The objective of this thesis is to explore the development strategy and location factors that affect on Taiwanese firms' investment in China's western region. In the first step of this research, we review literature and analyze China's strategy of western region. Main theories adopted in this study include "Regional Growth Theory", "Location Theory", and "Location Policy". In the second step, we adopt questionnaire survey to analyze the intention of Taiwanese firms' investment in China's western region. The statistical analysis of questionnaire data includes the use of t-test, ANOVA-test, Likert's summated scale analysis, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. They examine the relationship and effectiveness between the location selection and intention of Taiwanese firms' investment in China's western region. Through this research, the conclusions of this thesis are as following: firstly, the strategy " Spot-Axle Model" is adopted for the development of western region. Therefore, the location with railway has high priority in western development. Secondly, a total of 585 questionnaires were mailed to 12 industries of Taiwanese firms in China, out of which 78 firms were responding and 70 of them were valid questionnaires. The results of questionnaire survey are presented below: 1) In Taiwanese firms' views, the Sichuan Province, Chongging Municipality, Yunna Province, and Shaanxi Province are the best regions to investment for China's western region. And the best timing is during the period of 2001-2010s. 2) The certainty factors that affect on investment are labors, property policies, communications, and infrastructure. And market is an uncertainty factor. 3) They are different consideration by Taiwanese firm for the choice of locations between eastern region and western region. Taiwanese firms attach importance to market and labor factors in the eastern region. And the infrastructure, communication, preferential policies are the important factors in the western region. 4) According to the factor analysis, 76% of investment considerations can be explained by 10 factors, including quantity and price of labor and land, communications, public facilities, cultures, agglomeration, markets, minerals, policies, economics, and nature environment, which are selected from 36 factors included in this study. 5) We use cluster analysis to analyze the choice of location by Taiwanese firms. The results show that 58.6% samples belong to the category of "quantity and price of labor and land¡Vmarket oriented", and 18.6% samples belong to "nature¡Vinfrastructure oriented".

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This thesis focusses on contemporary China. It examines the role the dominant ideology plays in determining the kinds of texts and narratives that are translated for export as part of government-sponsored translation projects. The literary magazine Pathlight, launched as an instrument of Chinese cultural diplomacy, is at the centre of this research project. At the turn of the 21st century, the Chinese government stepped up its funding of cultural diplomacy activities in efforts to disseminate Chinese traditional culture and Chinese discourse internationally. This move was fuelled by mounting criticism and negative reporting from the Western mainstream media on China, and China’s declining image worldwide. As part of this, the Chinese government initiated a number of projects to enhance the country’s image and discursive power through cross-cultural exchanges and cultural diplomacy, and thus forge its own narrative on China in the international community (K. Zhao, 2016). Drawing upon notions of patronage and ideology from Lefevere’s rewriting theory and anchoring on previous research on similar translation projects, this study applies qualitative content analysis methods to pinpoint the recurring themes and narratives in the English translations exported in Pathlight from 2011 to 2019. It searches for links between these recurring themes and narratives and current Chinese mainstream ideology as expressed by “the Chinese dream.” The findings of this dissertation reveal that, although the dominant ideology in China does put certain limitations on what kinds of stories and narratives are selected for translation and export in government-sponsored translation projects, compared to years prior to the economic reforms of the 1980s, the variety of stories and narratives translated and exported has greatly increased. Arguably, this could be explained by the changes in the country’s dominant ideology over the past 30 years, and by how the Chinese government is turning to “softer” methods of control.

This research aims to investigate the development approaches, operational experiences, and market influences of foreign invested travel service (FITS) companies, including travel agencies and tour operators, in China in the opening decade (1998-2007) of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the industry. It also examines the Chinese business environment for the development of the FITS sector in the country. The investigation was conducted through some focused aspects, including different roles of three major locations; the setup and licensing process in the FITS sector; the FITSs’ original countries and relative features; their ownership and management structures; their major target markets and profitability; the FITS’s HR strategies on the local employment; the relationships between the FITS sector and the indigenous services, and the overall environment, as well as the opportunities and challenges for the sector’s development in China. The research focuses on three locations, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province which host almost all the FITS companies (27 registered in total) in China in the decade. The methodology combines the study of both primary and secondary data, with interviews being undertaken with the FITSs (29 formal interviews with 14 FITSs) and a questionnaire survey towards 150 Chinese travel services in the locations. Given the understanding of existing literature on the travel trade business, FDI, China’s economic and political foundations, and the opening of the Chinese tourism industry, the thesis argues that the development of the FITS sector in China was substantially constrained and shaped by the protectionist policies of the Chinese government in the first opening decade. The government’s strong power through policies and SOEs is also one of the most considerable challenges for FITSs in China. However, the FITS companies were not passive actors in this situation, but developed a range of strategies in response to the changing regulatory framework, which effectively shaped a rapidly emerging sector and its relations with endogenous companies. The research is important also because there are positive opportunities in the country for the future development of the FITS sector, in response to anticipated further opening of the market.

