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Paper‐based composite packages, which have been widely used for beverage in modern daily life, are featured of nutrition preservation and convenience. However, it is also causing environmental problems in urban areas because of the low recycling rate. The introduction of extended producer responsibility (EPR) is helpful to improving the recycling rate of beverage paper‐based composite packaging by extending the producer's environmental‐protecting responsibility for the product from its production to its end‐of‐life treatment. To find out the optimal strategy of applying the EPR system for beverage paper‐based composite packaging, this paper is conducted based on the basic framework of the EPR system, combined with the specific requirements of the EPR System Implementation Plan promulgated by China and the Implementation Plan of the EPR System for Beverage Paper‐Based Composite Packaging. An evaluation index system for beverage paper‐based composite packaging manufacturers is constructed to perform the EPR system, including three management‐level indicators, 10 standard‐level indicators and 42 programme‐level indicators. A comprehensive evaluation method is introduced to help the producers to fulfill the extended producer responsibility. Results suggest that beverage paper‐based composite packaging producers should first fulfill the responsibility in information disclosure, ecological design and use of recycled materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Reform and Opening up, China's rapid but regionally uneven economic growth has continuously attracted a large number of migrant workers from rural areas to cities, from the central and western regions to the eastern regions. At the same time, the migration structure of migrant workers has gradually changed from individual migration to family migration. Under the linked lives principle in life course framework, this paper makes an in‐depth analysis of the relationship between family structure and the long‐term settlement intention of migrant workers based on a nationwide survey in 2020 by using the binomial logistic models. This paper found that, migrant workers who migrate in couple or with their whole family (spouse and children) have higher intention to live in local areas for longer time than migrant workers who migrate individually. More importantly, this paper argues that that spouses and children have more positive influence on migrant workers' local residence intention in medium and long‐distance cross city or inter‐provincial migration than in short distance within city migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Chinese transnational investments, as (re)framed in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), contribute to changes in urbanisation processes in Southeast Asia. On the ground, the BRI becomes contextualised and intersects with local and national development trajectories. The growing presence of Chinese actors in the region intensifies urban dynamics, especially in secondary cities and emerging urban sites, where the BRI is used as a lever for local internationalisation strategies. The heterogeneous nature of the links between the BRI and various large urban projects is demonstrated on the basis of case studies involving changing consortia of private and public Chinese and Southeast Asian actors. A regional approach allows us to identify connections and shared processes across Southeast Asian countries. It provides a historically grounded understanding of how the BRI incorporates long‐term interactions with China and more recent partnerships in Southeast Asian countries. The paper paves the way for a research agenda that contests the image of China as a monolithic actor implementing the BRI uniformly and consistently. Further analyses are needed to examine systems and networks of actors as well as the local urban politics that affect the BRI on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stimulating counterurbanization has long been understood as a potential approach to revitalising rural areas. While well‐established in many countries, in China, it is taking a particular time‐limited form and characteristic dominated by issues of domicile and property rights. Rather than being characterised by long‐term life choices, counterurbanization in China is predominantly a shorter‐term leisure and tourism activity in which urbanites 'curate', for a limited period, a gentrified country lifestyle in accessible near‐urban villages. These lifestyles are in some ways akin to second‐home tourism. However, rather than purchase property as an investment, this new movement rents and renovates property as a consumption good with which to welcome other urbanites to visit, to consume and affirm these newly gentrified spaces and leisure opportunities. Based on a case study of Cenbu Village near Shanghai, this paper argues that current approaches to counterurbanization in China have limited impact on the revitalisation of local communities. Rather, newcomers from the cities largely superimpose their needs on the village in a way both ephemeral and removed from local people and village life. This comes about less as a mark of distain on the part of the incomers, and more as a result of their exclusion from key village institutions such as collective ownership, rights of domicile and ability to contribute to local governance. The paper concludes by arguing that mechanisms should be developed to enhance the long‐term confidence of newcomers, to encourage them to engage with community governance as a means of shaping the community and contributing more effectively to endogenous village revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green innovation (GI) can enable win‒win style economic and ecological benefits. Using China's pilot scheme for the construction of the intellectual property protection (IPP) system as an example, this paper empirically tests the impact of IPP system reform on the GI level and its spatial spillover effect. The results show that IPP system reform has significantly promoted urban GI, indicating that a progressive reform model characterized by experimentalist governance is applicable to innovation policy practices in developing countries. The dynamic effect analysis shows that IPP system reform can be applied to continuously promote urban GI. The mechanism analysis shows that such use of IPP system reform can improve the level of urban GI by promoting investment and talent agglomeration, confirming the viewpoint of the institutionalist school. The heterogeneity analysis shows that IPP system reform plays a stronger role in promoting GI in peripheral cities than in central cities, in cities with lower rather than higher scientific and educational levels and