with complex interactions, which have been overlooked by previous studies. This study clearly shows which strategy could tackle which barriers to prefabrication through the FCM simulations. This provides valuable references for the enterprises’ decision making and the governments’ policy making to facilitate the diffusion of prefabricated building technologies.

Few studies aim to analyze the interactions among the barriers to prefabrication, while this study specifically investigates this issue by illustrating the complex interactions using FCMs. Few studies also aim to identify the intervention strategies promoting prefabrication based on a quantitative approach, while this study employs FCM simulations to directly simulate the effectiveness of different strategies to facilitate prefabrication in a quantitative manner.

Despite the recognition that citizens' perceptions of mega sport events' social impact is critical for the sustainable development of these events and host cities, most previous studies have not taken into consideration how these perceptions may change over time. This study examines citizens' social impact perceptions of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games before and after the event.

Data were collected amongst local residents of Rio de Janeiro pre- and post-event (n = 256). A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) analysed the psychometric properties of the proposed social impact constructs. Subsequently, a multigroup analysis and latent mean comparisons were conducted to test social impact perceptions pre- and post-event.

The multigroup CFA showed factorial stability of the social impact model in both periods, while the latent mean comparisons revealed significant differences in the dimensions of social experiences, city image and community pride enhancement, public infrastructures and social conflicts. Results indicated that the perception of positive impacts tends to increase, while perceived negative impacts decrease from pre- to post-event.

The social effects of hosting sport mega events result in a short-term change in attitudes towards the local community, leading to a better comprehension on how communities perceive the event's impact on their lives.

In a highly complex mega event such as the Olympic Games, any change may influence residents' perceptions. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of residents for determining support or opposition in hosting the event, allowing a better understanding of the exchange effects.