Cooperation, open and upgrade: How does foreign ownership structure affect the skill upgrade of domestic-sale and export enterprises?

Faced with the double shock of COVID-19 and Sino-US trade conflict, how to upgrade technology and products and then establish a "dual circulation" development pattern has become the major challenges for Chinese government and enterprises. Under the framework of heterogeneous enterprise theory, this paper introduces foreign ownership structure into enterprise skill demand function, and discusses the influence of foreign ownership structure on the skill upgrade of export enterprises and domestic enterprises. And this paper make empirical verification for the model deductions, based on the data of industrial enterprise from 2000 to 2008. The results confirm that:1) The skilled wage of export enterprises are always higher than that of domestic enterprises based on the same proportion of foreign capital;2) The skilled wage of domestic-sale and export firms will increase with higher proportion of foreign capital, but the characteristics of the latter only holds for foreign-ownership enterprises;3) Once the proportion of foreign exceed 0.5, it will induce a dramatic change for corporate culture, and thus impulse the skilled wage jump up into a higher level which is more prominent among exporters. It is showed that continuing to expand the level of opening to the outside world, lifting control on foreign capital, strengthening the cooperation between domestic and foreign capital can more effectively promote the technology promotion and skill upgrading of Chinese enterprises, and jointly accelerate the establishment of an expanding domestic market and a leading trade power. © 2022 Systems Engineering Society of China. All rights reserved.

The COVID-19 pandemic and upgrades of CI speech processors for children: part II-hearing outcomes.

PURPOSE: To gauge the benefits to children of upgrading speech processors during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: The study involved 297 children, aged from 7.3 to 18.0 years, whose processors were upgraded to either Nucleus 7 or Kanso 2, or to Sonnet 2 or Rondo 3. To document the benefits of the upgrades, a speech-in-noise discrimination test and Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) were used. RESULTS: There was a significant benefit from the newer processors in terms of speech discrimination in noise. Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) indicated less hearing disability, a higher level of functioning in everyday life situations, and more satisfaction with the new speech processor in social situations. CONCLUSION: There is a measurable improvement in performance when the devices are upgraded to the new technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic and upgrades of CI speech processors for children: part I-procedure of speech processor upgrade.

PURPOSE: To demonstrate the feasibility of upgrading speech processors during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Adopting concepts from "lean thinking", we optimized hospital workflows to allow speech processors to be upgraded despite the obstacles arising from national guidelines for COVID-19 prevention. The study involved 297 children, aged from 7.3 to 18.0 years, whose processors were upgraded on five consecutive Saturdays during a time of peak COVID-19 in Poland. RESULTS: The optimized workflow allowed us to conduct speech processor upgrades during a time of peak COVID-19 in Poland. The upgrades were conducted as scheduled, patient flow was smooth, appropriate social distancing was kept, and no reports of COVID-19 infection in our patients in the 2 weeks after their visit were received. CONCLUSION: Upgrading of speech processors in children is still feasible under coronavirus conditions.