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Recently the Chinese government has been actively collaborating with nonprofit nongovernmental organizations to provide social welfare services to older adults at the community level. The role played by NGOs in facilitating governance has only recently gained attention in the literature on Chinese NGOs and urban governance. Addressing this gap, the paper advances geographers' understanding of State–NGO collaborations in facilitating urban governance in the Chinese context using fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai on the provision of community eldercare services as an example. It also explains the political control of these NGOs and their changing role in the eldercare market. We argue that collaborations between the state and NGOs in China have gradually transferred eldercare services to the NGOs, and led to a fragmented welfare system, which, as a consequence, has facilitated entrepreneurial urban governance. The paper sheds light on community-based organizations, their collaboration with local governments, and how they have become not only welfare providers but a significant site for social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a mega-project of primarily infrastructure-related loans and investments in Pakistan. Recently, the official discourse has increasingly shifted to the agricultural sector. For the region of Gilgit-Baltistan bordering China, academic and policy debates highlight the potential boost of fruit exports to China as the most promising opportunity to be leveraged through the CPEC. This paper scrutinizes these promises from a locally grounded perspective, investigating potential benefits and risks for local farmers. To make sense of the complex interplay between external and local actors, interests, markets and (infra)structures, the paper follows an assemblage-inspired approach to map out local trajectories. Contrary to the CPEC narrative, agricultural exports from Gilgit-Baltistan recently came to a halt, due to increasing trade barriers and seemingly competing agricultural developments in neighboring Xinjiang, China. Moreover, the economically most promising local crop for export to China, namely cherries, does not seem too promising for the majority of small farmers. There are other commodities with export potential, but overall, prospects appear to be limited. There is a need for a deeper engagement with the inherent complexities of CPEC trajectories, particularly in regards to local farming contexts in Pakistan and relevant developments in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale transport systems project expansive geographical reach via far-reaching connectivity and spillovers. This phenomenon, however, is understudied for its impact on economic and spatial relations across geographic scales and economic domains and the mechanism carrying and transmitting that impact. Despite its short existence, the China–Europe Freight Train (CEFT) has already created a long geographical reach and major impact on the transport landscape spanning China, Central Asia, and Europe. This paper argues that a new logistics state in China at the local level is driving and sustaining the CEFT from below relative to the national government and market forces. Using the ancient city of Xi'an as a characteristic embodiment of a logistics state, this paper demonstrates how the logistics state-driven CEFT has multiplied routes and redirected trade flows between China and Europe, reorganized inter-city and cross-border production and supply chains from China to Europe, stimulated a new geography of globally oriented and nationally rebalanced local consumption in China, and fueled major new development in an ancient and economically lagging city. The paper concludes on critical complications and implications from the Chinese local logistics state for the CEFT's sustainability and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comprises original research on China's use of bilateral media cooperation to mediate its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Building upon the literature on strategic narratives, aesthetic power and the Silk Road as a foreign policy concept, we present a detailed case study of the visual imagery of the "Silk Road" documentary collaboration between China's and Russia's state-owned international broadcasters, China Radio International and RT (formerly Russia Today). We employ a visual methodology to interrogate the formation and projection of multimodal (visual, textual and oral) narratives about China's infrastructural activities along this metaphorical new "Silk Road". We examine how the Silk Road series gives sense to China's BRI, the relative weighting of Chinese and Russian strategic narratives about the BRI, and how power is distributed in this Chinese-Russian media partnership. Our analysis reveals that in re-packaging visual imagery that applies nostalgia to the history of core places and technologizes their future, the series projects a pre-curated Chinese visual narrative that emplots the BRI as human and cultural development. Russian regional strategic narratives are marginalized. China is applying its aesthetic power to Russian journalists and politicians; RT obtains some commercial benefits, but the Russian state's aesthetic power is ceded to China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about a package of infrastructure investment, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This paper uses a range of theoretical perspectives (buttressed by historical and contemporary evidence) to think about the likely impact of CPEC on economic (especially industrial) growth in Pakistan. The theory includes crowding in of private by public investment, social savings, spillovers and the leading sector, and industrial policy. Theory points to some likely growth promoting effects of CPEC, on corporate logistics, shorter transport routes to China, and greater local production of cement. The impact of CPEC is unlikely to be transformative. There is little evidence that CPEC has improved corporate logistics in Pakistan. CPEC may reduce physical distances for overland trade with China but trade is likely to remain seaborne. CPEC construction activity has generated positive spillovers in local construction employment and cement production but no spillovers in either bitumen or steel production. Pakistan lacks a capable state and commitment to an industrial policy that historically have proved important in leveraging transport infrastructure into domestic industrialisation. The most important reason is that Pakistan is a middle-income country and CPEC is too small to create more than modest economic growth benefits for Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-2000s, the Russian Far East (RFE) has seen a revival of agriculture accompanied by rapid agrarian transformation that has taken a unique form because of the area's proximity to China. However, the existing literature either does not recognize Chinese presence or only studies it in terms of capitalist relationships transplanted directly from China and isolated from local realities. This paper seeks to remedy this oversight by exploring the influence of the multifaceted Chinese presence on RFE agriculture. We use the concept of social topology to demonstrate how different forms of economic life have not evolved as "Russian" or "Chinese," but instead present a bundle of capitalist and non-capitalist relationships that are continuously changing and rewriting themselves. We also explain the observed effect of China's simultaneous