in cities with weaker rather than stronger GI capacity. Consistent with the theory of institutional diffusion, IPP system reform has a significant spatial spillover effect, promoting GI activities in surrounding cities while working to improve the local GI level. This paper affirms the effectiveness of the pilot regional innovation policy with Chinese characteristics, with important theoretical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to information asymmetry, spatial distance will affect the associated credit cooperation relationship among enterprises. This paper employed the real‐world economic data to construct the entropy spatial interaction complex network model, which effectively depicts the associated credit risk among enterprises with the consideration of the influence of spatial distance and regional economic development level. Based on the calculation experiment and the Moran index, this paper reveals the spatial correlation of the credit risk contagion in each region and builds the theoretical model for spatial correlation of credit risk contagion. The research findings indicate the facts as follows. Firstly, enterprises in regions with close spatial proximity or higher level of economic development are more likely to attract enterprises from other regions for cooperation. For instance, due to the close distance between cities and more advanced economy, the eastern coastal region in China presents more intensive enterprise cooperation with other regions. Second, the analysis using the global Moran index reveals a significant spatial credit risk contagion pattern in credit defaults during 2020, attributed to the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Third, the risk contagion effect of long‐distance associated credit is more complex. With the increase of the infection rate of long‐distance linked credit risk, the system will enter a chaotic state, hindering accurate long‐term prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the political hierarchies of cities in China from different perspectives. First, we examine the economic disparities between prefectural cities and municipalities. Furthermore, this paper draws upon a quasi‐ experiment to analyze the impact of upgrading Chongqing to a municipality in 1997 using the synthetic control method. The city‐upgrading policy significantly increased Chongqing's gross domestic product (GDP) in the following 4 years. Finally, we find that the policy increased GDP in treated cities within 1200 km of Chongqing by about 10%–13% relative to the control cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lifestyles signify who people are and who people want to be. They contain one's value orientation toward the world. The speeding urbanization over the globe has made the urban lifestyle mainstream, and so does it in China. The overwhelming range of options in cities represents a consumerist society, but meanwhile, there is an emergent underground alternative, especially from the younger generations who are pursuing a "more meaningful life." This paper does an ethnographic study on young Chinese urbanites' engagement in a village as an essential example of this trend. It argues that young people's choice for rural life is a reaction and a resistance to the social forces of consumerism and urbanization. By reflecting on the reimagination of modernity and life politics in the changing process, the research implies that accompanied by opportunities for social change, young people's promotion of rural lifestyles could be linked to the government's development agenda, and this might potentially cause new forms of inequalities in rural development. By drawing on practical experience, the paper brings narratives about young Chinese urbanites' life choices in rural places into the discussion of modernity and life politics, hopefully exemplifying a broader sociological contribution around the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Economics is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The relationship between labor migration and the medical benefits of migrant children (MC) has long been a focus of empirical research. Based on the dynamic monitoring data of the migrant population in Hubei Province by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China in 2014 and the characteristic data of prefecture‐level cities, this paper studies the impact of labor migration on the medical benefits of MC. The major findings of this paper are that in China, due to the huge spatial differences in medical services, the migration of labor to urban areas with better public services helps to improve the medical benefits of women during pregnancy and lying‐in period, and at the same time significantly enhances the medical benefits of the MC. In contrast, due to the relative lag of the reform in social security system such as household registration and medical care, in the long run, labor migration is not conducive to the improvement of the medical benefits of MC. Based on the above findings, this paper suggests that in the short‐term, more public resources should be allocated to the urban medical supply, especially at the primary level, and in the long‐term, the adjustment of public policies should be aimed at eliminating urban‐rural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impacts of stringent environmental regulation of firm‐level upstreamness in the global value chains (GVCs). Specifically, we use the non‐uniform promulgation of local water pollution control regulations across cities and over time after the 11th Five‐Year Plan as a quasi‐natural experiment in China, in which firms are forced to adopt cleaner technologies or equipment to reduce pollution after enforcing tighter environmental standards. Using highly disaggregated firm‐level data between 2008 and 2014, we find that firms in cities with stricter water pollution regulations tend to move to more upstream sectors in the GVCs. We find that this effect is more prominent for low‐productivity firms, high‐polluting firms, and firms with a high dependence on water in production. This paper sheds new light on the GVC upgrading of firms in response to environmental regulation changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals background in China, cities are the main force of energy consumption and carbon emission, and their low‐carbon transition development has become the primary task of urban planning. The transitional development of cities not only puts forward higher requirements for the output proportion of new energy, but also puts forward higher requirements for the flexibility of energy system. This paper proposes an optimization model of urban energy system considering the uncertainty output of new energy and new energy vehicles. The uncertainty and operational