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Over the past 5–10 years, a growing number of Chinese scholars and policy experts have sought to theorise the 'development' of other peoples and places in the Global South. These intellectual efforts include building temporal frameworks for describing development processes, and often, an implicit set of directives for effecting positive change. Drawing on eight months' fieldwork in Beijing, this paper examines the representational practices of depicting development and its temporal dimension that have been mobilised in the ongoing production of Chinese international development thinking. In particular, it is concerned with the ways in which temporal distance and proximity have been constructed to provide a theoretical and moral justification for China's intensifying geopolitical and economic preoccupations. We argue that more than a system of explanations, current Chinese thinking contains and expresses a recalibrated will to geopolitical power, which has had a conditioning effect on the enframing of the meanings and relations of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preparations for the Beijing Winter Olympics have promoted the rapid development of ice-snow tourism in China, which contributes to achieving the goal of having "300 million people participate in ice-snow sports". This paper analyzes the status quo and problems associated with the growth of ice-snow tourism in China based on the methods of documentation and field investigation. The results indicate that China's efforts have born abundant fruits. Notwithstanding, there are still some problems due to the limited time and hastened process of ice-snow tourism development, including unreasonable exploitation, low-quality products and services, imperfect investment and financing system, inadequate management, a single marketing mode, and insufficient talent teams. Compared with developed countries in Europe and the United States, ice-snow tourism in China is in the stage of rapid development. To achieve the high-quality development of ice-snow tourism in China, this paper proposes actions from eight aspects which involve policy, products and services, marketing, safety management and control, talent teams, standardization construction, science and technology, and community participation. This study can provide references for the high-quality development of ice-snow tourism in China, as well as perfecting Chinese theoretical research on ice-snow tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regeneration of old residential communities in China is one of the most important tasks in urban renewal. In recent years, distinctive models and pathways have emerged in the emerging practice of participatory community regeneration, all of which can be seen as applications of collaborative governance theory at the community level. Collaborative governance is considered an effective way to achieve multiple goals in urban regeneration, but there has been relatively little research on collaborative governance in small-scale regeneration projects. This paper summarizes three nuanced pathways in the collaborative governance model through case studies, which are led by different initiators, resulting in collaborative models, rights dynamics, and implementation pathways that are applicable to different scenarios, effectively resolving community conflicts and producing sustainable practical results. This study compares how the three models achieve their respective objectives in participatory regeneration projects by coordinating the different stakeholder participation processes. These three models complement and extend international experience and will provide a vivid Chinese example for other developing countries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a mathematical model to determine both a worker's decision to participate in a nonwork activity and the decision about whether to include it in the basic home-work-home commute. By using household travel survey data from Beijing, China, this paper presents an empirical analysis framework to examine commuters' nonwork stop-making behavior in a highly urbanized environment in a developing country. To account for the censored nature of the decision about whether to include a nonwork stop in the commute tour, a bivariate probit selection model was used. To enhance the behavioral basis for the model, extensive statistical tests were performed on model specifications and assumptions. The empirical results provide useful insights into the effects of individual/household sociodemographics, transportation measures, work schedule, and mode choice on commuters' nonwork stop-making propensity. This study also provides methodological evidence that could lead to an approach for predicting the changes in commuters' nonwork stop-making behavior as a result of the changes in sociodemographics and transportation scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon efforts to secure the future of the historic winding hutong streets and siheyuan houses that represent the way of life of the common people and the true urban identity of Beijing. These remaining patches of historic Beijing are of immense value and the urgency of their preservation has become widely recognised. There are many challenges facing conservation projects with regard to the retention of the unique historic urban character whilst achieving necessary revitalisation. This paper will review recent practice and legislation that is recognising the potential of the old city without compromising the modernity of China's bustling capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose a new margin protection (MP) scheme for the producers of hog, cattle and dairy in the developing countries. Design/methodology/approach: The proposed MP scheme is inspired by the Livestock Gross Margin (LGM) program that has been successfully implemented in