Xiao Ma

This book compiles a broad range of monitoring and early warning technologies focused on high-resolution in-situ water quality parameters at springs and monitoring wells. The surface collapses often cause severe damage to infrastructures, properties, and loss of lives, whereas contaminated groundwater poses risks to human health and the environment. Collapses are critical in karst systems, sparsing a seventh of Earth’s land surface. Karsts are also very relevant for drinking water, yet karst represents a fourth of global drinking water. Mitigating collapses and contaminated groundwater in karst aquifers can be complicated and costly. These parameters detect hydrodynamics, internal soil erosion, and ground deformation changes as karst collapse and pollution proxies. This book represents the most comprehensive overview of decades of research on karst collapse and groundwater contamination. This book is of interest to researchers and policymakers.

This book is an ethnographic account of education and migration from the perspective of three groups of South Koreans in contemporary China: migrant parents, children/students, and educational agents. The book reveals how these temporary migrants make choices, plan their trajectories and engage with the authorities, both in China and South Korea. Migrant subjectivities among these groups are driven by and respond to the education-migration regimes of both the sending and receiving countries. As ‘people in between’, they occupy flexible and multiple positionalities that are transnationally distributed. However, paradoxically, they experience a juxtaposition of privilege, integration and separation, which is indicative of the Chinese style of internationalisation. The book adds weight to the argument that China is a temporary destination for foreigners and not one for long-term settlement.

Edge computing has been identified as one of the key technologies for 5G networks and beyond due to two prominent advantages: low network latency and reduced core network load. By empowering cloud capabilities and IT service environments at the network edge, edge computing can well support applications of 5G and beyond, such as augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), vehicular network (ultra-reliable low-latency communication services),Internet of Things (massive machine type communication services), and mobile high-definition video (enhanced mobile broadband services). Therefore, edge computing has attracted the attention of both industry and academia since its emergence. This book highlights the progress of 5G edge computing in both industry and academia according to our long-term efforts, including the current practice of public edge providers, the research process of edge computing from academia, the integration of edge computing with 5G, and the future visions of edge computing in the 6G era. From this book, the readers can benefit from: (1) the first comprehensive measurement study on a leading public edge platform, NEP (next-generation edge platform); 2) a clear and in-depth introduction of the key technologies of 5G edge computing; (3) the latest progress of 5G-integrated edge computing; and (4) pioneering exploration of 6G edge computing based on Tiansuan constellation – an open satellite-terrestrial integrated platform. Both the researchers from academia or practitioners from industry can benefit significantly from this book.

Looks at the rollout of one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history to show how local governments play a complex role. China's high-speed railway network is one of the largest infrastructure programs in human history. Despite global media coverage, we know very little about the political process that led the government to invest in the railway program and the reasons for the striking regional and temporal variation in such investments. In Localized Bargaining, Xiao Ma offers a novel theory of intergovernmental bargaining that explains the unfolding of China's unprecedented high-speed railway program. Drawing on a wealth of in-depth interviews, original data sets, and surveys with local officials, Ma details how the bottom-up bargaining efforts by territorial authorities—whom the central bureaucracies rely on to implement various infrastructure projects—shaped the allocation of investment in the railway system. Demonstrating how localities of different types invoke institutional and extra-institutional sources of bargaining power in their competition for railway stations, Ma sheds new light on how the nation's massive bureaucracy actually functions.