Author Archives: Monique Abud

About Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

Neighbourhood governance in urban China

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Yip, Ngai-Ming (ed.) (2014). Neighbourhood governance in urban China. Cheltenham : Edward Elgar. XI-213 p. ISBN: 978-1-78100-023-6

Neighbourhood Governance In Urban ChinaAs the economy and society of China has become more diversified, so have its urban neighbourhoods. The last decade has witnessed a surge in collective action by homeowners in China against the infringement of their rights. Research on neighbourhood governance is sparse and limited, so this book fills a vital gap in the literature and understanding.

The authors reveal how the Chinese authorities have themselves become increasingly sensitive to the potential risk of collective actions becoming destabilizing forces in urban arenas. This thought-provoking book looks at both the theoretical and empirical underpinning of the self-governance of homeowners and their collective action, as well as control mechanisms in neighbourhood governance. The book offers a window through which contending issues, such as changing state–society relations, rights-based social movements and the emergence of civil society, can be further explored.

Neighbourhood governance is a multifaceted concept that cuts across academic disciplines and intersects an array of policy areas. Therefore this book will find a wide audience amongst public and social policy academics, particularly those with an interest in urban studies, governance and Asian cities, as well as politics.

The hukou converters

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Deng, Quheng and Bjorn Gustafsson (2014). The hukou converters : China’s lesser known rural to urban migrants. Journal of Contemporary China, 23 (88), 657-679. DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2013.861147.

This article studies people born in rural China who now live in urban areas of China and possess a residence permit, an urban hukou; these are the hukou converters and they are examined using large datasets covering substantial parts of China in 2002. According to our estimates, there are 107 million hukou converters constituting 20% of the registered population of China’s urban areas. Presence of a high employment rate in the city, that the city is small or medium-sized, and that the city is located in the middle or western part of China are factors which cause the ratio of hukou converters in the registered city population to be comparatively high. The probability of becoming a hukou converter is strongly linked to having parents with relatively high human and social capital and belonging to the ethnic majority. Compared to their rural-born peers left behind, as well as to migrants who have kept their rural hukou, the hukou converters have much higher per capita household incomes. Years of schooling and CPC membership contribute to this difference but most of the difference remains unexplained in a statistical sense, signalling large incentives to urbanise as well as to receive an urban hukou. While living a very different life from their peers left behind, the economic circumstances of China’s hukou converters at the destination are, on average, similar to the urban-born population. Hukou converters who receive an urban hukou before age 25 do well in the labour market and we have reported indications that they actually overtake urban-born peers regarding earnings. In contrast, hukou migrants who receive an urban hukou after age 25 do not catch up with their urban-born counterparts in terms of earnings.

Chinese perceptions of the European Union

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Dong, Lisheng (2014). Chinese perceptions of the European Union. Journal of Contemporary China, 23 (88), 756-779. DOI:10.1080/10670564.2013.861172

This article uses survey data collected in 2010 and conducts a systematic comparative analysis of the perceptions of the EU by the Chinese general public and the elite. Most ordinary Chinese citizens do not understand the EU very well, but their impressions of the EU are very positive and they also hold good expectations for the future of China–EU relations. The Chinese elites and ordinary citizens differ significantly in terms of ‘favoring the EU’ or ‘favoring Russia’. The multivariate model indicates that EU travel experience, annual income level and Internet dependence have significant positive effects on ‘favoring-EU’ feelings. Those who have EU travel experience, higher levels of annual income and greater opportunities to obtain information via the Internet are more likely to be ‘favoring-EU’.

 

 

Making China’s urban transportation boom sustainable

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Zhao, Zhirong Jerry (2014). Making China’surban transportation boom sustainable.  (Paulson Policy Memorenda). Chicago, IL : The Paulson Institute.

China’s economic takeoff of recent decades has been accompanied by the dazzling growth of the nation’s transportation infrastructure. China’s total highway mileage had reached a staggering 4.2 million kilometers (km)  (2.6 million miles) by 2012, expanding from just 126,675 km (78,712 miles) in 1949. Railroads in operation increased from 22,900 km (14,229 miles) in 1952 to 98,000 km (60,894 miles) in 2012, including more than 9,360 km (5,816 miles) of high-speed rail (HSR) that moves sleek passenger trains between China’s major urban centers at speeds that clock in at over 200km (124 miles)/h.

