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Residents' participation is crucial for sustainable old neighborhood regeneration. Residents' intentions to participate in the regeneration are low in China, resulting in unsustainable neighborhood development problems. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the drivers of residents' participation. Residents' behavioral mechanisms are deeply embedded in their social networks, especially in acquaintance social networks typical of old neighborhoods in China. By constructing a mediated moderation model based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and danwei system and taking the old neighborhood regeneration in Xi'an as a case study, this paper investigates the paths and mechanisms of the social network embeddedness, TPB, and danwei system on residents' participation intention. The results show that social network embeddedness can improve residents' intention to participate in regeneration through both direct and indirect pathways, and its indirect effect is much larger than the direct effect. Attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control significantly and positively mediated the contribution of social network embeddedness on participation intention. However, the specific mediating effect of attitude is significantly smaller than the other two. The danwei system has a significant moderating effect in the first stage of the relationship between social network embeddedness and participation intention. These imply that the extrinsic social factor of social network embeddedness is internalized as a driving force for convergence and motivation of residents' participation intentions mainly through the normative pressure and exchange of experiences between acquaintances and that the danwei system reinforces this extrinsic-intrinsic facilitation process through the danwei's "physical presence." These findings provide revelatory countermeasures for exploring the factors that motivate residents to participate actively in neighborhood regeneration and encourage their involvement at the intervention level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green finance has become an important reform force to promote the sustainable development of China's economy. Therefore, it has a great significance for in-depth analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of regional green finance development, to further promote it by clarifying and predicting the regional differences and dynamic evolution trends. Based on this, this paper will select the relevant index from 2001 to 2020 to construct China Green Finance Core Network (CGFCN) in different years by using Space-L method at the first, then analyze its network characteristics and spatial evolution pattern in depth, and finally predict the future development trend of CGFCN by link prediction. The research results show that: firstly, the evolution of CGFCN is mainly divided into three stages: rapid development, stable development and optimal development, and the closeness of CGFCN is constantly improving. Besides, two strong relationship networks are gradually forming, that is Beijing-Tianjin region and the Yangtze River Detla region. Secondly, with the development of green finance, the community division has changed. It is mainly divided into four communities, named the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei leading community, the eastern provincial community, the Yangtze River Delta community and the central and southern joint community. Different communities will have different integration in different periods. Thirdly, the future development direction of green finance network is mainly Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and Yangtze River Delta regions, and their outward radiation are mainly shown in the eastern coastal and central regions, which also have strong development potential. In this regard, it is proposed to coordinate development across provinces to speed up the "urban integration" of green finance services; Establish an efficient community development mechanism and promote the interconnection of green finance markets and infrastructure between different regions; Strengthen the resource flow among regions and coordinate the resource competition of green finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd 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.)

Social networking sites have seen tremendous growth and are widely used around the world. Nevertheless, the use of social networking sites in educational contexts is an under explored area. This paper uses a qualitative methodology, autoethnography, to investigate how social networking sites, specifically Facebook[TM], can help first semester doctoral students adapt to a Ph.D. program and a new national culture. Each week during the semester, a Ph.D. Student Tip and a Cultural Tip was posted. Students would then post related discussions, observations, and/or questions. At the conclusion of the semester the doctoral students shared their thoughts about participating in the Facebook[TM] group through autobiographical narratives. A technique called open coding was used to analyze the narratives. Our findings suggest three emergent themes. Social networking sites can aid adaptation through: 1) facilitating knowledge exchange, 2) alleviating apprehension, and 3) enabling socialization and building community. The data showed that the Facebook[TM] discussions aided in various types of knowledge exchange, providing a conceptual map that facilitated greater adaptation. Next, the interactions appeared to help minimize trepidation related to embarking on a new program of study and adjusting to a new national culture. Third, the Facebook[TM] group was useful fostering socialization and community among the students. We make the following recommendations for professors when implementing SNS (Social Network Site) groups: 1) establish a Facebook[TM] group with a course-related identity, 2) be sensitive to security and privacy issues, 3) provide tips to "seed" various types of knowledge exchange, 4) encourage participation, and 5) assess and adjust. While our research is exploratory in nature, we believe it provides a foundation for future research in this important and rapidly expanding area of SNS usage. (Contains 2 tables.)

The accurate evaluation of the relationship between nature reserves and poverty is highly significant for the harmonious coexistence between human and nature. It is widely recognized that the establishment of nature reserves is of great importance to the income poverty of farmers, but less attention has been paid to the impact of different reserves on the multidimensional relative poverty of farmers. Based on the survey data of Panda Nature Reserves in China, we analyze the influence of reserve regulation (or not) and regulation intensity on the multidimensional relative poverty of farmers and its mechanism. Results show that farmers in reserves are more likely to fall into multidimensional relative poverty than those outside the reserves, and there is a U‐shaped relationship between regulation intensity and multidimensional relative poverty. Further, the mechanism analysis show that, on average, the establishment of reserves has no significant impact on farmers' resource utilization capability, but too high or too low regulation intensity will affect farmers' resource utilization capacity, and aggravate their multidimensional relative poverty. The conclusions of this paper are not only conducive to the expansion of theoretical research on regulation and poverty, but also provide policy implications for realizing the coordinated development between biodiversity conservation of nature reserves and rural livelihood. Recommendations for Resource Managers: The effects of the regulation of nature reserves on the relative poverty of farmers is analyzed in this paper. We find that there is a "quantity" problem of the impact of reserve regulation on the farmers' relative poverty. The following implications could be realized based on the observations: •When identifying the relative poverty of farmers, it is necessary to make an in‐depth analysis from the perspectives of economic poverty and multidimensional poverty, and provide targeted and accurate assistance policies for different types of farmers.