How do past global experiences of coal phase-out inform China's domestic approach to a just transition?

China produces nearly half of the world's coal and more than half of the global coal-fired electricity. Its CO2 emissions are higher than the combined volumes of the next three world regions-the US, Europe, and India. China has announced a net-zero commitment by 2060. This timeline creates enormous pressure to maintain energy security while phasing down coal use. Despite the localized nature of China's coal production with nearly 80% of its thermal coal industry concentrated in four provinces, the dependencies are complex and extensive. Large-scale changes to energy systems will result in a range of social, cultural, and economic disruptions across China's urban, rural, and remote regions. This paper examines experiences with coal transitions in other jurisdictions and considers implications for China. We examine the drivers, successes, and failures of coal phase-down in Germany, Poland, Australia, the UK, and the US. Despite significant differences in scale and complexity, these experiences offer important insights for China as it works to meet its climate commitments.

From Cultural Tourism to Social Entrepreneurship: Role of Social Value Creation for Environmental Sustainability.

Cross-cultural exchanges among the locals and the tourists have been beneficial in terms of social value creation and sustainability. The present study has examined the role of cultural tourism and social entrepreneurship on social value creation and environmental sustainability. The study has drawn a sample through a non-probabilistic convenience sampling method for desired data collection, as investigators approached tourists visiting the tourism destinations. The study reports data received with the help of tourists visiting cultural heritage in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan. The study has employed the PLS_SEM approach for analysis purposes to draw the results. The findings showed a significant relationship between cultural tourism, environmental sustainability, and social value creation that significantly predicts environmental sustainability. The results revealed a significant positive association between social entrepreneurship, social value creation, and environmental sustainability. Besides, results showed that social value creation mediates the relationship between cultural tourism and environmental sustainability and social entrepreneurship and environmental sustainability. The study's findings climax the importance of cross-cultural interactions that enriches the cultural understanding and gives new perspectives to the existing cultural traditions. Pursuing environmental sustainability through social value creation requires an excellent combination of the administrative and political collaborative strategy that integrates cultural tourism and social entrepreneurship in tourist destination development and aims to attain improved tourist attractions. Besides, this research identifies a significant effect of cultural tourism on environmental sustainability. However, the relationship between tourism and environmental sustainability is bidirectional. It might provide direction for further study. The findings deliver valuable insight into global cultural tourism and social entrepreneurship activities that provide tourism destinations for community development. This investigation produces a systematic and holistic research framework to help explore the influence of cultural tourism and social value creation on the environmental sustainability at tourism destinations. The generalizability of the findings supplies helpful directions for future research on environmental sustainability related to social entrepreneurship and cultural tourism that leads to social value creation.

Corporate Business Strategy and Tax Avoidance Culture: Moderating Role of Gender Diversity in an Emerging Economy.

Tax payments stimulate business enterprises to choose tax management through tax avoidance activities, which is the legal practice to reduce the amount of tax payable. In developing economies, taxation is considered more critical for budget and revenues of a country. This paper investigates whether various business strategies influence corporate tax avoidance decisions of firms by adopting business strategies. Besides, it explores how gender diversity can ease this relationship. This study has chosen a sample of organizations from non-financial sector in Pakistan. The time frame is 5 years, including once a year. The present model employed a generalized moment method (GMM) and tested the proposed hypothesis to draw the results. The study has taken the size, leverage, and business profitability as control variables of firms. The study outcomes by using the GMM method demonstrate that the presence of female directors reduces tax avoidance behavior in prospector companies. This study provides insight into future research for stakeholders, government officials, tax authorities, and policymakers. The findings offer valuable recommendations and practical insights and implications. The findings provide future directions for research to test different frameworks to attain beneficial results to promote the responsibility of tax payment culture.

China's COVID-19 Control Strategy and Its Impact on the Global Pandemic.

