The 2017 Thousand-Village Survey Officially Launched
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of SUFE, the Thousand-Village Survey has stepped into its tenth year. On March 30th, SUFE held the initial meeting of the 2017 Thousand-Village Survey. The attendees included Jiang Chuanhai, Vice President of SUFE; Professor Huang Hailiang, Executive Deputy Team Leader of the 2017 project group, and the members of the group: Professor Weihang, chief expert of 2016 Thousand-Village Survey; Professor Liu Liya, chief expert of 2015 Thousand-Village Survey; and heads of the related departments including the data group, training group, the Student Affairs Department, the Youth League Committee, the Department of Publicity, the Teaching Affairs Department, the Graduate School, the Scientific Research Department and the Department of Development and Planning. Ying Wangjiang of the Department of Development and Planning presided over the meeting.
Professor Wei Hang first talked about the progress of 2016 Thousand-Village Surveyproject and the working plan of the project, and then he shared his experience. In 2016, 2,188 students joined in the project of 2016, making up 1,472 teams. The teams headed for 32 provinces including Xinjiang and Xizang, visited 1,500 villages and finished over 30,000 questionnaires. The project group will push forward the outputs of the Nine “1 Project” including an annual report, an index, the theses, etc. to contribute to the social development of our country and improve the “brand effectiveness” of the Thousand-Village Survey.
Cao Lijuan, Deputy Director of the Department of Development & Planning, illustrated the executive plan of the annual research program of 2017 from the organizing frame, task arrangement and time mode.
On behalf of the research group, Professor Huang Hailiang introduced the annual research program of 2017, “the Internet Using Condition of China’s Rural Areas,” through the backgrounds, the context, the plan and the support. He pointed out that the internet would be the breakthrough to connect the different topics of Thousand-Village Surveys for the last ten years. Using the method with features of information technology to start the research and knowing the penetrating level of the internet in every aspect of farmers’ daily lives can provide instructive suggestions for eliminating the gap of data.
During the free discussion, Professor Liu Liya, the representative of chief experts; Ni Zhixing, Director of the Student Affairs Department; Li Jinsong, Vice Dean of the Graduate School; Chen Zhengliang, Deputy Director of the Scientific Research department; Han Dongmei, leader of the data group; and Professor Lao Guoling, (the members of the project group) had a heated discussion over the organization, questionnaire design, group composition, students’ safety, training job and output transition. They put forward the proposal that the students who had participated in the survey before can help students who joined the project this year, and of enlarging the research scope to help the project be carried out successfully.
At the end of the meeting, Vice President Jiang Chuanhai confirmed the achievements the Thousand-Village Survey has made in the past ten years. The project aims to reinforce in students’ the responsibility of contributing to the country and people, the innovation of exploring and the ability to solve problems. The project is enriched continuously and now becomes a systematic program that includes students’ cultivation, scientific research, social service and subject construction. He hopes that the project constantly takes students’ cultivation as its core and reinforces subjects’ function, builds its platform, and integrates the resources to improve itself on the basis of the former experience.
The Thousand-Village Survey on “Rural Economy, Rural Development and Rural Demography” is held by SUFE every summer. It covers 32 provinces, near 10,000 farmer families. Since 2008, we had finished 9 researches which include “the Basic Condition of the Chinese Rural Area”, “the Medical Insurance Condition of the Chinese Rural Area”, “the Farmers’ Income Condition in China”, “Food Security in Rural Areas of China”, “Education Level in Rural Areas of China”, “the Labor Transferring in Rural Areas of China”, “the Aged-support in Rural Areas of China”, and “the Basic Financial Service in Rural Areas of China”. The annual topic for 2017 will be “the Internet Using Condition in Rural Areas of China” and the chief expert will be Professor Yue Jinfeng.
Translated by: Dong Xiaowen
Edited by: Dominic Graham
Source : SUFE News
The 2017 Lujiazui Financial City Job Affair Was Held at SUFE
For the new semester, the Student Employment Guidance Center continued to expand labor market oppurtunities for students. The center introduced nearly two hundred high quality employers to SUFE, and held the “Lujiazui Financial City Job Fair”, the “Yangpu District Job Fair”, the “China Insurance Association Job Fair” and three other Job fairs tailored for SUFE students. Lots of famous companies presented themselves in these job fairs.
The Lujiazui Financial City Job Fair is a renowned job fair in Shanghai. This job fair introduced fast-developing industries (such as shipping, headquarters economics, special services, cultural ideas and much more) to SUFE, which provided more positions to the students.