•The formulation and implementation of the reserve regulations should consider the difficulty of farmers' livelihood transformation to balance the relationship between the community development and ecological protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's agricultural economy is developing rapidly, but the unbalanced regional development is still a key issue that needs to be discussed today. By studying the total factor productivity of green agriculture and its factors, this paper analyzes the regional differences in time and space changes between the eastern, central and western parts of China. In this paper, the total factor productivity of green agriculture is calculated and decomposed by Metafrontier Malmquist-Luenberger index based on directional distance function. The results are as follows: First, the total factor productivity level of green agriculture in China is increasing year by year, but the overall level is still at a low level and has greater volatility; Second, although the total factor productivity of green agriculture shows an upward trend, the three regions show a downward trend in turn, which has great differences; Third, there are obvious differences in technological efficiency, optimal production potential and technological gap between the eastern, central and western regions, and there are great differences in productivity among regions and provinces. Based on the results, this paper puts forward policy recommendations, according to the regional heterogeneity, from a number of angles to rely on the joint efforts of many parties to improve the level of total factor productivity of green agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explosive growth of tourism in China since the 1980s has generated attendant interest in tourism research in the country, among researchers both in the mainland and outside. The dialogue between the two communities (domestic and international researchers) is also growing, but is as yet still limited, with insufficient contributions from Chinese mainland tourism researchers to the international academic world. China provides a rich field for examining the cultural, social and institutional context in which tourism develops. Recent studies of village-based community tourism development in China, with an emphasis on institutional perspectives, provide some insight on the dynamic and complex changes of rural communities along with tourism development. In general, these papers show that village participation in decision making is growing, although examples of disempowerment are as rife as those of growing empowerment. Contested resources are one of the most influential factors in this struggle, along with the rapid growth of tourism that the country has experienced since the 1980s. The papers in this special collection also demonstrate the distinct character of domestic tourism research in China, which engages the rich body of literature published in Chinese, but is generally less connected to broader international debates in the predominantly Anglo-American English publishing realm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On the basis of regional tourism economic development, this paper uses the entropy method and the coupling coordination model to analyse the comprehensive development level and the degree of coupling coordination between tourism and regional development and uses the GM (1, 1) grey prediction model to forecast the degree of coupling coordination between tourism and regional development in China in the next five years, based on the data related to tourism and regional development in China from 1996 to 2015. The results show that the degree of coupling and coordination between tourism and regional development is steadily increasing, with the coupling level moving from low level coupling to antagonistic stage and the coupling coordination level reaching from low level disorder to good level coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One large challenge we face in achieving integrative and sustainable cities in China and Europe is to understand what is making people "stick together" and care for their local communities. Only when we understand local communities better will it be possible to make improvements. In this paper we start by reviewing the way in which communities and community building have been understood in Europe and China respectively. The paper then goes on to assess the similarities and differences between China and Europe with respect to the role of communities and provides an overview of potential barriers and opportunities for achieving socially integrative cities through local community building and public engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the imbalance of technological level and industrial structure in regional economic development, the same carbon source can bring differentiated carbon emission levels in different regions, thus making the carbon emission show significant regional differences. In order to explore the regional differences in China's provincial carbon emission intensity and the effect of relevant influencing factors, this paper combines EKC model and STIRPAT model to conduct research. Using carbon emission intensity and other influencing factors of China's 30 provinces ranging from 2005 to 2017 to construct a panel data, the authors use exploratory spatial data analysis and Spatial Durbin Model to study the spatial effect of carbon emission intensity in China's provincial regions and the impact of different development factors on carbon emission intensity. The results show that from 2005 to 2017, China's carbon emission intensity gradually declined from east to west and from south to north. The inter-provincial carbon emission intensity of China presents an agglomeration effect in space, and the agglomeration effect gradually weakens with time. In addition, reducing energy intensity can reduce carbon emission intensity to a large extent. By optimizing industrial structure, increasing the degree of foreign trade and promoting financial development, carbon emission intensity can also be inhibited. Therefore, reducing the energy intensity of various industries and establishing inter-regional carbon emission cooperation mechanism will be effective to control the carbon emission intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China's socio-economic development is entering into a transitioning era, urban residents' demands are becoming more diversified, complicated, and fragmented. Ought to address issues regarding community environmental renovation, infrastructure and facilities constructions, and efficient public service supplies, measures should be adopted to adjust the urban community governance model in China to face emergent challenges. Against this background, this paper argues that the "participating actors," "community management and organization framework," "related laws, regulations, and policies," and "resources allocation and management" are the four crucial dimensions in urban community governance. We then adopted these four underpinnings as the theoretical framework to unravel the complex dynamics of community governance in contemporary urban China. This paper argues that the current community governance system falls short in accommodating the growing demands of community development due to "ambiguity of participating actors," "excessive administrative intervention on community management," "insufficient legislation supports," and a "deficiency in financing management system." Therefore, this paper argues that through the pluralization of public participation, diversification of community organization modes, and the enhancement of participation accessibility, community governance performance in urban China could be drastically improved. Therefore, a pluralistic and participatory community governance model is proposed in this paper to provide additional policy implications for community governance in urban China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of 3C Empresa is the property of Area de Innovacion y Desarrollo, SL 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.)