flexibility of electric vehicles are taken into account at the planning level by using stochastic optimization method. The model considers the expansion and retirement of new energy units and various conversion devices in urban energy system, and ensures the achievement of carbon peaking and carbon reduction goals by imposing constraints on electric vehicles. The case results show that this model can effectively improve the economy and new energy consumption rate of urban energy system, and can meet the carbon reduction demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an increasingly urbanized world, there is an urgent need to examine how cities may evolve and achieve sustainability. This paper systematically looks at the Greater Bay Area (GBA) and the Poyang Lake Region (PLR) in China to examine the spatial processes for insights into cities and urbanization, balancing the environmental and socio‐economic dimensions. A total of 226 805 cells are analyzed to unveil the relationship between sustainability changes in 2015–2019 period and urban form indicators, considering sociodemographic variables, geographical features, and city size as control variables. Two tree‐based machine learning models (Random Forest and XGBoost) are developed. This study provides evidence that a monocentric urban form and a high share of small activity clusters are not good for sustainability. For each urban form indicator, there is a non‐linear relationship with sustainability. The results of the machine learning models reconfirm the sustainability benefits of having a strong second activity cluster comparable to the largest one. When planning cities, some forms of land use buffering are desirable. There is also support for developing relatively large activity nodes and promoting compactness in urban form. Beyond urban form characteristics, the levels of urbanization, economic development, and population are still highly relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon a quasi‐natural experiment of county‐city mergers in China to examine whether state‐led urbanisation makes a difference in local labour markets. Based on the difference‐in‐differences framework and three waves of data from the China Household Finance Survey, we show that, on the urban fringe, residents' probability of working in nonagricultural sectors increased by 6.69 percentage points after the policy. Residents responded mainly by shifts from the agriculture sector to being self‐employed. The results indicate that, after fringe counties connect to the corresponding big city in substance, residents in peripheral areas could benefit from the positive spillover effect from large cities and gain employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization has a great impact on urban evapotranspiration. Water evaporation inside buildings is an important part of urban water vapor resources and a crucial core of urban hydrological processes. The systematic studies on building water evaporation (BWE) are mostly the method of experimental monitoring. This study proposed a new method to simulate and estimate water evaporation flux inside buildings in urban areas. Based on the nighttime light data and urban per capita gross domestic product (GDP), a new modeling system was built to simulate the total BWE. Building area was calculated using the nighttime light data. And the BWE coefficient Df was estimated according to the important indicator of economic development per capita GDP value. Then the water evaporation inside urban buildings and the spatial distribution of water evaporation inside buildings in typical cities could be obtained. The results showed that the total amount of water evaporation inside buildings in China's urban areas was 24.5 billion m3. Among the 31 provincial capitals in China, Shanghai had the largest BWE of 1.08 billion m3. The minimum water evaporation of buildings in Lhasa was 20.0 million m3. Studies of BWE can assess urban water budgets, support on‐demand allocation of water resources, and provide a fundamental understanding of the relationship between water resources and energy heat island effects in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we focus on migrant parents' decision to either bring children to the cities (family reunification) or leave them behind in China. We develop a framework to understand this decision, which takes into account child characteristics, characteristics of migrant parents and characteristics of migrant‐receiving communities. Our research design allows us to conduct comparison of rural‐origin children and urban‐origin children. The rural–urban differences are reflected in lowered probability of bringing children to cities, more hurdles for housing and access to public school education for rural migrant parents and their children. For rural‐origin school‐age children, gender inequality is persistent, that is, girls of school age are less likely to be brought to cities than boys. Finally, a piece of promising news is that migrant parents with more social interactions with local residents are more likely to bring children to destinations. The results suggest that years after China's official policy of 'no extra fees' for migrant children in urban public schools, migrant children, especially from rural areas, continue to face a variety of challenges in moving to cities and having access to local urban public schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how Muslim immigrants negotiate their family practices and religious identities in secular Guangzhou, a global city in south China, drawing on an in‐depth qualitative analysis. It provides a lens for better understanding the interrelationship between family practices, transnational mobility, and religious values spatially in the Chinese context. The key arguments of this research suggest that transnational mobility plays important roles in making, remaking, and unmaking of connections between family and religion. Moreover, both family spaces and religious spaces are dynamic and on the move. As an empirical study on family and religion in the Chinese context, this research can not only be read as a contribution to family and religious geographies in an everyday setting, but also one of the first everyday geography studies of Islam and Muslims in globalised China. This paper provides a lens for better understanding of the intersection of family practices and religion. We argue in this empirical analysis that transnational mobility plays important roles in the making, remaking, and unmaking of the connections between family and religion. Moreover, we indicate that focusing on the interrelationships between family and religion can nuance understanding of how notions of family and family spaces are reproduced through daily religious practices and how processes