For the main countries of the Asia-Pacific region, the United States, China and Russia, a situation of "new normality" is emerging. Moreover, for each of the countries, this "new normality" has its own meaning. For the United States, this is an aggravation of the military confrontation with China in the Taiwan Strait. For China, this is an increase in the degree of rivalry with the United States and a slowdown in the pace of economic development with a very high probability of their decline in the future. For Russia, this is an almost complete curtailment of relations with the United States against the background of a special military operation and imposed sanctions. These nuances, in addition to the results of the 20th CPC Congress, will determine the main trends in Sino-American and Sino-Russian relations. It seems that China's attitude towards Russia will not change against the background of the Ukrainian crisis. Beijing will maintain a position of "benevolent neutrality" towards Moscow. At the same time, the balance between "goodwill" and "neutrality" may vary depending on the scope of Sino-Russian cooperation. For example, in the economic sphere, Chinese companies will be afraid to cooperate with Russian partners for fear of secondary sanctions. However, in general, Russia will retain its importance for China as the strongest anti-American pole. In relations with the United States, China will continue to firmly defend its interests, while at the same time not excluding the normalization of relations with Washington in certain areas of cooperation: strategic stability, non-traditional threats, ecology, etc. In general, the decisions of the 20th CPC Congress do not allow us to say either in favor or against the idea of China's readiness to resume dialogue with the United States in the post-congress period. Sino-American relations, as noted above, have their own logic and will probably continue to develop within its framework. However, so are Sino-Russian relations. Within the framework of these logics, Beijing seems to continue to balance between the two vectors of its foreign policy. On the one hand, this is the development of bilateral cooperation with Russia in order to strengthen its own negotiating positions in the confrontation with the United States: military cooperation with an emphasis on joint exercises, political cooperation based on anti-Americanism, economic cooperation with an eye to the risks of secondary sanctions. On the other hand, it is unacceptable for China to recognize the collapse of Ukraine, the inadmissibility of a direct military clash with the United States and the extreme undesirability of further aggravation of relations with the United States on the factor of Chinese friendship with Russia.
Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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v.17
no.3
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pp.103-117
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2022
The recent corporate economy, such as the COVID 19 pandemic that has spread all over the world since the beginning of 2020, the acceleration of the 4th industrial revolution, and supply chain management risks triggered by the US-China conflict and the Ukraine crisis, is more serious than ever before. CEOs who have started and managed small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are more concerned than ever about the sustainability of their businesses in this reality. Nevertheless, there were few empirical studies on the factors that influence the intention of SME CEOs to discontinue business. In this study, the perception of the business environment of SMEs (intensity of competition in key business areas, difficulty in manpower management), corporate competency (employee competency, company product or service competitiveness, supply chain and consumer relations, digital competency and technical expertise), and CEO's competency(trust between employees and the CEO, management competency and perceived health status of CEO) on CEO's intention to discontinue business was discussed. As a result of the study, the intensity of competition in the main business field, and the difficulty in manpower management had a positive (+) effect on the intention to discontinue the business, and the employee competency, product (service) competitiveness, digital competency of the company, and the CEO's Health status had a negative (-) effect on intention to discontinue business. The relationship between these influences was found in the order of CEO's health status, product competitiveness, employee competency, digital competency, competitive strength in the main business, and difficulty in manpower management. It was analyzed that supply chain and consumer relations, trust between employees and the CEO, and management capabilities did not significantly affect the intention to discontinue business. On the other hand, business confidence has a mediating effect between the intensity of competition in the main business field, the difficulty in manpower management, product or service competitiveness, digital competency, trust between employees and the CEO, and the management capability and intention to discontinue business was tested. This study had academic significance in that it empirically analyzed factors related to intention to discontinue business targeting small and medium-sized business CEOs. In practice, as it has been found that business environment awareness, corporate competency, managerial competency, and business confidence are factors that influence the intention to discontinue business, if an action ideas that can reinforce this part can be found, SMEs can achieve sustainable growth or it may help CEO find an meaningful exit.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the influences of educational policy transfer on transitional countries by analyzing the impacts of the Bologna Process on the educational systems of former socialist countries in Europe including Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary. For this purpose, documents published by European Union and its associated educational institutions, as well as academic institutions and scholars were analyzed to evaluate the changes made not only in the systemic level but also institutional and personal levels. The Bologna Process, instigated by the rise of knowledge economy and globalization, is purported to be the most influential educational reform conducted by the member countries since the formation of EU. However, unlike its original intentions to promote the voluntary participation of universities and students, the Bologna Process strengthened the structure of centralized bureaucracy in the educational systems, and restricted the freedom of professors, since most of the universities in these countries relied on governments for their funding. This indicates that in analyzing the influences of educational policy transfer in transitional countries, it is important to analyze the roles and motivations of actors participating in the decision-making processes. Moreover, Bologna Process reforms, made under the direction and control of government, were often turned into cases in which administrators hurriedly implement new policies against the will of faculty members and students, thus impeding the efficient localization of the reforms. This case, thus, implies that while educational reforms driven by policy transfer can change external systems and policies of universities, the fundamental reforms in the minds of faculty and inner workings of organization can only come about after a careful consideration of the societal and cultural values embedded within society.