presence and absence in RFE's agriculture: Chinese agricultural practices are tightly embedded in local social networks and are loosely tethered to local infrastructure, but the Chinese presence also manifests in perceptions and imaginaries that influence and determine the strategies of the Russian state, agroholdings, and Russian farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, the approach of the Chinese government remains under the spotlight, obscuring the complex landscape of responses to the outbreak within the country. Drawing upon the author's social media experiences as well as textual analysis of a wide range of sources, this paper explores how the Chinese public responded to the outbreak in complex and nuanced ways through social media. The findings challenge conventional views of Chinese social media as simply sites of self-censorship and surveillance. On the contrary, during the COVID-19 outbreak, social media became spaces of active public engagement, in which Chinese citizens expressed care and solidarity, engaged in claim-making and resistance, and negotiated with authorities. This paper situates this public engagement within a broader context of China's health-care reforms, calling attention to persistent structural and political issues, as well as the precarious positionalities of health-care workers within the health system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's borderlands have received increased investment and policy attention since Beijing formally launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. This special issue, comprised of four research articles and a photo essay, is designed to provide a timely intervention into the growing literature seeking to situate and assess this important policy campaign. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork in China's southwestern, northwestern, and northern borderlands, the contributing authors analyze recent borderland transformations against the backdrop of the BRI. However, by shifting the analytical focus to prioritize voices and events in borderlands, the papers de-center Beijing-centric discourse on the BRI, and provide urgent reminders of region-specific geographies and histories. Taken together, the papers underscore the persistent social complexity of borderland situations, revealing intricate processes of resistance, adaptation, and muddling through, while highlighting continuities and ruptures associated with the present moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Architectural research often considers buildings as local material adaptations to climate, particularly when it comes to the analysis of architecture in rural and small-scale settlements. Based on ethnographic data from the rapidly urbanizing oasis metropolis Ürümchi in China's northwestern borderlands, this paper goes beyond such a localized view of climate responsiveness. It analyzes how individual thermal practices of residents are linked to the interests of the state and to socio-cultural notions of thermal comfort. Through the classification of Xinjiang as part of China's northern "Heating Zone," the keeping warm of individual bodies becomes part of a territorializing strategy. There are, however, clear seasonal differences in how indoor residential spaces are regulated to maintain bodily comfort. In winter, apartment owners and residents enjoy the amenities of the state-financed heating infrastructure. In summer, cooling strategies depend on more neoliberalized, individual, social, and architectural ways to lower indoor temperatures. This paper unfolds the diversity of thermal discourses and practices that characterize Ürümchi citizens' creation of comfortable residential spaces throughout the seasons. The data outlines that houses as infrastructures are far from being simple containers that keep residents' bodies warm. Instead, the socio-technical organization of thermal spaces interferes with territorial strategies and ethnic place-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) intersect and overlap in Central Asia at the heart of Eurasia. Whereas the literature has commonly focused on the economic aspects of these major regional policy initiatives, efforts to create a common Eurasian higher education space through these regionalisms have barely been studied. In response, this paper compares the development of Russian and Chinese led visions for Eurasian higher education regionalism in Central Asia and the extent to which these constructions overlap. The paper also sheds lights on the perspectives of Central Asian states by investigating how these countries are approaching these efforts to construct a Eurasian higher education region. The conceptual framework brings together higher education regionalism with overlapping regionalism and takes a policy-oriented methodological approach. The paper introduces the new term of "points of correspondence" based on language used in both Russian and Chinese policy discourse to explain how constructions of a Eurasian higher education region can overlap without duplicating or flowing into each other. "Points of correspondence" emphasizes neither competition nor collaboration but rather the ongoing pursuit to find ideas and policy tools that best fit one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to reconstruct the "Asian" dimension of Russian national identity discourse by using relations with China as a case study. It analyses the foreign policy debate before and after the 2014 Ukrainian crisis (2010–2016) by focusing on the emerging concept of "pivot to the East." Based on a discourse analysis of official documents, elites' speeches, and think-tank views, this paper inductively recovers the identity discourse, structured around linking/differentiation and such themes as the relative perception of China's threat. This research shows that the identity structure put several limitations in the way of engagement with China. These interlinked structures made it extremely difficult for the more intense economic turn toward China, which eventually occurred only when the relationship with the West (as the significant Other in Russian identity) broke down after the 2014 crisis. By comparing the identity structure and policies before and after the crisis of 2014 and following the poststructuralist notion of mutually constitutive relations between identity and foreign policy, this paper argues that policy changes after 2014 affected the gradual changes in identity narratives. However, there was not enough time and pressure to change the deeper layer of the core identity discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Mongolia's attempts at balancing its relations with China and Russia and the dilemmas it faces as China's influence grows in the wake of its "Belt and Road Initiative". Mongolia has embraced China's connectivity projects and a new form of trilateralism, even though Mongolia was not included in the initial five economic corridors proposed by Xi Jinping in 2013. Mongolian concerns over geo-strategic isolation led to a renewed effort to embrace its two big neighbors, resulting in the proposal of the trilateral "Economic Corridor" in 2016, followed by further trilateral summits. The paper thus seeks to answer the puzzle how Mongolia's self-perception as a geopolitical bridgehead state can be reconciled with the partially diverging interests of its two neighbors. Drawing on interviews with Mongolian experts and officials as well as qualitative document analysis, the paper adds empirical nuance to the debate about Sino-Russian interaction in Eurasia, but also to the