of doing family and doing religion are spatially entangled, as both family spaces and religious spaces are dynamic and on the move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic cultures in public space occupy a central place in the theorisations of social relations and social interactions in the modern city. But theoretical perspectives formulated in Western urban contexts tend to assume clear‐cut distinction between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, and between the public and private realms, and assume that encounter automatically steers people towards the ethics and politics of difference. These optics represent epistemologies which for the most part address the socio‐spatial nexus in Euro‐American urban modernity, and are ill equipped for elucidating the contingent, improvised relationships between public space and multiple urban modernities beyond the West. This paper works on the trail of the comparative urbanism and delves into configurations of publicness in "square dance" in reform‐era urban China. Starting from historical conceptions of publicness in China but being mindful of how they are reconfigured and renegotiated amid a rapid transition towards urban modernity, this paper argues that publicness in reform‐era China is of a largely experimental, negotiated nature. On the one hand, square dance exceeds sociological accounts and categories which produce epistemological opposition between stranger and community, between public self and intimate affiliations. It incubates sentiments of collectivism that overcome anonymity and strangeness but do not contradict the ethos of individualism in the modern city. On the other hand, square dance can be conceptualised as an active process of urban learning, in which people are motivated to reflect over what codes, rules, and ethics are needed for governing urban publics. In all, this paper aims to broaden the conceptual spectrum of the ideas of public space and urban civic cultures through comparative analysis and theorisation. This paper partakes in comparative urbanism and uses a case study of square dance in urban China to enrich theories of public space and urban civic culture. It emphasises processes of re‐collectivisation contesting anonymity and strangeness and the ethics of public space as an active process of urban learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of China's "Zero‐Covid" policy on subnational cross‐region export performance during 2019–2021. Using monthly export data at the product‐destination level for China's 31 provinces and municipality cities, we find that new infections in a region have a significantly negative effect on the region's export growth, particularly for non‐processing exports and industries with low dependence on remote working and products that are more substitutable and used mostly in the downstream of supply chains. However, restrictions on people inflows have no significant effect. The severity of the pandemic in export destinations is negatively correlated with China's export growth, suggesting an important demand‐side reason for China's export downturn during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2015 China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) this paper examines the effect of culture on the gender gap in financial literacy. We exploit geographical differences in culture in China, comparing outcomes between rural and urban areas and between areas in the east and west (Shanghai and Chongqing). Using the Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition we show that, nationally, the gender gap in financial literacy is entirely the product of differences in the way men and women acquire financial literacy. It is a result consistent with cultural effects. When considering just women in Shanghai and Chongqing we observe a raw financial literacy differential of 13% (favoring Shanghai). This gap is also the product of differences in the way financial literacy is acquired. It provides additional evidence as to the importance of culture when it comes to understanding financial literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past millennium, Confucian culture has prevailed in China as a typical informal institution, especially its emphasis on human feelings and interpersonal connections (guanxi) that coincides with the incentives for corruption. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that Confucian culture can generate positive effects on the formation of bureaucratic corruption in China. Using the variation in the number of jinshi across Chinese cities as a proxy for the degree of Confucian culture, and using the number of bribery recipients to measure corruption, we find that regions with more jinshi are associated with more bribe recipients. To address the endogeneity, we employ the Confucian sages in a given city as our instrumental variable. The instrumented results are consistent with our baseline claim. The findings remain robust after using a variety of tests, including using the percentage of bribe recipients instead of the number of bribe recipients, using the number of Confucius temples, Confucian academies and chaste women as alternative Confucian cultural measures, and controlling the impact of the North–South differences. In addition, we find the shock of foreign culture can mitigate the positive effect of Confucian culture on corruption. Finally, mechanism shows that the effect of Confucian culture on corruption can be attributed to the attitudes towards income unfairness, the excessive pursuit of vanity and the emphasis on interpersonal connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental externalities of place‐based policy have generally been overlooked despite their welfare consequences. This paper studies the air‐pollution effect of development zones in urban China using a geo‐coded data set of 2720 counties from 1998 to 2016. By adopting the generalized difference‐in‐difference framework to resolve the problem of endogenous locational selection for place‐based policies, we find that development zones reduce ambient PM2.5 concentration by around 1.8%, leading to a total social gain of $7.75 billion USD. The environmental benefit varies by the zone's dominant industry, geographical region, administrative affiliation and time of establishment. We further show that development zones are comparably cleaner due to the incentives of central and local governments, manifested by the desire to administratively promote development zones, the attempt to satisfy residential demands for higher quality‐of‐life cities, and the employment of the national environmental monitoring system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographical distance constitutes friction in searching for research collaborators. Taking