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Abstract
Overseas engineering projects (OEPs) significantly facilitate China's participation in global politics and economy. Based on Pew Global Surveys from 2005 to 2019, this study investigates the relationship between China's OEP and the country's national image. We find that OEPs have a positive impact in this regard, but most significantly in countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. Specifically, China's image gains the most positive impact from transportation and energy projects and, to the greatest extent, from those powered by financial assistance rather than by imported Chinese workers. Such a positive effect is, in addition, most pronounced in low- and middle-income countries with a low level of national governance, while it is negligible in states that are US allies. This study affords a deeper understanding of the spillover effects of overseas economic activities at both the political and social levels.

This article empirically analyses the effect of government subsidies on total factor productivity (TFP) based on the data of listed manufacturing companies in China. The results indicate that government subsidies increase total productivity directly as well as indirectly by increasing R&D investment. The positive effect of government subsidies on TFP is higher in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), higher in central SOEs than local SOEs and higher in enterprises with lower rather than higher TFP. Furthermore, the mediating effects of R&D decisions also differ among different enterprises. Therefore, the government should implement differentiated subsidy policies to promote enterprises' TFP.

Fang-teng Liu,1,* Qi-zhen Xue,2,* Pei-qian Zhu,1 Hong-liang Luo,1 Yi Zhang,1 Tengfei Hao1 1Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, 2Institute of Toxicology, College of Preventive Medicine, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, People's Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this paper Abstract: A number of studies have demonstrated that the expression level of actin filament-associated protein 1 antisense RNA 1 (AFAP1-AS1) was upregulated in various cancers. High expression of AFAP1-AS1 is associated with an increased risk of metastasis and a poor prognosis in cancer patients. The electronic search was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang database. We collected relevant articles to explore the association between the expression levels of AFAP1-AS1 and lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, overall survival, relapse-free survival, and progression-free survival. A total of 1,017 patients from eight studies were finally included. The results showed that cancer patients with high AFAP1-AS1 expression suffered an increased risk of developing lymph node metastasis (odds ratio =3.19, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.11–4.83, P<0.00001) and distant metastasis (odds ratio =3.05, 95% CI: 1.84–5.04, P<0.0001). Moreover, we found that patients with high AFAP1-AS1 expression also had a poorer overall survival (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.98, 95% CI: 1.57–2.38, P=0.000), a worse progression-free survival (HR: 1.73, 95% CI: 1.11–2.35, P=0.000), and a shorter recurrence-free survival (HR: 1.96, 95% CI: 1.02–2.90, P=0.000) than those with low AFAP1-AS1 expression. High expression of AFAP1-AS1 was associated with poor clinical outcome. AFAP1-AS1 might serve as a potential novel biomarker for indicating the clinical outcomes in human cancers. Keywords: lncRNA, AFAP1-AS1, carcinoma, clinical outcome, meta-analysis