understudied dimension of the agency of the "in-between countries" in their shared neighborhood. It argues that the spectrum ranging from competition to accommodation between China and Russia is further complicated by the choices and policy responses of actors "in between", like Mongolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that "the urban" has emerged as the most significant ideological realm in contemporary China. In developing this argument, I suggest an alternative approach to how we theorize urbanization in China. Seeking to avoid the dichotomized analyses that often characterize scholarship on China's urbanization, the paper suggests reading "the urban" as an ideological device. Such a reading calls for an analytical distinction between the city as a technology of socialist party-state planning and government and urbanization as a messy social process over which the state struggles for control. It also calls for a recognition of the ways that ideology itself has shifted dramatically in China, from the Mao-era centrality and coherence of class struggle and its overriding goal of proletarianization to a much less coherent post-reform message of "stability". The paper begins with a brief discussion of ideology and Gramsci's notion of "common sense" in a Chinese register. It then considers the film 24 City, directed by Jia Zhangke, as a template for understanding urban spaces as sites of conflict between the city as an ideological device and urbanization as a social process. New urban spaces are then explored in an effort to tease out their complex and contradictory ideological renderings. I conclude with an argument about the openness and contradictions of China's urban spaces and how an ideological analysis can resist the kind of theoretical closure that much work on urbanization in China seems to aim for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies articles about terrorism in the representative Chinese newspaper People's Daily in order to analyze how traditional Chinese political culture, in particular Confucianism, permeates contemporary Chinese geopolitical discourse. Specific attention is paid to articles on terrorism and the U.S. "war on terror." The author argues that, instead of interpreting terrorist actions and U.S. counter-terrorism politics as binary opposites, using a lens of a Confucianism-style morality, the Chinese newspaper observes connections between them. The author considers how these discourses affect China's perception of itself in the realm of international security politics. The representative Chinese newspaper articles on terrorism, in addition to China's repositioning on the global stage, reveal a geopolitical fault-line with strong moral undertones. The paper sheds light on the historic and often implicit political impact of Confucianism within present day Chinese geopolitical discourse and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a review of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) nuclear warfare and uranium mining programs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Its scope spans from the PRC's first nuclear weapon test in Lop Nor, to contemporary issues surrounding in-situ leach uranium mining in the Yili basin, which now provides a third of PRC's uranium. By exploring these scenarios, a lens can be placed on the parameters and limitations to Uyghur life within a nuclear state. This paper draws on the work of Achille Mbembe's necropolitics, whereby power is persistently exercised as violence, to consider the entangled aftermath of nuclear imperialism and its effects to Uyghur bodies, environment and culture. While racialized nuclear imperialism presented Uyghur lives as inconsequential to progress in Xinjiang, post-Cold War necropolitics presents Uyghur culture as a direct threat to the progress and values of the PRC sovereign state. This paper proposes that the ongoing exploitation of nuclear Xinjiang provides an additional motivation for state-imposed necropolitical sanctions upon Uyghur people. This paper also presents a new theoretical contribution, the "nuclear imperialism-necropolitics nexus", which offers a way to consider the entangled legacies of spaces of nuclear activity, from nuclear imperialism to the post-Cold War world. Abbreviations: People's Republic of China (PRC); Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR); Global War on Terror (GWOT). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian leaders rely on regional leaders for both political support and the fulfillment of their policy objectives. In addition, top leaders face trade-offs between following established rules for managing bureaucratic officials' careers and exercising a free hand in choosing regional officials. This paper compares patterns of appointment of regional officials in Russia and China before and after 2012. In recent years, the leaders of both countries have centralized and personalized state power. We hypothesize that these changes have altered policies for managing the appointments of regional leaders in such a way as to increase their dependence on the central authorities and reduce their autonomy to create their own networks at the regional level. We analyze a comprehensive original set of biographical data on all top regional officials from 2003 through 2019 in China and from 2000 through 2019 in Russia. We discern clear differences between the pre- and post-2012 period for China and less marked differences for pre- and post-2012 Russia. Turnover of regional officials has become more frequent in both systems; average tenure in office has fallen; and the share of "outsiders" has risen. However, the corps of regional officials has not been rejuvenated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project in Myanmar, this paper contests the proposition that China's state-coordinated investments are, by nature, more accommodating to local people's demands than Western investments. Tension between Myanmar villagers and the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) in a copper mine project does not square with Beijing's "inclusive globalization" narrative. Drawing upon extensive semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in a Sino-Myanmar copper mine project, as well as other secondary data, this study finds that the Chinese SOE's operation was reactive to the ebb and flow of social resistance and the government's pressure amid the host country's democratization in the 2010s. Reforms were more likely to occur when the Chinese SOE observed more domestic constraints in its operation environment. It showed less incentive to improve its business practices when societal actors failed to display strong resistance, and the host government did not care about its legitimacy. Despite Beijing's efforts to craft an image of itself as a responsible power, conflicts in the BRI project should not be simplified as the SOE's defiance of the state's regulations. They are rooted in the state-centric foreign policy that systematically overlooks societal actors in state-coordinated investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing transboundary river basins proves a challenge for China when encountering disagreements with its neighbors that experience different political and social conditions. This paper analyzes what happens when China characterizes water as a security issue, examining China's fluid securitization practices, where changes can be identified indicating that the Chinese government values the various water security concerns differently. Two cases are adopted for comparison. In the case of China sharing