In recent years, Tibetan Yubeng Village, located in southwest China, has become a hot spot for studying community tourism development in China's minority areas. Studies of Yubeng Village have been made on two tourism benefit distribution systems that are dominated by the community: the accommodation income distribution system and the caravan rotation system. Analysis and discussion of researchers are based on the formation, change, and influence of these two systems. However, different researchers have different interpretations of some fundamental facts, whether in terms of the time of the systems’ changes or in terms of the specific contents of such changes. Based on firsthand interview records and auxiliary secondhand materials obtained from field investigation, this study mainly takes “time of system change” as an example to discuss the reasons for these differences and advises that researchers should be more rigorous when facing those fundamental facts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's economy in the past 10 years has developed rapidly and achieved great success, but at the same time, environmental problems have been deteriorating, seriously hindering the country's regional sustainable development. This paper proposes a common-weights DEA model based on "the priority of choosing common weights" to assess the environmental performance of 30 provinces from 2006 to 2015 and analyzes regional development in combination with China's economic division. This paper also introduces the biennial Malmquist Productivity Index (BMPI) to study environmental productivity levels during the 11th and 12th Five Year Plans (FYP) from a time series perspective. The results present a large gap in regional environmental efficiency, mainly manifested by the fact that the eastern and northeastern regions' environmental condition is obviously better than that of the central and western regions. BMPI analysis indicates that the overall environmental performances during the 11th and 12th FYPs did not improve significantly, with a clear imbalance in the western region, implying that its development potential is huge. On this basis, we offer some suggestions for improving the environmental performance of different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation has become the main impetus for regional development. Effective utilization of innovation resources is crucial in promoting sustainable innovation. From the theoretical aspect, there still exists uncertainty of how to effectively evaluate innovation performance. From the empirical aspect, we still doubt whether regions of higher economic level or high innovation quantity really show positive regional innovation performance, especially in heterogeneous regions. This paper uses DEA-Malmquist index to measure regional innovation performance of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China. Regions of similar performance levels are grouped by ward clustering, analysis regional innovation performance characteristics, and problem-solving paths of regions in different development stages. The empirical research proves that overall performance of Yangtze River Economic Belt is not high. The economic core area has realized increase of innovation volume through large amount of material input and resource consumption, instead of realizing full utilization of innovative resources; how to improve the utilization rate of existing technical resources has been neglected. Different regions with similar innovation performance show different characteristics and innovation problems, including resource mismatch, input redundancy, or insufficient output. There are also some differences in the way the region's specific innovation performance is improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, as in other countries of the world, communities, which are often considered as self-governing social organizations, are shaped and influenced by many factors. Different from other studies, this paper approaches the issue of community shaping from a planning perspective and tries to answer the questions of how Chinese communities have been physically shaped throughout history and what influences the planning policies have on communities' scales, forms, and functions. Hereby, the planning policies concern not only the spatial organization, but also the social management of communities. The research is elaborated chronologically, dividing the history of community development in China roughly into four periods according to socio-economic development trends, planning objectives, and community characters. The narration is mainly based on literature work and case studies, with a focus on the social and spatial characters of urban communities. The paper concludes that before the modernization of China, Chinese communities were mainly shaped into a gated Li-Fang pattern by traditional city building principles, in accordance with the regulations on social management, in spite of the terminological changes in different dynasties and the opening of gated communities during certain dynasties. In the thirty years of the planned economy, Chinese communities were mainly shaped into inward Danwei (or work unit) communities of perimeter blocks by the urban planning institution, which was regarded as a technical tool of the planned socio-economic development to support national industrialization. In the next thirty years of economic transition, Chinese communities were further shaped into gated commodity housing communities of super blocks under the influence of reforms and the guidance of urban planning regulations. In the period of new urbanization, Chinese communities face the challenge of transforming towards a dense grid, with narrow streets and small blocks, and promoting public engagement in community building, in view of the requirements for quality-oriented development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue comprehensively researches China's financialization and examines the transformation of its development model, state development corporations, local government bonds, productivity, and the extent and characteristics of financialization. While it is widely known that the state plays an important role in enabling and constraining financialization, these papers further reveal that China's financialization originates from the state's deployment of financial approaches to urban and regional development under state entrepreneurialism. Through internalizing financial logic into the state development system, the expansion of financial operations reflects the state's developmental intention and increases its governance capability. Thus, financialization is not a unidirectional process but involves extensive state involvement and participation in finance, to such an extent that it often simultaneously evolves into greater interference and de-financialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including orientation of the Asian governments in welfare provision for the poor, community development practice in China, and migrant labor in Singapore.