HKUST Annual Report 2022-2023

How Wealth Conferred Elite Status in Qing China A monograph titled Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center), authored by Prof. Lawrence ZHANG (Humanities), sheds new light on social mobility in late imperial China. Contrary to the traditional view that elite status was solely based on merit achieved through civil service examinations, the book reveals that wealth was the ultimate determinant of elite rank, and the purchase of degrees and offices served as significant routes to ascend into the civil service. 34 35 State, Society and Historical Role of Public Interest In his book Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China (Cambridge University Press), Prof. HE Wenkai (Social Science) showcases how a discourse of state legitimation, based on public interest, was prevalent across the three countries during the early modern period. Drawing on extensive historical scholarship and primary sources, he illustrates that this discourse served as a mutual platform for negotiation and collaboration between state and society to achieve good governance by providing public goods, such as famine relief and infrastructure. This dialogue on state legitimacy allowed a limited yet meaningful political space for the ruled. Synergizing Water- Climate Needs in Urban Wastewater Treatment P r o f . LU Zhongm i ng ( En v i r onmen t and Sustainability) collaborated with researchers from the Mainland and Austria to advance China's wastewater treatment decarbonization. They studied the link between urban water stress and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by the growing wastewater infrastructures across 300 cities on the Mainland. The team identified low-carbon technologies for urban wastewater treatment, sludge disposal and water reuse, which could help reduce both water stress and wastewater-related GHG emissions. According to their research, there's potential to further disconnect water stress mitigation from GHG emissions by 2030. Novel Method for Measuring Organic Nitrogen Concentration HKUST researchers have created a groundbreaking method to measure both inorganic and organic nitrogen in aerosol samples in one single analysis. The team, led by Prof. YU Jianzhen (Chemistry, Environment and Sustainability) and Prof. YU Xu (Environment and Sustainability), developed a new instrument coupled with a new data algorithm to study how carbon and nitrogen elements incorporated in aerosols evolve at different temperatures. This allows them to differentiate be tween i no r gan i c n i t r ogen and o r gan i c nitrogen, based on their unique thermal evolution characteristics. The novel tool has wide potential uses, including studying the effects of atmospheric organic nitrogen on the environment and climate.