advantage of a quasinatural experiment featured by High‐Speed Railway (HSR) lines in China, this paper employs the difference‐in‐differences model to identify the causal impact of a substantial improvement in the intercity transportation infrastructure on collaborative innovation across cities. The data pertain to a universe of patent applications filed by Chinese universities and their citations. We find that HSR contributes to a substantial increase in the innovation quantity and quality of collaborative patenting innovation between universities and corporates. It contributes to industry collaboration by utilizing university academic disciplines in the related technology fields. Lastly, HSR facilitates universities to search for new research partners with better quality beyond the geographical boundary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of Broadband Network Infrastructure (BNI) on urban ecological innovation (EI). The implementation of China's "Broadband China" Demonstration City (BCDC) construction policy provides a quasi‐natural experiment for examining the causal effect of BNI on urban EI. Using the difference‐in‐differences method, we find that BNI significantly increases the number of green patent applications in local cities, and that the effect is increasing over time. Examination of the underlying mechanism reveals that BNI promotes urban EI through stimulating entrepreneurship, improving human capital level, and attracting investment agglomeration. This paper contributes to the understanding of why significant innovation frequently occurs in places with relatively perfect infrastructure, such as networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using China Migrants Dynamic Survey Project data from 2012 to 2018, this paper evaluates the causal impact of equalisation of basic public health and medical services on the long‐term urban settlement intentions of internal migrants by the difference‐in‐differences approach. The results reveal that the equalisation of basic public health and medical services has a negative impact on the long‐term urban settlement intentions of internal migrants of 4%. Male, middle‐aged, and unmarried internal migrants have a much stronger negative response, in terms of long‐term urban settlement intentions, to changes in basic public health and medical services. Moreover, more recent internal migrants, those in first‐tier cities and those in cities in eastern regions also have a much stronger negative response. Mechanism checks imply that the negative impact on the long‐term urban settlement intentions of internal migrants is caused by social integration decline after implementation of equalisation of basic public health and medical services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study exposes and maps a hitherto little‐known dimension of China's urban geography – that of shrinkage, directly affecting one in 10 of its cities. Urban shrinkage is revealed to be a growing concern for the most populous country on earth, with the absolute number of shrinking cities rising by 71% from 164 in the 1990s to 281 in the 2000s. By developing its own definition of the city as an urban area (UA) in the Chinese political‐administrative context, this paper builds a morphologic taxonomy of China's shrinking cities. This reveals the overall net population loss across Chinese shrinking cities more than doubling since 1990, reaching 7.3 million inhabitants in 2010. Sixty‐eight Chinese UAs, mostly in north‐eastern China, are found to have been shrinking continuously since 1990. Despite the multifaceted and entangled make‐up of urban shrinkage, the paper identifies four distinct causes of this geographical phenomenon in China: (1) state‐incubated reindustrialisation and economic restructuring, impacting upon 63% of all shrinking UAs; (2) the country's new economic geography, with the underlying centripetal forces of agglomeration pushing around 34% of all shrinking cities towards marginalisation; (3) state‐propelled demographic change, leading to natural population decline in 26% of Chinese shrinking cities; and (4) state‐sponsored mega‐shrinkage, responsible for urban population loss in almost 20% of all the cases. This study further provides a theoretically informed reflection on the peculiarity of shrinkage in China and its public policy implications. This study exposes and maps a hitherto little‐known dimension of China's urban geography – that of shrinkage, directly affecting one in ten of its cities. The paper also identifies four distinct causes of this geographical phenomenon in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Haken model to explore the synergistic evolutionary characteristics and competition trends of agricultural resilience and eco‐efficiency can establish a theoretical foundation for achieving high‐quality and sustainable agricultural development. The traditional Haken model cannot address the issue of the lack of directionality in synergy values, but incorporating the tendency theory of the coupling coordination model into the Haken model can solve this problem, thus establishing propensity synergistic Haken model to give values directionality. Established a more comprehensive evaluation system for China's agricultural resilience. Measuring agricultural system resilience in China's 31 provinces and cities from 2001 to 2021. The synergistic values between agricultural resilience and eco‐efficiency were measured by the improved Haken model. Results show that: (1) Agricultural resilience exhibits a stable upward trend, but the overall level is low. Regional differences have been increasing over time. (2) Eco‐efficiency is the sequential covariate of synergistic evolution by the two systems. The overall synergy level between agricultural system resilience and eco‐efficiency is higher. (3) Considering the "propensity synergistic," the overall change from low‐level benign synergy to high‐level benign synergy between agricultural resilience and eco‐efficiency in China. (4) The propensity synergy Haken model can compensate for the directionality‐lack problem of the traditional Haken model synergy value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is transiting its power system towards a more flexible status with a higher capability of integrating renewable energy generation. Demand response (DR) and energy storage increasingly play important roles to improve power system flexibility. The coordinated development of power sources, network, DR, and energy storage will become a trend. This paper examines the significance of source‐network‐demand‐storage coordinated development. Furthermore, an outlook of the power system transition in China is provided by virtue of source‐network‐demand‐storage coordinated planning. The paper also assesses the integration