How global value chain participation affects China's energy intensity.

China is currently the world's largest energy consumer and, at the same time, a huge trading power. With the increasing complexity of production processes along global value chains (GVCs), it is of great significance to study the impact of GVC participation on energy intensity. By using production length to measure GVC participation, this study first calculates China's manufacturing industry's total average production length of GVC activities and its three segments: length of pure domestic production, length of traditional trade production, and production length of GVC activities. Next, this study explains the influence mechanisms of GVC participation on energy intensity, proposes three research hypotheses, and conducts econometric analyses to examine the influence of production length and its three segments on energy intensity for a sample of China's manufacturing sector from 2000 to 2014. The results indicate that the total average production length of GVC activities significantly affects energy intensity and presents an inverted U-shaped, non-linear relationship wherein China has passed the critical point. The interactions between the three segments of production length and energy intensity also present an inverted U-shaped, non-linear relationship, where the impacts of the pure domestic segment and the "traditional" trade related segment on energy intensity have passed the critical point, while that of the segment related to GVC production has not yet crossed the critical point. It is suggested that further promoting China's manufacturing industry towards the mid-to-high end of the GVCs and breaking through its captive and "squeezed" position in the GVCs could significantly contribute toward curtailing energy intensity.

Characteristic, composition, and sources of TSP investigated by HRTEM/EDS and ESEM/EDS.

Total suspended particle (TSP) collected at the fifth floor of House Dust in Hunan University, China, was analyzed in terms of microscopic morphology and chemical composition. The fine particles (50 nm-2 µm) in the TSP were analyzed by a high-resolution transmission electron microscope equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray analyzer (HRTEM/EDS). Results showed that the particles were in shapes of plate, irregular and agglomerate. Based on EDS results, these fine particulate matter was primarily composed of Fe-rich (35.82-61.29%), Ca-rich (30.18-36.77%) and Si-rich (18.95-32.28%) particles. Other elements mainly including Mg (0.47-4.97%), Al (0.45-14.57%), S (0.45-4.73%), K (1.13-2.13%) and Zn (0.67-3.85%) were also observed. The sources analysis indicated that the HRTEM particles mainly originated from coal combustion, traffic emission, vehicles exhaust emission and fugitive soil or cement particulate matter. The coarse particles (4-50 µm) were detected by environmental scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray detector (ESEM/EDS). Based on a simple algorithm, ESEM particles were categorized into five groups: C-bearing (46.15%, 67% and 86.98%), Si + Ca-bearing (21.48 + 11.80%, 16.51 + 10.81% and 16.32 + 10.62%), Si + Al-bearing (20.06 + 12.40%, 20.16 + 11.22% and 15.31 + 11.25%), Si-bearing (34.40%, 26.92% and 27.15%) particles and aggregates, most of which exhibit obvious crystalline structure, and these ESEM particles mainly derived from vehicles exhaust emission, coal combustion, soil, and biomass burning, while the aggregates are indicative of atmospheric reaction progress. HRTEM/EDS and ESEM/EDS are mutual complementary in analyzing the characteristic and determining the sources of TSP.

COVID-19 and Regional Income Inequality in China.

This study investigates the impact of COVID-19 and social distancing policies on regional income inequality. We base our study on a sample of 295 prefecture (and above) cities in 31 provinces in China. A distribution dynamics approach is employed to reveal the trend and movement of disposable income per capita in each city before the COVID-19 pandemic, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the period when the COVID-19 was under the control. The findings reveal significant negative economic consequences of the COVID-19 in the first quarter of 2020 and show that most cities will converge to a level of disposable income which is much less than the Pre-COVID level if the COVID pandemic persists. Regional income inequality has intensified in the cities that have a longer duration of stringent social distancing policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and disappeared in the cities with policies of short duration. Disposable income per capita for urban residents recovered quickly when the transmission of coronavirus was effectively contained; and yet the impact of the pandemic on rural residents remains unresolved, if not intensified. This study demonstrates a significant divergence of the trend of disposable income across cities with different durations of social distancing policies and between urban and rural residents. It also highlights the importance of stringent social distancing policies in containing the spread of virus in a short time and calls for special policy attention for rural regions in the recovery from the COVID-19.