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a broad spectrum of economic, social and environmental goals to be achieved by 2030. The Yangtze River Economic Zone (YREZ) is an important national regional development strategy in China. National and regional development strategies like the YREZ play a crucial role in achieving the SDGs. Therefore, this paper presents an assessment method for measuring progress of SDGs at the local level and takes the case of the YREZ in China. The local SDGs indicator framework is developed based on availability of good data and alignment with the global indicator framework (SGIF), including 60 indicators covering 17 goals. The local SDGs index and three target indexes are aggregated based on entropy-weighting method. The SDGs progress of each province (municipality) in the YREZ is assessed based on the proposed method. The results show that: (1) all eleven provinces (municipalities) in the YREZ face significant challenges in achieving the SDGs, (2) the local SDGs index is not only correlated with economy development but also with other factors, such as environmental protection and social development; (3) even the wealthiest provinces (municipalities) also face major challenges in meeting several goals of the SDGs, and some poor provinces (municipalities) have achieved good performance in some goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the challenges of community self-organisation in contemporary China, where the retrenchment of the party-state and the decline of social cohesion under late socialism have left underresourced communities increasingly responsible for the self-provision of public goods and services. Through a comparison of two case studies – a village shareholding corporation and a community foundation – the paper identifies three dimensions of institutional choice in community self-organisation: the efficient maximisation of resources, the equitable distribution of resources, and the affective recruitment of ideological support. This analysis suggests both a tradeoff between efficiency and equity and a reliance on nostalgia as the basis for the selective mobilisation of affect. These dynamics intersect to produce programmatic biases that privilege the interests of some residents while excluding others. While new forms of affect can help increase inclusion, the initial choices made by organisers result in institutional path dependencies that prove difficult to escape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imbalance of regional development is an important problem in China's economic development. This paper measures the allocation efficiency of financial resources of 31 provinces in China from 2008 to 2018. This paper makes up for the defciency of the traditional DEA model in variable selection and effciency identification. Firstly, we use AIC, BIC, and HQC information criteria to select variables, and construct a more scientific and reasonable financial effciency evaluation index system. On this basis, the Shannon entropy index is used to improve the discrimination ability. The results show that: (1) The combination of Shannon entropy index makes the result more accurate and improves the discrimination ability. (2) The Eastern region has the highest CES score, followed by the Midland and Western region, and the Northeast region has the lowest CES score. (3) Overall, from 2008 to 2018, the effciency of financial resource allocation in China showed an upward trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to fully implement the new development concept, bring into full play the potential of sports development, and maintain the resilience of China's sports development. This paper studies the resilience evaluation and spatial correlation of Chinese sports development under the new development concept. First, we constructed Resilience Evaluation Indexes System for Sports Development in China based on the analysis of the resilience features of sports development and the DPSIR model, which is from the five aspects of "driving force – pressure – state – influence – response." Second, used Coefficient of Variation and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) Method to measure the resilience level of sports development in 31 provinces in China from 2013 to 2017. Then, we introduced the obstacle degree model to identify the obstacle factors that hinder the resilience of Chinese sports development in different periods. Finally, we used the global and local Moran indexes to analyze the spatial correlation of China sports regional development. The results showed that: (1) overall, the development level of sports resilience in 31 provinces in China showed an upward trend from 2013 to 2017, while some provinces showed obvious fluctuations. (2) The obstacles to the development of sports resilience in China mainly include sports scientific research equipment, the number of national fitness monitoring stations, the number of national fitness centers, the full-time equivalent of (R&D) personnel, and the number of sports scientific research projects. The response subsystem is the main obstacle factor that affects the improvement of the resilience level of sports development in China. (3) There is a positive spatial autocorrelation between the resilience level of sports development and regional spatial distribution, and the correlation shows a weakening trend, and the internal difference is significant. Finally, we concluded that we must take the new development philosophy as the guiding principle. First, we should stick to innovation-driven development to fully upgrade the resilience of China's sports development. Second, we should adhere to the principle of coordinated development to promote the overall and balanced development of sports. Lastly, we should promote shared development so as to deliver benefits for all in an equal way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional inequality in western China has been rarely examined and has risen as an important issue in the Chinese academic circle. This study, taking Xinjiang as a case, investigated regional inequality in Xinjiang since the 1990s. The results show that the interregional inequality became more prominent, while the overall regional disparities among counties and cities have experienced an inverted U-shape path and have been mainly caused by the inequality of the intra-north part of the province. Counties with high economic development levels were mainly located in northern Xinjiang and had a high probability of further moving economic levels. We further found that the regional development pattern in Xinjiang was significantly associated with spatial accessibility, followed by population density and urbanization factors. This paper deepens our understanding of the complex pattern and mechanism of regional inequality in western China, and local specific policies, therefore, are needed to solve the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is a large economy with unbalanced economic growth throughout different regions, posing a great challenge to allocating energy saving and carbon emissions reduction responsibilities. This paper applies the multi-regional input-output tables of China in 2007 and 2012 to evaluate the status of embodied energy consumption. The embodied energy transfer of eight regions in China is analyzed based on a demand-side perspective. Furthermore, the driving factors of embodied energy changes and the inequality at a regional level are explored via a structural decomposition