Between Politics And Finance Hong Kong S Infinity War

As the Covid-19 pandemic strikes hard, protests in Hong Kong appear to have abated. Distant seem the days when yellow umbrellas and balaclavas saturated global media. And yet, just like at the start of what has now come to be known as the 2019 “global protest wave”, Hong Kong remains at the frontline of political contestation worldwide. The protests against the 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition law unearthed one of the main points of contention between Hong Kong and mainland China. Through the protests, China’s increasingly assertive stance has found a counterweight, revealing how important the city is to Beijing. China’s actions towards Hong Kong might serve as a litmus test for Beijing’s ability to mediate and pacify its neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic risks further heightening tensions between the Hong Kong and the mainland. What makes Hong Kong so special? To what extent have the protests exacerbated or eased over time? How will the city’s role in mainland China’s outward-looking plans change, if the protests continue?

The coronavirus pandemic that has rocked China since December 2019 has posed a gruelling test for the resilience of the country’s national economy. Now, as China emerges from its Covid-induced “recession”, it feels like the worst is behind it. How did China manage to come out almost unscathed from the worst crisis in over a century?This Report examines how China designed and implemented its post-Covid recovery strategy, focussing on both the internal and external challenges the country had to face over the short- and medium-run.The book offers a comprehensive argument suggesting that, despite China having lost economic and political capital during the crisis, Beijing seems to have been strengthened by the “pandemic test”, thus becoming an even more challenging “partner, competitor and rival” for Western countries.

Is the concept of open society still relevant in the 21st century? Do the current social, moral, and political realities call for a drastic revision of this concept? Here fifteen essays address real-world contemporary challenges to open society from a variety of perspectives. What unites the individual authors and chapters is an interest in open society’s continuing usefulness and relevance to address current problems. And what distinguishes them is a rich variety of geographical and cultural backgrounds, and a wide range of academic disciplines and traditions. While focusing on probing the contemporary relevance of the concept, several chapters approach it historically. The book features a comprehensive introduction to the history and current ‘uses’ of the theory of open society. The authors link the concept to contemporary themes including education, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive science, African cosmology, colonialism, and feminism. The diversity of viewpoints in the analysis reflects a commitment to plurality that is at the heart of this book and of the idea of open society itself.

The 2010s might be remembered as a time of increased polarization in American life. The decade contained both the Obama era and the Trump era, and as the nation’s political fissures widened, so did the gap between the haves and have-nots. Hollywood reflected these divisions, choosing to concentrate on big franchise blockbusters at the expense of mid-budget films, while new players like Netflix and Amazon offered fresh opportunities for low-budget and independent filmmakers. As the movie business changed, films ranging from American Sniper to Get Out found ways to speak to the concerns of a divided nation. The newest installment in the Screen Decades series, American Cinema in the 2010s takes a close look at the memorable movies, visionary filmmakers, and behind-the-scenes drama that made this decade such an exciting time to be a moviegoer. Each chapter offers an in-depth examination of a specific year, covering a wide variety of films, from blockbuster superhero movies like Black Panther and animated films like Frozen to smaller-budget biopics like I, Tonya and horror films like Hereditary. This volume introduces readers to a decade in which established auteurs like Quentin Tarantino were joined by an exceptionally diverse set of new talents, taking American cinema in new directions.

Contents:Heavy-Tailed and Nonlinear Continuous-Time ARMA Models for Financial Time Series (P J Brockwell)Nonlinear State Space Model Approach to Financial Time Series with Time-Varying Variance (G Kitagawa & S Sato)Nonparametric Estimation and Bootstrap for Financial Time Series (J-P Kreiβ)A Note on Kernel Estimation in Integrated Time Series (Y-C Xia et al.)Stylized Facts on the Temporal and Distributional Properties of Absolute Returns: An Update (C W J Granger et al.)Volatility Computed by Time Series Operators at High Frequency (U A Müller)Missing Values in ARFIMA Models (W Palma)Second Order Tail Effects (C G de Vries)Bayesian Estimation of Stochastic Volatility Model via Scale Mixtures Distributions (S T B Choy & C M Chan)On a Smooth Transition Double Threshold Model (Y N Lee & W K Li)Interval Prediction of Financial Time Series (B Cheng & H Tong)A Decision Theoretic Approach to Forecast Evaluation (C W J Granger & M H Pesaran)Portfolio Management and Market Risk Quantification Using Neural Networks (J Franke)Detecting Structural Changes Using Genetic Programming with an Application to the Greater-China Stock Markets (X B Zhang et al.)and other papers Readership: Researchers in finance, time series analysis, economics and actuarial science, as well as investment bankers, stock market analysts and risk managers. Keywords:Proceedings;Workshop;Statistics;Finance;Hongkong (China)

In this monograph, Colonel Tony Pfaff explores the ethical challenges facing the Army in an era of persistent conflict dominated by a variety of irregular threats. Pfaff argues that these challenges arise because irregular adversaries change the character of their war from imposing one's will on the enemy to compelling the enemy to accept one's interest. While this shift may seem subtle, Pfaff argues, it suggests a number of important practical and ethical implications for our way of war. Formerly, civilians were largely separable from warfighting, meaning that our strategies of annihilation and attrition were the most effective--and ethical--paths to victory. But now, when combating irregular threats, civilians are no longer separable from warfighting. Consequently, strategies of annihilation and attrition not only undermine a successful resolution of the conflict, but they are unethical. This last point suggests that the Army needs to adapt the PME to account for these changes and to adopt a number of policies and procedures to account for the expanded role irregular conflicts demand Soldiers play.