In China’s current subway boom, meanwhile, not only are megacities like Beijing and Shanghai actively adding new lines and extensions (see Figure 1) but smaller Chinese cities are also racing to open their first subway lines. 

Urbanization, development, and China’s “land-lost”

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Lian, Hongping and Raul P. Lejano (2014). Interpreting institutional fit: urbanization, development, and China’s “land-lost”World Development, 61, pp.1-10.

Urbanization-led development brings not just demographic, technological, and economic change, but profound institutional transition, as well. The scale and pace of China’s urbanization project have generated a crisis for millions living in rural–urban peripheries. We will utilize a model of institutional fit to conduct a critical analysis of China’s urbanization program and its implementation problems. Utilizing a semi-structured interview format, we analyze the experiences of the so-called “land-lost” residents in Changsha, China, vis-à-vis this ongoing institutional transition. The analysis provides a rich account of the myriad ways the transition to a privatized property market runs counter to the collective nature of peri-urban Chinese communities.

Read full text article on ScienceDirect (restricted access)

Land use policy in China

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Land use policy in China. Edited by Hualou Long . Special issue of Land Use Policy, 40, September 2014, pp. 1-146.

1-s2.0-S0264837714X00037-cov150h[1]This themed issue of Land Use Policy builds mainly on papers presented at an international conference on ‘Land Use Issues and Policy in China under Rapid Rural and Urban Transformation’, convened by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, in October 2012. The conference set out to share and promote new scientific findings from a range of disciplines that advance research on land use policy in China. The contributions to this themed issue provide conceptual–theoretical and empirical takes on the topic, around four main areas of interest to both researchers and policymakers: nation-wide land use issues, the Sloping Land Conversion Program, land engineering and land use, and land use transitions. Various land use issues have been associated with rapid urban–rural transformations in China, giving rise to formulation of new policies directly affecting land use. However, these have contributed to new land use problems due to the nature of the policies and the difficulties in policy implementation constrained by the special ‘dual-track’ structure of urban–rural development in China. In view of this, this themed edition makes a compelling call for more systematic research into the making and implementation of China’s land use policy. It also emphasizes the challenges for further research on land use policy in China.

 

 

Sustainable City 2014

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The International Conference on Urban Regeneration and Sustainability addresses all aspects of the urban environment aiming to provide solutions leading towards sustainability.

Date

23-25 September, 2014

Location

Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, Italy

Organisers

  • Wessex Institute of Technology, UK
  • University of Siena, Italy

The Conference addresses the multi-disciplinary aspects of urban planning; a result of the increasing size of the cities; the amount of resources and services required and the complexity of modern society.

Most of earth’s population now lives in cities and the process of urbanisation still continues generating many problems deriving from the drift of the population towards them. These problems can be resolved by cities becoming efficient habitats, saving resources in a way that improves the quality and standard of living. The process however, faces a number of major challenges, related to reducing pollution, improving main transportation and infrastructure systems. New urban solutions are required to optimise the use of space and energy resources leading to improvements in the environment, i.e reduction in air, water and soil pollution as well as efficient ways to deal with waste generation. These challenges contribute to the development of social and economic imbalances and require the development of new solutions.

 More information at: http://www.wessex.ac.uk/14-conferences/sustainable-city-2014.html

 

Poverty reduction and effects of pro-poor policies in rural China

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Li, Shi (2014). Poverty reduction and effects of pro-poor policies in rural China. China & World Economy, 22, p. 22–41. Pre-published online: 12 March 2014. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-124X.2014.12060.x

The present paper describes changes in poverty reduction in recent decades and the effects of income growth and inequality on poverty reduction in rural China. The paper also examines the main poverty alleviation policies implemented in rural areas over the past 10 years and assesses the effectiveness and efficiency of these policies from the perspective of targeting accuracy. It is found that China has achieved significant progress in rural poverty reduction in recent decades, although the speed of poverty reduction has varied from one period to another. The largest contribution to rural poverty reduction has been economic growth, which has been increasingly offset by the inequality effect on poverty reduction. In addition, poverty alleviation policies are effective, but not efficient.

Read full text article on Wiley Library Online (restricted access).