52 companies presented in this job affair, which contained twelve fund companies, 10 futures companies, 7 banks, 5 securities companies and 4 finance and insurance companies. These companies provided rich position choices.
Students who attended the fair said that they got useful information about posts from the companies. They could talk with top human resource departments right on campus, which helped them with their future job seeking. Many students said they were interestedi in participating in more similar activities .
More job fairs will be held at SUFE on the 24th, 28th, and 31st of March and the 7th of April. We hope all students find a good job!
Translated by Wang Xueqing
Edited by David Switzer Zhang Boxin
Source : SUFE News
SUFE Center for Anti-Monopoly Law Provides Consulting Service for Tetra Pak Case
SUFE received a letter of thanks from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (“SAIC”), which highly acclaims Professor Tan Guofu and Professor Ju Heng and other economists of the SUFE Center for Anti-Monopoly Law and Competition Economics (“CAML”). The 2 professors provided comprehensive economic analysis and professional consulting service to SAIC in the case of Tetra Pak’s dominance in the market under Anti-monopoly Law. In November 2016, SAIC issued a press release on the over-four-year investigation with a fine imposed in amount of 670 million Yuan on Tetra Pak. The SAIC’s decision and the penalty in this case has raised considerable concerns in the international community and the masses speak highly of this case. This decision also strikingly enhances the international influence of China’s law enforcement agencies.
SUFE CAML has assembled a panel of research scholars in almost a decade of international recruitment and wide cooperation. Both full-time professors and distinguished professor teams are engaged in the program. The panel keeps up with the cutting-edged research through regular research seminars and annual workshops. As time goes by, the discourse of industrial organization economics has seen a benchmark in terms of academic research.
The thorough research greatly contributes to high standards of strategy consulting service. SAIC notes that the case of Tetra Pak falls within rather complicated Dominance Case and they have employed several panels from various fields during the investigation. The experts of SUFE research center studied an abundance of domestic and foreign literatures on monopoly, conducted active research based on masses of solid data and composed thorough special papers, which offered considerable support in the investigation.
Meanwhile, SAIC has manifested its professional enforcement during the investigation. The officials of SAIC and experts of SUFE developed effective communication, where they discussed not only economic evidence but also the research into related theoretical issues. The officials of SAIC also attended the workshop of antitrust 2015 organized by SUFE CAML. SAIC expressed its willingness to foster deeper cooperation in the future to maintain the fairness of market economics.
Review of Tetra Pak Case
On November 16th 2016, SAIC released the decision on the Tetra Pak Case. SAIC decided that Tetra Pak’s conduct violated the regulations in the Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) of the People’s Republic of China, and constituted tying without legitimate reason, restricting trade without legitimate reason, and other acts of abuse of market dominance as stipulated in Article 17 (4), (5) and (7) of the AML. Pursuant to the AML, SAIC ordered Tetra Pak to stop the illegal conduct, and imposed on Tetra Pak the penalty of 7% of its sales in 2011 in Greater China.
According to the investigations, SAIC concluded that from 2009 to 2013, Tetra Pak had dominant position in the three markets including paper-based aseptic packaging equipment for liquid food (“equipment”), technology service for paper-based aseptic packaging equipment (“technology service”), and paper-based aseptic packaging materials (“packaging materials”) in mainland China, whose clients are in the majority dairy manufactures and secondarily soft drink enterprises. All 3 markets show rather rigid barriers to market entry. Tetra Pak won and retained clients in long term supply by its operation experience, technical service system and continuous research and development; all these reasonably justify its edge over other competitors.
SAIC concluded that Tetra Pak had enhanced its market dominance in addition to its original market power through varied contracts.
Highlights of the Case
The difficulty and the focus fall in loyalty rebates. Rebates are common business practice, benefiting consumers and promoting market competition. But in this case, SAIC explicitly demonstrated that Tetra Pak had specific market conditions to impose loyalty rebates.
In the packaging market, large and mid-sized enterprises will purchase a certain amount of packaging material. If the customers made incremental orders, they would receive a lower price and additional rebates. Other competing packaging materials suppliers have to not only match Tetra Pak’s rebates for contestable portions, but also further reduce their prices to compensate customers’ rebate loss in non-contestable portions; while the average price of Tetra Pak remains high, they maintain a rather low price for incremental orders. Such a situation brings difficulty for other packaging materials suppliers to compete with Tetra Pak.
