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This paper analyses container throughput developments in the East Asia container port system. Throughput evolutions and concentration/deconcentration patterns in the multi-range container port system of East Asia are analysed. The paper also provides a more in-depth qualitative analysis of the reasons underlying the observed trends and results. It is demonstrated that the East Asian port system is undergoing major structural shifts in cargo patterns and is witnessing a cargo deconcentration trend as a result of the rise of the Chinese ports and the relative stagnation of the Japanese range.

Several multivariate statistical methods were comprehensively used to interpret the temporal, spatial patterns and source identification of surface water pollution in Bohai Bay with the large and complex data. Twelve variables water quality indices were surveyed at 12 sites three times a year (May, August, and October) from 1995 to 2005. Cluster analysis (CA) grouped the eleven years into two clusters, Cluster A (1995 to 2001 except 1998) and cluster B (2002 to 2005 and 1998), and spatial CA divided the entire area into three groups. The results of discriminant analysis showed that the temporal CA and spatial CA were effective with 90% and 83.3% correct assignments, respectively. In cluster A, the pollution sources mainly were nutrient factor from non-point source and Hg pollution, oil and organic pollutions were relatively light. In Cluster B, the organic pollution became the mainly pollution source, and the nutrient pollution was still serious problem. In the results of spatial analysis, the group 1 was mainly affected by anthropogenic pollution, the group 3 was seriously affected by oil spill pollution and nutrients pollution, and the group 2 reflected relatively strong water self-purification ability.

The aims of this study were to investigate the influencing factors of wine tourism development in China, assess the marketing efforts made by the wine-tourism stakeholders, and provide constructive suggestions for the development of China's wine tourism.

A qualitative approach was adopted for the purposes of this research. The study site is the Bohai Bay wine region in Shandong Province, the birthplace of China's modern wine industry and the largest wine-producing area in China. Chateau Changyu-Castel and Chateau Junding were visited in June 2010. Qualitative data were collected in the forms of observations of the wineries, interviews with wine tourists, focus groups with tourism practitioners, and analyses of travel blogs, document excerpts, and official web sites. Content analysis produced a thematic framework on people, promotion, and place.

A number of facilitating and detrimental factors were revealed pertaining to China's wine tourism development on the three themes: people, promotion, and place.

The number of wine tourists being interviewed is relatively small, and the wineries chosen are relatively large ones. Results may not be generalized to other wine tourists and wineries in China.

The paper includes implications for the development of wine tourism in China, such as food and wine pairing that combines wine with local (Chinese) cuisine at the wineries, positioning, and genuine government support.

Research on wine tourism and wine tourists in China is scant. The current research fills a research gap by examining China's wine tourism phenomena from multiple perspectives, including those of tourists, tourism practitioners, and wine tourism destinations.

Based on the cognitive bias theory, this study aims to explore the relationship among the size of new ventures, entrepreneurial experience and organizational decentralization.

This study uses 175 entrepreneurial companies in the Bohai Bay Rim as samples. The hypotheses are tested through partial least squares (PLS).

A clear positive relationship is found between size and organizational decentralization, and entrepreneurial experience is found to have a negative effect on this relationship.

The influences of other variables at the organizational level on organizational decentralization are not taken into consideration, and the measurement of entrepreneurial experience is not accurate enough.

This study also has practical implications. Compared with inexperienced entrepreneurs, experienced entrepreneurs do not always have many advantages. Entrepreneurs should decentralize power at the right time in the process of expanding their businesses and continuously reflect and learn, instead of exaggerating their own intelligence, consequently making more rational decisions.

This study has three theoretical implications. First, it provides a theoretical implication for understanding the characteristics of changes in the organizational decentralization of new ventures, which enriches the literature on organizational decentralization in the field of entrepreneurship. Second, it derives theoretical implications for understanding the role of organizational size in organizational development. Third, this study, which applies the cognitive bias theory to assess the effect of entrepreneurial experience, helps supplement existing research on the relationship between entrepreneurial experience and new ventures.

The paper discusses the new concept of “Multinational Investment Projects” (MIPs) and its application in the context of international business operations in China. The petrochemical industry in China is used as the industrial context in which we investigate the interplay between the Chinese government, which encourages growth and investment activities in the sector, and the multinational petrochemical firms competing for global market share in this sector.

The paper investigates the nature of the petrochemical value chain and the investment activities in all of its segments. Using an originally created database of the top 180 MIPs in the petrochemical industry in China and additional context information the business environment in China, the paper reviews the investment strategies of multinational petrochemical corporations, and discusses their strategic choices for mode of entry in China, geographic location and location within the value chain.

The overview of MIPs in the Chinese petrochemical industry confirms the theoretical expectations of the critical impact of Chinese Government policies. The paper explains the emerging shape of international competition in this sector of the Chinese economy.

The main contributions of this paper are the new conceptual framework for analysis of the drivers for strategic investment choices, the assembly of a database with the top 180 MIPs in the petrochemical industry in China, and the analysis of the relationships between the regional endowments, concentration of value‐chain activities and location choices by multinational firms from different countries of origin. The results demonstrate the factors that drive growth in a knowledge‐, technology‐ and capital‐intensive sector.

