Geochemical characteristics of surface sediments and environmental quality assessment in the coastal zone of Hainan Island, northern South China Sea, China.

Tipping into protectionism: Tariff shocks and the fragility of free trade

Land-use transition (LUT), a pivotal vector for anthropogenic intervention in the carbon cycle, profoundly influences the formation and evolution of regional carbon emission patterns. This study focuses on Hainan, China's sole tropical island, and establishes a model accounting for carbon emissions associated with LUT based on related remote-sensing data, socioeconomic statistics, and energy consumption-related data between 2000 and 2025. We combine spatial autocorrelation analysis, an extended logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition model, and the Tapio decoupling model to systematically elucidate the spatiotemporal features of LUT-associated carbon emissions, their driving factors, and their decoupling relation with economic growth. Notably, Hainan Province features an LUT involving decreasing and increasing proportions of carbon-sink land and carbon-source land, respectively, with construction land expansion being the primary transition mode driving carbon emission growth. The associated carbon emission response features a spatial differentiation pattern of high values concentrated in the north and west and low values localized in the south and east. In addition, carbon sources and sinks demonstrate considerable spatial agglomeration. Economic output is the core driver promoting carbon emission growth, with improvements in land-use efficiency and energy intensity being critical for carbon emission mitigation. During the examined period, the correlation between LUT-associated carbon emissions and economic growth evolves from weak to strong decoupling, demonstrating the remarkable efficacy of peak carbon and carbon neutrality goals in guiding emission reduction-focused LUT. Overall, this research provides a scientific basis for coordinating LUT and low-carbon development in the Hainan Free Trade Port initiative.

Occurrence, seasonal variability, and ecological risk of emerging contaminants in estuarine and nearshore waters around Hainan Island, China.

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of bilateral value chain embeddedness between China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) trade partners on carbon emissions. The motivation for this study arises from the growing importance of understanding how trade relationships influence environmental outcomes, especially in the context of the BRI. Using data from 2001 to 2022, the analysis employs panel fixed-effects models, spatial Durbin models, and threshold regression techniques to investigate both direct and indirect effects on carbon emissions. The results reveal that stronger value chain integration significantly reduces emissions across multiple levels. Specifically, the ‘energy efficiency improvement effect’, driven by technological innovation, outweighs the ‘energy consumption intensification effect’ from economic growth, resulting in net carbon reduction. The study identifies two primary decarbonization pathways: technological diffusion and industrial upgrading. Additionally, value chain integration generates positive spatial spillovers, contributing to emissions reductions in neighbouring economies. These findings suggest that China and BRI countries should enhance green value chain cooperation, promote the development of free trade zones, and advance low-carbon development under the BRI framework.

ABSTRACT This article examines the evolution of, and controversies surrounding, China's outbound data transfer regime. Taking the Measures for Security Assessment of Data Exports and the Provisions on Promoting and Regulating Cross-Border Data Flows as key inflection points, it traces the regime through three stages. Before the Measures took effect, Chinese law established the architecture for security assessment but provided limited operational detail, while China pursued cross-border data governance through agreements and initiatives. After the Measures were issued, three compliance pathways—security assessment, standard contractual clauses, and certification—were operationalised. However, practical frictions emerged, including a low trigger threshold for security assessment and uncertainty over certain mechanisms' applicability. With the Provisions' entry into force, filing requirements were eased, exempted scenarios were clarified, and pilot free trade zones were authorised to formulate negative lists. The 2025 Measures for Certification of Personal Information Export further consolidated the toolkit and signalled institutional maturation. Nevertheless, uncertainties remain. These include the indeterminate scope of important data and slow catalogue compilation; overlap and divergence among free trade zone negative lists in sectoral coverage and threshold design; difficulties in aligning domestic rules with digital trade frameworks such as the CPTPP and DEPA; and, in international cooperation, the need to navigate fragmented rulemaking and foreign restrictions on data flows. The article argues that China's regime is best understood not as a static set of rules, but as a tiered toolkit dynamically calibrated amid tensions between security, development, and openness, while facing challenges of legal certainty, coordination, and interoperability.