The previous orders can be deemed, as non-contestable demand of Tetra Pak’s market power and the incremental orders is contestable demand. Tetra Pak enhanced its dominance in contestable demands by loyalty rebates. The critical point needed to understand the antitrust conducts in this case is that Tetra Pak also employs retroactive rebates in its rebate strategy, which further adds to difficulty of other packaging enterprises to compete with it.
Tetra Pak enhances its market dominance in an unreasonable way not by advance of techniques and service, but by its market power. This further induces customers to choose Tetra Pak and foreclose its competitors, which eventually restricts market competition in the short run. Therefore Tetra Pak sustains and expands its market power and the Tetra Pak-dominant market is hard to change.
According to the Decision, SAIC took the “rule of reason” approach and employed the save clause of principal (7) of Article 17 of the AML, which can serve as a landmark model in addressing cases of eliminating and restricting competition.
The School of International Business Administration and CAML will continue the Workshop on Antitrust and Industrial Organization in 2017. The workshop features enforcement agencies, experts in the industry and outstanding scholars around the world, and serves to boost research on antitrust and offer theoretical bases for antitrust enforcement.
Brief introductions of the 2 experts
Professor Tan Guofu
Guofu Tan is a Professor of Economics, University of Southern California with PhD from the California Institute of Technology, Distinguished Professor of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Dean of Center for Anti-Monopoly Law and Competition Economics. His research fields are Auction Theory, Industrial Organization, Antitrust Economics, Competition Policy and Regulation, Microeconomics and Chinese Economy. He serves in various editorial capacities for the International Journal of Industrial Organization, the Annals of Economics and Finance, China Economic Quarterly, and the Review of Industrial Economics.
Doctor Ju Heng
Doctor Ju Heng is Assistant Dean of the School of International Business Administration; Executive Director of Center of Anti-Monopoly Law and Competition Economics. PhD of Economics from the University of British Columbia Economics. His professional interests include Industrial Organization, Regulation and Competition Policy, Applied Microeconomics, and Chinese Economy. He has published several papers in Review of Economics and Statistics, International Economic Review, Journal of Comparative Economics, etc. He also works as antitrust expert of Shanghai Administration of Industry and Commerce at the time this article is composed.
Translated by Sun Yichen
Edited by Dominic Graham , Zhang Boxin
Source ： SUFE News
Confucius Institute at Queen Mary University of London holds the second annual council meeting at SUFE
On the morning of March 31st, the Confucius Institute at Queen Mary University of London held the second annual council meeting at SUFE. There were eight members attending the conference including Simon Gaskell, principle of Queen Mary University and chairman of the council and Fan Liming, Presidentof SUFE and Vice Chairman of the council. Prof. Gaskell hosted the meeting.
President Fan kicked off the proceedings with a warm welcome to the council members from Britain. She said that SUFE has long been cooperating with Queen Mary University, and the establishment of a Confucius Institute further deepens the communication in the areas of academics, research, culture and more. She also conveyed sincere gratitude to Prof. Gaskell, who is leaving office this year. During the meeting, the council discussed and passed a series of issues, including the work report and final financial costs for 2016, the work plan for 2017 and also for the following three years.
Next, Kathryn Richardson,Dean of the Confucius Institute reported the development of the Confucius Institute at Queen Mary. Since its establishment in October of 2015, 72 students have registered for Chinese courses; Teaching venues have been set up in six primary and junior schools with 83 students participating in Chinese courses and 276 students attending Chinese language culture workshops; 60 students have received GCSE teaching at local Chinese schools in London. At the end of 2016, the Confucius Institute applied to set upan HSK Chinese Proficiency Test Center and successfully organized the first test.
In addition, the institute pays great attention to promotion of Chinese culture locally by holding Chinese New-Year celebrations, Dragon Boat Festival activities, film evenings and much more. More than 770 people have taken part in these activities and they were well recievedlocally.
Before the meeting, council members visited the International Business Chinese Teaching and Resource Development office at SUFE. They got to know Chinese businessculturefromfivemodulescomprisedby “Yi(justice)”、”He(Harmony)”、”Ji(propitious)”、”Tong(together)”、”Mou(plan)” and experienced the charm of electronic calligraphy.
In the future, the institute intends to enrich the forms and level of Chinese teaching and set up at least one Confucius Class. Besides, it will put more focus on market expansion of business Chinese courses and attract more businesspersons to join. In terms of activities, it will start more courses on Chinese activities like calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting, continue celebrating important Chinese festivals and add more related forums and speeches.
Translated by Sun Mengni
Edited by David Switzer Zhang Boxin
Source : SUFE News