the Mekong River, the Chinese government has shown a willingness to incorporate more issues found both inside and outside of the water sector. In contrast, in the case of the sharing of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna, China's security agenda has been limited to the consideration of water availability and has led to military security concerns. The findings indicate that China's water security agenda is not only driven by a concern for water management over specific rivers, but also judgments that incorporate strategic military consideration with regard to countries that they are involved with. The case of China thus suggests that water security is a complex domain that demonstrates competing values and concerns in (de)politicizing water. Therefore, water-related security issues cannot be understood solely from an environmental policy perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To contribute to the debate on the importance of state vis-à-vis inter-firm competition in regional development, this paper examines a representative dataset of the relocation of manufacturing firms in Guangdong province of China with multinomial logistic regression models. To improve the competitiveness of manufacturing in the Pearl River Delta, the Guangdong government implemented pro-active policies to encourage the relocation of existing manufacturing firms to their designated industrial parks during the 2000s. Although the initial results appear to support the usefulness of relocation policy, further examination reveals its effectiveness depends on the industrial sector and profiles of the relocated firms. In fact, the relocation of large-scale labor-intensive firms is not driven by local government initiatives. The physical proximity of high-technology parks to airports/ports has a bigger impact on the relocation of small-scale locally-funded high-technology firms into designated parks. In the case of locally-funded firms in polluting sectors, they are expanding rather than relocating to designated industrial parks. The empirical evidence indicates the non-binary nature of the industrial relocation policy. The nuances of relocation policy and its multi-scalar effects on relocated firms rejects any simplistic generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Covid-19 pandemic started in Wuhan in December 2019 and then spread to the rest of China and the world. This paper examines the relationship between inter-provincial migration and the diffusion of covid-19 outbreak in Mainland China from 26 January to 6 March 2020. Statistical analysis shows that the migrants who moved into Hubei in 2010–2015 are a good indicator of the population flow from Hubei to other provinces that caused the spread of covid-19 in early 2020. Many migrants traveled back to hometown before the traffic ban of Wuhan city for the spring holiday. Thus, the migration flow from a province to Hubei in the period 2010–2015 had the highest correlation coefficient with the number of covid-19 cases in four selected dates. The population flow based on the big data from the Baidu map on 20 January 2020 was also highly correlated with the number of cases, but not as good as the above migration data. The finding demonstrates the role of established migrant networks in the spread of covid-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of financing the Belt and Road Initiative sharpens the broader debates about the intentions behind and implications of the initiative, in particular, whether it represents an alternative to or within globalization (global capitalism) and the broader global order as currently constituted. This paper addresses this by examining the institutions, actors, mechanisms, and nature of the (proposed) financing of Belt and Road projects. It argues that however Chinese rhetoric on the BRI is read, looking at the financing demonstrates the structural power of the existing institutions, structures, and mechanisms of global political economy, and this will constrain Chinese ambitions to base an alternative world order on the foundations of the BRI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is expected to be a "game-changer" for Pakistan's struggling economy. In China's Yunnan province, the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor promises to revive old forms of connectivity across the region. While both projects feature prominently in Xi Jinping's signature project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), neither is particularly new. The BCIM dates back to the Kunming Initiative of 1999, while the CPEC was initiated in the early 2010s. Following the development of both projects over the past decade, this paper shows some of the effects of economic corridors on local trade. It argues that, despite claims of inclusiveness, openness and mutual benefit, such projects often achieve the opposite. In Xinjiang, security concerns have curbed opportunities for Uyghur and Pakistani traders to carry out cross-border trade. In Yunnan, a stricter border regime is favoring well-connected elites over local actors who had been engaged in local trade for decades. I thus argue that the corridor-ization of trade along China's frontiers has brought the end of what I call proximity: the advantages intrinsic to a certain geographical, cultural and historical closeness that used to afford business opportunities to borderland communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical analysis of hierarchical tendencies and functional patterns in the development of Mainland China’s space-economy by operationalizing the concept of “megaregions.” Drawing on the burgeoning literature on megaregions, we first argue that under conditions of economic globalization the megaregion concept does indeed present an effective tool to study the spatial agglomeration of the key components of China’s economic development. Second, we analyze the development status and the key functional characteristics of 16 prospective Chinese megaregions by constructing an index system consisting of 5 functions and 36 indicators. Third, we calculate an entropy index to rank megaregions according to their overall development status and reveal functional differences by applying cluster analysis. We find that the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Metropolitan Area, and the Pearl River Delta stand out, identify different varieties of megaregions according to their dominant functional characteristics, and explore the main policy dimensions of the persistent west–east divides observed. The paper is concluded with a discussion of potential avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The construction of the high-speed railway (HSR) system in China has improved cities' interconnectedness. We contend that the improved interconnectedness will likely strengthen economic interaction among cities, particularly cross-border trade integration. Employing a spatial panel fixed effect error model with prefecture-level city data from 2008 to 2013, this paper evaluates how cities' proximity to the HSR system affects urban market integration in China. We find that cities' proximity to the HSR system exerts a positive influence on reducing market segmentation, ceteris paribus. This study for the first time assesses the impacts of cities' proximity to HSR on inter-city market integration in China. The study will facilitate proactive regional policy decisions related to the future development of HSR and other critical infrastructure investment and development. Results obtained from the study could be of broader impact on policies of