It has become commonplace to describe publicly provided infrastructure as being in a sorry state and to advance public-private partnership as a possible remedy. This essay adopts a skeptical but not a cynical posture toward those claims. The paper starts by reviewing the comparative properties of markets and politics within a theory of budgeting where the options are construction and maintenance. This analytical point of departure explains how incongruities between political and market action can favor construction over maintenance. In short, political entities can engage in an implicit form of public debt by reducing maintenance spending to support other budgetary items. This implicit form of public debt does not manifest in higher interest rates but rather manifests in crumbling bridges and other infrastructure due to the transfer of maintenance into other budgetary activities.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) wants to become a key regional actor in the Arctic. PRC's underlying priority in the region is gaining access to commercial opportunities from trade and natural resources. To this end, PRC is building its domestic capacities for research and commercial development in the Arctic, increasing its involvement in multilateral forums on Arctic governance and deepening ties to Arctic nations, especially Russia.

Attitudes towards PRC among Arctic nations are diverging, but Beijing generally faces high levels of skepticism and opposition to its Arctic involvement, explicitly grounded in perceptions of PRC as a state undermining the rules-based international order and potential military build-up in the high north.

The analytical framework in this article builds on an outline authored by Exner-Pirot in 2012 (Exner-Pirot, 2012) to detail the current schools of thought within Arctic governance, and builds on it by including more recent developments in Arctic governance, incorporating the updated Arctic policies of most Arctic countries and connecting it to PRC.

This article contends that Beijing wants to change the status quo of Arctic governance and shift it towards a more accommodating approach to non-Arctic states. This article finds, based on the stated Arctic strategies of the eight Arctic states and PRC, that there are different views on Arctic governance where Arctic countries for the most part indicate an openness to a Chinese entry into the Arctic, albeit in diverging ways. This creates a complex governance scenario for PRC to navigate as it seeks to become a key Arctic player

Urban morphologies in the global south are shaped by a complex interplay of historical imprints, from colonial legacies and ethnic tensions to waves of modernization and decolonization efforts. This study delves into the urban morphology of Hangzhou during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unraveling its transformative patterns steered by a convergence of spatial politics, economic forces, and cultural dynamics. Drawing upon a unique blend of historical map restoration techniques, we unearth pivotal morphological nuances that bridge Hangzhou’s transition from its pre-modern fabric to its modern-day urban layout. We uncover key shifts such as the movement from intricate street layouts to systematic grids, the strategic integration of public spaces like West Lakeside Park, and the city’s evolving urban epicenter mirroring its broader socio-political and economic narratives. These insights not only spotlight Hangzhou’s distinct urban journey in the context of ethnic conflicts, Western influences, and decolonization drives but also underscore the value of context-sensitive urban morphological research in the global south. Our findings emphasize the criticality of synergizing varied methodologies and theoretical perspectives to deepen our comprehension of urban transitions, sculpt place identities, and invigorate public imagination in global urban planning.

In higher education, mental health education is a complex task that involves many educational factors. From the perspective of psychological education, the basic tasks and value pursuits of university mental health education and curriculum ideological and political education are the same. Both are student-centered, providing a basic guarantee for the integration of the two. Currently, some universities are facing issues such as the need to clarify the concept of "psychological education", the trend towards value neutrality in mental health education, and the need to improve the quality of the psychological education team. In response to this situation, universities should integrate educational factors, provide clear value guidance, strengthen integrated education, improve the overall quality of the education team, continue to promote the ideological and political construction of psychological health education courses in universities, and achieve new breakthroughs.

With the main idea of cultivating people through the curriculum, this paper explores the organic integration of ideological and political lines and knowledge lines in the teaching design of pharmacology in higher vocational colleges. The medical humanistic literacy contained in the teaching design, explores the path and method of the ideological and political construction of the course, and combines the teaching of professional knowledge and the cultivation of theoretical skills with the cultivation of students’ patriotism, medical professional ethics, life awareness and scientific research spirit. Improve the educational effect of curriculum ideological and political education in college education.

The construction of journalism majors contains rich ideological and political resources. As one of the practical courses, the news interview and writing course is a professional basic course for journalism students. Therefore, for professionals who will undertake journalism in the future, they should not only have the ability to produce and disseminate information, but also shoulder the responsibility of telling Chinese stories, spreading Chinese voices, and delivering Chinese excellent culture. For the teaching of news interview and writing courses, students should be guided in thought, so that they have a sense of home and country, good professional ethics and social responsibility.