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In this century Chinese tourists in Australia have rapidly become the most numerous national source. Relatively little is known about their socio-economic status, their geographical origins and expectations of tourism, and their attitudes to and perceptions of Australia, although every Australian state has devised a specific Chinese tourism strategy to tap into this market. Chinese tourism is concentrated in metropolitan areas in the eastern states, has evolved from group tours to individual plans, and is relatively high spending. Unless geographical and tourism research on Chinese tourism aligns with contemporary theoretical developments in tourism studies, the type of knowledge being produced will be limited. Whilst there is value in extending existing knowledge, important social insights into the Chinese tourists' experience of Australia will not emerge. Although Chinese tourism is similar to earlier waves from East Asia, it constitutes a distinct component of the contemporary Australian market. A deeper understanding of this phenomenon requires the adoption of practice theories that privilege social practices as the entry point for theorising and conducting research. In advocating such an approach, we highlight challenges of linguistic and cultural differences, scale and governmentality in providing a qualitative research agenda for geographical and tourism studies' engagements with Chinese tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous studies indicate that migrant integration is associated with migrants' characteristics as well as restrictions and opportunities in receiving cities. However, the effect of receiving cities and the relationship between migrants and receiving cities have not been fully explored due to the lack of large samples from cities. The objective of this study is to examine the effects of receiving cities alone and their regulating role in the interaction with individual characteristics. Methods: Cross-city data on 154,044 Chinese domestic migrants above 15 years old in 289 cities from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey are used. Migrant integration is assessed by a four-dimensional model proposed by Esser, which is slightly adjusted according to the characteristics of Chinese migrants. A hierarchical linear model is used to measure the proportion of effects of city factors in migrant integration as well as the effects when city factors are considered alone and in interaction with individual factors. Results: The individual-level and city-level factors are responsible for 69.81% and 30.19% of the effect on migrant integration, respectively. City political factors do not affect migrant integration directly, and cities with larger sizes and higher wages can directly and significantly improve integration, while higher housing prices will directly inhibit integration. From the cross-level interaction of city and individual, different social, economic and political factors at the city level have an indirect impact on migrant integration by inhibiting or strengthening the effect of individual-level factors on migrant integration. Conclusion: This study is one of the first to show the effect of cities and the relationship between receiving cities and migrants on migrant integration by keeping the national context constant. It is necessary to weaken the social and economic privileges associated with a city's administrative level and reduce the negative impact of cities' social and economic conditions by implementing city agglomeration, developing advantageous industries and optimizing the industrial structure. It is also essential to improve migrants' socioeconomic capital through social support, occupation training and contiguous education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pension reform poses a formidable challenge to China's development and has become a topic of intensive debate in recent years. Nonetheless, various reform measures based on legislations adopted since the 1980s have largely failed to be implemented, including the 1997 three-pillar pension plan. While the current debate on pension reform in China centers on how to address the financial crisis of the public pension system, this article argues that the widening pension deficit has been only a symptom rather than the root cause of the reform stalemate. China's old socialist pension benefits were developed as a statusbased privilege rather than a provision of old age economic security. As China transits from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, the old pension system has increasingly become inadequate and inequitable. The remaining socialist pension obligations are incompatible with the emerging market, and the majority of the population is exposed to market risks without protection in retirement. However, those structural challenges have not been successfully addressed by deficit-driven reform plans or short-sighted measures that focus on having current workers' pay for the heavy cost of pensions for retirees under the previous system. The right reform strategy will require that efforts be redirected towards addressing the fundamental transition issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important part of the China Dream is the development of a comfortable middle class lifestyle for all. This is not such a surprising development since a public discourse surrounding the emergence of a middle class has been in the making for over a decade. There is though nonetheless an apparent paradox in a Communist Party embracing the middle class. Understanding how and why this has occurred, as well as attempting to identify the consequences for social stratification in China is clearly important. While it would seem reasonable to attempt to analyse China's middle class in terms of wealth, or occupation or even lifestyle, it is argued that this is fairly meaningless: in this context the middle class is more a discourse than social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the patterns and changes in public perceptions of domestic income inequality in Hong Kong in the past two decades and explains individual variations in these perceptions. It found that the perceived seriousness of income disparities had been persistently high, while the perceived unjustness of income disparities showed a fluctuating trend. Our findings lent partial support to the structural position thesis that the privileged groups are less likely than the underprivileged groups to consider existing income disparities to be serious and unjust. Nonetheless, the popular understanding of poverty is still biased towards 'individual' explanations, and this perhaps explains why the government is less willing to tackle the economic and political foundations of poverty in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that China's corruption problem has become more and more serious during the period of economic reform. This paper examines China's corruption problem with the help of several simple economic models. The author proposes the concepts of implicit corruption and explicit corruption. We explain how the granting of privileges has directly created implicit corruption in China's socialist market economy. We argue that the long-term existence of the same privileged group in Chinese society has led to widespread collusion among its members, and as a result, these privileged group members, by utilizing their monopoly power, are able to seize almost all the wealth created by the ordinary Chinese people. This seizure is accomplished by means of a two-part tariff in pricing their administrative service, which is the essence of the explicit corruption. Finally, we point out that, because both implicit corruption and explicit corruption are generated by China's political system, which grants and protects privileges, unless a political reform is initiated and privileges are eliminated, China's problem of corruption will never be solved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]