Public health crises are challenging for governments and health systems, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has presented huge challenges to humans worldwide. In the context of COVID-19 in China, we explore China's control strategies and challenges. Our analysis examines seven strategies: digital technology pandemic prevention, zero-case policy, all-staff nucleic acid testing, all-staff vaccinations, the long-term quarantine system, and the official accountability system. Additionally, it considers three challenges: repeated pandemic waves, increased downward pressure on the economy and social exhaustion. We identify the causes of these challenges, including social and natural factors, and the controls put in place. We contend that China's control strategies slowed the spread of the global pandemic and that Chinese vaccines have promoted global vaccine equity.

Women's Entrepreneurial Contribution to Family Income: Innovative Technologies Promote Females' Entrepreneurship Amid COVID-19 Crisis.

Women entrepreneurs innovate, initiate, engage, and run business enterprises to contribute the domestic development. Women entrepreneurs think and start taking risks of operating enterprises and combine various factors involved in production to deal with the uncertain business environment. Entrepreneurship and technological innovation play a crucial role in developing the economy by creating job opportunities, improving skills, and executing new ideas. It has a significant impact on the income of the household. The study focused on investigating the role of women's entrepreneurship and innovation technologies in contributing to household income in the challenging situation of the pandemic COVID-19. The paper emphasized identifying the determinants of female entrepreneurial contribution toward household income. This study collected data from selected rural and urban areas of district Faisalabad through a self-administered questionnaire. Investigators interviewed female entrepreneurs and chose them through the snowball sampling technique from a population of purposively selected female-run businesses. Interviews were conducted with women entrepreneurs to gather relevant information for the survey investigation at their workplaces and home. The effects of various factors, including age, education, family size, income from other sources, time allocated to entrepreneurial activity, firm size, and location (rural/urban) were estimated empirically using an ordered logit model. The study findings exhibited a positive and significant role of respondents' education, family size, time allocated to entrepreneurial activities, and firm size. The survey outcomes also indicated that the contribution of entrepreneurial income to household income in the rural areas is significantly higher than that in urban areas. This study signifies that regulations against gender discrimination in public and private institutions are helpful. Besides, encouraging an environment for entrepreneurial culture among women in the country would increase family income. The study's findings and policy implications directly link to Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 5 of Gender Equality (GE) and SDG 8 related to decent work and economic growth.

China's COVID-19 Vaccination Strategy and Its Impact on the Global Pandemic.

Public health crises are challenging for governments and health systems. Vaccines are a key solution to viruses, and immunization has always played a critical role during public health crises in the past century. In the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), we explore China's vaccination strategies and challenges. Accordingly, we identify the causes of the high vaccination rate in China, including technical and nontechnical factors. Considering the impact of China's high vaccination rate on the global pandemic, we argue that it has strengthened China's opportunities and capabilities to participate in global development, enhanced the equity of vaccines and given the world community more choices.

Have Elderly Individuals in Urban China Been Satisfied with Nursing Services during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Based on the customer satisfaction index model, we constructed an elderly care service satisfaction model that includes 5 latent variables and 16 observed variables. To analyze the degree of satisfaction of elderly individuals in nursing homes, we used structural equation model (SEM) to test the nursing service elderly satisfaction model. With the help of AMOS 22.0 software, we analyzed the degree of model fit and the behavioral relationships between the variables that affect the path. We found that the satisfaction of Chinese urban elderly individuals in nursing homes is at a moderate level, which is lower than the quality expected by elderly individuals. The customer satisfaction index model can be applied to assess satisfaction with nursing services. Furthermore, perceived quality and value have a significant impact on satisfaction.

COVID-19 in Rural China: Features, Challenges and Implications for the Healthcare System.

A public health crisis is a "touchstone" for testing the ability and capacity of rural and urban health systems. In the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China, we track the features, challenges, and implications of the temporary disruption of the health system in rural China and its response to this major public health crisis. We examine the general content and logic of village pandemic prevention and control regarding COVID-19 through a case study. Accordingly, we identify the challenges to the rural health system, including logic failure and its causes. It is strongly suggested that the government strengthen rural health system reform, balance medical services between rural and urban areas, and strengthen public health awareness and education.

