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Intensifying strategic competition with China has introduced the need for the United States to consider extensive and stringent economic restrictions against the rising power. This article suggests that US economic containment of China is unlikely to materialise due to the presence of the EU states that are not militarily threatened by the geographically separated China and in a position to prioritise economic benefits in exchanges with that state. It first identifies the role of the EU in China's foreign economic exchanges and addresses the ability of the EU states to replace the economic function of the United States in China. Then, it discusses how geographical conditions surrounding China make the rising state largely an East Asian threat. It suggests that, devoid of any direct military threat from China, the EU states can undermine the effectiveness of substantial US economic containment measures against China by functioning as alternative economic partners or facilitating China's construction of alternative economic routes. Finally, this paper discusses the limitations in US ability to constrain the EU states' economic exchanges with China. While concerns grow over Washington's economic assertiveness against Beijing, the feasibility of a US-led upheaval in economic relations involving China should be carefully gauged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on tourism geographies in China. He offers his observations on Anglo-American tourism geography review papers, the difficulty experienced by tourism geographers in publishing their work in mainstream geographical journals, and the historical background of Chinese tourism geography research.

China's population is large and its annual growth significant. Since the mid-1950s, the Chinese government has made four attempts to curb the growth and hopes to limit the total population to 1.2 billion by the year 2000. Thus it has established a policy of limiting families to one child each. These efforts of population control have been successful in cities but have fallen short in rural areas. Using the 1982 Chinese census and data from a national sampling on fertility, this paper examines the urban-rural contrasts in demographic and marital behavior, rates of growth, and implementation of the one child policy. It discusses the variables, such as education, occupation, and political factors, that affect the urban and rural populations. The majority of rural couples still desire a larger family. The paper probes the reasons for this and finds that the traditional concerns of old age and family propagation are more important than are economic reasons, such as increasing the family labor force. To implement the one child policy local governments have set forth directives againts second and higher-order births. They also are promoting the development of small towns and the transference of farmers to nonagricultural jobs. The government is attempting to integrate urban and rural administrations and to establish "'population development regions" around the country so that cities can play a central role in population control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the province of Yunnan in China. The province of Yunnan is described as extraordinarily diverse in terms of geographical location and sociocultural aspects. It is larger that Germany, with a population of more than 45 million. Historical perspectives on Yunnan are presented, including its political, social and ethnic history. Overview of the papers concerning Yunnan published within the issue are also presented.

Selection of roads is an intractable generalization operation due to the difficulty in retaining the density difference and connectivity of a road network. This paper proposes a novel approach of selective omission for roads based on mesh density. The density of a road network and its local variations are calculated using meshes as units. Since maps at different scales usually reveal different densities, different density thresholds for road networks are determined on the basis of theoretical analysis and empirical study of mesh densities on maps at different scales. The selection process starts with the identification of the meshes that have a density beyond the threshold. The mesh with the largest density is first treated. Its bounding road segments are ordered according to their relative importance. The least important segment is eliminated. The remaining segments are then merged with the adjacent mesh, thus forming a new mesh. The selection procedure is repeated until none of the meshes has a density beyond the threshold. Such a process of eliminating road segments and merging meshes can ensure the road network connectivity. In this study, the meshes are classified depending on the types of road segment. For the different mesh types, their density thresholds are set to be different, which can be used as an indicator for the preservation of the density difference. This proposed approach considers topological, geometric and semantic properties of the road network. It was applied to two sets of road networks, and the results of selection are convincing. This methodology has now been adopted for the updating of 1:50,000 maps of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, 28 participants with little geographical knowledge of the destination were asked to plan a week-long trip to China online. The participants were asked to create a detailed seven-day itinerary outline with activities or attractions they would like to participate in or visit, as well as restaurants in which they would like to dine. The participants were given a computer with internet access to conduct an online search to complete this task. Interestingly, despite an overall lack of geographical knowledge about China, few employed geographical learning techniques during the experiment. Specifically, most participants surrogated geographical knowledge for 'geographical imaginations' and they delegated geographical learning to dependence on recommendations from outside sources for their place knowledge. The results of this paper illustrate how participants' lack of their geographical knowledge and skills affected their trip planning, the strategies they used to cope with the ignorance and the effects on their trip plans. As a result of this research, recommendations to tourism marketers about how to address customers' lack of geographical knowledge are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative study of the law of assembly between the People's Republic of China (PRC) vs. the Republic of China (ROC). The comparison is achieved by looking at how these two Chinese societies structure police powers during assembly, procession, and demonstration -- textually and contextually. Particularly, it investigates how the forces of history, constitution, and politics converge to define and shape the Law of Assembly. This comparative project is conducted to understand the relative development of police powers in the two Chinese societies, which once were linked by history and culture and are now divided by geography and ideology. In a still larger context, this research employs comparative policing to expose and explicate how the police in two closed societies, the ROC (Confucianist) and the PRC (Socialist), come to terms with social protests and political challenges, and suggests how to balance the forces of reform and control with the use of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical study of dyadic negotiation supported by computer-mediated communication media. Dyads of MBA students from mainland China and the United States negotiated in a distributed, semisynchronous environment. The task was based on a scenario developed and used extensively by Lituchy (1992) involving distribution of real estate. The technologies were electronic mail and Internet/World Wide Web-based threaded discussion, configured to appear and function very similarly to electronic mail. Outcome measures included joint profitability of the negotiation (reflecting its integrativeness) and perceptions of suitability of the technologies for the task (task-technology fit). Hypotheses drew from literatures on integrative negotiation, negotiation and group support systems, technology adoption, and cross-cultural psychology. As predicted by previous research, Chinese dyads (from a collectivist culture) reached higher average joint profitability (more integrative solutions) than did American dyads (from an individualist culture). These results concur with those obtained with similar cultural groups in previous studies. Both groups of dyads here achieved somewhat lower joint profitability than similar groups who negotiated face-to-face without computer support in previous studies. Neither amount of information technology experience nor assigned technology had any effect on profitability or on any perceptions of task-technology fit. Subjects from both cultures reported that the technologies were acceptable for the task. Chinese subjects preferred the computer-based technologies to face-to-face negotiation, preferred the computer-based technologies to the telephone for dispersed negotiation, and felt that these media were more secure and private than telephony. Americans showed reversed preferences. The authors stated that the technologies used are already being adopted in mainland China in their primary roles as communication support media. Results are consonant with the technologies' expected adaptation as negotiation support tools, appropriate for both cultural groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's agricultural reforms and open door policy adopted since 1978 have had impact on the country's economic structure, population characteristics, and urban development. This paper examines the spatial implications of such changes in the light of the development of Zhujiang Delta located in the coastal region of South China. Market-oriented agricultural production, rural industrialization, migration of surplus farm labor, and the spread of small towns in the rural areas are some of the consequences of the reforms and are placed in the perspective of the coreperiphery theory of regional development. It is argued that the hybrid ’center-downward’ and ’periphery-upward’ approach in spatial development was adopted because it was politically more adaptable to the Chinese objectives of economic development, which continue to uphold Marxism, Maoism and Communist Party leadership. Through careful control of the destination of the rural migrants in conjunction with the policy of small town development, China hopes to establish a new spatial relationship between the core and the periphery on more equal footing. Currently the spatial structure of Zhujiang Delta displays a well-integrated network of towns of varying sizes being established to fill in gaps in the settlement hierarchy to effect spread of benefits from the core to its periphery. But contrary to expectations, spatial inequity in development persists as the core has advanced at a much faster pace than its periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]