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In China, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and more than 3,000 people have lost their lives. It seems that there will be more deaths since the epidemic is not over. All the Chinese provinces have reported the COVID-19 cases. This chapter aims to explore the trend of COVID-19 treatment efficiency in Chinese provinces using the data released daily by China Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Since China Center for Disease Control and Prevention began to release data daily from January 24 to March 12, we have more than 40 groups of daily data for 31 provinces in China mainland. In the calculation, we take the daily data of each province as a sample and then we have more than 1,200 samples in this study.

We use additive two-stage data envelopment analysis as an efficiency evaluation tool to calculate the COVID-19 treatment efficiency. In our framework, the first stage is to understand the infection rate and the second stage is to evaluate the treatment efficiency. In the first stage for the tth day, we use total population (p) and number of people infected in the previous day (inf _t−1) as the inputs and cumulative number of people infected in the current day (inf _t ) as the output. In the second stage for the tth day, we use cumulative number of people infected in the current day (inf _t ) as the input and cumulative death in the current day (death _t ) and cumulative recovery in the current day (recov _t ) as the outputs. Some techniques on how to deal with undesirable outputs such as inf _t and death _t are employed in this study.

After we have the infection rate and treatment efficiency for the samples more than 1,200, we analyze the COVID-19 treatment efficiency and its development trend from January 24 to March 12 in 34 regions of China from static and dynamic aspects. The results show that, on the whole, the overall efficiency and phased efficiency of COVID-19 treatment efficiency in all regions of China are relatively high, which reflects the key factor for the Chinese government to quickly control the epidemic in the short term. Relatively speaking, the average efficiency value in the infection stage (first stage) is lower than the average efficiency value in the healing stage (second stage), which shows that the focus of anti-epidemic in China should be early detection and prevention rather than treatment process. In terms of trend, the total efficiency of COVID-19 treatment in each region shows a trend of “increasing first and then decreasing.” Our analysis indicates that in the initial stage, the continuous increase of various resources leads to the rise of the total efficiency, while in the later stage, the rapid decline of the number of infected people leads to the decrease of the total efficiency. Based on the results of the efficiency analysis, this study provides corresponding management implications and policy suggestions, hoping to provide some enlightenment and suggestions for the anti-epidemic work of other countries in the severe environment where the epidemic is spreading rapidly.

Textbook content and curricula are artifacts that can serve as indicators of social contexts and societal values. In this chapter, we use qualitative and quantitative content analysis to examine the content of Chinese language arts textbooks for basic education during a period of curriculum reform in China at the start of the 21st century. Given the important role of the Chinese language arts in the socialization of students into official societal values, this study seeks to provide insight into the nature of the official world view in China and addresses the societal ambivalence between global vs. national/local and traditional knowledge vs. Western/contemporary knowledge. We find that there is a slight increase in themes that reflect contemporary global concerns such as creativity and social justice. We also find that, in the face of the globalizing cultural influences of the new millennium, there is a sustained emphasis on the role of the Chinese language curriculum in the transmission of traditional Chinese cultural values and on the cultivation in Chinese students of an appreciation of their rich cultural traditions.

With its worldwide fame for making action films, Hong Kong cinema has been defined as masculine. Action films, including the costumed martial arts films and the modern gangster films, have been a major genre in Hong Kong cinema from the 1960s on. Despite the dominant masculinity, women still play significant roles in some of these films. In fact, fighting women leave footprints in the history of Hong Kong cinema, which precede their counterparts in the West and even provide models for Hollywood after 2000.

This chapter focuses on the female characters portrayed by the acclaimed Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, whose works have an ambiguous connection to mainstream genres. He modifies Hong Kong action films and creates unconventional female characters such as the drug dealer in Chungking Express (1994), the killer dispatcher in Fallen Angels (1995), the swordswoman in Ashes of Time (1994), and the kung fu master in The Grandmaster (2013). Wong's films have been mush discussed in academia, but the gender images therein are quite ignored. With high intertextuality, these characters are used to question mainstream action films and redefine women's roles in male's cinematic space. In addition, via the writing of these women, Wong constructs an open and ambivalent post-colonial Hong Kong identity. This paper contextualises the figures of sword-wielding and gun-shooting women and examines how Wong Kar-wai deploys these images to articulate the cultural identity of a post-colonial city.

