The conclusion higlights continuing challenges for the EU and the rest of the world and how the future humanity faces is uncertain. Yet an optimistic message is also presented. Noting that shareholder primacy is increasingly coming under question and a growing interest in the concepts of corporate purpose and sustainable value creation, the conclusion draws upon the suggestions made among the chapters throughout the book to highlight the potential for corporations to be a force for good if supported by more effective legal and regulatory reforms and operating with more innovative structures and technologies. More stable, resilient and democratic institutional structures are necessary too as is the inclusion of active political and entrepreneurial women. Also fundamental to change is setting sustainable value creation within planetary boundaries as an overarching purpose for business, with mandatory rules to ensure that sustainability is integrated into the governance of business across global value chains. In a policy coherence for sustainability perspective, the book concludes by positioning the research-based reform proposals for business and finance within broader European Union laws and policies, underlining the necessity of reform also of other related areas, including circular economy policies, competition and state aid law and public procurement.

This overview first discusses some traditional thoughts on public finance, particularly the thought of implicit taxation, which have had a profound influence on the behavior of the Chinese government historically and currently. It then describes public finance under the centrally planned economic system, followed by an examination of market-oriented public finance reforms before exploring the challenges to China’s public finance. Finally it explains the contributions of this book. By the end of 1956, China completed the “socialist economic reforms,” turning all large- and medium-sized private enterprises into SOEs and small private enterprises into collectively-owned-enterprises. In 1958, the government took back the land previously allocated to farmers and established the people’s communes. Another economic reform started in 1978, allowing private enterprises to develop and allowing farmers to grow whatever they like on the land allocated to them. A modern tax system and a social insurance system were established and local governments have been given some fiscal freedom. However, there are still problems with public finance.

Chapter 7 discusses China’s infrastructure development. It analyzes the ways in which infrastructure investment has been financed, including revenues from land sales, bank loans, infrastructure development funds, domestic and foreign debt, taxes, fees, and user charges. It shows the composition of funds for financing key infrastructures including transportation, telecommunication, energy, and sanitation. It demonstrates that China's infrastructures have grown rapidly in the past twenty-five years. It examines the reasons for the fast infrastructure development in China and the problems with infrastructure development, including a solid tax system, a pro-infrastructure spending system, expansionary fiscal policies, and large local government revenues from land sales and bank borrowings. It also evaluates China’s belt and road initiative and discusses the L17benefits and potential risks to the countries involved.

This chapter provides an opportunity to engage in analysis of contemporary Australian politics and question some of the challenges chosen for further discussion in this chapter. It also aims to bring together much of the discussion through the previous 12 chapters. By highlighting some of the problems Australia faces, including climate change, a global refugee crisis, and a global pandemic, our goal is not to suggest that Australian democracy is broken beyond repair. All nations face similar issues, and so Australia is not unique in that sense. Indeed, we might still argue Australia is Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country – in both the sense of being ‘lucky’, and in the sense Horne intended it (Horne, 2008). But it is only by analysing the challenges we as a nation face, that students of Australian politics can truly evaluate the future of Australian democracy.

Different abilities enlarge the terrain of the creative trance. By demonstrating the extended capacities of human beings, challenges widen the possibilities for everyone. Not all conditions can be “cured,” but healing is always available through self-transformation. Differently abled people experience altered states in sports competitions, the Paralympics, dance, wheelchair dance, music, science, and visual art, sometimes without limbs, vision, or hearing. They share a triumph of achievement gained through accomplishing something that was at one time thought to be impossible – perhaps even by them. There are physically integrated dance and theater companies for people of all abilities and a long lineage of blind African American music professionals. The effort to confront impediments alters the neural landscapes of their brains and empowers their creative trance. As the world champion wheelchair dancer, Piotr Iwanicki says, “When I’m on the dance floor, nothing matters at all. Dancing is all my life. It’s my passion.”

This chapter assessed sustainability and resilience of eleven farming systems in their current situation, as well as in hypothetical future systems, using qualitative and quantitative methods. The assessment shows that current farming systems address sustainability dimensions in an unbalanced way and are characterized by poor resilience. Future resilient systems are imagined to promote environmental and social functions in the long term.

The Swedish egg and broiler sector faces strict regulation, changes in consumer’ preferences for high-quality food, and a need for constant technological adaptation. The aim of this chapter is to map key characteristics and to assess the resilience of the sector.

This chapter explores the current and future resilience of the small, mixed farming systems in the Nord-Est region of Romania. The chapter shows how the agricultural system, which has already undergone a major transformation after the collapse of communism in the 1990s, continues to reorganize and to adapt to the new conditions of the market economy and to respond to the new challenges induced by it.

The law of neutrality is not obsolete. Its validity subsists despite the prohibition of the use of force,the advent of collective security and the violations of the rights of neutrals during the two world wars. The sources of the law are customary laws and treaties. Customary law of neutrality is based on State practice mainly in the form of national military manuals. It is applicable in the event of an international armed conflict irrespective of the existence of a formal state of war and irrespective of the scale and extent of th conflict. Neutrality has withstood the challenge of collective security and the prohibition of the use of force both in the interwar years and after World War II. The gross violations of the rights of neutrals during World Wars I and II have been justified as reprisals or countermeasures; this is a further confirmation that beligerent practice at the time constituted a deviation from the law rather than a change or demise of the law of neutrality.