A Financial Times Best Book of the Year

The definitive biography of Zhou Enlai, the first premier and preeminent diplomat of the People's Republic of China, who protected his country against the excesses of his boss--Chairman Mao.

Zhou Enlai spent twenty-seven years as premier of the People's Republic of China and ten as its foreign minister. He was the architect of the country's administrative apparatus and its relationship to the world, as well as its legendary spymaster. Richard Nixon proclaimed him the greatest statesman of our era. Yet Zhou has always been overshadowed by Chairman Mao. Chen Jian brings Zhou into the light, offering a nuanced portrait of his complex life as a revolutionary, a master diplomat, and a man with his own vision and aspirations who did much to make China, as well as the larger world, what it is today.

Born to a declining mandarin family in 1898, Zhou received a classical education and as a teenager spent time in Japan. As a young man, driven by the desire for China's development, Zhou embraced the communist revolution as a vehicle of China's salvation. He helped Mao govern through a series of transformations, including the disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Yet, as Chen shows, Zhou was never a committed Maoist. His extraordinary political and bureaucratic skill, combined with his centrist approaches, enabled him to mitigate the enormous damage caused by Mao's radicalism.

When Zhou died in 1976, the PRC that we know of was not yet visible on the horizon; he never saw glistening twenty-first-century Shanghai or the broader emergence of Chinese capitalism. But it was Zhou's work that shaped the nation whose influence and power are today felt in every corner of the globe.

This book describes visual perception and control methods for robotic systems that need to interact with the environment. Multiple view geometry is utilized to extract low-dimensional geometric information from abundant and high-dimensional image information, making it convenient to develop general solutions for robot perception and control tasks. In this book, multiple view geometry is used for geometric modeling and scaled pose estimation. Then Lyapunov methods are applied to design stabilizing control laws in the presence of model uncertainties and multiple constraints.

Studies on the corrosion and degradation of materials play a decisive role in the novel design and development of corrosion-resistant materials, the selection of materials used in harsh environments in designed lifespans, the invention of corrosion control methods and procedures (e.g., coatings, inhibitors), and the safety assessment and prediction of materials (i.e., modelling). These studies cover a wide range of research fields, including the calculation of thermodynamics, the characterization of microstructures, the investigation of mechanical and corrosion properties, the creation of corrosion coatings or inhibitors, and the establishment of corrosion modelling. This Special Issue is devoted to these types of studies, which facilitate the understanding of the corrosion fundamentals of materials in service, the development of corrosion coatings or methods, improving their durability, and eventually decreasing corrosion loss.

Although one of the oldest microbial technologies used in food processing, solid-state fermentation (SSF) had, until recently, fallen out of favor. However, based on a series of established mathematical models, new design concepts for SSF bioreactors and process control strategies have been proposed, allowing SSF technology to reach new levels. Solid State Fermentation for Foods and Beverages covers these new technologies and their application to food and beverage production.

The book systematically describes the production of solid-state fermented food and beverage in terms of the history and development of SSF technology and SSF foods, bio-reactor design, fermentation process, various substrate origins and sustainable development. It emphasizes Oriental traditional foods produced by SSF such as sufu, vinegar, soy sauce, Chinese distilled spirit, and rice wine. The authors address such engineering issues as mass and heat transfer and energy equation calculation of solid-state fermentation, dynamic modeling of solid-state fermentation, and process control of solid-state fermentation.

Covering the latest developments and achievements in the field of SSF, the book provides a detailed introduction to various solid-state fermented foods and beverages, including product category, characteristics, functionalities, safety issues, and consumer perception. It explores real advantages of SSF processes and how their application at real scale for high quality production that is more and less costly.

Presenting original work and new thinking on a wide range of important issues, the book explores the current state of globalization, competition and growth in China.

China has produced an economic miracle since the late 1970s in its transition from a planned to a market economy. This remarkable economic performance was brought about by an open-door policy and gradual integration with the world economy, culminating in China's admission into the World Trade Organisation in 2001.

Studies included in this book focus on issues such as foreign direct investment, international trade, reforms in the financial sector, the development of rural township and village enterprises, the investment strategies of multinational corporations, and economic growth.

Presenting original work and new thinking on a wide range of important issues, the book explores the current state of globalization, competition and growth in China.

China has produced an economic miracle since the late 1970s in its transition from a planned to a market economy. This remarkable economic performance was brought about by an open-door policy and gradual integration with the world economy, culminating in China's admission into the World Trade Organisation in 2001.

Studies included in this book focus on issues such as foreign direct investment, international trade, reforms in the financial sector, the development of rural township and village enterprises, the investment strategies of multinational corporations, and economic growth.

This book provides readers with sufficient insight into battery equalization control technologies from both theoretical and engineering perspectives. Distinguished from most of the existing works that focus on the hardware design of active equalizers, this book intends to comprehensively introduce equalization control strategies for lithium-ion battery packs. The validity and reliability of the control strategies in this book have been verified by theory and experiments.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium, KSS 2023, held in Guangzhou, China, during December 2-3, 2023.

Biosensors for Single-Cell Analysis explores a wide range of biosensor technologies and their applications in single-cell characterization and analysis. Sections cover key biophysical and chemical single-cell properties that consider proteomic, metabolic, electrical, mechanical and optical properties. Each chapter features key definitions and case studies, providing detailed guidance for researchers who want to replicate covered solutions in their work. Tutorial sections, evaluations of the current state-of-the-field and future developments are also included. Microfluidic approaches to characterization, such as microfluidic impedance flow cytometry and microfluidic flow cytometry are considered alongside more conventional approaches, such as mass spectroscopy, fluorescent and mass flow cytometry.

Additionally, key types of biosensors are covered, including atomic force microscopy, micropipette aspiration, optical tweezers, microfluidic hydrodynamic stretchers, microfluidic constriction channel and microfluidic optical stretchers.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Knowledge and Systems Sciences, KSS 2019, held in Da Nang, Vietnam, in November 2019.

The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 31 submissions. This year KSS provides opportunities for presenting interesting new research results, facilitating interdisciplinary discussions, and leading to knowledge transfer under the theme of Knowledge Science in the Age of Big Data.

This book describes visual perception and control methods for robotic systems that need to interact with the environment. Multiple view geometry is utilized to extract low-dimensional geometric information from abundant and high-dimensional image information, making it convenient to develop general solutions for robot perception and control tasks. In this book, multiple view geometry is used for geometric modeling and scaled pose estimation. Then Lyapunov methods are applied to design stabilizing control laws in the presence of model uncertainties and multiple constraints.

The 14 revised full papers and 3 short paper presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions. The papers are organized in topical secions on ​data mining and machine learning; model-based systems engineering; complex systems modeling and knowledge technologies.