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The chapter looks at two recent acquisitions by Chinese companies of German firms operating in the automotive sector. In both cases it was the target firm that initiated the process, intentionally selling to a Chinese strategic investor. The main purpose of the chapter is to examine the main motivations that induce developed country MNEs to deliberately search for a buyer in China.

The chapter uses a case-study approach. Interviews were conducted with the managers that followed the entire process of sale and who were responsible for the search and the selection of a strategic investor in China.

Empirical findings show that major drivers in opting for Chinese investors are the potential synergies generating from resource redeployment, the ability of the acquired firm to maintain its autonomy and the opportunity to expand into the Chinese market.

The cases analysed show that developed country firms may take a proactive role in China in order to address their institutional-based disadvantages and to reduce and eliminate the liability of foreignness they may confront there. What is important is strong core competitiveness on their side, which can ensure their operational autonomy, such as technological leadership and superior quality and solid development. The policy implications are relevant, because in the current particular situation where many companies in Europe turn for sources of capital to emerging market firms, Chinese investors can facilitate target companies’ growth, with a positive impact for the local economy.

Regarding research on authenticity perception, this paper aims to pose the following questions: In different cultural regions, what are the different authenticity elements of old towns from a tourist perspective? What is the difference in authenticity perception in different cultural regions? How does the authenticity perception of old towns change in the tourismification process?

Combining eight cultural regions in China, this study focuses on 155 old towns to discuss the differences between authenticity perception of various old towns in different cultural regions and how the interactions between tourists and local places influence the perception of authenticity, with 11,387 user-generated photographs applied to interpret authenticity perception.

The study shows that the authenticity perceived by tourists varies greatly between farming and pastoral cultural regions; after authenticity loss, old towns with a long history of tourismification regain authenticity in tourists’ perception.

The findings could serve as a reference for tourism development and authenticity protection of old towns. Furthermore, the study explores a creative research method and theoretical framework for regional authenticity studies, which is significant in a global context. In the process of globalization, the implications of this study, including differences in authenticity perception within various cultural regions, will also be significant globally.

Due to rapid development, historic city areas are faced with urbanization damage to their characteristic urban identity besides physical deterioration and economic decay. The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: What are the constituent elements of locality for historic areas? How does one classify historic areas according to locality elements? What are the characteristics of each kind of historic area? How does one identify to-be-protected locality elements according to different historic areas to realize sustainable development?

As a historic cultural city with a building history of over 3,000 years, Beijing has a myriad of distinctive historic areas, of which 367 were selected as the research samples. This paper classifies historic areas into the following four categories: distinctive areas, permanent areas, adaptive areas and inherited areas by analyzing the locality elements of 8,905 geo-tagged photos related to Beijing historic areas. The correlation among locality elements – the basis for joint protection – is also examined by Pearson’s correlation analysis.

The results are as follows: the reaction degree of carrier elements is generally higher than that of information elements, of which the representative architecture is the main constituent element of locality; folk customs, traditional activities and other intangible cultural heritage in historic areas receive only slight attention and need to be further stressed; controlled by non-human factors, permanent elements bear a high degree of autocorrelation; and emerging tourism and business activities have, to some extent, grown into constituent parts of the locality elements in historic areas.

This paper seeks to strike a dynamic balance between city renewal and historic area protection, providing a reference for understanding the dynamics of locality.

The former residences of historical figures are typical landscape elements of historic districts, which are characterised by the styles of these residences and spiritual historical figures cultures. The purpose of this paper is to determine how the former residences respond once the historical figures living there have passed.

The history of human culture and progression of urban construction – which are submerged in societal transformation – is recorded for old Beijing city. Narrative space theory is used and methods such as a content analysis, map overlay and the Geographic Information System are employed to analyse the selected 300 former residences of historical figures in old Beijing city.

The results are as follows: the political setting played a key role in the evolution process, three political narrative areas in the inner city and one cultural narrative area in the outer city form the narrative spatial structure of the former residences of historical figures, “government construction” and “resident construction” are the main reasons for the loss and destruction of narrative spaces and ordinary life is an important channel for showcasing the history of former residences. The narrative spaces of these residences carry double histories, namely, the development of human history and of city construction.

Different from former studies that focus on the preservation of the single historical building, this study explores the integral logic of historic buildings in the whole city through narrative space theory to get a combination of culture and space.

The purpose of this paper aims to investigate the relationship between brand personality, country‐of‐origin (COO) image and purchase intention. Specifically, it is suggested that COO image exerts both main and interaction impact on purchase intention.

A cross‐city survey of China's auto industry for the Sino‐German Joint Venture's auto brand of Bora was conducted to test hypotheses, predicted on a sample of 1,200 respondents. Another sample for Japan and the Sino‐Japanese Joint Venture's Honda auto brand was used for validation.

Results reveal that both brand personality and COO image exert significant positive main effects on purchase intention. Furthermore, COO image is found to be a positive moderator in the relationship between brand personality and purchase intention. Specifically, a positive COO image could enhance brand personality's positive impact on purchase intention, whereas a negative COO image could significantly decrease the positive brand personality effect on purchase intention. Companies with both weak brand personality and a negative COO image achieve a higher purchase intention than those with weak brand personality, yet a positive COO image.

This study provides new theoretical insights into factors influencing consumers' purchase decision making by incorporating COO image as a moderator in the relationship between brand personality and purchase intention. It also offers joint ventures useful advice on whether to emphasize brand origin. If a company is weak in both brand personality and COO image, it is better not to emphasize brand origin.

