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This paper presents an analysis framework of the trade dilemma faced by global hegemony. It argues that maintaining global hegemony and addressing domestic conflicts simultaneously is a challenging task. Since the 1980s, the United States has prioritized the expansion of transnational capital, often at the expense of domestic vulnerable industries and the interests of low-skilled workers. This unbalanced development has led to intensified social contradictions within the United States. To resolve these conflicts, the US has shifted from reciprocal globalization deals to self-interested hybrid deals, aiming to uphold the interests of transnational capital while also addressing the concerns of workers. The negotiation experiences of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) demonstrate this mode of the US trade policy. While this strategy may repair the domestic political foundation, it leads to new challenges for the US, such as discontent and resistance from the international community, or encountering difficulties in promoting cooperation with US trading partners. These challenges will pose a threat to the long-term stability of the international economic order.

AbstractWith the rapid expansion of China's cities since the 1978 economic reform, more and more villages have been swallowed up by urban sprawl. The retention of collective land ownership in chengzhongcun has, on the one hand, made low‐rent housing affordable for migrants; on the other hand, however, it has exposed chengzhongcun to many social, economic and environmental problems. Based on a case study of chengzhongcun in Guangzhou, and using an analytical framework of property rights, this article has found that maintaining collective land ownership in chengzhongcun has been socially and economically costly, but a redevelopment strategy without a complementary affordable housing scheme may be problematic. In order to solve the problems of chengzhongcun, an institutional reform of collective land is required.Résumé Les villes chinoises s'étant rapidement étendues depuis la réforme économique de 1978, un grand nombre de villages a été absorbé par les tentacules urbains. La préservation d'une propriété foncière collective dans les chengzhongcun a permis que les migrants accèdent à un logement à loyer modéré, tout en exposant cet habitat à de multiples problèmes sociaux, économiques et environnementaux. S'appuyant sur l'étude de cas du chengzhongcun de Guangzhou et sur un cadre analytique de droits de propriété, cet article montre que le maintien de la propriété foncière collective dans le chengzhongcun s'est révélé coûteux sur le plan social et économique et que, par ailleurs, une stratégie de réaménagement sans un système de logement complémentaire accessible pourrait être problématique. Résoudre les problèmes du chengzhongcun appelle à une réforme institutionnelle des terrains collectifs.

This thesis is a study of the possible future developments of the Taiwan issue and the relationships between Mainland China and the island of Taiwan. After examining all the alternative scenarios, the author predicts that in the foreseeable future political and economic cooperation between Mainland China and the island of Taiwan will gradually increase, with avoidance of military confrontation, but complete reunification between Taiwan will not occur, nor will Taiwan become a legal state. The author will examine evidence, including both domestic factors in the two parts of China and external factors, which may either reinforce the above prediction or pose other alternatives. The first part of the thesis, therefore, will examine in detail these factors, based on government policy positions and the evolution of events from 1949 to the present. Particular attention will be given to developments associated with the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and further developments in the post-Cold War era. The evidence, up to the present, shows no clear indication that other alternative futures can be ruled out, and other possibilities will be examined in detail. In conducting the research, the author will examine previous works by scholars, journal articles, unclassified documents, and other sources such as the media, including TV, Internet, and key newspaper material, both from Asia and the Western world. Other important sources are knowledge based on 30 years of experience in China including formal education and views of professional colleagues in China as well as at Eastern Illinois University. Although future events may prove otherwise, the author is currently convinced that variables are too unstable and are still unfolding in ways that make it difficult to determine which alternatives will actually come true. What we can say is that any substantial progress in resolving the basic controversies between Beijing and Taipei needs time, and that the final solution perhaps will not be reached until the next generation or the generation following it.

ABSTRACTThis article examines the impact of strategic consumers on the efficiency and coordination of a supply chain. We consider a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a newsvendor retailer selling a seasonal product to strategic consumers, who may choose to wait for clearance sales to maximize their intertemporal utility. Under a prenegotiated supply contract, the retailer chooses retail price and ordering quantity simultaneously. After that, the strategic consumers, who may be heterogeneous in their patience levels, make purchasing decisions. We find that strategic consumer behavior can hurt the supply chain efficiency due to severe double marginalization, and that a simple buyback contract can coordinate the supply chain. Nevertheless, we show that the supply chain does become more difficult to coordinate when strategic consumers are present: the set of buyback contractual terms that coordinate the chain shrinks as consumers are more willing to wait, and the chain profit cannot be arbitrarily allocated between the firms. Contrary to popular intuition, this result implies that the retailer may enjoy some benefit from consumers' strategic waiting. In addition, we find that the retailer's gain is the highest when impatient and patient consumers are comparably mixed in the population.

AbstractPerformance evaluation and safety assessment of a buffering stormwater drainage system (BSDS) for a low‐lying area are discussed in this paper. Unlike a conventional pump drainage system, the BSDS, which drains stormwater runoff of a low‐lying area to a nearby channel system through underground conduits with gravity, and then buffering peak flows with the storage capacity of a channel system, will discharge stormwater to rivers outside the low‐lying area with pumps or flood gates if necessary. This kind of drainage system is considered to be environment friendly and economic both in terms of capital cost and operating & maintenance expenses. To investigate the design parameters and evaluate the performance and safety of BSDS, a hydraulic model coupling the conduit systems and a channel system was developed in this paper, and a case‐study approach based on field investigation and simulation test was used. Moreover, the design requirements for safety of BSDS were drawn through a simulation test.