analysis, which provides references for promoting regional energy development and adjusting the industrial layout. The results indicate that China's total embodied energy consumption increased from 2.06 billion tons of standard coal equivalent (tce) in 2007 to 3.46 billion tce in 2012. Specifically, embodied energy consumption is concentrated in the Central regions, consuming 710 million tce in 2012. In addition, a large proportion of energy produced in all regions is consumed locally, while the amount of transferred embodied energy is widespread across different regions. The economic scale is the primary driving factor of embodied energy consumption changes, and technological development has a noticeable effect on restraining energy consumption. Regarding the structural effect, significant differences exist in different regions and end-use sectors. In conclusion, the regional development policies aiming to optimize the industrial structure and strengthen energy technology improvement in dual-circulation development patterns are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1950s, China developed an urban governance system, which always had a dual function: providing community services and exercising sociopolitical control, to ensure stability of an organized society. The economic reforms of the late 1970s, however, made the system obsolete. In 2000, China adopted a community-building policy to renew its urban governance system, in which residents' committees (RCs), self-governing mass organizations, have been assigned a major role. However, as the base of the system, RCs have been overburdened by numerous administrative responsibilities. Over-administration consequentially challenges their self-governing mandate. To resolve these double predicament, community work stations (CWSs) are being tried. This paper examines four CWS models and discusses the impacts of CWS on RCs and on the urban governance system. The paper argues that as an incremental policy response in a social engineering process, the role of CWSs in China's urban governance system is yet to be decided, particularly when they may pose challenges to the original policy intent of the community construction policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mountain area accounts for a high proportion of the land area in China, and it is the focal area to solve the contradiction of imbalanced regional development, as well as an important source of ecosystem services. Therefore, this area has been facing long-term pressure and challenges in economic development and ecological protection. In this paper, we selected a rocky desertification mountain area, an active mountain area of new tectonic movement and a typical northern earth-rock mountain area, as Qian-Gui karst Mountain area, Hengduan Mountain area and Taihang Mountain area, as examples to represent three main types of mountain areas. Three representative types of ecosystem services, including NPP (Net Primary Productivity) as a support service, water conservation as a regulation service, and agricultural produce as a supply service, were incorporated into this study. Linear regression, correlation analysis and other methods were then used to investigate the spatial-temporal characteristics of the trade-offs and synergies in each of the three kinds of mountain areas during 1990-2015 in China. The analysis yielded three main conclusions for the three mountainous areas. (1) The agricultural produce supply service decreased relatively, while the support and regulation services of NPP and hydrological regulation increased significantly. (2) There was a synergistic relationship between NPP and the hydrological regulation services in the three mountainous areas. The synergistic relation in Qian-Gui karst Mountain area became enhanced, while those in Hengduan and Taihang Mountain areas became weakened, and the former was weakened to a greater extent. There was a trade-off between NPP, the hydrological regulation service and the agricultural produce supply service among the three mountainous areas. In particular, the trade-off between NPP and the agricultural produce supply service in Qian-Gui karst Mountain area became weaker, while those in Hengduan and Taihang Mountain areas were enhanced, and the latter was enhanced to a greater degree. (3) Significant spatial differentiation was evident in the trade-offs and synergies of ecosystem services among the three mountain areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a reduced-form equilibrium model to investigate the possible sources of residential investment differentials among 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, and four municipalities in the People's Republic of China. The model is estimated using panel data from 31 Chinese regions during the period between 2001 and 2006, yielding a total of 186 observations. Empirical results should hopefully shed light on the adjustment mechanism of the Chinese residential-property market. Specifically, this paper suggests that change in population, income, and business confidence are the major determinants that cause residential investment to vary among different regions. The relatively small coefficients of real interest rates and planning regulations suggest that they have significant but modest impacts on residential investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Factor mobility plays an important role in the convergence of regional income levels. This paper examines the role of labor mobility in China's regional economic development in the context of phases of demographic transition and the existence of institutional barriers. Our findings show that the two most important sources of interregional income disparity are per worker capital stock and technology level. The fact that the richest provincial economies are at the later phase of demographic transition provides a major reason for why those economies have accumulated higher per worker capital stock and achieved higher productivity levels. We also discover that regional per capita income levels have not displayed convergence since the mid 1990s. Two observations explain this phenomenon. One observation is that capital and labor movements have played only a limited role in equalizing their marginal returns across regions despite the fact that labor mobility has substantially strengthened this role since 2000. The other observation is that the impact of demographic changes on income growth has been distinctly uneven between the rich and poor regions. This phenomenon can be attributed to some particular features of China's interregional labor migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imbalance of regional development trends is strongly correlated over time and across provinces, paralleled the growth of the economic quality and even influenced by exogenous variables. In this paper, a regional 'two-way' theory based on 'input and output' is proposed, reflecting the current state of economic quality development comprehensively. An 'inverse absolute dispersion method' came up with calculating the Quality of Economic Imbalance in Regional Development (QEIRD) after the measurement of economic quality is obtained by the total factor productivity (TFP). Moreover, the distribution of Chi-square is fitted to classify the grades of QEIRD, and the causes of QEIRD are analyzed via exogenous variables and regional decomposition under the panel data from China at the provincial level. The results indicate that the new method of measuring QEIRD based on TFP is scientific and reasonable in China at the country level. Secondly, the results obtained from the three regional decomposition ways are highly consistent, showing that the QEIRD from China has been diminishing, though not continuously and more