Category Archives: Beijing

Remaking China’s great cities

Samuel Y. Liang (2014) Remaking China’s great cities. Space and culture in urban housing, renewal, and expansion, London, Routledge, 256 p. Contents

China’s rapid urbanization has restructured the great socialist cities Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou into mega cities that embrace global capitalism. This book focuses on the urban transformations of these three cities: Beijing is the nation’s political and cultural capital; Shanghai is the economic and financial powerhouse; and Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong Province and the regional center of south China. All are historical cities with rich imperial, colonial, and regional heritages, and all have been drastically transformed in the last six decades. This book examines the cities’ continuous urban legacies since 1949 in relation to state governance, economic reforms, and cultural production. By adopting local historical perspectives, it offers more nuanced accounts of the current urban change than the modernization/globalization paradigm and conceptualizes the change in the context of the cities’ socialist, colonial, and imperial legacies. Specifically, Samuel Y. Liang offers an overview of the urban planning and territorial expansion of the great cities since 1949; explores the production and consumption of urban housing, its spatial forms, media representations, and socio-political implications; and examines the state-led redevelopment of old urban cores and residential neighborhoods, and the urban conservation movement.

Read also

Planning and its discontents: contradictions and continuities in remaking China’s great cities, 1950–2010. Urban History, 40, p 530-553. doi:10.1017/S0963926812000752.

Jacqueline Nivard

Jacqueline Nivard, Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine

More Posts - Website

Neglect of a neighbourhood: oral accounts of life in ‘old Beijing’ since the eve of the People’s Republic

Neglect of a neighbourhood: oral accounts of life in ‘old Beijing’ since the eve of the People’s Republic. Paper written by Harriet Evans (2014), Urban History, Volume 41, Issue04, November 2014 pp 686-704.

ABSTRACT

Oral accounts of life over seven decades in Dashalanr, a popular neighbourhood in central Beijing, reveal a social world that despite being shaped by the state’s policies of social and political classification, housing and employment, has been resistant to complete appropriation by them. Based on research in the neighbourhood since 2005, and drawing on Xuanwu District archives, this article examines local residents’ accounts of long decades of hardship and neglect. With an analytical framework that links gender with temporality, place and space, it suggests ways in which their singular experiences can be read as historical narrative.

Please click here to read the article (access restricted): http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=9357383

 

Miguel Elosua

Spanish qualified lawyer; PhD in Chinese Law. UrbaChina Research Officer. Has lived in China since 2006.

More Posts

Space modernization and social interaction

Yang, Qingqing (2015). Space modernization and social interaction : a comparative study of living space in Beijing. Berlin ; Heidelberg : Springer. XVII-152 p. ISBN : SBN 978-3-662-44348-4.

This book concerns the Beijing Hutong and changing perceptions of space, of social relations and of self, as processes of urban redevelopment remove Hutong dwellers from their traditional homes to new high-rise apartments. It addresses questions of how space is humanly built and transformed, classified and differentiated, and most importantly how space is perceived and experienced. This study elaborates and expands Lefebvre’s “trialectic” of space on a theoretical level. The ethnography presented is a conversation with Tim Ingold’s argument about “empty space”. This research employs the ethnographic technique of participant-observation to secure a finely textured, detailed and micro-social account of local experience. Then, these micro-social insights are contextualized within macro-social structures of Chinese modernism by speaking to geographical concerns, orientalism and history.

More information on Springer

 

Monique Abud

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

More Posts

Human Urbanization workshop

The establishment of the 100-People Forum on China Urban Studies and the Humane Urbanization workshop were held at 9:00 on August 31st 2014 at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Many well-known scholars, including Wu Liangyong(吴良镛), Ni Pengfei (倪鹏飞), Xu Kuangdi (徐匡迪) and Niu Wenyuan (牛文元) attended and gave talks. The conference content can be seen here at the following link. http://www.china.com.cn/zhibo/2014-08/31/content_33340563.htm

 

CASS

Chi-Han Ai

Ph.D. candidate of EHESS ( École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris) focusing on regional economic development in China and Taiwan.

More Posts

Back in the saddle !

Last week end, were held the Beijing International Cycle Expo and the 3rd Beijing Cycling Festival.

Riding a bike seems trendy again in China.

Visit the expo’s website here.

