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The new Silk Road provides cross-border-e-commerce firms with an opportunity to widen their markets. Under this circumstance, the preference recognition of countries and inventory allocation among overseas warehouses both become critical issues to solve. Three Chinese smartphone brands, including HTC, Huawei, and MI, are selected in this chapter for their relatively enormous sales. DHgate and AliExpress websites are chosen as platforms to analyze the sales for data availability. This chapter first depicts key features of the sales and then, based on which, divide countries into several groups according to their preference for phones by cluster analysis. Then, based on the results of cluster analysis, this chapter further models the inventory assignment among the seven major overseas warehouses that were built by AliExpress in 2015. The results show that the HTC seems to be pursuing the “high value with high price” strategy, while the other two companies seem to be pursuing a hybrid strategy of “low-price” strategy and “high value with low price” strategy. This chapter also provides an assignment pattern of inventory among the overseas warehouses based on the real data of sales and costs.

In as much as it is contested, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is also unexplored, underdiscussed, and, as a result, misunderstood. Frequently viewed through the lens of international relations and global economy, the diverse dimensions of collaboration, including business and research-industry clusters, that BRI enhances, tend to be excluded from the analysis. In a similar manner, the role of the Arab Peninsula in the grand strategy underpinning BRI and its implementation is rarely discussed. BRI is a forward-oriented initiative, an attempt to reap benefits of developments and circumstances that are only nascent. This bears two potent implications. First, as China attempts to influence the context in which it operates, it is subject to change itself; the Chinese business sector evolution attests to that. Second, some of China’s not so obvious partners of today, including those in the Arab Peninsula, are about to turn into key interlocutors of tomorrow. BRI taps into opportunities thus created. This chapter elaborates on these issues and, against this backdrop, outlines how the remaining chapters included in this volume add to this discussion.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the corrosion behavior of 304SS in three kinds of solution, 3.5 per cent NaCl, 5 per cent H₂SO₄ and 1 M (1 mol/L) NaOH, using electrochemical noise.

Corrosion types and rates were characterized by spectrum and time-domain analysis. EN signals were evaluated using a novel method of phase space reconstruction and chaos theory. To evaluate the chaotic characteristics of corrosion systems, the delay time was obtained by the mutual information method and the embedding dimension was obtained by the average false neighbors method.

The varying degrees of chaos in the corrosion systems were indicated by positive largest Lyapunov exponents of the electrochemical potential noise.

The change of correlation dimension in three kinds of solution demonstrated significant differences, clearly differentiating various types of corrosion.

The objective of this study was to examine how high-social and low-social virtual live streamers affect consumers' experiential value (utilitarian value and hedonic value) and the mechanism and boundary conditions behind the effect.

The research consisted of four laboratory experiments.

The results showed that socialness has a positive significant effect on experiential value. Social presence mediated the effect of socialness on utilitarian value and hedonic value. In the relationship between socialness and experiential value, the moderating effects of communication style and situation were significant.

This study provides managerial implications for online stores about the use of virtual live streamers.

The finding of this paper extends the literature on virtual humans or avatars, enriches the literature on the characteristics of virtual humans and tests the explanatory power of social response theory.

Previous studies have examined the emotional mechanism between perceived overqualification and knowledge hiding. Based on a relational perspective, this study aims to draw on social comparison theory to reveal the cognitive mechanism of perceived overqualification on knowledge hiding, along with the mediating effect of relational identification. This research conceptualizes perceived overqualification differentiation and reveals the moderating effect of perceived overqualification differentiation on strengthening the link between perceived overqualification and knowledge hiding.

This paper conducts two times lagged research, addresses a sample of 216 employees nested in 47 groups from technology or R&D industries and uses structural equation modeling to test an original model.

The results show that perceived overqualification positively affects knowledge hiding; relational identification mediates this relationship; perceived overqualification differentiation moderates the effect of perceived overqualification on relational identification as well the indirect effect of perceived overqualification on knowledge hiding via relational identification.