Abstract Africa’s engagement with the international system is undergoing a significant shift as states and regional institutions increasingly pursue strategic autonomy within an emerging multipolar order. This article examines how African actors leverage South–South cooperation and regional integration to advance developmental sovereignty and geostrategic diversification, moving beyond portrayals of the continent as a passive recipient of external influence. Drawing on qualitative document and policy analysis and a structured set of illustrative case studies—including China–Africa, India–Africa, Turkey/Gulf–Africa partnerships, and intra-African cooperation through African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and regional economic communities—the study traces how Africa is expanding its bargaining capacity, institutional coordination, and development-centred diplomacy. Particular attention is given to Tanzania as an illustrative site where sovereignty-oriented policy positioning and regional engagement reflect broader continental strategies. The findings suggest that while South–South cooperation can widen Africa’s strategic options and support development priorities, it also generates new risks of asymmetry, fragmentation, and dependency substitution if not managed through transparent governance and coordinated institutional frameworks. The article concludes that Africa’s growing agency in global governance depends on sustained regional cohesion, bargaining capacity, and knowledge sovereignty rather than on multipolarity alone.

The growing significance of services in the global economy, driven by the expansion of global value chains and advances in information and communications technology, has made services trade provisions a central element of modern free trade agreements (FTAs). This paper examines the services-related provisions embedded in four of India's recently concluded FTAs, namely the India–Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA), the India–UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), the India–Japan CEPA, and the India–South Korea CEPA, through a scoping review methodology. Drawing on primary agreement texts and secondary literature sourced from Google Scholar, EBSCO, and ProQuest databases, the study maps commitments across eleven key service sectors, including information and communications technology, financial services, professional services, education, health, and transportation. The analysis evaluates the depth and breadth of market access commitments, the treatment of rules of origin, mutual recognition agreements, and the regulatory frameworks governing the movement of natural persons. Findings indicate that while India has progressively deepened its services liberalization commitments, particularly through the mixed scheduling approach introduced in ECTA, structural impediments, including high Services Trade Restrictiveness Index scores, non-tariff barriers, and inadequate enforcement mechanisms, continue to constrain realized trade gains. The paper concludes by identifying policy directions for enhancing the effectiveness of India's FTA engagements in the services sector, with particular attention to regulatory coherence, rules of origin design, and alignment with GATS disciplines.

This paper examines the contributions of ancient African trade practices and perspectives for an effectual African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Trade was a very important economic activity in ancient Africa, freely practiced, within short and long-distances, dependent on the actors and items involved. It was essentially through the direct exchange of goods and services for others (barter system). As time went by, other mediums of exchange: cowrie shells, golds dust, beads and others were introduced. The desire to engage in it, instigated many African communities to develop one industrial technology or the other, like blacksmithing, iron bending, carving, weaving and others, producing what they sold or exchanged for other goods and or items. Trading in these, helped connect African societies, despite challenges (fear, insecurity and transportation constraints) faced. It can therefore be contended that practices such as diversification, lowered barriers and others, that characterised ancient African trade, could enhance the most cherished African integration, unity and prosperity that the African Union seeks. This may further help improve trade relations amongst states within the continent through the AfCFTA, especially by diversifying the production of goods and exterminating all tariff and non-tariff barriers in Africa. Encouraging diversification with “made in Africa” products, would attract more trade opportunities within and beyond the continent. In constructing the paper, primary and secondary data were used, interpreted qualitatively and presented logically.

How does inland Free Trade Zones in China trigger industrial green transformation? Evidence from policy text mining

The Emerging Resistance Index: tracking early resistance to new antibiotics.

In order to support the governance of digital business environment in free trade ports, this paper proposes a dynamic monitoring and collaborative governance framework that integrates multi-source data access, time series status recognition, cross-departmental relationship modeling, risk diagnosis and strategy generation. The system processes 1.28 million records in data streams such as administrative approval, customs declaration, tax service, enterprise feedback, logistics circulation, and public complaints, and encodes 36 indicators into a unified time series representation. The timing identification module characterizes fluctuations in market access, service efficiency, contract enforcement, and regulatory response, and a graph-based collaboration mechanism captures inter- departmental dependencies and triggers linkage disposals. Experimental results show that the model achieves 93.4% state recognition accuracy, 0.917 Macro-F1, 91.8% trend consistency rate and 90.6% governance matching degree. The linkage completion rate reaches 90.9%, and the average response time is compressed to 4.2 hours. This framework provides a more effective and computable path for the monitoring and collaborative governance of the business environment of free trade ports under dynamic conditions.