 

 

 

Sebastien Goulard

Ph.D. in political science (EHESS, Paris); M.A. in social sciences (EHESS, Paris); M.A. in international relations (IRIS, Paris), B.A. (Hons) in international political studies (ESE - Nottingham Trent University)

More Posts

Commuting tools and residential location of suburbanization: evidence from Beijing

Yao, Yonglin and Wang Shuai (2014). Commuting tools and residential location of uburbanization: evidence from Beijing. Urban, Planning and Transport Research: An Open Access Journal, 1 (2), 274-288.  Retrieved 4 July, 2014, from  http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21650020.2014.920697

Since the 1990s, the population of Beijing has decentralized. This paper studies the relationship between residents’ commuting tools and their residential location during suburbanization by applying field survey data, statistical methods, and Geographic Information System techniques. The results show that public transportation is the most common choice for commuting. Residents commute the shortest distance do so by walking/bicycling and residents commute the longest distance do so by taking bus/subway. The likelihood of using bus/subway increases as the distance becomes longer; the likelihood of commuting by car/taxi has a very weak correlation with commuting distance. The results imply a public transportation-oriented suburbanization model in Beijing. By further mapping the subway lines and the geographic distribution of newly built houses from 2008 to 2012, it is discovered that public transit especially the subway plays a significant role in residential relocation in Beijing. This could explain the city sprawl in suburbanization in China.

 

Monique Abud

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

More Posts

The musician who became a champion of migrant workers

Chan, Bernice. The musician who became a champion of migrant workers. South China Morning Post, 1 July 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014 from: http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1543617/musician-who-became-champion-migrant-workers

Like many young people on the mainland, Sun Heng left his hometown to pursue his dreams. He loved music and had vague ideas about travelling across the country to sample different ethnic sounds and becoming a performer. He achieved that goal, forming the New Worker Art Troupe, a band which gave a voice to the country’s millions of migrant workers.

In the process of making music, Sun, now 39, became their champion: he set up a school in Beijing for the children of migrant workers who were not allowed to attend public institutions, a community centre, a museum and, in 2009, a centre where workers can go to pick up skills that could lead to better paying jobs.

Particularly concerned about second-generation migrants who were born in cities but stuck in low-paying jobs because they had little education, Sun and his friends figured one solution was to provide practical courses in areas such as computer literacy and graphic design.

“Once they begin working in a factory, they rarely have a chance to retrain in new skills, so we founded this training centre. It is not a formal academic university, but rather a social knowledge platform,” says Sun.

Founder of NGO the Beijing Migrant Workers’ Home, Sun was invited to Hong Kong in May by Oxfam to help raise awareness about the plight of the estimated 263 million mainland migrant workers whose contribution to China’s remarkable growth in the past 20 years is rarely acknowledged.

It wasn’t quite the role Sun envisaged when he arrived in Beijing about 15 years ago.

Read the full story on the South China Morning Post 

 

Monique Abud

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

More Posts

Neighbourhood governance in urban China

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.

Monique Abud

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

More Posts

Beijing attracting less tourists?

Last year, the number of foreign visitors to China dropped, including in Beijing, which attracted fewer international tourists. Last month, the China Daily published an interesting article on this slowdown1 in which the author presents three main reasons for this decline.

The first, and most important, reason, according to this article, is the pollution and bad air quality in Beijing. We at UrbaChina have already highlighted the possible damage of pollution on China’s global aspiration. Foreign visitors have seen the grey skies of Beijing on TV and simply do not want to experience it in reality.

The second consists of the economic crisis and Yuan appreciation. China has become more expensive to visit for foreign visitors, especially those coming from Europe.

The third reason raised by this article is that Beijing is no longer exotic. China is not as “mysterious” as it was a few years ago, and Beijing is no longer a dream destination. Although this argument should seem inadequate, the demolition of many “hutong” and the rapid modernisation of the city have negatively influenced foreign tourists, who prefer romantic destinations with fewer skyscrapers and more traditional districts.

However, there may be other reasons for this slowdown. Several articles rightly pointed out that the decline of tourism in China could also be caused by political tensions between China and her neighbours. Heather Timmons from Quartz2 showed that this decline mostly concerns tourism flows from Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia, countries involved in maritime disputes with China. The slowdown is much less significant with tourists from Europe and North America.