Cognitive Differences and Influencing Factors of Chinese People's Old-Age Care Responsibility against the Ageing Background.

With the rapid increase in the ageing population (60+) in China since 1999, the problem of supporting the aged is facing increasingly severe challenges. Based on the 2072 valid samples from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) of 2017, a non-sequential multinomial logistic regression model was established to analyse the changing trends and micro-influencing factors of Chinese people's cognition of old-age care responsibility (COACR). The result shows that offspring responsibility still is a common COACR, but this concept has been gradually weakened and been replaced by the responsibility of the government and the aged. Individual characteristics and relationships with relatives in the models all significantly affect people's COACR. It is obviously unrealistic for China to completely rely on government and society to provide for the aged. The traditional ethical role of inter-generational responsibility in providing for the aged should be brought into play. Reshaping the inter-generational responsibility ethics of old-age care requires the joint efforts of government, society, families, individuals and other responsible subjects to construct a diversified old-age care service system.

COVID-19 in China: Responses, Challenges and Implications for the Health System.

A public health crisis is a "touchstone" for testing the ability and capacity of a national health system. In the current era, public health crises are presenting new systematic and cross-border characteristics and uncertainty. The essence of a system for public health crisis governance is the rules administering the stimulus-response chain. The health system generally emphasizes joint participation and communication between different subjects, which may lead to overlap and redundancy as well as a lack of auxiliary support for major public health crisis events. In the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China, we track the responses, challenges, and implications of the temporary disruption of the health system and its response to this major public health crisis. We examine local governance capacity, performance in pandemic control, and the coordinated responses to COVID-19. Accordingly, we identify the challenges to the health system, including the imbalance in attention given to medical care versus health care, insufficient grassroots public health efforts and control capacity, and untimely information disclosure. It is strongly suggested that the government improve its cognitive ability and focus more attention on building and strengthening the emergency health system.

Factors Influencing Rumour Re-Spreading in a Public Health Crisis by the Middle-Aged and Elderly Populations.

Due to discrimination and media literacy, middle-aged and elderly individuals have been easily reduced to marginalized groups in the identification of rumours during a public health crisis and can easily spread rumours repeatedly, which has a negative impact on pandemic prevention and social psychology. To further clarify the factors influencing their behaviours, this study used a questionnaire to survey a sample of 556 individuals in China and used multiple linear regression and analysis of variance to explore influencing factors during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We found that, first, in the COVID-19 pandemic, middle-aged and elderly adults' willingness to re-spread rumours is positively related to their degree of believing rumours and to personal anxiety and is negatively related to their rumour-discrimination ability and to their perception of serious consequences to rumour spreading. Second, the degree of believing rumours plays an intermediary role in the willingness to re-spread rumours. It plays a partial mediating role in the path of anxiety's influence on behaviour, suggesting that an anxious person will spread a rumour even if he or she does not have a strong belief in the rumour. Third, interpersonal communication has a greater credibility and a greater willingness to re-spread than does mass communication. This suggests the importance of increasing public knowledge expertise and of reducing public panic. This also has important implications for the future design of public health policies.

COVID-19 in China: Power, Transparency and Governance in Public Health Crisis.

Public health crises are the "touchstone" to test the ability of national public health crisis governance. The public health crisis in the new era presents new characteristics: systematic, cross-border and uncertainty. The governance dilemma of a public health crisis generally emphasizes the joint participation and communication of different subjects, which is suspected of overlapping and redundancy, and lacks the auxiliary support of major public health crisis events. It dispels the significance of government-level cooperation. The essence of the public health crisis governance system is the chain law of stimulus-response. In combination with COVID-19 development in China, we track down the main reasons for the temporary disruption and the government's response to this major public health crisis. We mainly examine the tension between the centralization of power in China's governance structure and the effectiveness of local governance, and the control of local governments in information disclosure. The response to a public health crisis and the optimization of a decision-making mechanism should build tension between the centralization of power and effectiveness of local governance. It is suggested that government should disclose and share information to the public timely and pay more attention to the core value of order in crisis management.