of multiple urban infrastructures in China and its impacts on source‐network‐demand‐storage coordination. Lastly, challenges for achieving the source‐network‐demand‐storage coordination and suggested measures are discussed. This article is categorized under:Energy Research & Innovation > Systems and InfrastructureEnergy and Urban Design > Systems and Infrastructure [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Anti‐corruption is an important initiative in China's national governance system. The existing literature usually studies the direct impact of corruption or anti‐corruption on China's environment, while few studies show the spatial correlation impact of anti‐corruption on China's environmental governance. This paper redefines anti‐corruption, uses panel data of 30 Chinese provinces and cities from 2005 to 2019, and empirically analyzes the impact of anti‐corruption on environmental governance efficiency in China using spatial Durbin model. The findings indicate that the direct effect of anti‐corruption on environmental governance efficiency is positive, indicating that increasing anti‐corruption efforts will help improve local environmental governance efficiency; indirect effect of anti‐corruption on environmental governance efficiency is negative, suggesting that due to the existence of "pollution heaven" effect, the strengthening of anti‐corruption in the local region will cause polluting industries to move from local region to neighboring regions, leading to serious environmental pollution in the neighboring regions, and then reducing environmental governance efficiency. The indirect effect of economic development, industrial structure, and economic openness are negative, while the indirect effect of urbanization rate and clean energy are positive. The findings of the study provide a theoretical basis and insight for governments at all levels to improve environmental governance efficiency through anti‐corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper uses the multi‐period difference‐in‐differences (DID) method to empirically test the effects of Tech‐Fin on the innovation output of companies based on a quasi‐natural experiment to examine China's Tech‐Fin pilot city reform. We find that Tech‐Fin significantly increased the innovation output of high‐tech companies in the pilot cities and in cities with weak intellectual property protection. In addition, Tech‐Fin had no significant effects on the innovation output of pseudo‐high‐tech companies and technology‐intensive high‐tech companies. We further find that Tech‐Fin motivated high‐tech companies to increase their innovation output through innovation correction and risk‐smoothing effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a feasible way to realize urban innovation through the e‐commerce pilot. Based on the data of 289 cities in China from 2002 to 2019, we examine the impact of the National E‐commerce Demonstration City pilot on urban innovation with a staggered difference‐in‐differences method. The results show that after becoming a pilot city of National E‐commerce Demonstration Cities (NEDC), the quantity and quality of urban innovation have improved. Further, NEDC policy plays a greater role in promoting innovation in economically agglomerated areas, first‐and third‐tier cities and areas with a higher degree of marketization. Finally, NEDC policy can affect the level of urban innovation by optimizing the allocation of innovation factors, improving the efficiency of credit resource allocation and forming the logistics scale effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The integration of space and time generates much closer interactions between geography and other social sciences in general while providing new perspectives for the role of geography in tourism flow studies. This paper aims to apply exploratory space-time analysis to provide insights into inbound tourism flow patterns in China's cities over the period of 2000-2009 using city-level Geographical Information System datasets. First, this paper ascertains that there exists geographic neighborhood effect at city level by testifying significantly positive spatial autocorrelation. The hot spots and temporal stability are identified. The hot spots are locally concentrated in metropolitan areas. Local Markov matrix has also shown significant transitions with negative or positive influence of geographic neighbors upon a city. Specifically, three-dimensional surface is created to visualize tourism flows. The spatial inequalities have the pattern of 'the east more dense than the west, the south more dense than the north'. There simultaneously exist spatial agglomeration and spatial dispersion. The intensity of spatial agglomeration has become stronger. At the same time, smaller peaks of tourism flow centers developed around the main cities and spread toward surrounding cities. These potential tourism flow centers have gradually emerged and grown larger. Furthermore, the space-time covariance matrix uncovers correlation, which shows strong regional integration over years. Eight hundred and ninety links are identified and visualized. Two hundred and sixty nine links forming 10 spatial clusters represent strong positive correlation. One hundred and thirty-four links are negative correlation, which is about 15.06 per cent of all links. In conclusion, our comprehensive evidences offer deeper insights and have important policy implications. These enable the tourism-oriented governmental agencies, as well as the tourism industry professionals, to better understand the changes of inbound tourism flows in China's cities and relevant tourism partners/competitors for cities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper documents the changes in China's Hukou reform before and after 2014 based on a unique data set of Hukou policy documents from Chinese cities between 2000 and 2016. We construct a Hukou registration index to measure the stringency of local Hukou qualification in Chinese cities. There are four main channels for migrants to get local urban Hukou: investment, home purchase, talent program, and employment. The requirements of the four channels have large variations across different tiers of cities between the two periods of 2000–2013 and 2014–2016. First‐tier and some second‐tier cities set high criteria for local Hukou registration that have become more stringent over time, while other cities have much lower requirements. The point account system for Hukou registration shows that cities have different preferences over workers eligible for local urban Hukou. The quantitative measures developed in this paper can be used to study a variety of topics on the social and economic consequences of labor mobility barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State