Spatial inequality in Asia

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Special Session at the 2015 AAG Annual Meeting: The Geography of Inequality in Asia

Inequality is a fundamental issue for human society, a core subject of academic inquiry, and a major concern of governments. There has been a long-lasting debate about the pattern, trajectory, and mechanisms of geographical inequality, as well as policies that address poverty and inequality. This debate has been dominated by convergence (e.g., neoclassical economics) and divergence (e.g., dependency, neo-Marxism) schools. Concerns for the negative effects of globalization and liberalization and the unequal benefits of the transition in socialist countries have generated renewed debates since the late 1980s, which are intellectually enriched by developments in the new economic geography, new growth theory, economic sociology, institutional/evolutionary economic geography, and GIS. Thanks largely to the intensification of globalization and the uneven consequences of the recent global financial crisis, inequality has once again become a hotly debated topic among top world leaders, including those of the United Nations, World Bank and United States.

The geography of inequality has also drawn renewed scholarly interest, but the existing knowledge is fragmented and partial. This session intends to attract scholars with varied backgrounds to examine the dimensions, complexity, and dynamics of the geography of inequality from multiple perspectives.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Outcomes: income, social, health, education, digital, innovation, environmental inequalities, etc., and their interactive effects
  • Trajectory/Dynamics: Timing, effects of intergenerational inequality, levels of development
  • Scale: From global to local and everyday life, with an emphasis on the regional scale
  • Space/Place: Spatial association/agglomeration/clustering, core-periphery relations, uneven nature of inequality, space/place as agents etc.
  • Networks: Spatial relations, flows, interactions
  • Processes/Mechanisms: Globalization, liberalization, marketization, institutional change, decentralization, geography
  • Procedures/Policies: Role of institutions, policy effects and options, justice, planning
  • Methodology: ESDA, spatial regression, GWR, multilevel modeling, spatial Markov chain, spatial distribution dynamics, big data etc.

Date

  • April 21-25, 2015

Location

  • AAG Annual Meeting, Chicago, Ill.

Organizers

  • Yehua Dennis Wei, Professor, Department of Geography and Institute of Public and International Affairs, University of Utah, wei@geog.utah.edu.
  • Sanjoy Chakravorty, Professor, Department of Geography and Urban Studies, Temple University, sanjoy@temple.edu.

Submission Procedure

  • Please submit your participation/registration fee and abstracts online through the AAG’s website (www.aag.org). We would appreciate it if you would send us your PIN and title at your earliest time, at least two weeks before the AAG official deadline, to give us time to finalize and register the sessions.

 More info at: 

 

Representing and coping with early 20th-century Chongqing

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Chabrowski, Igor (2013). Representing and coping with early twentieth-century Chongqing: “Guide songs” as maps, memory cells, and means of creating cultural imagery. Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review. E-Journal 6, p. 67-94. Retrieved 19 May 2014 from: https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-6/Chabrowski.

Chongqing’s “guide songs” form an interesting subgenre among the broad category of haozi 號子 (workers’ songs). These early twentieth-century songs were a form of rhythm-based oral narrative describing Chongqing’s urban spaces, river docks, and harbors. Each toponym mentioned in the lyrics was followed by a depiction of the characteristic associations, whether visible or symbolic, of the place. This article aims to analyze the verbal images of Chongqing presented in these songs in order to understand how the city was remembered, reproduced, and represented. The article deconstructs representations of the city produced by the lower classes, mainly by Sichuan boatmen, and links culturally meaningful images of urban spaces with the historical experiences of work, religion, and historical-mythical memory. It also points to the functions that oral narratives had in the urban environment of early twentieth-century Chongqing. Rhythmic and easy to remember, the songs provided ready-to-use guides and repositories of knowledge useful to anyone living or working there. A cross between utilitarian resource books and cultural representations, they shaped modes of thinking and visualizations of urban spaces and Chongqing. Finally, this article responds to the need to employ popular culture in our thinking about Chinese cities and the multiplicity of meanings they were given in pre-Communist times.

