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The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) under the auspices of the Chinese government was created as a regional integration and development model between China and her trade partners. Arguments have been raised as to whether this initiative will be beneficial to participating countries in the long run. We set to examine how to estimate this trade initiative by comparing the relative estimation powers of the traditional gravity model with the neural network analysis using detailed bilateral trade exports data from 1990 to 2017. The results show that neural networks are better than the gravity model approach in learning and clarifying international trade estimation. The neural networks with fixed country effects showed a more accurate estimation compared to a baseline model with country-year fixed effects, as in the OLS estimator and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood. On the other hand, the analysis indicated that more than 50% of the 6 participating East African countries in the BRI were able to attain their predicted targets. Kenya achieved an 80% (4 of 5) target. Drawing from the lessons of the BRI and the use of neural network model, it will serve as an important reference point by which other international trade interventions could be measured and compared.

Since 1994, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has highlighted the different roles, functions and responsibilities of CCP's Grass-root Party Organisations (GPOs) in different periods and enterprises of different ownership types. To solve the inconsistency between a modern corporation governance structure and the involvement of GPOs in firms, the CCP pays great attention to embedding GPOs in the corporate governance structure of enterprises, which is a cause for concern for domestic and foreign investors.

Debt defaults of listed companies, the collapse of online financing platform and shadow banking problems have raised concerns about China's financial risk since 2017. Meanwhile, financing costs are rising and the financing channels are shrinking. Fundamental problems such as ambiguous roles of the government and the market, financial market segmentation and the indistinct boundaries of responsibilities of different regulatory authorities still remain in China's financial system.

Most scholarship on contentious politics in authoritarian regimes focuses on severe repression and transgressive protest (e.g. revolt), suggesting a zero-sum game played by the state and challengers. However, a burgeoning literature suggests that less brutal forms of authoritarian states have emerged in recent decades and that protesters in these countries tend to limit their challenges, avoiding direct confrontation with the authorities. If so, can the notion of the zero-sum game truly capture the nuances and complexities of contentious politics in authoritarian regimes? Taking the case of China, this article offers a systematic analysis of the pattern of repression and protest in a strong authoritarian state. Drawing on an original data set of 1,418 protest events in China, this article shows that the Chinese state permits some (albeit limited) space for protest and that most protesters confine themselves to this space. These findings thus provide quantitative evidence that popular contention in China is featured by a non-zero-sum game. Overall, this study contributes to a more comprehensive and complex understanding of popular contention in authoritarian settings.

AbstractUsing a sample of firms with consecutive earnings growth for more than 20 quarters (earnings strings), I assess the relationship between earnings persistence and the extent to which investors are able to anticipate breaks of earnings strings. I find that firm‐specific earnings persistence exhibits a concave trend during earnings strings. Stock returns are significantly and positively associated with earnings persistence. Upon breaks of earnings strings, investors' reactions are more negative for firms with higher earnings persistence—especially those with smaller institutional holdings and analyst coverage, and those with insider selling activities—before the break. Additional analyses show that variations in firms' economic performance (fundamentals) explain the varying earnings persistence during earnings strings. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Can citizens in an authoritarian country like China influence policy implementation? Two types of scholarship indicate ways that they can: The first proposes that policy implementation is carried out through a fragmented authoritarian system that requires consultation and cooperation among various government units, and this system is amenable to pressure from outside groups. The second examines institutional channels designed to handle grievances and bridge communication between citizens and the authorities. In this paper, I emphasize a link between these two bodies of scholarship, showing how protest channels are connected to the fragmented authoritarian system and how the imperative to maintain social stability leads higher-level authorities to resolve depart-mental conflicts in favour of protesters. I do this by examining a struggle against the privatization of a hospital in North China, a case that illustrates how protesters successfully employed both the petition system and the opportunities offered by the fragmented authoritarian system to develop powerful alliances, to peacefully pressure top local authorities to intervene and to overcome opposition in the local government, leading to finalizing the municipalization of the hospital. (JCCA/GIGA)