Plant Microbial Fuel Cells (P-MFCs) are biomass-based energy technologies that generate electricity from plant and root microbial communities and are suitable for natural fundamental solutions considering sustainable environments. In order to develop P-MFC technology suitable for domestic waterfront space, it is necessary to analyze international research trends first. Therefore, in this study, 700 P-MFC-related research papers were investigated in Web of Science, and the core keywords were derived using VOSviewer, a word analysis program, and the research trends were analyzed. First, P-MFC-related research has been on the rise since 1998, especially since the mid to late 2010s. The number of papers submitted by each country was "China," "U.S." and "India." Since the 2010s, interest in P-MFCs has increased, and the number of publications in the Philippines, Ukraine, and Mexico, which have abundant waterfront space and wetland environments, is increasing. Secondly, from the perspective of research trends in different periods, 1998-2015 mainly carried out microbial fuel cell performance verification research in different environments. The 2016-2020 period focuses on the specific conditions of microbial fuel cell use, the structure of P-MFC and how it develops. From 2021 to 2023, specific research on constraints and efficiency improvement in the development of P-MFC was carried out. The P-MFC-related international research trends identified through this study can be used as useful data for developing technologies suitable for domestic waterfront space in the future. In addition to this study, further research is needed on research trends and levels in subsectors, and in order to develop and revitalize P-MFC technologies in Korea, research on field applicability should be expanded and policies and systems improved.
Thirty one morphometric characters of specimens in 15 subspecies of striped field mouse(Apodemus agrarius Pallas) from Eurasia were analyzed to clarify taxonomic status of these subspecies. Five major subgroups in A. agrarius were revealed: I, a largest-size form, specimens from two southern from other six localities in Korea, subspecies coreae and pallescens; III, the other large-size from, specimens from Astrachan in western Russia, subspecies volgensis; IV, a medium-size form, specimens from 16 localities in eastern Asia(North Korea, China, and eastern Russia), subspecies coreae, manchuricus, pallidior, ningpoensis, and insulaemus; V, a small-size form, specimens from 16 localities in western Asia and Europe (Kazakhstan, Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine), subspecies tianschanicus, ognevi, agrarius, septentrionalis, nikolski, caucasicus, and karelicus. From this morphometric analyses, the followings are concluded: subspecies chejuensis is a larger-size form, as noted by Johnson and Jones(1955): subspecies pallescens is the synonym of subspecies agrarius, as suggested by Koh(1986): subspecies coreae from Korea is a large-size form and is idistinct from other 12 subspecies in Eurasia: the eastern form of subspecies ningpoensis by Corbet(1978) is a medium-size form o subspecies manchuricus, pallidior, ningpoensis, and insulaemus from eastern Asia (China and eastern Russia), and it includea North Korea specimens: a small-size form from western Asia and Europe(subspecies tianschanicus, ognevi, agrarius, septentrionalis, nikolski, caucasicus, and karelicus) is the western form of subspecies agrarius by Corbet(1978); the other large-size form of subspecies volgensis from western Russia is a distinct subspecies, which differs from the western subspecies agrarius. Therefore, it is concluded that 15 subspecies of A. agrarius can be classifed into five subspecies (chejuensis, coreae, ningpoensis, agrarius, and volgensis), although it is necessary to measure and analyze morphometric characters of specimens of other seven subspecies(albostriatus, maculatus, rubens, kahmanni, henrici, gloveri, and harti) for the complete reclassification of this species).