Influencing Factors of Understanding COVID-19 Risks and Coping Behaviors among the Elderly Population.

It is known that the elderly population has weak immune functioning and is a susceptible and high-risk group with respect to the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic. In this study, to understand the influencing factors of COVID-19-related risks and coping behaviors of elderly individuals with respect to COVID-19 and to provide a basis for taking corresponding protective measures, a questionnaire survey was applied to an elderly population. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and linear regression analysis were used to explore the influencing factors of the level of understanding of COVID-19 risks among the elderly population. Additionally, the chi-square test and logistic regression analysis were used to explore the influencing factors of the elderly population's protective behaviors against COVID-19. This study found: (1) The sex, age, and self-care ability of elderly individuals were significantly correlated with their level of understanding of COVID-19, and that those who were female, were of a younger age, or had better self-care ability had higher levels of understanding; (2) The sex, place of residence, and level of understanding of COVID-19 among the elderly individuals were significantly correlated with their protective behaviors, e.g., those who were women, had high levels of understanding, and lived in cities were more likely to have good behaviors; (3) Elderly individuals' assessments of COVID-19 information provided by the government were significantly correlated with their protective behaviors-those who had a positive evaluation of relevant information provided by the government were more likely to develop protective behavior. The conclusions of this study show that it is crucial to implement COVID-19 prevention and control measures in the elderly population. Society, communities, and families need to increase their concerns about the health and risk awareness of the elderly individuals.

Rethinking vulnerability and human behaviour in arid and semi-arid regions in northwestern China.

The relationship between human behaviour and vulnerability is interactive, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. This paper analyses vulnerability and human behaviour in the core areas of Qilian Mountains National Park, which is located in Qilian and Sunan counties. We used the vulnerability index and grey correlation degree methods to analyse the data. The results show that from 2005 to 2017, the vulnerability degree in the Qilian Mountain area decreased gradually (Qilian County vulnerability decreased from 0.0357 to - 0.2237, and Sunan County vulnerability decreased from 0.1428 to - 0.4489). In 2017, the degree had reached its lowest value due to central and local government policy (- 0.2237 and - 0.4489). Considering that human behaviour contributed to the vulnerability degree, we find that land use and agricultural development mode, the acceleration of industrialisation and changes in the spatial patterns of human activities, and the development of urbanization and changes in resident identities are the main concepts driving the relationship between human behaviour and vulnerability. The innovative assessment indicators developed in this study can be applied to thoroughly explore the relationship between human behaviour and vulnerability and to find the influencing factors. Under certain conditions, this approach can be applied to vulnerability research in specific countries and regions.

Hexanuclear 3d-4f complexes as efficient catalysts for converting CO2 into cyclic carbonates.

A series of novel hexanuclear 3d-4f complexes formulated as {[Ln2Zn4(µ3-OH)2L4(AcO)2(NO3)2(DMF)2]·2(CH3OH), LnIII = Dy3+ (1), Nd3+ (2), Tb3+ (3)} have been synthesized and characterized. These complexes 1-3 show excellent catalytic performance for the cycloaddition of CO2 and epoxides to obtain cyclic carbonates. The catalytic system has a wide substrate scope with high turnover numbers (9700) and high turnover frequencies (808 h-1) under mild conditions. Additionally, the catalysts could be conveniently prepared on a large scale and recycled.

Anion-induced 3d-4f luminescent coordination clusters: structural characteristics and chemical fixation of CO2 under mild conditions.