so in some periods and regions, and being in a transition from stage three to stage two. Thirdly, the mainspring of total QEIRD is from the between-regions QEIRD; however, the rate of the within-region QEIRD is increasing cannot be neglected. In addition, exogenous variables have a crucial role in reducing QEIRD; it is a long-term and unremitting efforts to achieve stage one and move toward coordinated regional development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rail transit investment has been viewed as a prominent policy instrument for local and regional development. However, little is known about to what extent the theorised changes in land and housing values arising from rail transit access can be substantiated by evidence in a large developing country context. This paper presents a quantitative review of empirical studies that analysed the impacts of rail transit access on land and housing values in China. We review empirical analyses in 67 studies from 1997 to 2018 for which we encode quantitative results along with a range of theoretically combinations of spatially contextual characteristics, data and methodological-design characteristics. The results show that there are significant variations in the size estimates of effects of rail transit access across studies. Such variations are associated with rail project types, data and methodological designs. Our study provides the insights on what has already been known and what needs to be known on evaluating real estate consequences of rail transit improvements in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the rise of democratic consciousness and the slowdown of urbanization and economic growth speed, the community development path in contemporary China is under transition, aiming at a more bottom-up and small-scale planning and design process. In order to reveal how the "social capital" affects the public participation and social governance in the process of community micro-regeneration in China, this paper takes two old communities in Chaoyang District of Beijing as examples, to compare the impacts of various social capital levels on participatory community planning and design. The study proves the significance of community social capital and community self-government for the success of residents' participation and community regeneration, as well as providing suggestions on how to improve public participation effects by strengthening social capital of communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate the China’s outward FDI efficiency and it determinants in 69 countries along the Belt and Road over the period of 2003-2013.Design/methodology/approach This paper defines the extent of the Belt and Road in terms of geographical boundaries, justifying the application of the stochastic frontier gravity model to the FDI analysis, and then constructing a frontier regression model to assess the China’s outward FDI efficiency and it determinants in countries along the Belt and Road.Findings Regarding the core gravity parameter estimates, China’s outward FDI was highly consistent with the gravity model. As far as policy parameters are concerned, China’s outward FDI was significantly restricted by some man-made barriers in host countries. According to the estimated FDI efficiency scores, China has huge outward FDI potential in countries along the Belt and Road. In general, China’s outward FDI efficiency demonstrated a consistent uptrend from the perspectives of both FDI flows and stocks over the period of 2003-2013. Although China’s outward FDI performance indicated a very uneven pattern across different countries and periods, there were no significant performance differences between the Road and Belt.Practical implications The Belt and Road initiative can be largely beneficial to China’s outward FDI, but the specific framework of cooperation should be designed on the basis of determinants of China’s outward FDI. The regional cooperation with the Road countries should mainly focus on the removal of business barriers and financial barriers. The regional cooperation with the Belt countries should mainly concern the improvement of local intellectual property protection, the reduction of local tax burden, and removal of business barriers and financial barriers.Originality/value To the authors’ best knowledge, no existing literature has specifically examined the efficiency of China’s outward FDI in the countries along the Belt and Road and its determinants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to learn from international experiences in order to facilitating China’s ongoing regional university transformation with an ultimate goal to enhance the role of university in regional economic development and innovation. In so doing, this paper compares major models of universities of applied sciences (UAS) around the world from the perspective of the Triple Helix Model with an emphasis on the nature of university-industry relation implied by each model, and then exploring their relevance for China’s UASs transformation. It is concluded that the Finnish model is the most relevant to China. By comparing the Finnish and Chinese practices, a number of recommendations are solicited to Chinese policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study delves into a theoretical framework crucial for guiding future empirical research and practices, tackling the challenges and constraints within the current practical approach of ecomuseums in China. It is posited that social factors and theoretical foundations are intertwined, contributing to the existing hurdles in ecomuseum practices, particularly in terms of inadequate community involvement and sustainable growth. Various studies have been examined to establish a framework that integrates various theories, such as critical heritage studies, new museology, and appropriate museology, shifting the focus from object-centred to user-centred approaches. The underlying principle is that heritage value is not fixed but rather constructed, with blurred boundaries between tangible and intangible aspects. Community engagement and development are pivotal in this construction process, necessitating the use of tailored methods and tools based on the unique circumstances of each community to achieve meaningful community participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory governance has been increasingly promoted in China since 2006. Whilst the state appears to be supportive of nurturing self-governance at the community level through providing financial incentives, it is worth investigating whether the state hampers citizen autonomy in practice. This article examines the implementation of participatory initiatives in a middle-class neighbourhood within the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). Through interviews and observing the interactions between state actors, residents and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), this paper examines the impact of changing the facilitator of self-governance initiatives from academics to NGOs. The findings reveal complex relations: although the state does not interfere in participatory processes directly, state-defined evaluation criteria that privilege 'innovative' practices, and budget constraints of NGOs, have weakened the capacity of residents to practise self-governance. The findings add to the literature on participatory governance by highlighting the unique role of community leaders in shaping the quality of citizen involvement in participatory initiatives in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes Wujing Township of Shanghai as a typical case to examine the process and dynamics of the production of rural space in China. Although Shanghai has generally become more urbanised and