Introduction: People Oriented: A New Stage of Social Welfare Development in China
Alongside 35 years of economic development, China’s social welfare system has also undergone rapid change. The Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) is facing pressure to provide more services to the people it has served in the past, such as orphans, older people without families, and people with disabilities. The MCA is also facing pressure to provide new services to social groups that were not previously covered, such as orphans in communities, “left-behind children” whose parents have migrated to the cities for work. New service projects have been created overnight, as happened with free school lunches and school buses. Local governments, especially governments in relatively developed areas, are competing in welfare provision to see who can provide more and better services. Walking in the streets of Beijing, it is not unusual to see advertisements in supermarkets or in residential areas, along the lines of, “The government will provide a free pair of glasses to Beijing residents aged above a certain number of years” or “The government is providing a free health check (or a free flu injection) for all Beijing eligible residents in attendance at a particular time and place.” This new trend is vastly different from even a few years ago, when the role of government in welfare provision was strictly residual and welfare was generally regarded as the private responsibility of families for whom policy support was rare. At that time, the state
Tourism border-making: A political economy of China's border tourism
Abstract This paper identifies changes in borderland tourism and their bordering consequences on the Daluo-Mongla border in Xishuangbanna, China. It identifies three distinctive phases: (a) phase one (1991–2001)- rapid growth of organized cross-border tourist flow, (b) phase two (2002−2011)- stagnation and collapse of formal tourism sector yet emerging illegal cross-border tourist flow, and (c) phase three (2012-present)- resurrection and transition of border tourism. It illustrates the border-making agency of tourism, arguing tourism development at the border can be viewed as a re-bordering force. It analyzes an evolutionary process of changing power structures, namely a dominant control of local states and market forces, a partial power shift towards national state and border communities, and a new dominance by the Chinese state.
Investigation of scatter radiation of non-circular X-ray scan trajectories
Modern interventional X-ray devices are highly maneuverable and allow complex 3D imaging trajectories. New scan trajectories enable not only optimized object sampling but also introduce new approaches for dynamic 3D imaging. In this paper, we investigated the scatter radiation of two different scan trajectories. The scatter radiation was sampled by a rail setup with dosimeters at defined positions. After data analysis, contour maps were generated which show for four exemplary heights the scatter radiation distribution. The alternative scan trajectory showed smaller dose exposures at heights correlated to upper torso and head areas of a model physician. Keywords—Image acquisition, alternative scan trajectory, circular tomosynthesis, scatter radiation distribution