The authors investigate the effects of Chinese acquirer’s chief executive officer (CEO) risk preference on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) payment method and the moderating roles played by acquirer’s ownership, industry relatedness and whether the M&A is cross-border.

Using 4,624 worldwide M&A deals conducted by Chinese firms from 2009 to 2021, the authors conduct multiple linear regression and ordered probit regression. And comprehensive indexes constructed based on the observed features of acquirer’s CEOs are used to be the proxy for CEO risk preference.

The results show that the higher-level Chinese acquirer’s CEO risk preference is overall positively associated with using more stock in payment. Moreover, the above relationship is strengthened if the ownership of the acquirer is state-owned.

The authors highlight the importance of the non-economic factors and demonstrate a relationship between the Chinese acquirer’s CEO risk preference and the M&A payment method, providing support for and enriching the upper echelons theory (UET). Moreover, the unique risk priorities of Chinese acquirers’ CEOs are revealed.

Tourists’ destination image is crucial for visiting intentions. An ancient capital with diverse characteristics is an important component of China’s urban tourism. The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: what are the differences and commonalities of the perceived destination image of ancient capitals? What makes the difference of the perceived destination image in these cities? Aside from the exterior factors, are there internal factors of cities that influence tourists’ cognition and perception of destination image?

The comment text data of Baidu tourism website were used to determine the differences in the destination images of China’s four great ancient capitals: Beijing, Xi’an, Nanjing and Luoyang. ROST content mining and semantic network analysis were for differences and commonalities of the perceived destination image, and correlation analysis was used to explore the internal factors of cities that influence tourists’ cognition and perception of destination image.

Though the same as ancient capital, the four ancient capitals’ images are far apart; historical interests are the core of tourism experience in ancient capital city; image perception is from physical carrier, history and culture, and human cognition; tourist’ destination affect of ancient capital is most from its history and culture; protecting identity and maintaining daily life are crucial for ancient city tourism.

Previous studies on ancient capitals have focused on the invariable identity of ancient capitals’ destination images, and left a gap on determining from where the invariable identity comes in general and how much it influences destination image. This gap was addressed in this study, by analyzing the destination images of four ancient capitals in China as cases. In this way, this study provided reference to the other ancient cities worldwide.

The mesoscale structure (MS) has a significant impact on the mechanical performance of parts made by additive manufacturing (AM). This paper aims to explore the design and fabrication of force-flow guided reinforcement mesoscale structure (FFRMS) compared with the homogeneous mesoscale structure (HMS), which is inconsistent with the stress field for a given load condition. Some cases were presented to demonstrate the mechanical properties of FFRMS in terms of MS combined with quasi-isotropy and anisotropy.

The paper consists of four main sections: the first developed the concept of FFRMS design based on HMS, the second explored volume fraction control for the proportion of force-flow lines in terms of mechanical property requirement, and the third presented a sequence stacking theory and practical manufacturing process framework and the final sections provided some application case studies.

The main contributions of this study were the definition and development of the FFRMS concept, the application framework and the original case studies. As an example, a typical lug designed with the proposed FFRMS method was fabricated by three different AM processes. The test results showed that both the strength and stiffness of the specimens are improved greatly by using the FFRMS design method.

The superposition of HMS as the basement and force-flow as an indication of the stiffener, leading to a heterogeneous structure, which exhibits more efficient and diversified means compared with the traditional way of increasing the HMS density merely.

This paper examines German trade and investment structures in relation to China, establishing for the 1990s: a severe trade imbalance, with stagnating German exports and sharply rising imports; it also establishes, despite occasionally substantial increases in contracted investment, a general pattern of steep decline in realized German investment. These findings contrast markedly with official surveys of German business opinions which seem to yield a very positive frame of mind by German businessmen regarding their business activity in China. Both grounds for disillusionment and success factors for foreign (German) business in China are explored, phenomena which are possibly shaping German conformance to the wider, distinct and apparently inexorable trend away from joint ventures towards wholly foreign‐owned enterprises. Regardless of such developments, Germany is a key business partner for China, not least because of its readiness to share sensitive high‐technology as, for example, in the field of environmental protection.

Due to the market trend of low-volume and high-variety, the manufacturing industry is paying close attention to improve the ability to hedge against variability. Therefore, in this paper the assembly line with limited resources is balanced in a robust way that has good performance under all possible scenarios. The proposed model allows decision makers to minimize a posteriori regret of the selected choice and hedge against the high cost caused by variability.

A generalized resource-constrained assembly line balancing problem (GRCALBP) with an interval data of task times is modeled and the objective is to find an assignment of tasks and resources to the workstations such that the maximum regret among all the possible scenarios is minimized. To properly solve the problem, the regret evaluation, an exact solution method and an enhanced meta-heuristic algorithm, Whale Optimization Algorithm, are proposed and analyzed. A problem-specific coding scheme and search mechanisms are incorporated.

Theory analysis and computational experiments are conducted to evaluated the proposed methods and their superiority. Satisfactory results show that the constraint generation technique-based exact method can efficiently solve instances of moderate size to optimality, and the performance of WOA is enhanced due to the modified searching strategy.

For the first time a minmax regret model is considered in a resource-constrained assembly line balancing problem. The traditional Whale Optimization Algorithm is modified to overcome the inferior capability and applied in discrete and constrained assembly line balancing problems.