An assessment of China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Agreement’s economic and environmental impacts on China

Recently, China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea (Korea) are conducting a government-commissioned feasibility study on the Free Trade Agreement among the three countries (CJKFTA) to form a regional free trade zone in East Asia. Considering that freer trade can cause unexpected impact on domestic environment, there is a need to evaluate the environmental impact of such a trade policy. This move should be made to help negotiators understand and pay more attention to environmental issues during CJKFTA negotiations, and to help lobby with the government to carry out appropriate policy instruments for adaptation or mitigation. Following the Chain Reaction Assessment Method that integrates and links the elements of trade, production, and environment, the present research aims to quantitatively assess CJKFTA’s possible impact on China’s environment. This is done by estimating the variations of China’s major conventional pollutants and greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission in two policy scenarios to represent CJKFTA’s scale and composition effects on China’s environment. Estimating the variations is based on a static Computable General Equilibrium model, working with Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) 7 database and China’s energy-environment statistics. Based on these assessments, CJKFTA is predicted to lead to notable environmental impact, including increased emissions of agricultural total nitrogen, agricultural total phosphorus, chemical oxygen demand, and GHGs. On the other hand, decreased emissions of industrial SO₂ and dust are also expected to happen. Suitable policies need to be made to combat negative effects and amplify positive ones, while aiming at a more sustainable regional freer trade system.     

Spectacles of Labor: Viewing Food Production Through a Television Screen

This paper examines visual and narrative techniques used in representations of food production and processing in contemporary reality television programming. These include normalizing industrial labor, controlling who is given license to speak, the use of humor, baby talk and innuendo, celebrating artifice, presenting numbers without context, and venerating mechanical precision and scale. The paper argues that together these strategies help to convert productive (wage) labor into televisual free labor. Additionally, viewer feedback on these episodes (available through on-line discussion sites and constituting yet another form of free labor) provides some evidence of the ways in which readers interpret these texts, acknowledge the conditions of industrialized labor, and begin to reflect on their own food consumption practices.     

One-pot hydrothermal fabrication of BiVO4/Fe3O4/rGO composite photocatalyst for the simulated solar light-driven degradation of Rhodamine B

• BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/rGO has excellent photocatalytic activity under solar light radiation. • It can be easily separated and collected from water in an external magnetic field. • BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/0.5% rGO exhibited the highest RhB removal efficiency of over 99%. • Hole (h⁺) and superoxide radical (O₂^•−) dominate RhB photo-decomposition process. • The reusability of this composite was confirmed by five successive recycling runs. Fabrication of easily recyclable photocatalyst with excellent photocatalytic activity for degradation of organic pollutants in wastewater is highly desirable for practical application. In this study, a novel ternary magnetic photocatalyst BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/reduced graphene oxide (BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/rGO) was synthesized via a facile hydrothermal strategy. The BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄ with 0.5 wt% of rGO (BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/0.5% rGO) exhibited superior activity, degrading greater than 99% Rhodamine B (RhB) after 120 min solar light radiation. The surface morphology and chemical composition of BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/rGO were studied by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. The free radicals scavenging experiments demonstrated that hole (h⁺) and superoxide radical (O₂^•−) were the dominant species for RhB degradation over BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/rGO under solar light. The reusability of this composite catalyst was also investigated after five successive runs under an external magnetic field. The BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/rGO composite was easily separated, and the recycled catalyst retained high photocatalytic activity. This study demonstrates that catalyst BiVO₄/Fe₃O₄/rGO possessed high dye removal efficiency in water treatment with excellent recyclability from water after use. The current study provides a possibility for more practical and sustainable photocatalytic process.     

中国自由贸易试验区是否抑制了环境污染——来自中国281个城市的实证研究

加快建设贸易强国,提高对外开放水平,是推进高水平对外开放进而实现高质量发展的重大课题。然而,贸易引致而来的环境问题不容忽视,如何有效防治环境污染,推动绿色发展,成为高质量发展中亟须解决的问题之一。本文以自由贸易试验区作为“准自然实验”,利用2005—2019年中国城市的面板数据,通过双重差分法探究贸易与环境的关系。研究发现：自贸区能够显著抑制片区所在城市的环境污染,该结论在考虑内生性问题以及多种稳健性检验后依然成立;自贸区通过优化地区产业结构、提高地区绿色创新能力以及促进地区经济集聚三个作用渠道来抑制地区环境污染;自贸区对地区环境污染的抑制作用存在地理、行政异质性,中西部城市和副省级以上城市的抑制环境污染效应更显著;自贸区在抑制环境污染方面具有空间溢出效应,能够对邻近地区的环境污染起到显著的遏制作用;在抑制环境污染方面,自贸区与“一带一路”倡议之间存在联动作用。本文为丰富自贸区的政策内涵、实现贸易与环境双赢发展提供了新思路。     

高级氧化技术在废水处理中的应用研究进展

探讨了高级氧化技术（Ａｄｖａｎｃｅｄ Ｏｘｉｄａｔｉｏｎ Ｐｒｏｃｅｓｓｅｓ，即ＡＯＰｓ）如：Ｏ３／Ｈ２Ｏ２Ｆｅｎｔｏｎ试剂均相湿式催化氧化；Ｈ２Ｏ２／ＵＶ、Ｏ３／ＵＶ、Ｏ３／Ｈ２Ｏ２／ＵＶ均相光催化氧化；多相湿式催化氧化，多相光催化氧化，多相催化和生化氧化等过程处理废水及其反应机理，论述了ＡＯＰｓ技术在工业废水处理方面的研究进展。     

测定游离氯和总氯样品保存方法研究

建立了游离氯和总氯样品保存方法。用氢氧化钠溶液作为固定剂,现场固定含有游离氯和总氯的水样,使水样pH>12。结果表明,样品经4℃低温避光保存,5 d内测定,测量结果没有显著变化,方法检出限(以Cl2计)为0.004mg/L,加标回收率为96.7%～104%。