US directly implementing the LGM program in developing countries can be difficult due to the rudimentary of the futures market with limited futures listing. To address this issue, the authors proxy the futures prices by relating to some relevant spot prices via an econometric model. The proxied futures prices, in turn, enable the implementation of a generalized LGM, which the authors denote as the MP scheme. Findings: As China is the world's largest consumption and production of pork, the authors describe the proposed MP scheme by demonstrating how a generalized LGM can be constructed for the Chinese hog producers. By empirically comparing to the pilot hog price index insurance for the Beijing's hog producers, the authors find that the proposed MP scheme is more effective in providing MP for the producers. Research limitations/implications: The proposed MP scheme still requires the availability of some relevant spot prices in order to use an econometric model to proxy the missing futures prices. Originality/value: The value of this research stems from demonstrating how an MP scheme can be constructed for developing countries that have rudimentary futures markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the global COVID-19 crisis, China has portrayed itself as a "champion of multilateralism" -- defending UN institutions and its own multilateral initiatives in a variety of spheres. China's approach has, however, often been criticised for undermining multilateralism through its use of multilateral platforms as arenas to contest US leadership. This paper examines the official Chinese discourse on multilateralism during the COVID 19 crisis in the years 2020 and 2021 in light of Beijing's multilateral diplomacy in the Global South, exemplified by the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and the China-CELAC Forum (China--Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Forum). The authors argue that China's growing multilateral engagement must be understood in the context of a multilateral system that was already in crisis before the pandemic due to its inability to resolve major global challenges. The term "multilateralism" is essentially used by Beijing to discursively oppose "unilateralism". While its active multilateral engagement may be able to prevent and resolve major global crises in the future, Beijing's approach offers limited multilateral spaces for deliberation and contestation by weaker states and non-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water issue is one of the challenges of urban sustainability in developing countries. To address the conflict between urban water use and economic development, it is required to better understand the decoupling states between them and the driving forces behind these decoupling states. The transformed Tapio decoupling model is applied in this paper to study the decoupling relationship between urban industrial water consumption and economic growth in Beijing and Shanghai, two megacities in China, in 2003–2016. The factors driving decoupling are divided into industrial structure effect, industrial water utilization intensity effect, economic development level effect, and population size effect through Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method. The results show that: (1) the decoupling states of total water consumption and economic growth in Beijing and Shanghai are mainly strong decoupling and weak decoupling. In comparison, Shanghai's decoupling effect is better than Beijing; (2) regarding decoupling elasticity, Beijing is higher than that of Shanghai in tertiary industry and lower in primary industry and secondary industry. As a result, Beijing's decoupling level is worse than Shanghai in tertiary industry, while better in primary industry and secondary industry; (3) The common factors that drive the two megacities' decoupling are industrial structure effect and industrial water utilization intensity effect. The effects of economic development level and population size mainly present weak decoupling in two megacities, but the decoupling state is optimized year by year. Finally, based on the results, some suggestions for achieving the sustainable development of urban water use are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macro-scale urban growth management at the metropolitan level in a transitional and developing country is often criticized because of its weak performances in controlling local development activities that are fuelled by autonomous decisions of local actors and market forces. This paper conducts an empirical analysis of the implementation of urban growth management in Beijing, a typical transitional city. The results suggest that the objectives of municipal growth management have partly been achieved through local district and county development. Some unexpected and illegal local developments are counterproductive from the perspective of municipal growth management. The findings suggest that there are problems in the implementation of macro-scale growth management in the context of new trends towards political decentralization and marketization, although the continuing centrally planned system still plays a vital role in policy formation. In the interest of future policy, the institutional capacity of municipal growth management should be enhanced to enable the planning system to control the increasing local autonomy and market forces in urban development in the transition process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of the globalisation of innovation assume that multinational corporations (MNCs) distribute their innovation activities hierarchically, with advanced technology being confined to the advanced industrialised countries, while more routine low-end innovation is decentralised in a few developing countries. The emergence of about 40 research and development (R&D) centres in Beijing, China, many of which engage in