marketization reform and development for Eurasian countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a nuanced understanding of town-country relations in China. Inherent in the current literature is the serious problem of randomly indigenizing experiences and concepts from the West. To restore this imbalance, this paper provides a preliminary attempt to develop a better understanding methodologically, epistemologically and theoretically. It argues first for the implementation of a spatial story methodology that takes spatio-temporal relations seriously; second, a nuanced concept of the state as dynastic empire-building which functions through a two-tier governing relationship in focus-field relationships; third, a rejection of dualism, advocating instead the idea of mutual embeddedness in order to decipher the subtle relationships between parts and whole; fourth, an interrogation of the appropriateness of spatial concepts like spatial reach, scale, level and territory; and, finally, a proposed concept of cheng-cum-xiang to eschew a dualistic approach to town-country relations. In conclusion, the paper suggests implications for debates within urban studies more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes an interdisciplinary perspective to focus on the role played by the rural-urban dual system in China's urbanization and migration. We explain its establishment in China in the 1950s and its genealogy in the industrialization strategy adopted in the USSR in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the reform era, the system has been refashioned to suit a new set of demands of the state industrialization strategy to cater for the global economy. We analyze the mechanisms of the dual system, and how it has helped generate low-cost migrant labor for urban employers and siphon off revenues for urban governments by expropriating rural land. We also argue that there are fundamental differences between the dual system and the common "dualism," based on the Lewis dual-sector model, as observed in many developing countries. The plight of children of migrants is used to illustrate the main points made in the paper. Our research challenges the prevailing perspectives in Chinese geography and urban studies, many of which are based on market-driven neoclassical economics or global neoliberalism, often ignoring China's historical and institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the question of extended urbanization by arguing for the need to overcome dualistic views to properly address the political specificities of urbanization in China. To this end, this paper understands state-territorial relations as a process of étatization by drawing on the particular literature on the role of the party-state in urbanization. Through a brief history of Guangdong, it elaborates on the political modalities of territorialization through China's administrative rank system. This has enabled the party-state to mediate the production of urban space. From this, I arrive at the concept of "territorially-nested urbanization", moving beyond limited accounts of hierarchical state powers in Chinese urban studies. Next, from a short periodization of Dongguan's urbanization, the paper exemplifies how a particular mode of territorialization has evolved into tense relationships between the city and towns in the ongoing dilemma of multi-centered versus concentrated direction of urbanization. Based on insights from in-depth fieldwork, the last part of this paper illustrates the contradictory mobilization of village collectives within extended state power through local government, and the development of villagers' politics and activism in contested land transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A taxonomy of stakes and stakeholders in urban governance is presented in this paper. In addition to property interests, business interests, political interests and the state, special attention is paid to ordinary people's general interests in the city. It depends on a person's indigeneity, the degree of his being an indigenous person or insider to the city. General interest is usually not revealed because urban governance is more distant from the person than his daily work and life, but its revelation could be ignited in an explosive way by particular events on some occasions. This is called the flash preference problem, which has important implications to urban governance. Both social control and civil society can be regarded as possible solutions to the problem. Built on the taxonomy of stakes and stakeholders, a theoretical framework for urban governance in China includes growing property interests and business interests that have formed growth coalition with local government. Social control remains important but difficult because street office and residents' committee are expected to strengthen social control while they are gradually being marginalized in neighborhood governance. The case of grid management not only demonstrates the dilemma of social control in China but also hints at the ultimate importance of democracy and civil society to urban governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has long positioned itself as the ancient civilization of the Far East, which only makes geographical sense through the lens of the West. The literature on China resonates with this geographic illustration, about which, critical scholars have cautioned against the imperial hegemony of Eurocentric knowledge. In this paper, we attempt to answer the call for a Global East through the situated agency of the others in the geopolitics of knowledge circulation. The circulation of knowledge foregrounds transnational flows in a multifaceted and multidirectional process, and mimicry calls for attention to political/soft subversions beneath the camouflaged behavior of coping. By investigating scholarship on the particular topic of shanzhai, we probe into two layers of knowledge production: how the variegated scholarly citation behaviors reflect the situated agency that bears the effects of asymmetric power relations formed through multiple flows of people, idea and capital, but nonetheless demonstrates an endeavor of autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three months into the Covid-19 crisis, lockdown has become a global response to the pandemic. Why have so many countries resorted to lockdown? How is it being implemented in different places? Why have some places had more success with lockdowns and others not? What does the effectiveness of lockdowns tell us about the local institutions entrusted with enforcing them? This paper compares how lockdown orders have been implemented in China, Italy, and the U.S. The analysis points to two major factors that have shaped the enforcement: tensions between national and local governments, and the strength of local territorial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent 2017–18 "dash for gas" captured global attention, but also exposed critical failings in China's gas market. The 2019 lull imposed by the Government reflects the need to address local challenges. This paper analyzes the prospects for demand growth and assesses the various ways in which that demand can be met. There is considerable uncertainty surrounding demand growth, with cost competitiveness being the determining factor. Equally, although China has significant natural gas reserves, they are largely unconventional and present significant geological and technical challenges; with domestic production growth failing to keep pace as demand import dependence increases. China's gas imports are met by pipeline