World Cities and International Organizations: Political Global-city Status of Chinese Cities

In this study, the authors use a political perspective to explore the relative global status of cities in China. Two questions are addressed. Firstly, by using international organizations as the subjects and quantitative analysis of the spatial distribution of their offices, the overall position of Chinese cities in the global distribution of international organizations is estimated. The results show that 22 Chinese cities are involved in international political affairs. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou dominate these activities and have high political global-city status. Secondly, through qualitative analysis of Guangzhou City, the authors explore how its status as a center for international organizations has been shaped in recent years. The locational decision-making process is analyzed and the factors are demonstrated at both national and city scales. The definition of international organizations as used in this study refers not only to those supranational bodies that have the ability to manage relations across states(such as the European Union), but also those inter-governmental organizations(IGOs), international non-governmental organizations(INGOs) and diplomatic representatives and delegations that today also manage and regulate relations between and among states.

Changing Connectivities of Chinese Cities in the World City Network,2010–2016

Against the backdrop of the sizable economic growth of China in recent years, this paper uses the most recent data gathering of the Globalization and World Cities(Ga WC) research network to update and supplement earlier research on the shifting global connectivity of Chinese cities. The update consists of an evaluation of the connectivity of Chinese cities in 2016, the supplement of an analysis of the changing position of Chinese cities in the world city network between 2010 and 2016. To this end, we build on a specification of the world city network as an ‘interlocking network' in which producer services firms play the crucial role in city network formation. Information about the presence of leading producer services firms in cities in 2010 and 2016 is used as the input to a bipartite network projection algorithm in order to measure cities' network connectivity. The first set of results discusses the geographies of urban connectivity in the world city network in 2016. The second set of results discusses standardized measures of change to reveal the major dimensions of the transformations between 2010 and 2016. We find that, with the exception of Hong Kong, Macao and Kaohsiung of Taiwan, all Chinese cities record connectivity gains. This wholesale rise in connectivity is nonetheless geographically uneven, with above all Beijing, Chengdu/Chongqing and Changsha/Wuhan becoming more connected. We conclude that the wholesale rise of Chinese cities in the world city network and their changing trajectories in the post-crisis era are embedded in shifting external and internal political economies.

Measurement and Interpretation of Connectivity of Chinese Cities in World City Network,2010

This is an empirical paper that measures and interprets the position of Chinese cities in the world city network in 2010. Building on a specification of the world city network as a′interlocking network′in which business services firms play the crucial role in city network formation, information is gathered about the presence of global service firms in cities. This information is converted into data to provide the′service value′of a city for a firm′s provision of corporate services in a 526(cities)×175(firms) matrix. These data are then used as the input to the interlocking network model in order to measure cities′connectivity and its predominant geographical orientation. Here we focus on the position of some key Chinese cities in this regard, and discuss and interpret results in the context of the urban dimensions of the′opening up′of the Chinese economy.

Global Civilisation Initiative Proposed by Xi Provides Hope to Heal the World in Turbulence

Xi Jinping,General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Chinese President,proposed the Global Civilisation Initiative.Experts said following the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative,China is trying to share its wisdom and plans to bring new hope for all nations to consider together on how to escape the trap of the"Clash of Civilisations"and find a path that can help the world sail through the current turbulence.

Study of living fossil of historic cities--taking historic city Ping Yao in world heritage list as an example

World Heritage belongs to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are living. The world heritage list draws attention to the wealth and diversity of the Earth's cultural and natural heritage. Historic cities in world heritage list agglomerates the elite of the noblest stage in human civilization history, whose outstanding historic, artistic and scientific values make them the living fossils of urban historic study.

The evolution analysis of agricultural global value chains

With the Uruguay Round bringing agricultural trade into multilateral regulation,the major countries have actively participated in agricultural global value chains(AGVC)and occupied an important position according to their comparative advantages.Utilizing bilateral agricultural trade data of 66 countries based on the OECD Inter-Country-Input-Output Tables(OECD ICIO)from 2010 to 2018,this study applies social network analysis indicators to measure each country’s eigenvector centrality within AGVC and to examine the current global agricultural trade patterns,with particular attention to the changes in the status of world powers within AGVC.The main findings are as follows:first,with the multilateral and regional trade liberalization,growing numbers of developing nations,including China and India,are engaging in international agricultural trade,which contributes to its diversification;second,as AGVC develops,the structure of global agricultural trade networks has become more decentralized and balanced.This is evidenced by the emergence of additional central nodes,and large nations like the United States,which formerly held the most central position as indicated by a drop in its centrality,are becoming less dominant.

