Financial policy innovation for social change: a case study of China's green credit policy

Financial policy impacts on a range of social issues such as poverty alleviation, education, pollution control, etc. Making good use of financial policy and applying innovation to existing financial systems can generate positive outcomes for society. This article is to discuss the case of green credit policy in China. This policy was jointly announced in 2007 by financial and environmental regulators. According to this policy, banks were encouraged to give more loans to environmental friendly companies than to others. Such policy has made great progress, and it became a more formal document entitled ‘Green Credit Guideline’ in 2012. This guideline included a comprehensive definition on green credit and specified several requirements at practical levels. Despite the great success, challenges of implementing such policy still remain. First, information about corporate environmental performance is insufficient; second, market incentives for green credit policy are not high enough; third, most banking staff lack knowledge and capacity to handle environmental affairs. Nevertheless, this case still sheds light on how financial policy innovation drives social changes. The key is to identify the connection between social issues and financial issues, and then to make a business case that creates pressures or incentives for financial institutions. This requires a market where social and environmental cost is appropriately priced and internalized to those who generate it. Ideally, financial policies should help shape such a market so that society can share values created by financial institutions.     

应慎言“以产业优惠代替区域优惠”

在促进后发展地区经济发展的过程中,世界各国普遍将税收区域优惠政策作为刺激投资的主要措施,我国在东南沿海开发、开放初期也不例外.在区域税收优惠方面,按“经济特区——经济技术开发区——沿海经济开放区——内地”梯度递减的方式体现,使东南沿海地区享受的税收优惠待遇远高于其他地区,形成了我国税收区域优惠政策的格局.经过三十多年的开发、开放,已造就了长三角、珠三角、环渤海地区三大增长极,其发展态势和增长速度受到全世界的关注.税收区域优惠政策对东部地区的发展发挥了巨大的刺激作用,造就了一批民族品牌,扩大了社会就业,促进了居民生活水平的大幅提高.目前,在我国应实行税收区域优惠政策从东南沿海向中西部地区的转移,而不应简单的“以产业优惠替代区域优惠”或“淡出税收区域优惠政策”.     

Potential of decentralized wastewater management for urban development: Case of Bangkok

Decentralized wastewater management (DWWM) has recently gained much attention in wastewater management (WWM) due to its build-as-you-go principal. Rapid urban development and the widespread impact of wastewater require sustainable ways to test the DWWM approach. This paper aims to examine and discuss the potential of Bangkok’s current WWM approaches for urban development, focusing on decentralized management approaches. General WWM approaches were examined using case study research methods. Three WWM cases were selected for detailed investigation. Residential wastewater user surveys and expert interviews were used to support system performance findings of service providers and recipients, as well as to draw lessons learned. Results show that DWWM is economically and technically efficient, demonstrating potential for sustainable urban development (SUD) in the study area. The competitive cost found is a result of less sewer line, simple technology, and limited additional costs, while the high efficiency is a result of good operation and maintenance. Also the reclaimed water has been used for landscape irrigation of the urban greenery. Sustainability of the system lies in social value of public amenity it provides, and the urban planning implication that it could be an option for smart growth. The results also show that even in an inner urban area DWWM does not conflict with any SUD considerations. Thus, the study recommends using DWWM for new development within both public and private properties based on Bangkok’s case as part of long-term urban development.     

马克思主义人学理论的动态历史考察

马克思主义人学思想是一个非常完整、科学的理论体系,其形成和发展主要经历了三个发展阶段:从博士论文到《1844年经济学哲学手稿》是其萌芽时期,提出了以劳动为基础的人学理论框架;从《神圣家族》到《共产党宣言》是其基本形成和发展时期,确立了人学理论的唯物主义立场;从《共产党宣言》到《资本论》是其成熟和完善时期,形成了以人的自由全面发展为最终归宿的完备人学理论体系。马克思主义人学在唯物史观的基础上实现了对以往人学理论的超越,为人和社会的发展开辟了广阔的前景。     