Mainland China since its economic reform has become one of the countries that attract most foreign investment, which brought significant influence on China¡¦s economic development. However, the foreign investment has a highly unbalanced distribution within China, with the coastal area absorbing more than eighty per cent of the total amount. The uneven distribution exacerbated the development disparity among different regions. In an effort to address the regional development gap and ameliorate inland economic development, central government in China put forward the Western Development Program in 2000. This paper seeks to analyze the impacts foreign investment brought to west China, by examining China¡¦s foreign investment policy since its economic reform, and its Western Development Program since 2000, respectively. The research concludes that as economic reform began in China¡¦s eastern area, the region benefited from government¡¦s favorable foreign investment policy and advanced its economic development. Western area, on the contrary, demonstrates otherwise. The Western¡¦s Development Program failed to attract substantial foreign investment into inland China, and the preferential policies for foreign investment had only very limited success. This is due to a range of factors taken into consideration by foreign investors when contemplating operating in the western area, including the infrastructure and the investment environment in west China. As such, government¡¦s preferential policies remain ineffective and the distribution of foreign investment continues to be highly asymmetrical.

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Since the opening of economic reform in 1978, mainland China's national power as a whole has been greatly enhanced with more than two decades of economic development. Under the impact of such events as the First Persian Gulf War, the Kosovo War, global anti-terrorist attacks following the 9/11/01 Attacks on America, and the Second Persian Gulf War, mainland China has thus reconstructed its viewpoint of international as well as regional security. This thesis aims to inspect, from the perspective of international regime, China's policy towards UN peacekeeping operations and apply the rationale of Neo-liberal Institutionalism ( which is based on international regime theory ) to explaining and analyzing the evolution of China's peacekeeping policy. China's policy has made a drastic impact on current international relations, involving peace and stability not just of Asian-Pacific but of cross-Strait relations. Due to the two-handed strategy adopted in dealing with ongoing cross-Strait issues, China has always shown reluctance to renounce the use of military force on Taiwan up to the present. As a result, cross-Strait security is now being threatened from enormous military stress. Hopefully, both sides of the Taiwan Strait can resolve existing political conflicts by taking peaceful means. However, in the face of such threats from China's abrupt rise as well as having its veto exercised by force in the UN Security Council and then proceeding to play a zero-sum game in which pure competitions in foreign affairs are doomed to become intensified, I'm deeply convinced that, through peacekeeping operations as well as coordination and cooperation between regional/international organizations ( as they are probed into in the thesis ), possible cross-Strait conflicts can be reduced to a great extent.

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China’s mega-regions, in addition to cities and metropolitan areas, have become the engines for economic development, and the target areas for regional and national policies. Reflecting upon China’s current path of regional urbanization, the proposed research examines a fundamental issue for China’s megaregional development: the impact of transport network development on the spatial pattern of China’s megaregions. Using the multiple national Censuses (1982, 1990, 2000, 2010) and the transport network GIS data in the corresponding years, this research 1) constructs measures of megaregional spatial patterns, 2) assesses the spatial trajectory of megaregional growth based on the differentiated growth rates of metropolitan cities, 3) computes indicators of megaregional transport network connectivity and accessibility, 4) examines the impacts of transportation infrastructure on megaregional growth trajectory. This research helps understand the spatial structure of China’s megaregions with newly constructed quantitative measures of polycentric spatial development, as well as the intra-megaregion and inter-megaregion variation of transport network in China. It also clarifies the link between transport infrastructure and megaregional spatial structure in China’s unique context by providing quantitative evaluation of the implications of transport investment for the spatial pattern in Chinese megaregions. Finally it enriches the megaregional solutions to China’s vision of economic, social and environmental sustainability.

Master of Arts / Department of Economics / LeiLei Shen / This paper aims to examine the effect of property taxes on selling prices in China’s real estate market. I collect the data in China’s 35 major cities before and after the property tax has been implemented, and estimate the effects of property taxes using the Differences-in-Differences method. I find that the effect of property taxes in Shanghai and Chongqing does not lead to lower house prices in these two cities.