World Cities and Globalization

在本论文中,笔者将探讨对“世界城市”的研究如何有助于将城市研究扎根于全球化的辩论之中。关于世界城市的文献广泛讨论一系列问题,采用了不同的本体论、认识论和方法论。这些文献共同加深和扩展了我们对以下问题的理解:第一,某些特别的城市如何在全球化经济/社会组织中作为一个关键平台。第二,这如何影响这些城市内部的社会空间变化。然而,由于这些文件缺乏一个中心范式,即便是被广泛引用的文献也被认为是日益多样化的研究全球城市文献中的具体部分。本文回顾了世界城市的核心概念以及这些概念如何变得越来越广泛和富有争议;世界城市形成的时空和组织维度;讨论了基于生产者服务公司办公网络地理的世界城市图谱;并描绘了未来的主要研究议程。

Application of random walk model to fit temperature in 46 gamma world cities from 1901 to 1998

Very recently, we have applied the random walk model to fit the global temperature anomaly, CRUTEM3. With encouraging results, we apply the random walk model to fit the temperature walk that is the conversion of recorded tem-perature and real recorded temperature in 46 gamma world cities from 1901 to 1998 in this study. The results show that the random walk model can fit both temperature walk and real recorded temperature although the fitted results from other climate models are unavailable for comparison in these 46 cities. Therefore, the random walk model can fit not only the global temperature anomaly, but also the real recorded temperatures in various cities around the world.

Wastewater Management in Third World Cities: Case Study of Cotonou, Benin

Poor wastewater management coupled with lack of sanitation facilities has aggravated the sanitation challenges in developing countries.?This study was aimed at providing information on the current state of sanitation in Cotonou City through surveys. The most common sanitation facilities in the city were septic tanks, latrines and soakaway pits. Mechanical desulging was mainly used (94%) for desludging latrines and septic tanks with a frequency of less than once a year for 73% of the houses;manual desludging was most common for soakaway pits. 84% of sullage generated is disposed without treatment. The only existing stabilization pond plant, managed by a private company SIBEAU, is overloaded;the effluent is poor (up to 2250mg/l BOD5) and does not meet any quality standards. 96% of survey respondents recognise that the sanitation situation in the city is not good;it has to be improved by providing an appropriate and sustainable sanitation management system.

World cities in terms of the sustainable development concept

The article considers the issue of the world cities in terms of sustainable development.The population has been increasing in such intensive rates never reached during the middle of the 20th century.The expansion of the cities indicates,on the one hand,the growth of the world’s general socio-economic development,on the other hand,it raises a number of economic,social and environmental problems.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current state and prospects of the world cities in terms of the sustainable development concept,to identify opportunities,threats,strengths and weaknesses of the world cities,to determine the role of cities in the con-temporary global world and consider further research of the world’s cities.The authors analyzed the world cities rankings and noted that highly developed cities have more chances to quickly implement the sustainable devel-opment concept compared to medium-sized cities due to larger financial resources.The authors built a SWOT analysis of the world cities transformation in terms of the sustainable development concept,identified strengths,weaknesses,opportunities and threats.According to the results of the SWOT analysis,the authors established that sustainable development of cities requires significant investments,particularly in the social sphere develop-ment,purification,and preservation of urban nature from the anthropogenic impacts.The research result is the systematization of the sustainable development criteria used in compiling the world cities rankings,determining the possibilities of the contemporary cities transition to the sustainable development concept.

Command and Control Cities in Global Space-economy Before and after 2008 Geo-economic Transition

The global economic downturn caused primarily by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2007 engendered revenue loss of the multinational corporations.Existing studies have yet to depict the detrimental impacts on city's command and control functions induced by the sub-prime mortgage crisis together with its residual wave of global economic recession on the global spatial economy.Recent and previous studies have produced an 'instant history' of the global spatial economy before the global economic downturn undermines the global economy in late 2008.However,the waxes and wanes of major cities' command and control functions on the global economic arena before and after the outbreak of financial crisis and its associated geo-economic transitions are still poorly understood.This paper attempts to contribute a new set of customized data to update and fill in the gap in the literature with the investigation of the command and control functions of cities around the world from 2005 to 2009.Particular attentions are paid to the time-space relationship of the geo-economic transition that can capture the recent historical images of the command and control situation of different cities in the world.

Sing Your City: Local Stories of Global Artifacts

The article discusses five local stories that, without being connected to each other, tell about the socio-cultural circumstances accompanying creation of works of art that have received significant (but not the highest) recognition on a global scale. The discussion concerns three songs about cities: Torna a Surriento, Moscow Nights, and Li Beirut;a famous Soviet painting Low Marks Again;and the design features of Audi cars for the US market over the past decade. The approach to each certain artifact, be it song, painting, or the design of rear turn signals, is developed on the basis of disciplinary affiliation, whereas a discipline is more sociology, anthropology, or history of an appropriate art, than its theory. Another research method places a local context into the test tube of globalization. Experience shows that these two methods are applicable to different arts, places, and periods enriching the scientist with more detailed information about the era studied.

Metropolis or City?Metropoles and Cities with Their Citizens

Through the specific examples of two very different metropoles,not compared but evoked,New York City and Bordeaux Métropole,since globalization from mid-19th and to the beginning of the 21st century,we can observe how metropolitan flows acceleration change cities and citizens heritages.How can we achieve metropolization and globalization of our cities?

