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China's trade with South Africa has become more important in recent years, and a SACU-China free trade agreement has been proposed to further strengthen this trade relationship. This paper examines the relevance of this proposed trade policy for further enhancing bilateral trade flows and development in SACU. The paper finds that tariff liberalization alone is inadequate for successful trade integration, as it benefits mostly South Africa only and harms some of SACU's internal and external trade and its welfare through trade diversion. Measures to improve trade complementarity, reduce barriers to intra-industry trade, and implement parallel MFN trade liberalization should also be undertaken by SACU in order to achieve successful trade integration with China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses health policy and systems research in complex and rapidly changing contexts. It focuses on ethical issues at stake for researchers working with government policy makers to provide evidence to inform major health systems change at scale, particularly when the dynamic nature of the context and ongoing challenges to the health system can result in unpredictable outcomes. We focus on situations where 'country ownership' of HSR is relatively well established and where there is significant involvement of local researchers and close ties and relationships with policy makers are often present. We frame our discussion around two country case studies with which we are familiar, namely China and South Africa and discuss the implications for conducting 'embedded' research. We suggest that reflexivity is an important concept for health system researchers who need to think carefully about positionality and their normative stance and to use such reflection to ensure that they can negotiate to retain autonomy, whilst also contributing evidence for health system change. A research process informed by the notion of reflexive practice and iterative learning will require a longitudinal review at key points in the research timeline. Such review should include the convening of a deliberative process and should involve a range of stakeholders, including those most likely to be affected by the intended and unintended consequences of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address two major questions. First, the question of whether China and India are displacing the African manufacturing export from the third market. Second, whether there is an evidence of shifting comparative advantage from China and India to Africa. We employed a gravity model with a panel data using 13 African exporters of clothing and accessories for the period 1995–2005 to answer the first question. To answer the second question, we used a flying-geese model and estimated Spearman's rank correlation coefficients on indices of the revealed comparative advantage vectors of the African exporters and China and India for the same period. Both the gravity and flying-geese models predicted similar outcomes. We found that there is strong evidence that China has been displacing African manufactures from the third market while India has been complementing it in the early years of the study. However, the overall third market impact of China and India has been that of complementarity in the later years of the study period. This result is found to vary across countries. Furthermore, we found evidence of shifting comparative advantage from China and India to Africa as the flying-geese theory predicts, South Africa being the leading goose followed by Kenya. The major implication of the study is that, in the world where China and India are reshaping the global economic order dynamically, the outcomes of the traditionally received wisdom of trade liberalization and industrialization policies through export promotion may be uncertain and requires strategic thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article gives information about papers published in the vol. 18 of the periodical Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics. The eighty items constituted in the volume were categorized into regular articles, reviews, academic, clinical and technical research notes. Atleast 25 items were directly relevant to clinical work in general optometric practice. The majority of the overseas submissions originated from optometry research centres in North America and Australasia, the remainder and an increasing proportion being made up from Hongkong, mainland Europe, South Africa and the Middle East.