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Incorporating 50 years of flood data for the Manas River Kenswat Hydrological Station from 1957 to 2006, the Pettitt test and Mann-Kendall trend test are used to analyse non-stationarity of the flood characteristic sequences. Moreover, the Pearson type-III (P-III) distribution, the mixed distribution (MD) and conditional probability distribution (CPD) models are employed to analyse frequency and to calculate the design flood process line. The results showed that the annual maximum peak discharge and the annual maximum flood volume are most likely to change in 1993. The MD model considering the nonstationarity of the flood sequence is more accurate than the CPD model and the traditional P-III distribution model. There are significant differences in the design flood process lines of the 1996 typical flood process obtained by the three methods using the same frequency scaling method. In addition, under different design standards, the design value of the MD model is 20-53% smaller than the design value approved in 2008 (approved by China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute) and 4-48% higher than the traditional P-III distribution design value. The results can provide a new reference for the management of non-stationary floods in Manas River.

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This paper examines the effects of China’s New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) on medical expenditure. Utilizing the quasi-random rollout of the NCMS for a difference-in-difference analysis, we find that the NCMS increased medical expenditure by 12.3%. Most significantly, the good-health group witnessed a 22.1% rise in medical expenditure, and the high-income group saw a rise of 20.6%. The effects, however, were not significant among the poor-health or low-income groups. The findings are suggestive of the need for more help for the very poor and less healthy.

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Since 1978, China has greatly reduced the rural poverty rate. This article provides an overview of the experience of China’s poverty reduction. Using panel data from 1996 to 2013 to calculate farmers’ income dynamics, we found that the pace of poverty reduction was relatively slow from 1996 to 2002 and that the rate of reversion to poverty was high. Since 2003, the pace of poverty reduction has accelerated, whereas the rate of reversion has decreased. Using econometric ordinary least squares and probit models, we explore the factors that drive poverty reduction. We found correlational evidence that the main reasons for poverty reduction in China since 1996 have been the increase in income from household farms and migrant work. In addition, rural public insurance prevented farmers from falling into poverty.

With the acceleration of human economic activities and dramatic changes in climate, the validity of the stationarity assumption of flood time series frequency analysis has been questioned. In this study, a framework for flood frequency analysis is developed on the basis of a tool, namely, the Generalized Additive Models for Location, Scale, and Shape (GAMLSS). We introduced this model to construct a non-stationary model with time and climate factor as covariates for the 50-year snowmelt flood time series in the Kenswat Reservoir control basin of the Manas River. The study shows that there are clear non-stationarities in the flood regime, and the characteristic series of snowmelt flood shows an increasing trend with the passing of time. The parameters of the flood distributions are modelled as functions of climate indices (temperature and rainfall). The physical mechanism was incorporated into the study, and the simulation results are similar to the actual flood conditions, which can better describe the dynamic process of snowmelt flood characteristic series. Compared with the design flood results of Kenswat Reservoir approved by the China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute in December 2008, the design value of the GAMLSS non-stationary model considers that the impact of climate factors create a design risk in dry years by underestimating the risk.

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