This paper shows the cognitive mechanism of perceived overqualification on knowledge hiding. Moreover, this study also extends current perceived overqualification literature from a single individual level/a dyad level to a complex team level by conceptualizing the perceived overqualification differentiation. The research findings are helpful to guide team talent management and knowledge management in business management practice.

Existing empirical studies emphasize the role of customer preference measurement accuracy (CPMA) on customized product quality while neglecting the role of manufacturing flexibility. However, the rise of web-based technology has highlighted consumer-manufacturer interaction in mass customization (MC). This paper explores the relationships between CPMA, manufacturing flexibility, customer participation and customized product quality, inspired by module decomposition and integration theory.

The study carried out a questionnaire survey of 241 directors who are specifically responsible for MC in the apparel industry in China and tested hypotheses with structural equation modeling (SEM).

CPMA has a direct positive influence on customized product quality and an indirect positive effect through manufacturing flexibility. Also, customer participation after placing an order (CPAPO) has a negative moderating effect on the linkage between CPMA and manufacturing flexibility.

A more dynamic relationship between CPMA and MF can be explored in the future, and the findings can be tested in other industries with more abundant data.

Manufacturing flexibility should be improved along with CPMA in MC. Also, disruptions caused by customer participation in the post-design stage should be noticed. In this context, better consumer service in the early design stage may be one possible solution.

First, the essential but unexplored mediating role of manufacturing flexibility is identified, adding knowledge to the consumer–manufacturer interaction literature in MC production. Second, module decomposition and integration are applied to unify consumers and manufacturers into one empirical model, enriched theoretical research on modular theory. Third, this study opens new discussions on the moderating role of customer participation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the policy and trends in rural education in China over the past 40 years; and also discuss a number of challenges that are faced by China’s rural school system.

The authors use secondary data on policies and trends over the past 40 years for preschool, primary/junior high school, and high school.

The trends over the past 40 years in all areas of rural schooling have been continually upward and strong. While only a low share of rural children attended preschool in the 1980s, by 2014 more than 90 percent of rural children were attending. The biggest achievement in compulsory education is that the rise in the number of primary students that finish grade 6 and matriculate to junior high school. There also was a steep rise of those going to and completing high school. While the successes in upscaling rural education are absolutely unprecedented, there are still challenges.

This is descriptive analysis and there is not causal link established between policies and rural schooling outcomes.

The authors illustrate one of the most rapid rises of rural education in history and match the achievements up with the policy efforts of the government. The authors also explore policy priorities that will be needed in the coming years to raise the quality of schooling.

This is the first paper that documents both the policies and the empirical trends of the success that China has created in building rural education from preschool to high school during the first 40 years of reform (1978-2018). The paper also documents – drawing on the literature and the own research – the achievements and challenges that China still face in the coming years, including issues of gender, urbanization, early childhood education and health and nutrition of students.

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of library services according to user experiences (UXs). The study discusses underlying internal problems existing in libraries that affect user satisfaction. Furthermore, it seeks to identify ways to improve the UX.

The methodology comprised a questionnaire administered at Nanjing University Library, China. The survey examined users’ satisfaction with the online public access catalogue, locating books on the shelves, and users’ participation in the organization of library resources. This study used the annual reading quantity of users system, a new system of measurement that distinguishes between informal and avid library users.

The data analysis indicated poor user satisfaction. The problems were mainly associated with the libraries’ resource organization, such as descriptive cataloguing, subject headings and classification, which is controlled by library administration. Moreover, users’ feedback is not integrated within the library system. Because of the process-oriented architecture of the current integrated library system, librarians and users do not communicate effectively. These barriers between users and the library staff members are difficult to overcome.

The study describes that the results relate to user satisfaction with searching and locating books based on the patron’s reading level. Differences were observed between light and avid readers in terms of satisfaction with the ease of searching and finding books. This demonstrates the internal connections of these results with library procedures. Furthermore, this study identifies improvement measures to resolve these problems.