Preparation of activated carbons from wood waste including northern hardwood pins-fines and wood dust was conducted and then compared through the following methods: physical pyrolysis and CO2 activation, vacuum pyrolysis and CO2 activation, CO2 gasification, and vacuum CO2 gasification processes. Experimental results show that chars and activated carbons with high surface area and pore volume are produced from wood waste through a vacuum CO2 pyrolysis/gasification process. The effects of operation variables of vacuum pyrolysis/gasification on the properties of chars and activated carbons were investigated to identify and optimize the temperature, heating time, and heating rate. The optimized vacuum CO2 gasification conditions were found to be a temperature of 800 °C, a heating rate of 20 °C/min, and a holding time of 2 h respectively. The prepared wood-chars and activated carbons were characterized by nitrogen physisorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra determined any changes in the surface functional groups produced during different preparation stages.

The US has huge interests in Hong Kong. In 1992, a few years before China resumed its sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, the US adopted the U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992. The keynote of the Act is to enhance the cooperation with and maintain the treatment to Hong Kong. This tune has changed in the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which is obviously the response of the US to widespread protests in Hong Kong arising from the Extradition Bill proposed by the Government of Hong Kong SAR. The new law includes several negative elements. It marks a change in the US policy towards Hong Kong and furthermore represents a change in the US policy towards China. The new law should not merely be understood as the US’s support for democracy and human rights in Hong Kong. Instead, it should be considered as a major leverage which the US may maneuver to engage a rising China.

The study finds placing informational message first generates increased brand attitude for female consumers, while males prefer informational message placed last. High construal level leads to increased brand attitude for both males and females, low construal level consumers do not differ significantly in brand attitude across information order or gender.

New national security (NNS) represents a twenty-first century’s sociological paradigm on which the law is based on and is characterized by multiple actors, wide covering, low predictability, subjective perception, dual nature, and rampant diffusion. The emergence and expansion of the NNS prompts a highly advanced perspective to the rule of law at both the national and international levels, specifically, the relationship between international and domestic law. In this context, traditional approaches, ‘international approach’ or ‘national approach,’ are insufficient, so that a new ‘managerial approach’ is thus needed. The legal practice in relation to national security of China, a rising great power, attracts close attention in the international society. Furthermore, since Chinese conception of national security has its own ‘Chinese characteristics,’ how China will enforce its national security law in the context of international law remains to be seen. The NNS will lead profound sociological transformation upon which all legal orders are based.

This paper examines the determinates of subsidiary product innovation in the Chinese market based on a sample 680 EU subsidiaries over the period of 1998-2009. To date, the literature on EU subsidiaries has failed to consider product innovation in the marketing strategy interplay in approaching new markets overseas. Building on Resource Based view linked with Chinese institutional factors, it empirically examines the inferential product innovation strategy in an EU-China context. By applying the econometric analyses techniques to investigate innovation determinants and to test the presence of agglomeration effect of past innovation activities. The results show EU MNC subsidiaries’ innovation is influenced by both host country institutions and firm capabilities, rendering support to the theory. The analysis indicates EU subsidiaries’ innovation is positively related to firm advertisement, labour training and host market size. R&D expenditure has a negative bearing on innovation. However, openness has a negative and significant effect on product innovation in China. The findings have important implications for theory, practitioners and policy-making. This study contributes to the literature on the evolution of MNCs by exploring determinants of developed foreign subsidiaries’ innovation activities in emerging markets.

The paper investigates the Brain Drain in Chinese family business based on a sample of 319 family businesses in China. Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to uncover different combinations of conditions (pay and welfare, work environment, management style of the leaders, and career planning) that are sufficient to achieve high and low brain drain. The results show that pay and welfare is a necessary but not a sufficient condition by itself to achieve high brain drain. The findings show that three causal recipes are equifinal in achieving high brain drain. The first causal recipe combines high work environment with low level of career planning and with high pay and welfare. The second combines low work environment with high level of career planning and with high pay and welfare. Finally, the third combines high work environment with high level of management style of the leaders and with high pay and welfare. The study also found two causal configurations that are equifinal to achieve low brain drain. Moreover, these combinations are not a mirror of the combinations founded for high brain drain. This study offers several implications to both researchers and business practitioners: It is acquired that in order to prevent brain drain, the pay and welfare of employees should be raised while the management philosophy should pay attention to humans in the first place. Secondly, the leaders need to improve their own quality so as to strengthen the management of family businesses. Finally, a refined human resource system needs to be established. After brain drain, enterprises should perfect their contract constraining mechanism and, bring in suitable talents promptly so that the loss is minimised.

This study addresses the influence of corruption on firm innovation in Chinese market. Using both the logit model and a fuzzy-set analytical approaches based on a new official sample of 2700 privately-owned and 148 state-owned firms over the period of 2011 to 2013, the study add further evidence to growing methodological consideration regarding complexity theory. The results show a significant negative effect of corruption on firm innovation, additional, firm sale and education and market have a positive bearing on innovation activity. However, the government ownership firms have a negative and significant effect on innovation. The findings have important implication for theory, practitioners and policy-making and shed light on a new perspective to focus on the long run effect of corruption.

The paper addresses the phenomenon of the opportunism that arises from a parent (principal) toward an IJV (agent) and its antecedents. This study integrates Agency Theory and Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) to discover its determinants from the perspectives of principal opportunism. Using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) techniques and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) based on a sample of 185 Chinese-foreign IJVs in China, which are useful to reals the overall story of the principal opportunism. This study finds an IJV depends on parents’ support in both knowledge- and property-based resources has more chances to subject to principal opportunism. The result also indicates that psychic distance has a negative impact on principal opportunism. fsQCA, however, provides further solutions that the specific combinations of these predictors or their negation predicts principle opportunism.

The multilateralization of international investment law has witnessed repeated disappointments over the past six decades. Current negotiations regarding the Investment Chapter within the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement may bring about a new promise for this process. It is necessary for the TPP negotiating parties to have a proper understanding of this recent history. Circumstances under which the TPP negotiations are conducted are quite different from those of the past. Thus, it can be assumed that TPP negotiations will be concluded successfully and may have profound implications on the multilateralization of international investment law. Since TPP negotiations have multilateral consequences, several new initiatives have been proposed amongst the TPP negotiating parties, which may help alleviate the ‘legitimacy crisis’ of the past two decades. These initiatives include a new principle of Special and Differential treatment, operative provisions on investment promotion, a Side Agreement on code of conduct of transnational corporations, and an appellate mechanism for reviewing arbitral awards.

The conditionality of human rights is a very provoking issue in international economic relations. It should be applied under the guidelines of legitimacy, legality, credibility, and proportionality. The EU is enthusiastic about human rights conditionality. However, it is hard to say that the EU’s program of human rights conditionality has worked well in practice. Some main multilateral economic institutions, which had been criticized for disregarding human rights concerns, have remained shy to human rights conditionality. As an increasingly emerging economic giant, China will be expected to have some sort of obligation to better respect, better protect and better promote international human rights. China can accept human rights conditionality in a moderate way.