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Using Social Network Analysis (SNA), this paper examines the inter-provincial logistics relationships in China. Based on the annual data of inter-provincial railway logistics quantity during the period 1998-2009, the degree of interconnection between regions could imply intensified trends of regional economic integration.

The main results of the logistic relationships in China are as follows: the regional logistic interconnection, especially between western and eastern China has increased continuously, which would imply a rising national economic integration. However, the increased centralization index and the average Degree Centrality level imply that a logistics bottleneck has intensified in several hub provinces.

Secondly, logistic center provinces evaluated by the Degree Centrality have changed. In 2009, Hebei, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and Sichuan provinces revealed the highest inward Degree Centrality. Sichuan Province is the region that most surprisingly increased its centrality.

Thirdly, the number of logistic hub provinces, evaluated by the Degree Betweenness Centrality, has increased. In 2008, Henan province was only a focal hub but in 2009, Shandong, Hubei, Sichuan provinces became logistic hubs.

Lastly, the Community Modularity which analyzed grouping structures shows that there are three time-consistent communities. This means that even though there is enhanced between-region integration, the inter-regional inter-connection is more important in explaining the regional logistic relationship.

The paper seeks to identify key features of prenatal care utilization and quality in western regions of China and to determine the factors affecting the quality of prenatal care.

A descriptive, cross‐sectional study was conducted. The instrument for the study was a 10‐stem respondent‐administered, structured questionnaire, designed in Chinese, composed of two segments: general information on infants who were under two years old; and their mothers. The authors determined the quality (both amount and content) of prenatal care using recommendations made by UNICEF and the Chinese Ministry of Health (MOH) jointly for rural areas of China.

The median number of prenatal visits was three and rate of first trimester visits was 53.6 per cent (n=1,474). Over three quarters (75.3 per cent) of respondents had fewer than five prenatal visits, with this proportion highest in Gansu (95.8 per cent) and lowest in Shanxi (55.4 per cent) provinces. The percentage of women who received qualitatively adequate prenatal care services was only 1.8 per cent. No respondents in Gansu received a completely correct prenatal test, while this rate was 4.0 per cent in Shanxi and 0.2 per cent in Sichuan. Mothers' age (p=0.05), level of educational attainment (p=0.07) and place of prenatal care (p=0.01) were related to the quality of care.

The prenatal care utilization among women in western regions of China is not adequate. Those women who have received prenatal care seldom receive qualitatively adequate prenatal care services, according to national standards. This situation clearly requires urgent attention and improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the effects earthquakes may have on rates of marriage and divorce in China, a country strongly affected by losses due to earthquakes.

This paper studies the effect of earthquakes on marriage and divorce rates in China between 2000 and 2011, using panel data from 31 provinces as well as from Sichuan at the prefecture level, a province that has a high frequency of earthquakes.

The results show that when controlling for demographic, economic, and social factors, losses due to earthquakes are found to be associated with increases in both marriage and divorce rates. While the estimated elasticities are low, amounting to 1.92×10−2 and 6.102×10−2, respectively, they are highly significant, suggesting that a doubling of losses due to earthquakes increases marriages by 1.92 percent and divorces by 6.102 percent with a lag of one year. Since the first elasticity is smaller than the second, losses due to earthquakes may influence familial instability. Moreover, these effects increase in the second year but cannot be traced beyond three years after the disaster.

In view of the cost imposed on society by instable family relationships, these findings point to a need to provide relief to families after earthquake disasters.

As an important public infrastructure, broadband has absorbed a large amount of investment in China. However, how and to what extent these investments affect economic and social development is largely unknown. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of broadband infrastructure construction on consumption of rural households, using an exogenous policy shock introduced by the China's “Broadband Countryside” pilot project.

Using the tracking sample data of China Household Financial Survey in 2013 and 2015, this study estimates the effect of broadband construction on rural household consumption and draws causality between them relying on a quasi-natural experiment based on an exogenous policy shock.