monopoly hinders market integration through rising interregional trade barriers. This article provides an account of the market reform on dismantling state monopoly as a natural experiment to investigate the extent to which the reform affects domestic market integration. The state monopoly on China's edible salt market was dismantled by implementing a market reform on the first of January 2017 that terminated the 2000‐year state monopoly on edible salt. Using a set of unique retailing price datasets on edible salt across cities over 10‐day periods every month, we take advantage of the regional and temporal variances of edible salt retailing price between origins of production and other cities to demonstrate market integration nationwide in China. The regression discontinuity estimation is leveraged based on an apparently sharp discontinuity in inter‐city price differences. The results suggest that the dissolution of state monopoly on edible salt market leads to a 3.14 percent decrease in price differences of edible salt between origins and other cities, thus ultimately resulting in the promoted market integration. The results also suggest that the varied iodine contents in edible salt, the market power of state‐owned enterprises and the government‐firm relationships exert promising roles in the influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss historic and contemporary relationships between landscape design, housing and everyday uses of green space in urban China. By drawing together writing focused on theorizing nature and everyday life, I offer critical insights into urban political, economic, social and cultural change in Chinese cities. The paper begins with a review of religious philosophies and cultural traditions relating to the development of Chinese gardens and then discusses the impact of the introduction of 'western' style public parks alongside the emergence of modern urban planning and design. The second half of the paper traces how changing notions of nature and everyday life can be mapped onto housing development and associated urban social and spatial inequalities. In conclusion, I highlight how critical insights at the intersection of thinking on nature and everyday life can inform socially progressive urban development, planning and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The rapid urbanisation of China has received growing attention regarding its urban residential environments. In this article, we model the spatial heterogeneity of housing prices and explore the spatial discrepancy of landscape effects on property values in Shenzhen, a large Chinese city. In contrast to previous studies, this paper integrates the official housing transaction records and housing attributes from open data along with field surveys. Then, the results using the hedonic price model (HPM), geographically weighted regression (GWR) without landscape metrics and GWR with landscape metrics are compared. The results show that GWR with landscape metrics outperforms the other two models. In summary, this research provides new insights into landscape metrics in real estate studies and can guide decision‐makers plan and design cities while also providing guidance to regulate and control urban property values based on local conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: For over 30 years, urbanisation in China went along with policies that discouraged migrants from permanently settling in cities. Since 2014, however, policies have shifted towards the encouragement of the urban settlement of migrants. This change has triggered new academic research aimed at re‐understanding the urban integration. Findings of this paper are based on a survey conducted in Chongqing, the first municipality to implement elements of China's New Urbanisation Plan. The focus was on the preference for permanently settling in the city among migrants. Situations before and after the policy transition have been compared, while special attention was given to the impact of 2 key institutional factors—hukou reform and access to public rental housing. The other key to the investigation was whether migrants who have accessed public rental housing seek to buy such housing in order to eventually achieve permanent urban settlement. Results show that the policy transition has had positive effects on the preference of migrants for permanent urban settlement. However, the influence of public rental housing occupancy was quantitatively limited and the impact of the hukou reform has not yet fully crystalized. The policy transition has brought certain equity to disadvantaged and intra‐provincial rural–urban migrants, but this in turn has had negative effects on more advantaged and inter‐provincial migrants. The latter categories appeared to have fewer incentives to approach permanent urban settlement via accessing public rental housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has attracted a large number of foreign investment. However, because of China's weak intellectual property protection environment, it is difficult to protect the intellectual assets of transnational enterprises, which will affect their investment decisions to some extent. In order to optimize the intellectual property system and improve the intellectual property environment, national intellectual property demonstration city policy was proposed in 2012 to improve the institutional environment. To explore the impact of national intellectual property demonstration city policy on foreign capital inflow, we explore the relationship between national intellectual property demonstration city and foreign direct investment (FDI) using the multi‐period differences‐in‐differences (DID) method based on city panel data of China from 2003 to 2019. Results shows the following: (1) Compared with non‐demonstration cities, national intellectual property demonstration cities are profit to FDI promotion. If a city is rated as a national intellectual property demonstration city, local FDI will increase by 5% on average. After a series of robustness tests, the conclusion is still tenable. (2) We find that the national intellectual property demonstration city policy has obvious urban heterogeneity. The effect of national intellectual property demonstration city policy on the increase in FDI is more significant in central cities, western cities, and key cities. (3) The mechanism test shows that national intellectual property demonstration city policies have a positive effect on FDI through increasing the government's strategic expenditure on intellectual property, improving urban technology innovation capacity, optimizing human capital structure, and promoting the marketization of cities. Therefore, China should continue to implement the policy of national intellectual property demonstration