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Intellectualism is necessary for humankind to overcome major public crises, such as the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Focusing on the data of scientific literacy across 140 cities in China and by employing the ordinary least square method, we tested the effectiveness of “anti-pandemic efforts based on intellectualism.” The findings are: (1) Intellectualism works, and it can achieve results in the citizen coproduction promotion to fight against COVID-19. For every 1% increase in citizens with scientific literacy in the city, citizen coproduction increased by 14.2%. (2) The urban education level and local government ability positively moderates the effect of the citizens' anti-pandemic efforts using intellectualism. (3) The results present a certain degree of heterogeneity at various stages, regions, and cities of different scales. This study responds to the lack of research on intellectualism and co-production; further, it provides novel ideas for improving the effectiveness of citizens' participation in public crisis governance.

Innovation of public sector has been greatly advocated and supported in China, and numerous so-called local innovations have emerged. Are they really innovations or just imitations from others? Through a quantitative comparison analysis with 66 so-called innovations in performance management of China’s local governments, we find that these innovations show more similarities than differences to each other, and they are imitations rather than innovations. Further, we argue that the ‘de facto federalism’ of China’s power structure, the incentive of China’s bureaucratic system, and the organizational culture of the public sector may result in such an outcome that rhetoric innovation is much more than substantive innovation

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. No matter how perfect a strategic plan is, if not carried out, it will be equal to a piece of wastepaper or a nonsensical “paper storm”. The Belt and Road Initiative is a win-win development strategy aiming to contribute Chinese strength to the world. However, if we are not clear about what it does, this strategy will be nothing but an illusion.

As Newton puts it, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Actually, the development of human material life and spiritual civilization is not as simple as God makes human being in a day. The material wealth in modern life is accumulated during thousands of years. A variety of things now in China, ranging from plants, animals and cash crops to religion, literature, arts and custom, are not homemade, but originate from the exchanges and spreading of world civilization. The Belt and Road is such an important channel for exchanging and spreading culture in history.

The ultimate goal for China to carry out the Belt and Road Initiative is to maintain its sustainable development. This development is not mere rhetoric, instead it will involve all enterprises and industries, and require them to play their respective roles so that the Initiative may be successfully implemented.

Acclaimed as “the fourth power” in modern society, news media, to some extent, plays a bigger role than the government and the market. Public opinion is definitely facilitated not only by news reporters, but also by government personnel, think tanks, celebrities, experts and scholars. Meanwhile, we should pay great attention to international organizations and trade agreements related to, or competitive with the Belt and Road Initiative. Some traditional major powers do not regard the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, or the rise of China, as a good thing, which therefore always makes them feel nervous and uneasy. In response to the numerous grand national strategies advanced by China, some countries always work out some countermeasures. At this time, the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative is also confronted with various international countermeasures.

Echoed by the lyrics of a Chinese song “never ask where I am from”, an ancient saying goes “never ask a hero where he is from”. Indeed, we don’t have to get to the bottom of many things when it comes to making deals, starting new businesses and even staging a revolution. But it is not so in our quest for knowledge. In our pursuit of knowledge we must understand what and why, otherwise we will be confused by a massive inflow of information, and our work and life will be negatively affected. Einstein said on multiple occasions that “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” The general public need to be more inquisitive than the universally acknowledged genius if they want to succeed. This chapter aims to delve into the nuts and bolts of what the Belt and Road Initiative is.

Together with opportunities, there are also various risks, or even more risks in the construction of the Belt and Road, which requires our great attention. Such risks include not only those in economy and politics, but also in culture, environment and society. To prevent these risks, we need to adopt a grand perspective rather than limit to economy itself.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess if the core value of Chinese traditional culture (harmony) still remains in managers’ hearts, and what factors influence this core value’s persistence. This was done by assessing the harmonious competencies of China’s county and department-level officials based on the competing values framework. Design/methodology/approach A survey of 1,000 county and department-level officials was taken at random based on the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security’s public sector employee listings. An empirical assessment was made and a hierarchical linear regression approach was used. Findings Though Chinese traditional culture has been blended with communist ideology and Western practices in government administration, the core value of Chinese bureaucracy still remains that which is carried in officials’ minds. In general, public officials possess a satisfactory level of harmonious competency. The regression results showed that some factors influence harmonious competency significantly, which disproves the view that harmonious competency might be merely engendered in officials by being born and growing up in Chinese traditional culture. Originality/value Given the assumption that a Chinese-born citizen could inherit the core value of its traditional culture is commonplace, the paper reveals that because the current Chinese culture is a mix of socialist thinking, traditional culture and Western practices, it cannot be assumed any more that the core value of Chinese culture is inherited automatically. On the contrary, it could be promoted by changing or cultivating certain factors in workplaces.