中国房地产税制:存在问题与改革设想

在现代市场经济条件下,房地产税制具有十分重要的功能。现阶段中国房地产税制存在房地产税收功能分散,房地产税种设置交叉重叠现象突出,计税依据不符合国际惯例,房地产保有环节税负偏轻和房地产税权分布结构不合理等问题。中国房地产税制改革已进入基础性制度建设阶段,必须按照"宽税基、简税种、低税率"的原则,实现房地产开发流转环节税收为主向房地产保有环节税收为主的房地产税制转型,去土地财政化,这就要适时开征房产税。开征房产税可以分两步走,近期对居民新购商品房超免税标准部分征收房产税,中长期覆盖到居民已购存量房地产。     

Tomorrow's Leaders and Today's Agents of Change? Children,Sustainability Education and Environmental Governance

Children are central to the rhetoric supporting global climate agreements, yet they are also envisaged to play a strategic role in materialising such agreements. Along with other household actors, children are implicated in localised efforts to manage global resource sustainability. As learners in educational systems that are being redesigned to encompass messages of sustainability, children are moreover positioned as ‘agents of change’ through sustainability education. Drawing on theoretical work on children's agency and interdependence, this review calls for greater attention to the structural and relational dimensions of environmental knowledge transmission to inform sustainability education. This is presented as one move towards constructing what Middlemiss (2014) terms a more ‘socially sensitive’ model of sustainable development.     

What can microblog exchanges tell us about food safety crises in China?

The affordance of microblogging services has made them an ideal tool for communicating risk and crisis. However, research on social media and risk communication is still in its infancy. This study, following the uses and gratifications framework, attempts to give some insight into the way micro-bloggers communicate about risk by investigating food safety communications on the microblogging service in China. A content analysis was conducted on 6186 microblog posts relating to 12 recent food safety incidents in China. A series of bivariate chi-square tests was conducted to test the association between micro-bloggers and gratifications. The results indicate that different types of micro-bloggers gratify different needs. Compared to other types of micro-bloggers, the general public tends to use microblogging to express opinions on food safety incidents, regulation and/or policy, rather than simply disseminating information; members of the public enjoy fewer multimedia affordances in their microblog posting but express more negative feelings. Although we anticipate growth in the use of social media in environmental health communication, caution is still needed: communication in China still follows a traditional top-down pattern.     

澳大利亚生态环境保护的举措及经验借鉴

澳大利亚在发展经济的同时,较早地对生态环境进行有效保护,使经济发展与生态环境相互协调,同步推进;澳大利亚把生态环境保护纳入国家战略、建立全民参与的环境保护机制、坚持依法依规治理环境、实现城市建设和管理的生态化、强调尊重自然规律等,都是值得学习和借鉴的一些成功做法;当然,澳大利亚在生态环境保护方面也存在一些利己主义行为,对全球环境保护不利。     

Effects of the social dominance orientation on environmental attitudes of Chilean university students / Efectos de la orientación a la dominancia social sobre las actitudes ambientales de universitarios chilenos

By adopting a multidimensional approach to environmental attitudes (apathy, anthropocentrism, connectedness and emotional affinity with nature), this study explores the relationships between these dimensions, social dominance orientation (SDO) and political orientation. Two hundred and sixty-two Chilean university students filled out an ad hoc online questionnaire. Two confirmatory factorial analyses showed the four typologies of environmental attitudes and the two factors for SDO, which are labelled group dominance and opposition to equality. Through hierarchical regressions, group dominance showed higher explanatory power of environmental attitudes than political orientation. Furthermore, using the bootstrap procedure we showed that group dominance mediated between political orientation and attitudes of apathy, anthropocentrism and connectedness, while opposition to equality mediated between apathy and emotional affinity. We conclude that SDO is an important variable for measuring political ideology while also providing new nuances when analysing the relationships with environmental attitudes.     

Working-class ecology and union politics: a conceptual topology

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that Environmental Labour Studies may benefit from incorporating the perspective of environmental justice. We offer a theorization of working-class ecology as the place where working-class communities live and work, being typically affected by environmental injustice, and of working-class environmentalism as those forms of activism that link labour and environmental struggles around the primacy of reproduction. The paper’s theoretical section draws on a social ethnography of working-class ecology in the case of Taranto, a mono-industrial town in southern Italy, which is experiencing a severe environmental and public-health crisis. We show how environmental justice activism since the early 2000s has allowed the re-framing of union politics along new ways of politicizing the local economy. We conclude by offering a conceptual topology of working-class ecology, which situates different labour organizations (confederal, social/community, and rank-and-file unions) according to their positioning in respect to environmental justice.