gas from Central Asia and Myanmar and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from avariety of countries. The Power of Siberia pipeline started deliveries of Russian in late 2019. However, plans to expand Central Asian imports have disappointed and China may agree to asecond pipeline from Russia or increase its LNG imports. Asimple "gas balance model" is used in the final discussion and conclusions to explore future developments and their consequences for global gas security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previously articulated within several regional multilateral frameworks, the "China-Laos Railway" eventually turned into a flagship project of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Started in 2016 and planned to be completed in late 2021, this project will provide Laos with unprecedented railway infrastructure, linking its capital Vientiane with China through the northern border town of Boten. This paper critically scrutinizes the underlying geo-economic win-win rhetoric of coupling China's regional BRI ambitions with Laos' national vision of transforming into a land-linked country. Understanding the newest BRI labeling of infrastructural connectivity against the backdrop of Laos' and the region's longer-lasting neoliberal developmental trajectory, I examine the financial mechanism of the railway project and the different temporal and spatial scales of Laos' and China's calculation of potential benefits. These are juxtaposed with the empirical reality of already visible dynamics and impacts of Chinese investment alongside the railway. Together, they tend to paint a future of Chinese profits at the expense of Laos' sustainable long-term development. Contributing to much-needed grounded accounts of local unfoldings of China-backed megaprojects, I pay particular attention to vernacular discourse and experience to fully understand the nature, processes and impacts of BRI financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last couple of decades, China's software and services industry has emerged as the driving power of economic growth playing a significant role in leading innovation in China. Research on inter-city network structure, drawing on patent cooperation among cities, helps understand the positioning of cities in terms of software and service-related innovation. This helps guide urban- or regional-development strategy. In this paper, we investigate 22,316 patents of software and service-listed firms. We examine the number of patent applications, technological innovation and development, and the geographical distribution of companies owning patents using Social Network Analysis (SNA). Our results show that: (1) Chinese software and service-related innovation has a notable agglomeration in a few geographically dispersed mega-cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen; (2) the technological innovation and development of the software and services industry in China is deeply dependent on importing technologies from foreign countries, particularly from the United States and Japan; and (3) the "Industry-University-Research" combination effect of innovation in China is still relatively low. Our policy recommendations include encouragement of cooperation, innovation of investment mechanism, preferential tax treatment of enterprise income tax, and sustainable and improved learning programs for nurturing highly qualified professionals to create an environment for independent innovation and entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a review of services sector development in China. It is found that China’s services have recently emerged as the dominant contributor to economic growth and job creation. Trade in services has also increased dramatically, although China maintains a huge deficit. In comparison with economies at a similar stage of development, however, China’s services sector is lagging behind. Both GDP and employment shares of the services sector are relatively small. Services trade also accounts for a relatively small share of China’s total trade. In particular, China’s new services are underdeveloped. As per capita income rises and resultant urbanization accelerates, the country’s services sector is expected to expand further and hence play a key role in rebalancing China’s economy away from its over-reliance on manufacturing and exporting. To reach this goal, further reforms and prudent government policies are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In August 2019, The Shenzhen Model City Initiative was released in which the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced its decision to support Shenzhen, the long-standing poster city for China's economic reform, in building a demonstration pilot zone for Chinese socialism with a particular emphasis on further developing the city's technological prowess. What are the ideological implications of the latest model-making of Shenzhen? And how does the city's innovative turn relate to its role as the nation's perceived civilizational front line? This study explores the continuities and evolution of contemporary Chinese governance by considering the reinvention of the "Shenzhen Model" in relation to processes of urbanization, globalization and industrial upgrading. Drawing upon Tim Oakes's theory of the "urban" as an ideological device, it examines the (re)making of the "Shenzhen Model" through different discourses, apparatuses and policies related to the city's technological innovation and entrepreneurship. Situating the "Shenzhen Model" at a time of precarity and uncertainty amidst economic growth slowdown, the China-United States trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic, this article demonstrates how the state mobilizes narratives and practices pertinent to technological innovation and entrepreneurship to enhance its political influence and thus sheds light on the latest developments in urban governance during China's post-industrial turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of China's intensified efforts to engage in regional and global environmental governance is widely noted and debated. With rapidly increasing economic and political influence, China has been gradually changing its attitude and strategy in negotiations over some of the most challenging cross-border environmental crises. In this paper, we examine two cases of multinational environmental negotiations, where China exhibited leadership potential and efforts, namely the climate change regime and Mekong river governance system. Our analysis focuses both on the leadership activities around institutional, moral, and financial contributions to the governance regime, and on the efforts for China to take up exemplary actions at domestic level. We argue that in both cases, China exhibited both determination and commitment to shape the course and outcome of the negotiations, whilst applying two clearly different strategies. In the case of climate change, China is using its entrepreneur power to facilitate the deals and portray itself as the moral leader of the climate change course, while in the Mekong river case, financial and institutional inputs are the major instruments for Chinese to assume the leadership role. Yet in both cases, China exhibited a notable shift from an un-cooperative and coercive veto power to a more constructive player in the multinational environmental negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses various research papers on topics including China's economic history, impacts of the World War II of China on its economy and the Chinese foreign relation.

