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Grounded in comparative law research, this paper compares differences in the regulation of online child pornography in China and the United States. The United States began regulating child pornography through criminal law in the 1970s, gradually refining the laws to distinguish between child pornography and obscenity and prohibit the possession of child pornography and virtual child pornography. In contrast, China treats child pornography on an equal footing with adult pornography, but imposes more lenient penalties on disseminating child pornography, which has led to the proliferation of child pornography. By comparing the two countries' policies and laws on child pornography, this review makes four recommendations for other countries: (i) define child pornography in criminal law; (ii) distinguish between obscenity and child pornography; (iii) prohibit virtual child pornography on the internet; and (iv) increase criminal penalties for child pornography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of COVID-19 has provided a new vigor to addressed global health issues. In this regard, global health diplomacy initiatives have seen a considerable surge. Countries around the world are using the opportunity to harness the potential of global health diplomacy in cultivating relations with several countries and also building a soft power projection. A case in point is how China has been spearheading global health efforts to improve relations while projecting a soft power about how China aims to act as global savior. Chinese efforts were able to gain significant traction owing to the fact that the United States under the administration of President Trump suspended its global leadership role, the first such instance in the post-World War-II era. This paper explains the concept of global health diplomacy by conducting a comparative analysis of the global health efforts and policies undertaken by both the United States and China by following qualitative research technique and secondary sources to explain the phenomenon. The study found that China led the response to COVID-19 not only domestically but globally as well. The U.S. lagged but gradually started to compete China in health diplomacy. There is an evident struggle for dominance in health sector between China and the U.S., however, it is not expected to lead into hard power struggle. The paper has concluded that it is important for both countries to work together in future in case of pandemic to spearhead an international effort against such crises. Moreover, it recommends Chinese authorities to include health corridor as a component with Belt and Road Initiative. On the other hand, the United States under the administration of President Joe Biden should invest in multilateral efforts so to empower global health institutions to better prepare for future health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last three decades, a networked global system has emerged in the natural-science-based disciplines, sustained by collegial epistemic relations in universities. Nationally ordered and funded science has expanded alongside the global science system. The common global pool of papers, defined by bibliometric collections, nevertheless excludes large components of knowledge. In the global system, four tendencies are apparent: (1) rapid growth of papers, (2) diversification of scientific capacity to many more countries, (3) expansion of networked international and national collaboration as measured by co-authorship, (4) growing multi-polarity of capacity, outputs and quality, with the rise of China and several middle-sized national systems outside the Euro-American bloc. The paper critiques the interpretation of global science dominant in scientometrics, in which positivist data analyses are applied to performative national comparisons. It argues for a historical-synthetic explanation of the global system that combines data and theorisation, and accounts for relations of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the divorce trends in the United States and China since 1980 and examines the consistency and disparity of alternative measures of divorce rate. While divorce rate is a special sociodemographic indicator, with different measures often yielding inconsistent or even contradictory results, this study contributes to the literature with a comparative analysis using data from the United States and China over 40 years. Results suggest that, as compared to the refined divorce rate (number of divorces per 1,000 married population) that counts only people with a possibility to divorce, the widely used crude divorce rate (number of divorces per 1,000 population) overestimated the increase in China's divorce rate from 1980 to 2019 by 60.76% and the decrease in U.S. divorce rate over the same period by 15.13%. Also, although in 1980 the U.S. divorce rates were much higher than the corresponding Chinese rates, divorce rates in these two nations, with very different socioeconomic systems and stages of economic development, are progressively getting closer in recent years. However, whether and when China's divorce rate may start to decrease, following an inverted U-shaped pattern over time observed in the United States and some other nations, remains a question for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China and the United States are both major countries in the world in the production of and trade in wind energy products, and they are also important trading partners. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to analyze and evaluate the Sino-US bilateral wind power complementarity for re-examining their respective comparative advantages and re-understanding the benefits that trade liberalization brings to both countries, in an attempt to strengthen the trade relations between China and the United States and enhance trade complementarities in wind energy products under the global circumstances of fierce competition. In this paper, based on the trade data from the UN Comtrade database in 2007-2016, a quantitative analysis was conducted on the complementarity of Sino-US wind energy products, by adopting the quantitative research methods of trade combination degree index (TCD), export similarity index (SI) and trade complementarity index (TCI). The results shows that: i) the total trade volume of wind energy products between China and the United States has increased rapidly, and the trade surplus between China and the United States has been expanding year by year; ii) the overall trade balance of wind energy products trade between the two countries is generally stable, and the dependence of China's wind energy products on the United States is much higher than that of the U.S wind energy products on China; iii) the Sino-US wind energy products between China and the United States are highly competitive in the international market; iv) Sino-US wind energy products have different degrees of complementarity in bilateral trade. Finally, this paper proposed policy implications based on the findings of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]