China, Trust and Digital Supply Chains presents a critical reflection on blockchain technologies in the context of their adoption in China and the world that China is engaged in and shaping. Approaching the issues of blockchain technology adoption and development on China’s own terms is critical if policy makers and others are to make effective sense of one of the key dynamics shaping the next few decades of the global landscape. The work challenges the ‘trust’ trope that dominates much discussion of blockchain technology’s application. It argues, contrary to the predominant trust trope, that blockchain is not about trust at all. It shows that China’s re-imagining of the 21st century global order is premised on driving intensified cross-border economic interactions without the presupposition of trust, and blockchain technology makes that possible. It also explores the paradox of technological decentralisation being taken up with vigour by a centralist polity, the role of blockchain technology as a critical condition of existence for the successful globalisation of China’s digital currency initiative, and the need to devise governance institutions that are multilateral in nature, to reflect the multi-polar nature of decentralised information systems with domestic and cross-border permutations. This book is of significant interest to readers of political economy, public policy, blockchain technology and Chinese studies.

The advent of Industry Revolution 5.0 has brought unprecedented challenges to supply chain management, compromising the effectiveness, transparency, and security of operations. Traditional methods of transaction management and data sharing prove inadequate in this complex landscape, necessitating a comprehensive solution. Editors Mustafa Khan, Naveed R. Khan, and Arsalan Ghouri present Achieving Secure and Transparent Supply Chains With Blockchain Technology, an edited collection that offers a groundbreaking solution. This book provides a thorough overview of blockchain technology and its potential to enhance supply chain efficiency, security, and resilience. By leveraging its decentralized and secure platform, blockchain emerges as a transformative technology capable of revolutionizing supply chain management. With a focus on contemporary theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical findings, this book equips academics, practitioners, policymakers, researchers, professionals, and students with the knowledge needed to harness the power of blockchain technology in supply chain management. Covering diverse topics such as traceability, resilience, sustainability, and ethical sourcing, it explores the wide-ranging applications of blockchain in achieving secure and transparent supply chains. Achieving Secure and Transparent Supply Chains With Blockchain Technology serves as an indispensable resource for individuals involved in the field, offering a comprehensive guide to unlock the potential of secure and transparent supply chains in the digital age. With its forward-thinking approach and diverse perspectives, this book paves the way for a future where blockchain technology revolutionizes the management of supply chains.

Amid an unprecedented digital revolution, our society grapples with profound challenges, from the upheaval of traditional global systems to the ethical implications of technology's inexorable advance. As academic scholars seek a comprehensive understanding of this dynamic environment, Driving Decentralization and Disruption With Digital Technologies emerges as a beacon of insight. This compelling book confronts the intricate issues spawned by decentralization, de-globalization, and the transformative power of digital technologies, providing a roadmap for traversing the complexities of our digitally connected world. The book starts by unraveling the disruptive forces at play, shedding light on the threats posed to existing hierarchies and the potential consequences for disadvantaged groups. Digital disintermediation, driven by platforms and peer-to-peer networks, shakes the foundations of traditional economic systems, leaving banks and markets in flux. As global relationships redefine themselves in the face of decentralized markets, supply chains, and economic ties, scholars grapple with the profound implications for the future.

The two-volume set LNBIP 480 and 481 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd Wuhan International Conference, WHICEB 2023, held in Wuhan, China, in May 2023. The 61 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 350 submissions. They focus on innovative research findings, solutions, and approaches to make the Internet a productive and efficient vehicle for global commerce. This year’s topic is “Digital Empowerment for an Intelligent Future“.

Trust and Digital Business: Theory and Practice brings together the theory and practice of trust and digital business. The book offers a look at the current state, including a comprehensive overview of both research and practical applications of trust in business. Readers will gain from this book in the following areas: knowledge across disciplines on trust in business, theoretical underpinnings of trust and how it sustains itself through digital dissemination, and empirically-validated practice regarding trust and its related concepts. The international team of authors from seven countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, Turkey, and the United States) ensures the diversity and quality of the content. The intended audiences of this book are professionals, scholars, and students.

Blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) have been identified as emerging technologies that can enhance global supply chain management processes. Given the embryonic nature of the technology, use cases pertaining to how it can be adopted and deployed in supply chain contexts are scarce. This book shares blockchain supply chain use cases across a range of industries including smart cities, food imports, product traceability, decentralised finance, procurement, energy management, consensus mechanism security, and industry 4.0. Given its scope, it is primarily intended for academics, students, researchers, and practitioners who want to learn more about how blockchain can digitally transform global supply chains.

Small-scale agricultural producers in the peripheral world are often condescendingly assumed to be a single social class (‘the peasantry’) to be pitted against the state or corporation. This book challenges this rather idealistic view by demonstrating that under current capitalist social relations (competition, efficiency and productivity, and profit maximisation), these agricultural producers have been differentiated into different agrarian classes by exploitation. By comparing two different contexts of local agrarian change in Indonesia—rice cultivation in Java and oil palm in Sumatra—this book exposes the different class locations of the agrarian classes among petty agricultural producers and the class relations between them. These are often inextricably linked to gender, clanship and generational issues. The power of class dynamics crucially shapes how agricultural production in both rice and oil palm is organised. The share received by different agrarian classes from the production site then prominently shapes the different nature of class reproduction for each agrarian class. This analysis demonstrates that the different agrarian classes possess different capacities and responses in their relation to the state or corporations. Any real emancipation attempt in the Indonesian countryside (and beyond) must start from a proper understanding of these class dynamics. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on agrarian change, the political economy of development, rural development and Marxist political economy.

Applied mathematics, modelling, and computer simulation are central to many aspects of engineering and computer science, and continue to be of intrinsic importance to the development of modern technologies. This book presents the proceedings of AMMCS 2023, the 3rd International Conference on Applied Mathematics, Modeling and Computer Simulation, held on 12 and 13 August 2023 in Wuhan, China. The conference provided an ideal opportunity for scholars and researchers to communicate important recent developments in their areas of specialization to their colleagues, and to scientists in related disciplines. More than 250 submissions were received for the conference, of which 133 were selected for presentation at the conference and inclusion here after a thorough peer-review process. These range from the theoretical and conceptual to strongly pragmatic papers addressing industrial best practice, and cover topics such as mathematical modeling and application; engineering applications and scientific computations; and the simulation of intelligent systems. The book explores practical experiences and enlightening ideas, and will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and to all those working in the fields of applied mathematics, modeling and computer simulation.

This book explores America’s decline as a global power, arguing that the implosion of Pax Americana was initiated by the process of globalization, preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union by nearly a decade. The era of Pax Americana, and with it American hegemony, is conclusively passed, and will not return in current global conditions. There is a stark contrast between the present epoch and the postwar era of American hegemony (1945–1979) in which the United States, at least outside of the Soviet sphere of influence, largely managed the international economy and reigned over international politics and relations. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical evidence, this book shows that the era of globalization unleashed forces—social, political, and economic—which broke down the status quo of American hegemony. Author Cyrus Bina also establishes that since the Iranian Revolution (1979), US involvement throughout the Middle East, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and now notably in Ukraine has been motivated by the freefall of American hegemony and an attempt to get it back by direct or indirect military force. Bina utilizes these contexts for wider analysis and critique of a number of theories commonly used to analyze economy, polity, geopolitical, and dynamics of crisis and social change in capitalism. This book will be of great interest to students, academics, and policymakers on subjects of Economics, International Relations, Global Studies, International Political Economy, Political Geography, Sociology, and postwar History.