Machine-learning analysis of leadership formation in China to parse the roles of loyalty and institutional norms.

A thriving cottage industry has long tried to predict the selection outcomes of the Chinese leadership using qualitative judgments based on historical trends and elite interviews. This study contributes to the discourse by adopting machine-learning techniques to quantitatively and systematically evaluate the promotion prospects of Chinese high-ranking officials. By incorporating over 250 individual features of approximately 20,000 high-ranking positions from 1982 to 2020, this paper calculated predicted probabilities of promotion for the 19th Politburo members of the Communist Party of China. The rankings of the promotion probabilities can be used not only to identify candidates who would have traditionally advanced within the party's promotion norms but also to gauge Xi Jinping's personal favoritism toward specific individuals. Based on different specifications for positions and periods, we developed measurements to quantify candidates' levels of perceived loyalty and promotion eligibility. The empirical results demonstrated that the newly formed 20th Politburo Standing Committee was predominantly composed of loyalists who would not have risen to such positions under conventional promotion standards. We further found that, even within his circle of known allies, Xi Jinping did not opt for candidates with strong credentials. The findings of this study underscore the increasing emphasis on loyalty and the diminishing role of institutional norms in China's high-ranking selections.

Vaccine Nationalism: How China's State Media Misinform about Western Vaccines and Highlight the Successes of Chinese Vaccines to Different Audiences.

What motivates state-sponsored vaccine misinformation campaigns, given clear scientific evidence of vaccines' efficacy? The authors explored this issue through the lens of state-owned presses in mainland China and in Hong Kong. They first collected an original database of media reports on both Western and Chinese vaccines from 16 Chinese-language media publications based in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They found the quantity of coverage of Western vaccines by mainland state-owned media outlets to be much less than their coverage of Chinese vaccines, reflecting the unavailability of Western vaccines in mainland China. However, applying a dictionary-based sentiment analysis, the authors found that state-owned presses in mainland China still portrayed Western vaccines negatively. In Hong Kong, where there is direct competition between Chinese and Western vaccines, they found that state-owned presses gave high coverage of both Western and Chinese vaccines but greater negative coverage of Western vaccines. These findings are consistent with a Chinese producer-oriented "vaccine nationalism" policy designed to nurture the domestic biotechnology sector.

Neural mechanisms underlying catastrophic failure in human-machine interaction during aerial navigation.

OBJECTIVE: We investigated the neural correlates of workload buildup in a fine visuomotor task called the boundary avoidance task (BAT). The BAT has been known to induce naturally occurring failures of human-machine coupling in high performance aircraft that can potentially lead to a crash-these failures are termed pilot induced oscillations (PIOs). APPROACH: We recorded EEG and pupillometry data from human subjects engaged in a flight BAT simulated within a virtual 3D environment. MAIN RESULTS: We find that workload buildup in a BAT can be successfully decoded from oscillatory features in the electroencephalogram (EEG). Information in delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma spectral bands of the EEG all contribute to successful decoding, however gamma band activity with a lateralized somatosensory topography has the highest contribution, while theta band activity with a fronto-central topography has the most robust contribution in terms of real-world usability. We show that the output of the spectral decoder can be used to predict PIO susceptibility. We also find that workload buildup in the task induces pupil dilation, the magnitude of which is significantly correlated with the magnitude of the decoded EEG signals. These results suggest that PIOs may result from the dysregulation of cortical networks such as the locus coeruleus (LC)-anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) circuit. SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings may generalize to similar control failures in other cases of tight man-machine coupling where gains and latencies in the control system must be inferred and compensated for by the human operators. A closed-loop intervention using neurophysiological decoding of workload buildup that targets the LC-ACC circuit may positively impact operator performance in such situations.