If Beijing and Shanghai want to become global tourist destinations, they must make attracting visitors from neighbouring countries a priority, as they are more likely to pick them as week-end destinations. It should be noted that in the case of Paris half of international visitors actually come from Europe.

This means that, for China to host more inbound tourists, more integration is needed in Asia. Since 2003, Japanese tourists can visit China (up to 15 days) without a visa, but this is not enough. There need to be more campaigns targeted at the Japanese and other nations explaining that China welcomes every visitor. This will help Beijing attract more foreign tourists while waiting for grey skies to turn blue once again.

  1. Zhang Yuchen (2014). The city that’s not forbidden, just avoided. China Daily, 13 May 2014, accessed 30 May 2014 from http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-05/13/content_17502797.htm. []
  2. Heather  Timmons (2014). Pollution isn’t the only thing killing tourism in Beijing. Quartz, 14 January 2014, accessed 30 May 2014 from http://qz.com/166554/pollution-isnt-the-only-thing-killing-tourism-in-beijing/. []

Sebastien Goulard

Ph.D. in political science (EHESS, Paris); M.A. in social sciences (EHESS, Paris); M.A. in international relations (IRIS, Paris), B.A. (Hons) in international political studies (ESE - Nottingham Trent University)

More Posts

The influence of housing characteristics on rural migrants’ living condition in Beijing Fengtai District

Liu Wen Tao (2014), The influence of housing characteristics on rural migrants’ living condition in Beijing Fengtai District, HBRC Journal,http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.hbrcj.2014.02.005.

Abstract

The study analyzes the influence of housing characteristics on rural migrants’ living condition in Beijing Fengtai District, China. The researcher will identify rural migrants in Beijing, examine their housing characteristics (housing crowding, housing privacy and housing facility) and the influence on their living condition. Also, some suggestions are given to improve their housing characteristics and living condition. The government should revise the migrant housing policy and hukou management. Also, the rural migrants should try to increase their education level and social skills. For the occupation, the local government should give the rural migrants more job opportunity. These issues are analyzed in relation to local government attitudes toward the rural migrants. The analysis is based on data collected from two types of interviews: rural migrants and management interviews which examine the rural migrants’ housing and managerial aspects of this research, respectively. It is also supported by the utilization of secondary data. The findings of the study indicate that the rural migrants’ housing characteristics (housing crowding, housing privacy and housing facility) highly influence their living condition in Beijing Fengtai District. Therefore, the local government should give some assistance to this group people in the big cities. This paper reports on the findings of a study to seek acknowledged definitions of the terms Project and Project Management. The study was based on a conventional review and analysis of the definitions from a series of texts.

Full text free on line

 

Jacqueline Nivard

Jacqueline Nivard, Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine

More Posts - Website

Beijing might push some yamen out of the city

Several newspapers have reported this week that the Chinese Government is planning to push government offices, wholesale markets, some medical resources, labour-intensive businesses, as well as big polluters out of Beijing in order to decongest the capital. Baoding city (保定市) plans to create several new districts to absorb new residents. The local government has allegedly reserved 120,000 ha. of land for the project (6% of its total area). Baoding is just a stone’s throw from Beijing (40 minutes by train), and would become a satellite city through the implementation of the plan. Speculators have already started pouring money into the real estate market.1 China would not be the first country to think up such a plan. South Korea launched a similar project in 2007, creating a new administrative district 120 kilometres out of Seoul to relocate government agencies.

Baoding, a city just outside Beijing, in Hebei province will create 34 districts to absorb branches of institutes and companies based in the overcrowded capital, authorities say.

Baoding would set aside 115,000 hectares for the project, Mayor Ma Yufeng told the Beijing Times yesterday.

Plagued by pollution, traffic jams and population pressure, Beijing is pushing labour-intensive businesses out.

Baoding, located about 150 kilometres away, and neighbouring Langfang will become satellite cities for the capital, according to directives issued by the provincial government and a Communist Party committee last week.

To read more about this article posted in the SCMP:   http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1462075/baoding-ready-beijing-overflow

  1. Baoding huoshao – 保定火烧 http://www.infzm.com/content/99539. Last accessed 4 March, 2014 []

Miguel Elosua

Spanish qualified lawyer; PhD in Chinese Law. UrbaChina Research Officer. Has lived in China since 2006.