Studies and practices in China unanimously ignored the additivity of government performance evaluation index. In the present evaluation systems, the total score of government performance is added by simply putting the indexes values (numbers) together. Neither the researchers nor the practitioners pay any attention to the reality that the government performance evaluation indexes belong to high attribute dimensions, and they cannot be added directly. To process these high attribute indexes of government performance evaluation, we have to follow their clustering features and reduce dimensions to convert high attribute dimensions to low attribute dimensions. In this study, binary state variable was adopted to reduce dimensions. We reduce the dimension of the performance evaluation index by 4 steps: (1) separating the hazy description of into measurable sub-indexes; (2) treating each sub-index as a binary variable by judging it false or true; true and false are respectively indicated as 1 and 0 in the statistical software or mathematical language; (3) using the methods of aggregate degree, aggregate vector, and set theory to make the sub-indexes aggregate in a same class; (4) nondimensionalising the values of sub-indexes and realizing the additivity of all the sub-indexes.

Citizens’ low continuous-use intention has become a great challenge for the development of e-government in China. This study has developed a chain model of e-government service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention to explain the relationship between government website service quality and perceived value, as well as how that relationship influences citizens’ reuse intention. Using data collected from a survey of 1,650 citizen users living in one direct-controlled municipality and four high-population cities in China, this study verifies the components of e-government service quality through partial least squares (PLS) analysis and then tests the proposed concept model using structural equation modeling. The results reveal that the concept of e-government service quality has eight contributing dimensions: system quality, reliability, security, accessibility, information quality, service capability, interactivity, and responsiveness. Perceived service value is a powerful mediator between service quality and citizens’ continuous-use intention. The intention to use is a consequence of service quality, service value, and satisfaction.

In this paper, a developed PSR model based on Chinese context is established to deal with the ecological vulnerabilities in western China. Judged by the model, we find that the essential way to pre-control the vulnerabilities is to evaluate it. Then a pre-control concept model is developed to evaluate and intervene the vulnerabilities. To carry out the pre-control model, we could use a series of evaluation equations to measure the single vulnerabilities, overall vulnerabilities, vulnerability changing trends, and the synergy degrees between the western ecological vulnerabilities and the performances of the local governments. Under the guidance of the evaluation results, the local governments and other organizations could choose the proper pre-control measures from the strategy matrix to respond to varied ecological vulnerabilities.

In this study we investigated assessments of managerial competency in the context of Chinese local government public officials. Based on data collected from a 2008 survey conducted in China's Jiangsu Province and drawing on the competing values framework developed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1981, 1983), we examined discrepancies in the assessment of managerial competencies through the supervisors' self-assessments of their own competencies, subordinates' self-assessments of their own competencies, supervisors assessments of their subordinates' competencies, and subordinates' assessments of their supervisors' competencies. We found that, significant differences existed between the managerial competency assessments of public officials with leadership positions and the assessments of their subordinates. This calls into question the validity and effectiveness of supervisors' assessments and peer assessments of managerial competencies in Chinese government. We offer both general and specific policy suggestions for improving the measurement of managerial competencies in China.

This paper focuses on how the Chinese public Cadres Managerial Competence of County and Department Level use their managerial competences in China, PR based on Competing Values Framework. By a 3-stage evaluation, we find that In general, the local government leaders at department or county level in China have quite good managerial competences. We can see that the 21 competences of "Developing/Communicating Vision", "Understanding Self and Others", "Living With Change", "Thinking Creatively", etc all scored more than 4 point, which means that the leaders' 21/24 competences are satisfying, because 4 points is an acceptable score. At last, we investigate the relations between managerial competences and the influence variables such as age, gender, length of work, and find some variables affect the competences heavily, while others not.

We first reviewed all Chinese local government performance evaluation forms to find that there came across a deadlock in the practice of evaluation. We discovered because the present performance evaluation cannot deal with the quality and quantity, certainty and uncertainty well, they have caused some deadlocks. In order to get out of the deadlocks, we use data mining as a tool to establish the government performance evaluation data houses based on indicator data market, capacity data market, local resource data market, etc. Eventually, we solve the problems occur in local government performance evaluations at present by mining the evaluation data and mining the related data on the basis of the data houses.