Globalization of Tourism and Third World Tourism Development——A Political Economy Perspective

Globalization, which is characterized by the escalating mobility of capital, people, ideas and information on a universal scale, has become a sweeping theme in the contemporary world. Tourism and its associated economic activities are evidently not immune to such a wider context of the world economy. In the past one or two decades, a stable increase has been witnessed in international tourist flows, inter-regional and inter-organizational alliances, and foreign direct investment. These trends are especially prevalent in the developing world, largely because of their pristine nature, di- verse culture, inexpensive goods and services, cheap labours, and other resources. However, it has been cautioned by some scholars, especially those from the Third World countries, that tourism is an industry run by and for the rich, more powerful nations and their corresponding multinational corporations. This article, from the perspective of political economy, supplemented with views from development studies, made a normative analysis on the impacts of the glob- alization of tourism on the Third World destination countries. Specifically, these impacts have been detailed in terms of economic, sociocultural, and ecological domains. It was demonstrated that without appropriate planning and manage- ment, the costs of Third World tourism development may accrue to the extent that its benefits are burned out. To avoid this happening, some suggestions have been made.

Global optimization by small-world optimization algorithm based on social relationship network

A fast global convergence algorithm, small-world optimization (SWO), was designed to solve the global optimization problems, which was inspired from small-world theory and six degrees of separation principle in sociology. Firstly, the solution space was organized into a small-world network model based on social relationship network. Secondly, a simple search strategy was adopted to navigate into this network in order to realize the optimization. In SWO, the two operators for searching the short-range contacts and long-range contacts in small-world network were corresponding to the exploitation and exploration, which have been revealed as the common features in many intelligent algorithms. The proposed algorithm was validated via popular benchmark functions and engineering problems. And also the impacts of parameters were studied. The simulation results indicate that because of the small-world theory, it is suitable for heuristic methods to search targets efficiently in this constructed small-world network model. It is not easy for each test mail to fall into a local trap by shifting into two mapping spaces in order to accelerate the convergence speed. Compared with some classical algorithms, SWO is inherited with optimal features and outstanding in convergence speed. Thus, the algorithm can be considered as a good alternative to solve global optimization problems.

Path of Building a Global City in Shanghai Based on the “Space of Flows” Theory

The "Shanghai Master Plan(2017—2035)" clearly states that building a global city with excellence has become the direction of its efforts in recent decades which requires Shanghai to become an important "global node" in the global city network structure like New York and London. Based on the "space of flow" theory, this paper uses the interlocking network model of Globalization and World Cities(GaWC) to calculate connective index of 48 cities whose level is "alpha" and above in GaWC's researches. There are still many gaps between Shanghai and other top global cities such as New York, London and Tokyo. Through the calculation of Theil Entropy, the importance ranking of the factors affecting Shanghai's status in the global city network is obtained. The results show that the proportion of foreign population, the number of sister cities, the number of headquarters of multinational corporations and the proportion of GDP in the whole country significantly affect Shanghai's status in the global city network.

Commissioning of First in the World DMTO-II Demonstration Unit in Pucheng City

On December 21, 2014 the first in the world coal-basedsecond-generation methanol-to-olefin （DMTO-II） commercialdemonstration unit was successfully started up atthe Clean Energy Chemical Company Limited in Puchengcity, Shaanxi province, which has symbolized the majorachievements of this phase associated with the disseminationand application of the new generation technology formanufacture of olefins from methanol, the independentintellectual property rights of which are in the hands ofthis Chinese enterprise.

Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City Being Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List

Ruins of Liangzhu City,once the center of power and belief of Liangzhu Culture,reveals an early regional state once existed in「aihu Lake area in the downstream region ol Yangtze River in I ate Neolithic China,based on rice cultivation,with obvious social dififerentiati on and unified belief system.

World Journal of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Announcement of Compiling the Special Issue of Acupuncture in the Whole World——Global Events Record of Acu-Moxi

Commemorate the 20th Anniversary of the Foundation of World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies (WFAS)ABSTRACT During the past 30 years, acupuncture has developed a lot in the whole world. The international group of acupuncture has been enlarged and a new page was created in the cause of human health and medicine. At the eve of "The 20th Anniversary of the Foundation of WFAS—International Acupuncture Congress", in order to show the achievements in the circle of acupuncture and set up a new image of global acupuncture circle, expand the influence of acupuncture, promote international cooperation, World Journal of Acupuncture-Moxibustion will print a Special Issue in large scale, Acupuncture in the Whole World—Global Events Record of Acu-Moxi and calling for articles starts from now on.

World Economic Globalization: Positive Role

By the globalization it means a type of movement process of the world e-conomy at large. It primarily means that the allocation of productive re-sources has transcended the scope of a nation and that 1he optimal of pro-duction factors is realized on a regional and even a global scale. This re-quires all countries to become more open and their economies to becomeincreasingly marketized, thus increasing the degree of mutual