This chapter conceptualizes computational methods across three related, yet distinct approaches: (1) Social Simulation, (2) Data Science, and (3) Big Data. Group communication research is then situated and reviewed along these three lines of research. Although some areas have considerable visibility (e.g., network analysis, text mining), some areas are less visible in group communication research (e.g., Social Simulation, Big Data designs). The chapter concludes with suggestions for issues regarding reliability, validity, and ethics.

The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological frame of yin-yang balancing can be taken as a unique system of thinking toward a meta-perspective. It is not only deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but also bears salient global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose and contribution of this chapter are twofold: (1) to explain the unique and salient features of yin-yang balancing (the “either/and” system to reframe paradox into duality as partially conflicting and partially complementary, both spatially and temporarily) as compared with the Western logic systems (the “either/or” and “both/or” or “both/and” systems); and (2) to explore the global implications of the “either/and” system for future paradox research, including the three unique themes of overlap between opposites with the “seed” of one opposite inside the other; threshold from the contingent balance between partial separation and partial integration in line with specific contexts through three operating mechanisms, and knot for the special role of third-party to shift paradox from a dyadic level to a triadic and even a multiplex level.

Purpose/approach – This introduction sets forth the main themes of the volume, reviews the methods employed by its contributors, and demonstrates the relationships among the chapters.

Research implications – The introduction demonstrates the ways gender research engages topics of current social, economic, and political importance and the ways in which focus on these topics advances an intersectional approach to gender research.

Practical and social implications – Drawing on each of the chapters, the authors point to the ways in which the global movement of people, media, and ideas foster changes in self-concepts, behavior, and social policy.

Value of the chapter – The essay serves as an overall introduction to the volume.

This study attempts to examine the relationships between leisure involvement, social support, and happiness. Consequently, for data collection, this study utilizes a convenient sampling procedure, involving a questionnaire survey on scuba divers in Kenting, a southern resort town in Taiwan. In this study, 320 samples of useful samples were collected. Structural equation modeling is deployed to test the underlying relationships among the research variables. Concerning the leisure involvement of the scuba diving participants, social support is viewed as an essential antecedent. This study confirms leisure involvement is a mediator between social support and happiness in the case of scuba diving. This study further confirms that the mediation effect of leisure involvement positively affects happiness. Furthermore, social support positively leads to leisure engagement (e.g., scuba diving) and could also directly influence happiness with a positive relationship. Consequently, this study renders managerial implications for the service providers of scuba diving.

This chapter provides a thorough historical overview of policies that have governed and guided scientific research in China since 1949 and illustrates changes in scientific publications that accompanied these policy reforms and programs.

We divide this historical period into four stages, each with distinct R&D policies: (1) 1949–1955, a period of socialist transformation; (2) 1956–1965, a period of struggle for higher education and research development in a rapidly changing political environment; (3) 1966–1976, the lost decade of the Cultural Revolution; and (4) 1976–present, a period when major national policies have significantly promoted scientific research in China. We use the SPHERE project’s comprehensive historical dataset based on Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science and data from a set of research universities in China to analyze changes in scientific publication rates concurrent with these policy reforms and programs.

The analysis suggests a tight connection between national policy and scientific research productivity in higher education. The central government controlled scientific research through direct administration in early periods and has guided research activities through funding specific programs in recent decades. Due to their resource dependency on the central government, higher education institutions have been quite responsive to the common goals set by the central government. As a result, what is measured tends to be accomplished.

The chapter provides an in-depth description about the rise of higher education and science in China and produces recommendations for future development.