The difference-in-difference estimates show that broadband construction has significantly increased rural household consumption by 16.69%. This positive promotion effect is mainly achieved through mobile phone access to the Internet, while penetration of computer crowds out rural household consumption. Further research find that broadband construction has increased rural household consumption related to daily life and high-quality household consumption, but not statistically significant for the latter, and it has not helped to promote the consumption upgrading of rural households.

This study contributes to the understanding of the positive status of broadband infrastructure in economic and social development by analyzing the impact of broadband infrastructure construction on rural household consumption. This study expands the content of consumption to rural households, especially high-quality consumption and consumption upgrading in rural areas, which provides the possibility to further tap the consumption potential of rural market. The study is the first to explore how broadband infrastructure construction affects consumption of rural households using a quasi-natural experiment.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the first-mover decision as one decision of a set of strategic decisions that ultimately determine performance.

The author used survey data collected from foreign-invested firms in Sichuan, China, to test for evidence that first-movers perform better than late-movers.

The results reveal that there is a first-mover advantage when the other strategic variables are not included in the model. When the entire set of strategic variables is included, however, the first mover variable loses its significance and the willingness of the foreign partner to commit additional resources becomes the best predictor of performance. Consequently, it was argued that foreign investment strategies should be analyzed as a set of strategic decisions managers make to formulate the best mix.

The empirical evidence for the first-mover advantage may not be as well grounded as many have thought. When the first-mover strategic decision is analyzed in isolation from other strategic variables, which is commonly done in many empirical studies, it indicates that firms that enter China before their competitors perform better. Unfortunately, it is more logical to assume that managers dynamically develop a set of strategic decisions that ultimately determine the firm’s performance. To extrapolate one static decision from the strategic decision set and make broad assertions about its effect of performance is an over-simplification of the strategic decision process.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an improved nearest‐neighbor collaborative filtering algorithm based on rough set theory to alleviate the sparsity problem of collaborative filtering. With experimentations, the new algorithm is thereafter evaluated.

Nearest‐neighbor algorithm is the earliest proposed and the main collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm, and its recommendation quality is seriously influenced by the sparsity of user ratings. By using rough set theory, the nearest‐neighbor collaborative filtering algorithm can be improved in the sparsity data situation. The union of user rating items is used as the basis of similarity computing among users, and then a rating predicting method based on rough set theory is proposed to estimate missing values in the union of user rating items for decreasing sparsity.

The sparsity problem of collaborative filtering can be alleviated by using the union of user rating items and estimating missing values based on rough set theory. The experimental results show that the new algorithm can efficiently improve recommendation quality of collaborative filtering.

The union of user rating items was used as the basis of similarity computing among users. A rating prediction method based on rough set theory with an assistant method was proposed to complete the missing values in the union of user rating items. Orthogonal list was used to storage user‐item ratings matrix.

The protection of traditional grassroots place-making knowledge and skills that comprise valuable intangible heritage has not been attracting enough attention in the field of post-disaster reconstruction and recovery. Based on the Guchengping Village’s reconstruction that followed the Lushan earthquake (Sichuan, China), the purpose of this paper is to identify the benefits of a co-design approach for post-disaster reconstruction and recovery, in order to ascertain various stakeholders’ contributions toward the protection of community-based intangible place-making heritage.

A qualitative method was employed to assist the professional designers in facilitating the co-design approach by bridging governments closer together with local communities. At the governmental level, focus groups and personal interviews were conducted to discover the government’s role in preserving the communities’ intangible heritage. At the community level, community-based workshops and family-based design partnerships engaged various community stakeholders to decipher their roles and contributions toward advancing the heritage age.

As the advocates of intangible heritage, all levels of government guaranteed that intangible heritage would be safeguarded in the government strategic plans. At the community level, local residents played a fundamental role as the grassroots protectors. Professional designers utilized cutting edge technologies to improve weaknesses found in the traditional knowledge and skills, by performing the protection in practice. Community-based service agencies promoted the value of heritage to address societal issues.

The co-design approach offered a new method of intangible heritage protection in post-disaster reconstruction and recovery by engaging different stakeholders, in order to effectively transfer the governmental strategic plans into community-based action plans, and in turn, enabled the grassroots voice to inform the government policies.