Jun Peng - Böcker

Since 1978, when China started remaking its economy, it has also embarked on an unparalleled effort at remaking its pension system to accommodate its hybrid economic model. This book tells the story of how China has managed to build a national pension system that now covers most of its population and what this system holds for its future.This book covers the following topics: evolution of Chinese pension system to its current form; benefit design, financing, and governance of current pension system; challenges facing the pension system, especially the looming funding shortage due to accelerating population ageing; solutions to the challenges; and lessons learned from the Chinese experience. Due to the fragmentation of pension system among 31 mainland provinces, we also select three provinces as case studies to help readers gain a richer understanding of how economic and geographic diversity has created disparity in pension benefit design and financing between provinces and within a province and how such disparity adds complexity and challenges to the pension system.This timely and important study provides up-to-date and in-depth analyses for policymakers and stakeholders to make informed decisions and will be relevant for all scholars and students of public administration and public policy studies.

Since 1978, when China started remaking its economy, it has also embarked on an unparalleled effort at remaking its pension system to accommodate its hybrid economic model. This book tells the story of how China has managed to build a national pension system that now covers most of its population and what this system holds for its future.This book covers the following topics: evolution of Chinese pension system to its current form; benefit design, financing, and governance of current pension system; challenges facing the pension system, especially the looming funding shortage due to accelerating population ageing; solutions to the challenges; and lessons learned from the Chinese experience. Due to the fragmentation of pension system among 31 mainland provinces, we also select three provinces as case studies to help readers gain a richer understanding of how economic and geographic diversity has created disparity in pension benefit design and financing between provinces and within a province and how such disparity adds complexity and challenges to the pension system.This timely and important study provides up-to-date and in-depth analyses for policymakers and stakeholders to make informed decisions and will be relevant for all scholars and students of public administration and public policy studies.

Intense media coverage of the public pension funding crisis continues to fuel heightened awareness in and debate over public pension benefits. With over $3 trillion in assets currently under management, the ramifications of poor oversight are severe. It is important that practitioners, researchers, and taxpayers be well-advised regarding any concerns, but until now traditional references have provided very little coverage.State and Local Pension Fund Management provides a basic and systematic discussion of all the major issues facing those responsible for state and local public retirement programs. The author begins with a technical overview that examines the history of the public pension system. He then proceeds to examinations of pension benefit design, actuarial valuation and funding methods, financial reporting, and pension asset investment management. These technical discussions prepare readers for the second component, which is a focus on policy. The book delves into issues such as managing public pension programs in the political context of public budgeting, pension benefit reforms, and the fairness and sustainability of pension benefits in the public sector. In addition, the author dedicates a chapter to a detailed discussion of other postemployment benefits (OPEBs) such as life, disability, and long-term care insurance, as well as healthcare subsidies. The book concludes by exploring the dilemma over how to ensure financial security for public employees in their retirement without putting additional pressure on state and local government finance. By understanding the major issues involved in managing retirement benefit programs in the public sector, readers will gain the knowledge needed to make informed decisions regarding specific fund management. They will also be better able to participate in the debate over the larger issues regarding pension fund policy and reform measures.

The contested and polysemic concept of ideology has been used only marginally in research on intercultural communication education. This edited volume focuses on the ideological dimensions of online interculturality in higher education, encompassing areas such as telecollaboration, virtual classrooms and online teacher professional development.The chapter authors explore the intercultural engagements, perceptions and experiences of students, teachers and researchers in different parts of the world, including Australia, China, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and the USA. In doing so, they aim to contribute to the current critical and reflexive turn in research and teaching that is examining global socio-economic, political and linguistic inequalities and imbalances of power. Using concrete examples from their own practices, the chapter authors critically and reflexively problematise 'doing' interculturality in higher education by identifying, engaging with, reflecting on and revising ideologies of online interculturality. By intersecting interculturality, technology and ideology, this book also makes a critical contribution to the literature on the internationalisation of higher education and its digitalisation.Written in a globally friendly and engaging style, the book will appeal to academics and students of intercultural communication education in online environments.

The contested and polysemic concept of ideology has been used only marginally in research on intercultural communication education. This edited volume focuses on the ideological dimensions of online interculturality in higher education, encompassing areas such as telecollaboration, virtual classrooms and online teacher professional development.The chapter authors explore the intercultural engagements, perceptions and experiences of students, teachers and researchers in different parts of the world, including Australia, China, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and the USA. In doing so, they aim to contribute to the current critical and reflexive turn in research and teaching that is examining global socio-economic, political and linguistic inequalities and imbalances of power. Using concrete examples from their own practices, the chapter authors critically and reflexively problematise 'doing' interculturality in higher education by identifying, engaging with, reflecting on and revising ideologies of online interculturality. By intersecting interculturality, technology and ideology, this book also makes a critical contribution to the literature on the internationalisation of higher education and its digitalisation.Written in a globally friendly and engaging style, the book will appeal to academics and students of intercultural communication education in online environments.

This book chiefly presents a novel approach referred to as backward fuzzy rule interpolation and extrapolation (BFRI). BFRI allows observations that directly relate to the conclusion to be inferred or interpolated from other antecedents and conclusions. Based on the scale and move transformation interpolation, this approach supports both interpolation and extrapolation, which involve multiple hierarchical intertwined fuzzy rules, each with multiple antecedents. As such, it offers a means of broadening the applications of fuzzy rule interpolation and fuzzy inference. The book deals with the general situation, in which there may be more than one antecedent value missing for a given problem. Two techniques, termed the parametric approach and feedback approach, are proposed in an attempt to perform backward interpolation with multiple missing antecedent values. In addition, to further enhance the versatility and potential of BFRI, the backward fuzzy interpolation method isextended to support α-cut based interpolation by employing a fuzzy interpolation mechanism for multi-dimensional input spaces (IMUL). Finally, from an integrated application analysis perspective, experimental studies based upon a real-world scenario of terrorism risk assessment are provided in order to demonstrate the potential and efficacy of the hierarchical fuzzy rule interpolation methodology.