China's administrative division adjustments (ADAs) reallocate resources and power under a unitary centralized structure. Using national-level data for 2001–2017, this study analyzed the likelihood of ADAs of counties or county-level cities through the events of history analysis method (EHA). The results revealed that county-level local economic factors (value added by first industry, value added by second industry, fiscal revenue, and urban fixed-asset investments) and particularly national strategic factors (promotion of city-regions, frontier location, strategic initiative location) significantly predicted adjustments. The findings verified that economic factors account for ADAs. Additionally, the strategies for creating city regions are a major motive for ADAs. ADAs were performed as spatial strategies in privileged areas to realize national goals for cities, city clusters and frontiers. Governments try to accomplish national strategies and promote spatial governance capacities by territorial urbanization and rescaling administrative power, which crystallizes the practice of state spatial selectivity. However, national spatial strategies should balance efficiency with equality among regions, meaning that the logics of different ADA types differ. Our study enriches the theory of territorial urbanization and contributes to the existing literature by providing a quantitative analysis and thick descriptions of factors facilitating the reconfiguration of state space in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being neighbors, China and Central Asian states face common problems, which require collective response and leadership. In this article, we explore to what extent China's increased engagement in the region since the dissolution of the USSR has included attempts to lead cooperation to address some of these common problems. We answer our research question by exploring observable leadership efforts, such as institutional development, financial support, moral or belief supply, and unilateral exemplary activities. The analysis shows that in three selected issue areas, namely counter-terrorism, infrastructure development, and water management China has made certain efforts to lead, but the scope and character of its efforts have varied significantly between different issue areas and over time. This variation can be explained in the light of China's evolving foreign policy interests, the specificities of the Central Asian states, and the role of Russia as the other prominent external actor. While earlier China's initiatives focused on Central Asia and Russia, the more recent ones either include Central Asian states among other members or focus only on some of them. Joining China's projects helps Central Asian states to improve their international standing and diversify their foreign relations, but also affects regional geopolitical structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural migrant children have become a fast-growing population in China as a consequence of the large-scale population flow from rural to urban areas. Besides the dual-structurehukousystem, which restrains rural migrants from upward mobility, family capital also plays an important role in providing family educational support to rural migrant children. Using the data from P District and N District of Shenzhen in 2013, this paper explores the present status of three dimensions of family capital and five aspects of family educational support to Chinese rural migrant children, as well as the correlation between family capital and family educational support from perspectives of migration status (hukou), life course (children’s age), and school type. Constrained by inadequate family capital in multiple dimensions manifested by less education, lower income, and limited social networks, etc., parents of rural migrant children provide less family educational support in nearly every aspect compared with parents of urban local children. Among rural migrant children, those in private migrant schools receive the least support from their parents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Homeownership by migrant households in large Chinese cities is increasingly evident and sometimes blamed for driving up local housing prices.Hukoureform grants localhukouto migrants in small cities while it allows large cities to set uphukouentry barriers to control migration. This paper explores whether migrant households’ micro-level characteristics and macro-level urban policies relating tohukoureform have any impact on their housing tenure choices. Using data from a 2009 survey of migrant households in six large cities, this study adopts logistic regression models to examine factors influencing labor migrant households’ tenure decisions. We find that household income and head of householdhukoutype, contribution to pension fund, and enrollment in health insurance all positively predict homeownership. Migrant households are more likely to be found in cities with larger population size. We argue that city entry barriers create new forms of institutionalhavesandhave-notsand new forms of inequality. The sustained impact of previoushukoutypes suggests inherited inequalities through intergenerational wealth transfer, which calls for targeted welfare policies to mediate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including migrant labor in China, neighborhood relations, and segregation.