As the Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP) moves toward full closure operations, industrial sectors in Haikou face an urgent demand for personnel equipped with robust vocational English competence (VEC). This paper examines the structural misalignment between existing higher vocational English education and the authentic occupational language needs of Haikou’s dominant industries. Drawing on stakeholder theory, foreign language education planning theory, and a core competence framework, the study proposes a “Government-Industry-Enterprise-School” (GIES) four-party collaborative cultivation mechanism. Central to this mechanism is a three-dimensional VEC model comprising language proficiency, occupational competence, and intercultural communication capacity. The paper argues that effective cultivation requires simultaneous restructuring of programme objectives, modular curriculum design, dual-supervisory practicum systems, and enterprise-led multi-dimensional assessment. Implications for policy, curriculum reform, and teacher development in free trade port contexts are discussed.

Peru has developed an extensive set of regulations, managerial instruments, and trade standards, largely influenced by free trade agreements, that appear to ensure strict control of the Amazonian timber supply chain. In practice, however, at least 20 per cent of logging is illegal (and up to 86 per cent in some areas), around 70 per cent of companies are informal, and there is repeated evidence of labour exploitation and forced labour. This article explores the relationship between these elements through a systematic review of regulatory and corporate frameworks, interviews with timber workers in Amazonian river ports, and an expert panel analysis. The findings reveal not so much a system of control as one that simulates control: a dense institutional framework that is highly permeable to illegal flows, a traceability scheme that looks modern but lacks accountability, and a trade chain that ultimately relies on a forest regent, a notebook, and a pen. In short, the Peruvian timber sector presents a paradox of international regulatory frameworks and enforcement weaknesses, where compliance is more often performed than achieved.

Abstract This article explores the perspectives of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) on international labour unity during the 1980s and 1990s, a subject largely neglected in previous historical studies. With a focus on high-ranking WFTU officials, it investigates the political and ideological motivations behind the communist federation’s approach to international cooperation, as well as internal debates regarding rapprochement with its Western-oriented counterpart, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). It also examines the polycentric nature of the WFTU, revealing divergent regional perspectives from Europe, Latin America, and Asia, and the varying degrees of support for East–West engagement. The article argues that competing visions of international labour unity within the WFTU intensified internal divisions after 1989 between European and non-European trade unionists.

To foster deeper economic integration across South Asia, the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) was instituted, with India assuming a central role in advancing trade relations among SAARC member states. This study examines the trade creation (TC) and trade diversion (TD) effects resulting from India’s participation in the SAARC nations under the SAFTA framework. Employing the gravity model framework developed by Anderson and van Wincoop (2003, American Economic Review , 93(1), 170–192), the analysis is conducted on a panel comprising 28 countries—including India, seven SAARC partners, and 20 India’s major trading counterparts during the 1988–2023 period. To overcome the limitations inherent in traditional gravity specifications, the model incorporates multilateral trade resistance terms and employs the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator to handle zero trade flows and ensure robust estimation effectively. Findings indicate the coexistence of TD and TC effects in terms of imports. These outcomes suggest that SAFTA’s destination-specific liberalization policies—particularly tariff concessions granted to Least Developed Countries (LDCs)—have positively influenced regional trade dynamics. However, gains from reciprocal liberalization appear uneven, diminishing with greater geographical distance among members. Thus, the findings contribute significantly to shaping informed trade policy frameworks across the region.

