The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been one of the most prominent components of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Most of the discussion on CPEC has centered around the macroeconomic effects on the economy. However, research on the fine details of CPEC’s financing structure has not been conducted. This paper aims to fill the gap by providing a detailed description of the financing of CPEC and how the money maps on to different sectors of the Pakistani economy. We also discuss some macroeconomic concerns and ways to mitigate these risks.

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

In this policy insight, the author lays out the context of the BRI and its role in global development. He also explains why the US should consider working with China on the BRI. The author opines on China’s possible approach and strategy to get global private investors to come on board for the massive BRI projects. He suggests that the global players can establish a third-party market cooperation and coordination mechanism to turn the BRI into a platform for win-win global collaboration.

As an important ecosystem type in the coastal zone, mangroves have important ecological functions, such as maintaining coastal biodiversity, preventing wind and consolidating the coast, promoting silt and building land. It is of great significance to understand the protected status of mangroves in the context of climate change and rapid urbanization. Based on the mangrove classification data from remote sensing interpretation, through vacancy analysis, the in-situ protection status of mangroves in China is analyzed. The results show that the total area of mangroves distributed in China is 264 km² (excluding the statistical data of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), of which 61.4% are protected in natural reserves. In terms of the main provinces where mangroves are distributed, the mangrove area distributed in Hainan Province is small but the protection proportion is high, while the mangrove area distributed in Guangxi and Guangdong Province is large but the proportion of protected areas is relatively low. Among the three mangrove types, Rhizophora apiculate-Xylocarpus granatum and Rhizophora stylosa-Bruguiera gymnorrhiza had high proportions (>90%) covered by reserves, but relatively small areas. In contrast, Kandelia candel-Aegiceras corniculatum-Avicennia marina had relatively low reserve coverage (52.6%), but a large area. The study puts forward the key areas of mangrove distribution outside the nature reserve, and suggests that they should be protected by delimiting ecological protection red lines.

The rare earth mining area in South China is the main production base of ionic rare earth in the world, which has brought inestimable economic value to the local area and even the whole nation. However, due to the lack of mining technology and excessive pursuit for economic profits, a series of environmental problems have arisen, which is a great threat to the ecosystem of the mining area. Taking Lingbei rare earth mining area in Ganzhou as an example, this paper discriminated and analyzed such aspects as the ecological source, ecological corridor and ecological nodes of the mining area based on the landscape ecological security pattern theory and the minimum cumulative resistance model (MCR) method, and constructed a landscape ecological security pattern of the mining area during the 2009, 2013 and 2018. The results show that: i) The patch area of the ecological source of rare earth mining area is small, mainly concentrated in the east and west sides of the mining area. ii) During the selected year, the ecological source area, ecological corridors, radiation channels and the number of ecological nodes in the rare earth mining area are increasing, indicating that the landscape ecological security of the rare earth mining area has been improved to some extent, but it remains necessary for relevant departments to make a optimized planning to further reconstruct the ecological security pattern of the rare earth mining area.

Based on the population change data of 2005–2009, 2010–2014, 2015–2019 and 2005–2019, the shrinking cities in Northeast China are determined to analyze their spatial distribution pattern. And the influencing factors and effects of shrinking cities in Northeast China are explored by using multiple linear regression method and random forest regression method. The results show that: 1) In space, the shrinking cities in Northeast China are mainly distributed in the “land edge” areas represented by Changbai Mountain, Sanjiang Plain, Xiaoxing’an Mountain and Daxing’an Mountain. In terms of time, the contraction center shows an obvious trend of moving northward, while the opposite expansion center shows a trend of moving southward, and the shrinking cities gather further; 2) in the study of influencing factors, the results of multiple linear regression and random forest regression show that socio-economic factors play a major role in the formation of shrinking cities; 3) the precision of random forest regression is higher than that of multiple linear regression. The results show that per capita GDP has the greatest impact on the contraction intensity, followed by the unemployment rate, science and education expenses and the average wage of on-the-job workers. Among the four influencing factors, only the unemployment rate promotes the contraction, and the other three influencing factors inhibit the formation of shrinking cities to various degrees.