For a better understanding of the preferences and differences of young consumers in emerging wine markets, this study aims to propose a clustering method to segment the super-new generation wine consumers based on their sensitivity to wine brand, origin and price and then conduct user profiles for segmented consumer groups from the perspectives of demographic attributes, eating habits and wine sensory attribute preferences.

We first proposed a consumer clustering perspective based on their sensitivity to wine brand, origin and price and then conducted an adaptive density peak and label propagation layer-by-layer (ADPLP) clustering algorithm to segment consumers, which improved the issues of wrong centers' selection and inaccurate classification of remaining sample points for traditional DPC (DPeak clustering algorithm). Then, we built a consumer profile system from the perspectives of demographic attributes, eating habits and wine sensory attribute preferences for segmented consumer groups.

In this study, 10 typical public datasets and 6 basic test algorithms are used to evaluate the proposed method, and the results showed that the ADPLP algorithm was optimal or suboptimal on 10 datasets with accuracy above 0.78. The average improvement in accuracy over the base DPC algorithm is 0.184. As an outcome of the wine consumer profiles, sensitive consumers prefer wines with medium prices of 100–400 CNY and more personalized brands and origins, while casual consumers are fond of popular brands, popular origins and low prices within 50 CNY. The wine sensory attributes preferred by super-new generation consumers are red, semi-dry, semi-sweet, still, fresh tasting, fruity, floral and low acid.

Young Chinese consumers are the main driver of wine consumption in the future. This paper provides a tool for decision-makers and marketers to identify the preferences of young consumers quickly which is meaningful and helpful for wine marketing.

In this study, the ADPLP algorithm was introduced for the first time. Subsequently, the user profile label system was constructed for segmented consumers to highlight their characteristics and demand partiality from three aspects: demographic characteristics, consumers' eating habits and consumers' preferences for wine attributes. Moreover, the ADPLP algorithm can be considered for user profiles on other alcoholic products.

After the 19th CPC national congress, Chinese Communist Party and the government put forward higher requirements for the development of coastal zones, and it is urgent to establish an integrated coastal zone management system, so as to better guarantee the construction of maritime powers and regional coordinated development. The purpose of this paper is to aim at re-examining and positioning China’s integrated coastal zone management.

This paper sorts out the current situation of coastal zone resources and environment, summarizes prominent problems and clarifies the path of comprehensive management of coastal zone based on the typicality and comprehensiveness of coastal ecosystem.

Coastal zone is a typical area of “life community shared among mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes and grass.” However, there are three prominent problems at present, namely, separation between land and sea, separation among industry sectors and separation among administrative jurisdictions. Coastal zone planning and legislation are important measures to realize the comprehensive management of coastal zone.

This paper puts forward some suggestions on the reform of coastal zone management from the perspective of planning and legislation.

The aim of the article is to explore the central risks, benefits and impacts of oil and gas exploration on human communities’ health and environment worldwide. It suggests a new model of governance to a more effective and coherent environmental management framework.

The article uses a case-based approach, utilizing a review of past literature as a vehicle to discuss possible new approaches and paths for the development of an innovative model of environmental governance relating to oil and gas industry.

The article demonstrates the necessity of improving the current governance patterns, economic theory and current models of development trying to align them with innovative effective mechanisms of risk management on sectoral industry dealing with highly risky resources exploration at a global platform.

The article provides a fresh illustration of the challenges of the oil and gas industry and environmental management by trying to point out the health impacts at the same time that suggests a profound reflection on new patterns of integrative and realigned governance.

The examine of the balance of risks and benefits associated with unarticulated and unaligned models of development, or sometimes the absolute lack of these models.

The article is original in its development of a new framework of governance aligned to revisited management systems, processes and infrastructure needed for a more efficient exploration of resources base of our economic system.

This case highlights the green agriculture initiative of the Honliv High Tech Agricultural Development Co., Ltd. towards agriculture environmental protection and better life. In this process, the Honliv Company confronted many difficulties, such as addressing the green transformation concerns of the team, identifying the sustainable agriculture target, the project selection of red globe grape products, the planning of a demonstration vineyard and green marketing. Nevertheless, with the Red Globe Grape of the “Honliv brand” had won the certification of China’s “Grade A” green food mark, and its green marketing initiatives, such as the “picking and demonstration model” had won people’s identification. The company was awarded the honorary titles of “Red Globe grape planting demonstration base with the Chinese characteristics” and “pollution-free science and technology demonstration unit of Chinese fruits and vegetables.” By discussing the Honliv Company’s experience and difficulties during the sustainable agriculture transformation process, one can realize the importance of green agriculture initiatives for creating a better life for humans.

Implementing just-in-time (JIT) practices on the supplier side is a common practice to streamline procurement and production planning in realization of cost efficiency and lead time reduction. However, it is little known how supplier JIT is related to firm flexibility performance and what factors may facilitate the relationship. This study aims to investigate the effects of supplier JIT on flexibility performance and explore the moderating impacts of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) and human resource empowerment (EMP).

This study applies hierarchical linear regression analysis to test the proposed model based on data collected from 213 manufacturing firms in China.

The results revealed a negative influence of supplier JIT on flexibility performance. However, the adoption of AMT and EMP reconciles the conflict between supplier JIT and flexibility performance. Besides, the results indicate the positive effects of AMT and EMP on flexibility performance.

This study contributes to supply chain JIT literature by providing a holistic view to understand the structural relationships between supplier JIT, AMT, EMP and flexibility performance.