Internet commerce has been growing at a rapid pace for the last decade. Many firms try to reach wider consumer markets by adding the Internet channel to the existing traditional channels. Despite the various benefits of the Internet channel, a significant number of firms failed in managing the new type of channel. Previous studies could not cleary explain these conflicting results associated with the Internet channel. One of the major reasons is most of the previous studies conducted analyses under a specific market condition and claimed that as the impact of Internet channel introduction. Therefore, their results are strongly influenced by the specific market settings. However, firms face various market conditions in the real worlddensity and disutility of using the Internet. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various market environments on a firm's optimal channel strategy by employing a flexible game theory model. We capture various market conditions with consumer density and disutility of using the Internet.
shows the channel structures analyzed in this study. Before the Internet channel is introduced, a monopoly manufacturer sells its products through an independent physical store. From this structure, the manufacturer could introduce its own Internet channel (MI). The independent physical store could also introduce its own Internet channel and coordinate it with the existing physical store (RI). An independent Internet retailer such as Amazon could enter this market (II). In this case, two types of independent retailers compete with each other. In this model, consumers are uniformly distributed on the two dimensional space. Consumer heterogeneity is captured by a consumer's geographical location (ci) and his disutility of using the Internet channel (${\delta}_{N_i}$).
shows various market conditions captured by the two consumer heterogeneities.
(a) illustrates a market with symmetric consumer distributions. The model captures explicitly the asymmetric distributions of consumer disutility in a market as well. In a market like that is represented in
(c), the average consumer disutility of using an Internet store is relatively smaller than that of using a physical store. For example, this case represents the market in which 1) the product is suitable for Internet transactions (e.g., books) or 2) the level of E-Commerce readiness is high such as in Denmark or Finland. On the other hand, the average consumer disutility when using an Internet store is relatively greater than that of using a physical store in a market like (b). Countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria, or the market for "experience goods" such as shoes, could be examples of this market condition.
summarizes the various scenarios of consumer distributions analyzed in this study. The range for disutility of using the Internet (${\delta}_{N_i}$) is held constant, while the range of consumer distribution (${\chi}_i$) varies from -25 to 25, from -50 to 50, from -100 to 100, from -150 to 150, and from -200 to 200.
summarizes the analysis results. As the average travel cost in a market decreases while the average disutility of Internet use remains the same, average retail price, total quantity sold, physical store profit, monopoly manufacturer profit, and thus, total channel profit increase. On the other hand, the quantity sold through the Internet and the profit of the Internet store decrease with a decreasing average travel cost relative to the average disutility of Internet use. We find that a channel that has an advantage over the other kind of channel serves a larger portion of the market. In a market with a high average travel cost, in which the Internet store has a relative advantage over the physical store, for example, the Internet store becomes a mass-retailer serving a larger portion of the market. This result implies that the Internet becomes a more significant distribution channel in those markets characterized by greater geographical dispersion of buyers, or as consumers become more proficient in Internet usage. The results indicate that the degree of price discrimination also varies depending on the distribution of consumer disutility in a market. The manufacturer in a market in which the average travel cost is higher than the average disutility of using the Internet has a stronger incentive for price discrimination than the manufacturer in a market where the average travel cost is relatively lower. We also find that the manufacturer has a stronger incentive to maintain a high price level when the average travel cost in a market is relatively low. Additionally, the retail competition effect due to Internet channel introduction strengthens as average travel cost in a market decreases. This result indicates that a manufacturer's channel power relative to that of the independent physical retailer becomes stronger with a decreasing average travel cost. This implication is counter-intuitive, because it is widely believed that the negative impact of Internet channel introduction on a competing physical retailer is more significant in a market like Russia, where consumers are more geographically dispersed, than in a market like Hong Kong, that has a condensed geographic distribution of consumers.