As cities in China undergo growth and transformation, they continue to absorb migrants from both ends of the economic spectrum, giving rise to socially mixed cities. As this occurs, the cities experience an elevated level of residential segregation due to the emergence of new forms of enclave urbanism, such as gated communities andchengzhongcun(villages-in-the-city). Factors including historical legacy, land institutions, and property-led development have contributed to this divided residential pattern at the neighborhood level. However, at larger geographical scales, the degree of segregation depends on whether the provision of different housing types is systematically segregated among urban districts. This paper, using Shenzhen as a case study, examines the spatial logic of the divided pattern of the population by analyzing the distribution of both urban residents and housing provisions. The analysis explores segregation between the privilegedhukouholders and underprivileged non-hukoumigrants as well as the spatial separation of formal urban housing andchengzhongcun. As expected, non-hukoumigrants are largely segregated fromhukouholders due to their much-constrained choice of housing and the widespread availability ofchengzhongcun. A rather low degree of segregation is manifest at the sub-district level. The pattern is somewhat more desirable, as it maintains a more spatially equitable setting that enables disadvantaged groups to reside within short distances of jobs and amenities. Nevertheless, urban renewal programs targeted atchengzhongcunare most likely to jeopardize such a pattern of housing, which may aggravate segregation at the larger geographical levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of global production networks have made great strides in understanding the dominant organizations of global production but so far have only offered limited insights on mitigating risks inherited by being a part of such networks under the condition of crises in the world’s wealthiest regions. Drawing from the literature of regional resilience, this paper examines the performance of Chinese Information Communication Technology firms before and after the financial crisis of 2008 with the aim to identify differentiated impacts and the firms’ and region's ability to deal with shocks under the crisis conditions. The research looks into how market portfolios and technological levels affect firm performance based on primary data from two large-scale firm-level surveys conducted before and after the 2008 financial crisis. I found that while the 2008 crisis primarily affected demands outside China, its impacts did not stop at firms or regions specializing in export. Domestic market-oriented firms also suffered from the shock, and mixed-market firms performed the best during the crisis. Technological levels did not have a clear impact on firm performance during the crisis. While the two surveys cover only a short time horizon, the comparison highlights the entrenched nature of the production networks and underscores the importance of creating and maintaining structural diversity and multiple market relations to survive the new “normal” of the volatile globalized industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's Opium Replacement Policy (ORP) is one of the country's earliest cross-border development interventions in the upper Mekong region. A massive state subsidy program for "alternative" development in the northern parts of Myanmar and Laos, the ORP helped finance a wave of Chinese agribusiness investments abroad since the mid-2000s, causing significant social and ecological transformation. Yet key details about the program remain opaque. In this article, we contribute to a growing literature on the rising economic power of China's "peripheral centers," borderland prefectures whose role in foreign affairs has increased significantly as the country's borders become more porous. We review state motives for establishing the ORP and use public records about the program's activities in Myanmar and Laos to interrogate the vertical politics that structure and complicate the ORP's implementation. The program's public records are characterized by a mix of transparency and opacity which we analyse to show that the ORP's increasing transparency since around 2010 has moved away from regulating impacts abroad and instead toward securing and distributing benefits for borderland business (and their interlinked political) interests in China. As borderland authorities play a growing role in China's foreign trade, we show that the vertical politics that increasingly shape the regulatory environment have allowed the ORP to proliferate in size and influence as state oversight of its activities abroad has waned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Soviet breakup, rural communities in the Kazakhstan–China borderlands have faced cataclysmic social, economic, and ecological transformations. Collective and state farms have been replaced by precarious smallholder agriculture suffering from a decline in financial inputs and the deterioration of infrastructure. At the same time, dynamic transformations of border permeability (and trans-border reconnections) between Kazakhstan and China have challenged the until relatively recent widespread Soviet rhetoric on Western China (or rather Xinjiang) as an underdeveloped space across the border. This article is based on several months of fieldwork between 2019 and 2021 in Panfilov District, located at major cross-border road and railway intersections and hosting important infrastructural objects, such as a dry port, a major railway transhipment hub, and a trans-border special economic zone. The article explores how the border situation (and the border's changing permeability for people, commodities, and ideas since the early 1990s) as well as the implementation of new trans-border infrastructures eventually shaped local discourses and practices in the socio-economic development of south-east Kazakhstan's agricultural sector. It is scrutinized herein how various forms of trans-border socio-economic interactions (although heavily regulated) and China's (agri-) economic policy in Xinjiang started to affect farmers' ambitions and practices across the border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is undergoing a rapid agrarian transition from dispersed household farming to large-scale, mechanized, and commercialized agricultural production, while retaining collective rural land ownership. Reforms have encouraged transfers of rural land to new subjects of agriculture including agribusinesses, family farmers, and cooperatives, leading to capitalist dynamics in agriculture both from above and from below. Central-state pressure to scale up and modernize agriculture has led local governments to engage in creative experimentation with new institutional forms. This article investigates one such innovation, which has been widely lauded as an important model: the creation of an "agricultural co-management system" in Chongzhou City, Sichuan province, which combines land shareholding cooperatives (LSCs), the hiring of new professional farm managers for the LSCs, and state-provided agricultural services aimed at modernization. We demonstrate that the Chongzhou government's experimentation arose from political economic incentives to capitalize and modernize agriculture as well as the locally specific circumstances of the failure of a dragonhead enterprise. Examining the three components of the agricultural co-management system in depth, we argue that it has deepened rural differentiation through a process of state-led accumulation, and that the continued scaling up of LSCs in the context of a new modern agricultural functional zone threatens to further erode shareholder control. These LSCs, set within the agricultural co-management system, are a new subject of agriculture that combine elements of capitalization from above and below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses aspects of China's energy future consisting oil, natural gas and nuclear power sectors. He comments on the issues related to the country's energy sector development which include the objective of energy policy, energy source endowment in relation to population size, and the locations of energy sources and consuming market. It notes that China's 6th Five Year Plan of 1981-1985 is the pillar of its energy policy.

The article explores the mechanisms which spurred the growth in the international reserves of Russia, China, and India during the 2000s. It examines the costs incurred by such countries in intervening into exchange markets to maintain exchange rate regimes as well as highlights the measures they have taken to address the 2008 global financial crisis. How each country deal with the outflows of foreign private capital and decreases in demand for imports in developed countries is discussed.

The article comments on George Lin's paper, "Peri-urbanism in Globalizing China: A Study of New Urbanism in Dongguan." It argues that Lin's used ideas on urbanism that is dated, drawn as it was from a paper by Louis Worth written in 1938, in his discussion of the processes of urban growth and change in China owing to the forces of globalization.