 

Unauthorized use change of the industrial buildings

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Li, T., Liao, H. P., Zhuang, W, Sun, H., Li, C. (2014). Unauthorized use change and control system of China’s industrial buildings : taking S district of Chongqing as an example. Canadian Social Science, 10 (4), 130-135. Available from: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/css/article/view/4475.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/4475

This paper uses both theoretical research and empirical research in analyzing the changing scale and characteristics of spatial-temporal variations of the unauthorized change of the use of the industrial buildings in Chongqing’s S District. Through the in-depth exploration of the driving factors and mechanism of China’s unauthorized change of the use of the industrial buildings, this paper finally builds scientific and reasonable use change control mechanism for industrial buildings. It has been found through the empirical study that unauthorized use change causes great loss of state-owned land resources and serious impact on commercial real estate and leads to very baneful social consequences. Use change of industrial buildings includes five driving factors: economy, structure of land supply, laws, industry development and system. To avoid such use changes, we must improve the existing laws and regulations and vitalize the industrial building resources; optimize both land supply structure and the spatial arrangement of industrial buildings; explore to develop supervisory control system based on the building certification process and principle of rent-to-grant; construct multi-sector linked supervision system for the use change of industrial buildings; effectively use economic levers to squeeze the profit brought about by the use change of industrial buildings; and know clearly about the industry direction and settled businesses.

Bringing sustainable infrastructure to urban areas

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Grangé, Jérémy and Petitet, Sylvain (2014). For cities of a different nature : bringing sustainable infrastructure to urban areas. Translated by Oliver Waine. Metropolitics, 26 March 2014. Retrieved 8 April 2014 from: http://www.metropolitiques.eu/For-cities-of-a-different-nature.html

City-dwellers want to see more of their metropolitan areas turned over to nature and urban public spaces; however, our cities today are still structured by a network of roads that were primarily built to manage motor traffic flows. Sylvain Petitet and Jérémy Grangé show how implementing sustainable urban infrastructure could provide city-dwellers with easy and convenient access to the places that generate most of their journeys, revealing a new form of network-based public space.

 

 

The China Urban Sustainability Index 2013

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Li Xiaopeng et al. (eds.) (2014). The China Urban Sustainability Index 2013. Beijing : UCI [Urban China Initiative]. 45 p.

Urban Sustainable Index (USI) 2013 builds upon the work carried out in USI 2011. USI 2013 has expanded and upgraded the indicators used in USI 2011. The analysis deploys 23 metrics, which cover four categories: economy, society, resources and environment. We ranked 185 cities, of varying sizes and at different stages of development, by their level of sustainability from 2005 to 2011. To ensure data was available, as well as to reflect the full landscape of Chinese cities, our sample includes all levels of cities from municipalities directly under the central government, to county-level cities with populations ranging from 200,000 to 20 million.

Read more

 

Urbanization, land development, and land financing: evidence from Chinese cities

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Ye, L. and Wu, A. M. (2014). Urbanization, land development, and land financing: evidence from Chinese cities. Journal of Urban Affairs. Prepublished April, 14, 2014, doi: 10.1111/juaf.12105

China’s urbanization is significant worldwide. This process is characterized by underurbanization of population and fast urban land expansion. The driving forces behind this expansion and their rationale are not fully understood and empirically tested. This study fills this gap by analyzing panel data from 1999–2009 for all 286 prefecture-level cities in China. The findings reveal that land financing, using different measures, significantly contributed to land urbanization in China. Economically stronger cities with higher real estate investment more aggressively pushed for land urbanization. The true purpose of urbanization should be improving the living standard, not to generate revenue. It is suggested that urbanization can serve its justified goals only if fiscal and political relations between central and local governments can be adjusted. As more data become available, future studies are encouraged to further explore the subject by investigating additional factors and the latest trend of urbanization in China.

 

 

 

Household registration reform and peri-urban precarity in China

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Smith, N. R. (2014). Living on the edge: household registration reform and peri-urban precarity in China. Journal of Urban Affairs. doi: 10.1111/juaf.12107

China’s household registration system divides the nation into urban and rural populations, conditioning life chances and producing widespread inequity. Recent reform experiments in Chongqing have met with mixed success, as many residents have declined to convert to urban registration. This article ethnographically investigates the rationales and strategies of residents in Hailong, a village in Chongqing where residents were reluctant to participate in household registration reform. For Hailong residents, the state-sponsored welfare offered through urban registration was perceived as a source of exploitation and precarity. In search of stability, Hailong residents developed informal welfare strategies, including mutual support networks and economic diversification. By forcing residents to give up their land rights and adopt urban roles, household registration reform threatened these informal strategies. The article concludes by exploring the policy implications of this analysis, including the possibility of developing formal welfare programs that complement—rather than replace—informal strategies.