globalised than ever, the rural area in Shanghai is relatively marginalised. Production of space, as a social theory focusing on interactions between capital, power and class and their impacts on urbanisation, is applied into one such micro-scale case of community development. There are three categories of social space separations in Wujing. The main driving force of producing these separations is power: top-down policymaking represses bottom-up community self-organising. Rising housing prices driven by capital not only makes the locals only care for benefit from housing demolition, but also enlarges the gap between the locals and the migrants. It is the increasing strength of capital and power and weakened local voices that undermine community-based social space in Wujing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1949, the Miao nationality in China has encountered historic opportunities for development. This paper reviews four aspects of the historical achievements of the Miao nationality in China: education, youth organizations, cultural heritage, and new media and women's empowerment. By analyzing official statistics and autoethnographic data, we demonstrate that the agency of the Miao has contributed to these historical achievements. We argue that the Miao have seized many chances to promote development. Moreover, this paper emphasizes that the Miao have diverse cultures and an imbalance in development in various areas. These diverse features demonstrate that a single criterion cannot be used to measure the complicated situation and we call for further transdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the transformation of the Chinese economy from an extensive growth to intensive development, city development is also gradually turning from incremental construction to stock management. Community, as a basic unit of human settlements, is an important platform to build and improve the social governance capability. In 2013, Shiyoulu Jiedao Office of Yuzhong District led the 1st urban community development planning, which was a milestone of Chongqing’s city regeneration and governance innovation. This paper focuses on two key issues: how to understand the community values and make the community development planning based on the above, and how to integrate with the local forces so that the community development planning can be integrated into the action plan. Combined with the practice of Minlecun Community Development Planning, using the concept of asset-based community development, a comprehensive survey is conducted on community assets (including three aspects of physical, human, and social capital), and a community comprehensive planning strategy is formulated which covers two parts: the optimization of community spaces and the upgrading of community governance. The paper explores the local-based community planning theories and methods from such aspects as value attitude, public participation, role transformation of urban planners, and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the link between regional financial development and foreign direct investment using a large micro-level dataset of Chinese manufacturing enterprises. We first investigate the effect of regional financial development on foreign direct investment location choices, and find such development to significantly promote foreign direct investment. We then show that regional financial development also plays an important role in foreign direct investment productivity spillovers. Domestic firms located in financially developed regions gain positive knowledge spillovers from foreign direct investment, but the competitive pressure from multinationals exerts a negative influence on the productivity of domestic firms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Authenticity is a constructive concept and the core principle for protection of cultural heritage, but it is also a controversial issue, along with its practice in different geographical and cultural contexts. Both the heritage management system and its authenticity principles are not indigenous, but were developed in western society and exported from western countries. As a result, conflicts arise with its implementation and therefore often lead to counterintuitive behaviors. This paper examines the heritage conservation process in the case of Hongcun by applying the social constructionism theory. The paper attempts to point out that both the heritage and the authenticity principles are socially constructed concepts and that the construction process is very much influenced by the power relationships involved. Authenticity in Hongcun is an implementation of the principle of material, static, and superficial style understandings, while less attention is paid to the non-material cultural heritage protection, which is especially reflected in the neglect and the development restrictions on local craft and folk art. The study shows that there is a need to be aware of the nature of the constructiveness and power relationships in the heritage management and to integrate local voices in the heritage conservation process to avoid conflicts and to achieve conservation goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Global warming is recently an urgent issue worldwide. The increase of carbon emissions induced by human economic activities has become a major driving force behind global climate change. Thus, as a matter of social responsibility, reasonable carbon constraints should be implemented to ensure environmental security and sustainable development for every country. Based on a summary of studies that examined the relationship between carbon emissions and regional development, this paper shows that human activity-led carbon emission is caused by the combination of several influencing factors, including population size, income level, and technical progress. Thus, a quantitative model derived from IPAT-ImPACT-Kaya series and STIRPAT models was established. Empirical analysis using multivariate nonlinear regression demonstrated that the origins of growing global carbon emission included the increasing influencing elasticity of the population size and the declining negative effect of technical progress. Meanwhile, in context of classification of country groups at different income levels, according to the comparison of fluctuating patterns of the influencing elasticity, technical progress was found as the main factor influencing carbon emission levels in high-income countries, and population size might be the controlling factor in middle-income countries. However, for low-income countries, the nonlinear relationship between carbon emission and its influencing factors was not significant, whereas population growth was identified as an important potential driving force in future carbon emissions. This study can therefore provide a reference for the formulation of policies on carbon constraints, especially to develop more efficient carbon mitigating policies for countries at different income levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public participation is considered a cornerstone of sustainable tourism planning. Although this process is well established and tested in western democracies, there is an emerging trend of developing it within the liberalizing Chinese tourism economy. Using a qualitative research strategy, this paper applies the theoretical construction of community participation in tourism planning to the analysis of the planning process of a tourism destination in Jiao Chang Wei, Shenzhen, China. The paper finds that: 1) public participation has played a significant role in the formulation and implementation of the tourism destination plan in the case study area. 2) Structuralized inter-network collaboration led-by government