Changzhou is a typical waterside municipality with approximately 2,500 years of history located south of the Yangtze River. It was an agriculturally oriented region but is becoming an industrialized region. Rural green landscaping in this region possesses characteristics of traditional Chinese gardens. This paper presents a methodology for assessing the visual quality of green landscaping in rural residential areas through public perception-based and expert/design approaches. The former approach enables us to rank green landscaping based on a survey of public preference; the latter weighs the contributions of the attributes contained in a photograph to its overall scenic beauty via correlation, regression, and factor analyses. The photographs used in the survey included road greenways, riparian greenways, residential public gardens and green landscaping around houses, with each type of landscape represented by seven photographs. In total, 141 college students and 41 other participants ranked photographs of each landscaping type from highest to lowest preference. The results indicate that the preferences of students are similar to those of the general public. Examples of green landscaping depicted in the "best" four photographs possessed more attractive qualities regarding the variety of vegetation, richness of colors and a selection of human additions compared to those depicted in the "worst" photographs. The perceived visual quality was positively influenced by, in decreasing order of importance, the variety of vegetation, color contrast, the openness of green spaces, the area of vegetation, and positive man-made elements; conversely, it was negatively influenced by the type of topography. Moreover, some suggestions were offered for future rural greening regarding perceived visual beauty.

We examine the impact of independent directors' reputations on executive payperformance sensitivity. Using hand-collected data from listed Chinese companies from 2012 to 2017, we find a positive association between independent directors' reputations and pay-performance sensitivity that is more pronounced in companies with less concentrated ownership. Further, the results show that reputable directors have a stronger influence on payperformance sensitivity when they sit on a remuneration committee, are in state-owned enterprises, and are in companies with higher agency costs. Our results highlight the monitoring role of reputable independent directors in setting effective executive compensation contracts.

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We find that, at both the audit firm and partner level, having a common auditor in the supply chain has a significant positive association with the supplier company's degree of tax avoidance. Companies report a higher level of tax avoidance when they are audited by an industry‐expert or a tax expert common auditor, when the common audit partner is economically dependent on the supplier company, when the audit client is in a highly competitive industry, and when the company is subject to a high level of information asymmetry. Moreover, we find potential audit quality issues embedded in common audits in the supply chain.

Abstract-The "4.20" earthquake caused enormous economic loss for Lushan, which restricted the local economy to some extent, therefore, speeding up the reconstruction according to local conditions, exploring new models of economic development, promoting the development of agricultural industrialization effectively are tasks which brooks no delay. This paper uses SWOT analysis to study the agricultural industry of Lushan, to explore the new model which is suitable for the development of Lushan's agricultural economy, and to put forward reasonable suggestions and countermeasures.