ABSTRACT This paper examines how network externalities shape the strategic interaction of trade policies between home and foreign countries. Incorporating reciprocal trade policy into an import‐competing model under Cournot and Bertrand competition, we show that the endogenous choice of trade policies depends critically on the strength of network effects. Under Cournot competition, weak network externalities yield an Intervention–Non‐intervention outcome, where the home country imposes tariffs while the foreign country opts for free trade. However, when network externalities are sufficiently strong, two equilibria arise: Intervention–Non‐intervention or Non‐intervention–Intervention, implying that the home country may prefer free trade. Under Bertrand competition, strong network externalities lead the foreign country to subsidize exports rather than impose an export tax. Moreover, depending on the degree of network effects, three distinct equilibria emerge. These findings suggest that when network externalities are strong, the trade policy preferences of the two trading countries converge, making an equilibrium in which the home country adopts free trade and the foreign country pursues export subsidies Pareto optimal.

This work aims to enhance the efficiency of credit assessment in free trade port banks by proposing a data-driven consumer credit assessment model. First is a review on the application of traditional credit assessment models and big data in this field. Next, the support vector machine (SVM) is integrated with the random balance (RB) sampling algorithm to create the SVM-RB algorithm. Subsequently, the multi-grained cascade forest (mgcForest) is introduced, which utilizes a cascade structure of tree models, to learn representations of consumer credit data in the banking sector. Then, a consumer credit assessment model is built by combining the SVM-RB algorithm with mgcForest. Finally, there is evaluation of the model's performance. The experiments showed that the model achieves performance indicators, including accuracy, F1 score, and area under the curve value, of 94.66%, 81.70%, and 90.55%, respectively. It outperforms the baseline algorithms (SVM and convolutional neural network algorithms) and demonstrates superior global interpretability. Therefore, the model significantly improves performance and effectively ranks the importance of global interpretability, providing valuable insights for banks and the financial industry in free trade ports.

Since mid-1990s Russia had been Armenia’s ‘strategic ally’, although Yerevan was inclined to a foreign policy coined as ‘complementarity’. Meanwhile, Armenia backtracked from the Association Agreement (AA)/Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with the EU in September 2013 in favour of joining the Customs Union (CU)/Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU); such a shift was justified by membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and entailed switching to a policy of ‘supplementarity’. Forging the relations with the EU through the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in 2021, Yerevan’s relations with Moscow deteriorated after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war stopped through the Russian mediation. After Azerbaijan’s subsequent attack on Armenia proper in 2021 followed by the ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population in 2023 the Armenian government resorted to cumbersome tactical ‘hedging’. Whereas the concept of ‘hedging’ has been widely applied to small and middle powers, ontologically, this article will undertake the task of explaining the puzzle of Armenia’s foreign policy ‘twists’ focusing on the empirical developments as of 2018. Epistemologically, it will be inductive. Methodologically, it will employ process-tracing relying on primary (official discourse, visits, data, figures) and secondary sources to demonstrate the transition from the strategy of ‘bandwagoning’ to cumbersome tactical ‘hedging’. It is inferred that the latter is fraught with risks for Armenia given the persistent great-power competition between the US and Russia, the stakes of middle powers Turkey and Iran in the South Caucasus and the Middle East, which have inflated the previously manageable in-betweenness/ entre-deux into unwieldy in-amongness/ entre-plusieurs.

On December 4, 2025, the Trump administration published a new National Security Strategy, fully integrating trade policy into the country's national security system. The Strategy views economic prosperity as the foundation of military strength and the nation's civilizational confidence through rebuilding the industrial base, eliminating trade deficits, and leveraging access to the American market as a tool of geopolitical influence. The transition from globalism and free trade to hard sovereignty and flexible realism is formally enshrined. Cultivating American industrial strength is declared the highest priority of national economic policy. The goal is to achieve global leadership in the global economy through the dominance of American technologies and standards, particularly in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing. In fact, the entire US national security system is fundamentally integrated with AI technologies. Absolute priority is given to global technological dominance as a national security imperative, based not on traditional political ideology, but motivated above all by what works for the United States based on the principle of 'America First. Victory in the AI race is declared as the beginning of a new golden age of human prosperity, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people. The goal is to integrate AI into all sectors of the national economy and public administration. AI is regarded as the most important strategic resource of the emerging new industrial and information revolution, capable of decisively transforming the global economy and changing the balance of power in the world. AI has been transformed into a priority instrument of foreign trade policy in the context of the US national security system.