basic and advanced applied research, challenges the above assumption. This article argues that the cheap and abundant highly skilled labour of the latecomer countries is an essential factor in attracting global R&D activities but that this factor is far from being a sufficient condition for the presence there of advanced R&D activities. Through its analysis of the historical transformation of local institutions and of their co-development with MNCs, this paper identifies four major knowledge assets that explains why Beijing could attract advanced R&D activities. First, Beijing has developed a strong entrepreneurial culture that creates highly motivated engineers who are eager to learn new knowledge from abroad. Second, the experienced Chinese returnees provide a critical bridging role between Western R&D management knowledge and local engineer culture. Third, the lack of inter-firm trust and networks makes the entrance of MNCs into a 'loose' cluster much easier. Fourth, the large and dynamic Chinese market that desires high-tech products with low prices shortens the product life cycle, forcing MNCs to upgrade their R&D facilities in China. The findings show that the co-development of local institutions with the MNC R&D centres can create locational windows of opportunity for advanced R&D activities to be carried out in unconventional sites outside the Triad countries. This article concludes with the discussion on how Dunning's Ownership, Location and Internalisation (OLI) framework and Mathew's Linkage, Leverage and Learning (LLL) framework might be useful in explaining this new phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the 1995 Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women and the Non-Governmental Organization Forum held in Beijing, China. Economics was the focus of the conference as most of the participating countries are undergoing structural adjustment or similar economic reforms. It also discussed issues on women's ownership and the control of land and housing. Furthermore, the conference had formulated a comparative analysis of the results and the responses of the participants to the economic transformation in developing countries with the individuals in the family as the main factors.

In recent years, extensive efforts have been paid on the investigation of OpenStreetMap (OSM) in developed countries, but little attention has been given to the cities in developing countries. This paper presents the results regarding the evolution of OSM road networks in Beijing, China, from four aspects. First, findings from general analysis indicate that (1) the overall growth pattern could be mainly explained by the increasing number of volunteers and their mapping contributions. Second, findings from geometric analysis suggest: (2) mapping intensity exhibits heavy-tailed pattern both for a certain time period and across time; (3) mapping direction moves from outskirts to downtown distinguished from other regions; and (4) mapping behaviors are mainly constrained by the underlying structure of road networks. Third, results of topological analysis indicate that (5) OSM road networks resemble the growth of real road networks and are undergoing an evolution process depicted by exploration and densification. Last, from the perspective of centrality analysis, (6) two kinds of nodes are identified with the ones accounting for the exploration and the other ones for the densification, which further hints the evolution process of continuous strong exploration accompanied by weak densification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article locates one of the earliest charitable performances organized by prostitutes in 1907 in two cities, Shanghai and Beijing. It examines the ways in which each social group prostitutes in the name of jijie (prostitute circles)/huajie (circles of flowers), the male elites who helped them manage the performances, and the newspaper commentators who responded to these events in mass media reconceptualized the formation of their identities, the transformation of their businesses, and the negotiation of their relationship with the emerging society and the nation in the last decade of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). It argues that the charitable performances not only cultivated the civic virtue of every group involved within a newly restructured society that prioritized public morals and nationalistic devotion, they also promoted person gain in terms of social status and reputation. To a large extent, these performances help us understand such bigger issues as female sexuality, the prostitution business, elite dominance, and the reform of China within the larger urban, social, and ideological contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is aimed at analyzing how governance structure and mechanisms can support the cooperative principal–principal relationship between the public and private sectors in infrastructure public–private partnership (PPP) projects. This topic is important because PPP projects are prevalent in developing countries such as China, and the two sectors can face inherent conflicts when they come into the principal–principal relationship. To address this aim, we employed an in-depth qualitative case study of Beijing Metro Line 4—a typical and successful PPP project in China. Based upon retrospective primary and secondary data, we identified and analyzed effective governance mechanisms at institutional, corporate, and project levels. These mechanisms enable both sectors to balance power and protect mutual benefits against the adverse effects of principal–principal conflicts. This study contributes to the literature by revealing the link between governance and principal–principal relationships in Chinese infrastructure PPPs and illustrating how different levels of governance mechanisms together foster the cooperative relationship between public and private parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China model is increasingly viewed by developing countries as a viable alternative to democracy. China's allegedly merit‐based promotion system is lauded as a secret ingredient of the China model. However, once being promoted to the top, Chinese leaders are as unconstrained as other autocrats. If there are fundamental reasons why other autocrats cannot commit to such a promotion system, why are Chinese leaders any different? We provide a unified theory that accommodates both China and other autocracies by postulating that they coordinate on different equilibria. Both the presence and the absence of political career concerns can arise in equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public participation in urban planning is a contested issue in China. In this article, we look at the endogenous mechanism of institutional change, by analyzing the roles and motivations of "third-party" planning professionals in two contrasting cases: a government-led and a citizen-led participatory practice. Findings show that planners were advocates of citizen participation in heritage preservation in both cases and acted as "mediators" in the first and "activists" in the second, yet remained within the mainstream planning structure. Their motivation to serve the rights of the citizens was clear, but subordinate to the drive to conform to the professional norms of authenticity in preservation in both cases. In contrast to both the Global North where more agonistic approaches question inclusive planning and the Global South where insurgent planning finds space to maneuver, Chinese urban planning seems to proceed by taking small steps within narrow margins when it comes to citizen engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In it, the line between the study of China's practices as a development finance creditor becomes blurred by a more prosaic forecasting of what chapters 1-8 mean in the context of China's flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Asian Financial Crisis did not affect China as adversely as Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, or Thailand, but shifted upward the whole region's tendency to accumulate foreign exchange reserves. [Extracted from the article]

Large-scale centralised wastewater treatment system has often prevailed in industrial countries, and has been regarded as a successful approach during the last century. However, transfer of this highly water-consuming system and so-called 'end-of-pipe' technology to developing countries, especially in fast-growing cities with scarce water resources, has been extremely limited. Decentralized water treatment is not a new technology and has been successfully implemented in many rural areas worldwide. However, there are few applications in urban areas. This study at Tianxiu Garden in Beijing, China, investigated the potential and feasibility of water management based on a decentralized approach, but modified for application of greywater recycling and rainwater harvesting in a densely populated semi-urban area. A high degree of drinking water substitution (more than 25%) could not be attained by rainwater harvesting. Recycling of treated greywater for toilet flushing was shown to be an efficient method for minimisation of drinking water consumption, and a more suitable technique than rainwater harvesting for saving water in Beijing, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In developing countries, aerosol particles damage the health of hundreds of millions of people. Migration from the country side to megacities increases emissions and exposure to particles. Some countries have started to limit emissions based on particulate mass, but this may increase particle number concentrations. In this study we discuss some earlier measurements carried out in the developing world and compare results from one-week measurement campaigns concerning the particle number size distribution and PM10 mass concentrations in New Delhi, India and Beijing, China. Our results show that submicron particle concentrations are high in both places. The average PM10 concentration was 360 μg/m3 in New Delhi and 120 μg/m3 in Beijing. The corresponding total particle number concentrations in the size range 3–800 nm were 63 000 cm−3 and 35 000 cm−3. Number and mass concentrations and their characteristics showed significantly different behaviour between these two locations, which stresses the importance of long-term simultaneous measurements of both quantities in different types of megacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South-South Cooperation (SSC) has been a recurring theme in the global discourse but it neither resulted in self-reliance of the South nor it could yield in the political and economic liberation of the South. The major obstacles in its ways have been the North's overarching control over the international system and the South's incapacities to address its own shortcomings. The renewed economic cooperation among developing countries seems to be undoing the strictures imposed on them before, be it by default or by design. In this milieu, China's ascendency to the global economy and its massive investment in Asia and Africa has set the stage to analyse Beijing's policies and projects of SSC promotion. President Xi Jinping's One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative is a huge opportunity for the South to reinvigorate their socio-political and economic ties. While implementing OBOR's flagship project, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Beijing adhered to the five principles of peace and shunned the traditional intrusiveness of the North. It generated hope and avenues for altering the economic landscape in Pakistan, which illuminated the path of cooperation among developing countries and brightened the prospects of OBOR even more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]