city, especially increasing the number of national intellectual property demonstration city in key cities, central cities, and western cities. On the one hand, these findings can help government evaluate the attractiveness of demonstration cities for FDI. On the other hand, it also provides relevant policy enlightenment for the Chinese government to select appropriate demonstration cities and further refine and implement the national intellectual property demonstration city policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's impressive growth has been accompanied by high inequality and a wide rural-urban divide. This paper identifies and examines some of the major dimensions of this divide: income, consumption, education, employment, health care, pensions, access to public services, and the environment. The paper attributes the main causes of the divide to China's urban-biased development strategies and the resulting lack of social provision of public goods in rural areas. It also highlights the severe and multidimensional constraints on the Chinese peasantry and argues that increased equality and efficiency can now be pursued simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Economic Geography (NEG) models predict that locations with market access advantages have higher wages and larger labour inflows. Using comprehensive prefecture-city level data for China, the study estimates a wage equation derived from a NEG model. The results support the NEG explanation for wage disparities across cities. An application of shock experiments on 230 prefecture-cities in China shows that the average effect of income changes differs greatly across locations. In particular, income shocks generated in core cities have a higher average impact in the rest of the country than shocks generated elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After three decades of market development, the problem in China is no longer how to achieve growth but how to manage its consequences and how to sustain it. One of the most important consequences is the growing inequality – between skilled and unskilled workers, between the genders, between rural and urban areas, and between inland and coastal regions. The papers in this symposium shed light on the important issue of inequality during rapid market development in China. Analysis based on ground level empirical studies can help us to understand better the sources of the rising inequality and to illuminate the nature of the future challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the causal relationship between financial development and the urban–rural income gap in China. Using a bootstrap Granger panel causality analysis, the result indicates that financial development influences urban–rural income gap mainly in Eastern China. The high level of financial development in this region enables rural areas to increase its income. Our results also confirm the existence of the financial Kuznets curve in Eastern China where urban–rural income gap would be first increased and afterwards decreased by financial development. The financial development itself is not dependent on urban–rural income gap as it largely depends on government policies and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the modelling of green urbanism is spatially manifested in flagship eco-city projects such as the Sino- Singapore Tianjin eco-city ( SSTE) project. As part of a multi-scalar process that taps into a host of mobile policy networks and 'quick fix' urban policy solutions that circulate around the world, such eco-flagship prestige projects serve as powerful sites for the convergence of the boundaries between the social and technical and are highly symbolic places charged with the formidable task of constructing purportedly new forms of ecological urban imagineering and socio-ecological lifeworlds. But to the extent that these eco-flagship projects are often underwritten by state-business growth coalition and driven by (green) entrepreneurial objectives, these urban ecological spaces are also necessarily implicated in broader normative debates and the challenge of constructing sustainable and socially just urban futures. As David Harvey has pointed out, insofar as all environmental-ecological arguments are arguments about society and, therefore, complex refractions of all sorts of struggles being waged on other realms, eco-cities in China both reflect and embody the multiple contradictory tensions inherent in contemporary Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanization has brought numerous aquatic problems to plain river network regions. We selected three categories (five indicators) of characteristics to describe the physical characteristics of river network systems, including quantitative, structural, and complex characteristics. Using the grid method and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA), the spatiotemporal change pattern of one plain river network of the Yangtze River Delta was addressed from the 1960s to 2014 based on topographic maps. The results showed that the river density (DR), water surface ratio (WP), and box dimension (D0) in over 82% of the area decreased. The spatial pattern of the water system is divided into four categories by HCA: urban areas, river network areas, mainstream areas, and lake areas. The categories of river network areas and lake areas decreased, while the categories of urban areas and mainstream areas increased from the 1960s to 2014 because of urbanization. There are approximately 12.8% grid cells that change from river network areas to mainstream areas, which is the most important change due to the reduction of tributaries and increase of main streams. These results indicate that river network distribution patterns have the tendency to simplify and remain mainstream. Our study suggests that water systems and river networks should be protected, which would provide support for water resource management in highly urbanized plain regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are not only connected through conventional infrastructure, but also through digital infrastructure. This paper tests whether digital connectivity patterns follow traditional ones. Using a generalized spatial interaction model, this paper shows that geography (and distance) still matters for an extensive set of world cities. With a view to the rapidly rising urbanization, the attention is next focused on the emerging large cities in China to test the relevance of distance frictions − next to a broad set of other important explanatory variables − for digital connectivity. Various interesting results are found regarding digital connectivity within the Chinese urban system, while also here geography appears to play an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]