organized non-governmental organizations has the potential to become dominant paradigm of public participation in tourism planning in China in the future. The paper concludes with the contributions of this research to wider theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the field study of the tourism development and post-disaster reconstruction process in Pingba Qiang village in Wenchuan earthquake-stricken area, the current paper suggests that the social developmental style there is essentially "modern engineering" led by the government, which can be summarized as "binding development" that reflects some basic characteristics of the "China Model". In the operating process of this developmental style, a series of events of power and discourse games occur in local society, and the relationships between different types of participants, especially those between the grass-roots government and the people, undergo dramatic changes. The "development discourse" in the national mainstream ideology, while being utilized in clever operations, is transformed into capital for grassroots political games, producing a relatively new "version" of grassroots politics. This phenomenon is labeled "metaphorical politics". There are many notable relations between binding development and metaphorical politics. As the macro political system's derivatives in China, the former and its inherent characteristics provide a prerequisite condition for the emergence of the latter. At the same time, the latter reacts to the former through its unique operational logic, and furthermore, to some degree, has a "deconstructing" effect on it. Through these relations, we can detect some subtle changes and new noticeable trends of the grassroots political form in China. With people's enhanced awareness of their rights, bettered conceptualization of independence, and refined political protest strategies, China's rural political power relations are facing the possibility of new reconstruction, and binding development will encounter more challenges. Of course, the future prospects of these changes are still hard to be accurately predicted because they are closely related to the direction of China's macro political reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current literature on Chinese urban studies and governmentality undertheorises the reform of local governance with regard to the activation and empowerment of community in China. Inspired by Dean’s and Sigley’s discussions of non-liberal or ‘Chinese governmentality’, this paper seeks to understand and conceptualise one of China’s most noted examples of community development, the so-called Shanghai model, using the Foucauldian concept of pastorship. Understood here as distinct from the notion of ‘advanced liberal’ governmentality, it is argued that Shanghai’s community governance depends on the governing concepts and technologies associated with the socio-political construction of the ‘pastoral’ relationship between local Party leaders and citizens. By focusing on the case study of Luwan district and one of its grass-roots community organisations (Wuliqiao Street Office), this paper will demonstrate the characteristics, institutionalisation and limitations of, pastoral governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the impact of transnational geographical mobility among Chinese and German scholars using the concepts of 'development corridors' and 'development chains'. A temporal-spatial analysis of two case studies - (1) a multi-generation actor-based network of social scientists and (2) the vibrant connections between the Department of Geography at the Sun Yat-Sun University of Guangzhou and various German institutes - illustrates how seemingly individual, isolated and temporary episodes of academic mobility can, through interacting with factors ranging from unforeseen events to framework conditions, lead to chains of events that produce, reshape, strengthen, weaken or even erase corridors of knowledge production and exchange. Both cases demonstrate the need to view geographical mobility and its relationship to development beyond national and transnational frameworks, and the need to pay attention to translocal and highly contextualised processes that shape and are being shaped by the multiple elements of the mobility-development nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Awards and competitions are often used to motivate public servants, and this paper examines how the central government of China uses these to try and motivate cities to improve public hygiene. The authors argue that apart from improving performance,(1) awards and competitions are good at motivating user participation and spreading good practice. However, the design of the schemes used in China tends to prioritize disproportionately the winning mentality, and sometimes causes high costs and social tension. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Significant economic disparities among China's Eastern, Central, and Western regions pose unequivocal challenges to social equality and political stability in the country. A major impediment to economic development, especially in the poor, remote Western region, is the shortage of a transportation infrastructure. The Chinese government has committed to substantial investment for improving the accessibility of this vast, land-locked region as a mechanism for promoting its development. The paper examines the impacts of the intended transportation infrastructure build-up on the Western region's comparative advantage and its interregional trade. The World Trade Model is extended to represent this investment and applied to determine interregional trade in China based on region-specific technologies, factor endowments and prices, and consumption patterns as well as the capacities and costs of carrying goods among regions using the interregional transportation infrastructure in place in the base year of 1997 and that planned for 2010 and 2020. The model is implemented for three regions, 27 sectors, and seven factors. The results indicate that the planned infrastructure build-up will be cost-effective, will increase benefits especially for the Western region, and that it can conserve energy overall at given levels of demand but substitute oil for coal. Based on these and other model results, some recommendations are offered about strategies for regional development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of community resource identification and its value in promoting community building programs with an intergenerational initiative in urban communities in China is important to this paper. Although intergenerational programming is a new concept among Chinese stakeholders, it is considered a timely approach to community development, particularly with the retreat and destatization of socialist welfare in contemporary China. This paper describes how, with the application of the newly developed Community Resources Assessment Tool (CRAT), community resources, in particular resources from elderly people, were identified and mobilized for intergenerational programs in a community in Shanghai, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies growth equations to examine the impact of region-specific factors on China's growth in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, this study focuses on investigating the role of capital formation, initial conditions, labour productivity, human capital, openness, infrastructure, foreign capital and economic reform in China's regional growth. It is found that those variables account for 70-90% of China's growth in the past decades. The robustness of the findings in this study is tested by estimating alternative models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]