Two series of anion-induced 3d-4f luminescent clusters ZnII2LnIII2L4 (LnIII = Eu3+, Tb3+, Er3+, Yb3+, Nd3+) and ZnII4LnIII2L4 (LnIII = Tb3+, Nd3+) based on µ3-OH group were synthesized and characterized. The difference in anions not only leads to significant structural changes, but also changes the luminescent properties of the 3d-4f coordination clusters. These complexes show excellent catalytic performance for CO2 conversion to obtain cyclic carbonates with wide substrate scopes and high selectivity under mild conditions. Turnover numbers were up to 9000, and turnover frequencies obtained were 660 h-1. The ligand is simple and the complexes are easily obtained even on a large scale. Moreover, these complexes also feature lanthanide-characterized luminescence both in visible and near infrared regions with relatively long luminescence lifetimes and high quantum yields, suggesting promising multifunctional applications.

Ambient chemical fixation of CO2 using a highly efficient heterometallic helicate catalyst system.

Two novel heptanuclear 3d-4f helicates have been synthesized and characterized. The helicates act as catalysts and show high catalytic activity for the coupling of CO2 and epoxides to obtain cyclic carbonates with a wide substrate scope at ambient temperature and pressure.

Environmental and social risk evaluation of overseas investment under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Along with the further implementation of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative and the promotion of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the construction of the CPEC will likely face challenges owing to differences between China and Pakistan in politics, economics, culture, religion, language, customs, environmental management systems, environmental protection laws, social management systems, and social management regulations. To address potential environmental and social risks associated with Chinese enterprises as they invest in the CPEC region, this paper examines previous studies addressing topics such as the environmental and social safeguards of international institutions and Pakistan's domestic environmental and social management requirements. We then systematically identify the environmental and social risk factors involved in CPEC construction, which cover risks regarding water, air, soil, noise, biodiversity, politics, economics, culture, technology, and individuals. By establishing and calculating these risks and using a multi-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model, we found that noise and individual risks belong to a medium risk category, while others belong to a higher risk category. In view of these risks, the Chinese government must create a friendly and peaceful environment for Chinese enterprises to invest in the CPEC region, and Chinese enterprises must adopt a development strategy of strength and capacity building and establish enterprises capable of addressing environmental and social issues during the investment process. All stakeholders must understand that if no determined and diligent steps are taken, CPEC construction might be doomed for failure from the start.

Synthesis and in vitro antiproliferative evaluation of novel nonsymmetrical disulfides bearing 1,3,4-oxadiazole moiety.

A series of novel nonsymmetrical disulfides bearing 1,3,4-oxadiazole moiety were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their in vitro antiproliferative activities against SMMC-7721, Hela and A549 human cancer cell lines by CCK-8 assay. The preliminary bioassay results demonstrated that all tested compounds 7a-7o exhibited antiproliferation with different degrees, and some compounds showed better effects than positive control 5-fluorouracil against various cancer cell lines. Among these compounds, compound 7j showed significant antiproliferative activity against SMMC-7721 cells with IC50 value of 3.40µM. Compound 7a displayed highly effective biological activity against Hela cells with IC50 value of 4.26µM. Compound 7g exhibited the best inhibitory effect against A549 cells with IC50 value of 6.26µM.

Synthesis and antiproliferative evaluation of novel 1,2,4-triazole derivatives incorporating benzisoselenazolone scaffold.

A series of novel 1,2,4-triazole derivatives incorporating benzisoselenazolone scaffold were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their in vitro antiproliferative activities against human cancer cell lines SMMC-7721, Hela, A549, and normal cell lines L929 by CCK-8 assay. The preliminary bioassay results demonstrated that most of the tested compounds 3a-3n exhibited antiproliferation with different degrees, and some compounds showed better effects than positive controls ethaselen and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) against various cancer cell lines. Among these compounds, compounds 3b and 3c displayed highly effective biological activities against SMMC-7721cells with IC50 values of 6.02 and 6.01 µM, respectively. Compound 3n showed significant antiproliferative activities against Hela cells with IC50 value of 3.94 µM. Compound 3n exhibited the best inhibitory effect against A549 cells with IC50 value 9.14 µM. Furthermore, most of the tested compounds showed weak cytotoxic effect against the normal cell lines L929. The pharmacological results suggest that the substituent groups are vital for improving the potency and selectivity of this class of compounds.