More Posts

Carpooling endorsed and legalised in Beijing

In January 2014, Beijing issued the carpooling regulation for small vehicles, a lawful endorsement which officially legalised carpooling in Beijing.

However, there are illegal taxicabs, which are often called “black car”, in almost every city in China. These black cars do not have legitimate operating licenses from the transportation management department, but they provide transport services and make a profit in return. There are several types of black cars, such as motorcycles, tricycles buses, and even ambulances. Therefore, the aforementioned regulation the Beijing government announced raises questions. In order to clarify the doubts, a report from People’s Daily provided answers1.

Illegal taxicab in China, Ai Chi-Han

How to distinguish legal carpooling from black cars?

Carpooling needs to be built on long term cooperation between the owner of the car and the passengers; in short, people involved in carpooling know each other. Since the goal of carpooling is to reduce carbon emissions and the number of vehicles on the roads, most carpooling will be performed during commuting time. The price of carpooling

should not be expensive either.

Who is responsible in case an accident happens?

For carpooling, the driver and passengers should have an agreement, so it is recommended that the issue of liability for any possible accident should be stated clearly and that the insurance related to the carpooling should be arranged previously.

How much does carpooling cost?

Normally, the cost of a private vehicle for carpooling is half the price of a taxi for the same distance. Passengers can therefore calculate the fee with reference to the taxi fee and divide it by the number of the passengers.

The goal of Beijing’s legalisation of carpooling is to ease traffic congestion and conserve energy. Since the new regulation may enable black cars to earn more unjust profits, the challenge ahead for Beijing, the first city legalising carpooling, is for the government to enforce strict laws and distinguish legal carpooling from black cars.

  1. Beijing chutai zhidao yijian guifan xiao keche he cheng xingwei, http://right.workercn.cn/157/201401/03/140103114024450.shtml, accessed 18 February, 2014 []

Chi-Han Ai

Ph.D. candidate of EHESS ( École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris) focusing on regional economic development in China and Taiwan.

More Posts

Chinese homeowners’ participation in policymaking

Jiang, Yihong ( 2013 ). Altering the rules : Chinese homeowners’ participation in policymaking. Journal Of Current Chinese Affairs, 42(3), pp. 121-148. [Retrieved January 17, 2014, from http://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/jcca/article/view/672]

This study looks at Chinese homeowners’ participation in policymaking. Drawing on evidence from Guangzhou and Beijing, it shows that various organised homeowner activists have moved upstream in the policy process and have begun to push beyond policy implementation into the domain of agenda setting and “rule-making”. These advocates display rights-conscious patterns of behaviour that are closer to that of interest or lobby groups than to the typical repertoire of Chinese contentious citizens. The study suggests that this kind of political participation is on the rise amongst Chinese homeowner activists. This result complements and extends other recent findings that suggest the Chinese policy process is gradually opening up. Such a trend could have significant implications and calls for more research in different domains of state-society relations.

Read full text (PDF)

Monique Abud

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

More Posts

Last of the bicycles?

Last of the bicycles?, Elosua Miguel

The increase of purchase capacity of urban residents has led to a massive increase in the number of cars in circulation within Chinese cities. The once ubiquitous bicycle yields to the (theoretically) more convenient car. In the space of seven years, the number of registered cars in the city of Beijing doubled, surpassing 5 million in 2011.1 By July 2012 there were about 72 million registered cars on the mainland, from just 10 million in 2003.2 At the same time, the city has greatly expanded. Its area spreads over 17,000 square kilometres (almost three times the size of Shanghai). However, although the city has experienced a distinct suburbanisation of the population, more than 60% of the total population lives in 8% of its total area, that is, in Central Beijing (within the third ring). Public transport has expanded in the same fashion. Of the total fifteen existing lines, thirteen were added to the network in the last ten years.

However, the quest for convenience and sustainability might mean the resurgence of bicycles. Commuting time and pollution has greatly increased and the government has started restricting car use to tackle pollution. Some residents might begin to consider it a good idea to dust off their old bicycle. Unlike some European cities, there is no need for added construction in China, since most of the main roads have dedicated bicycle lanes and most cities are flat like a pancake (this is not the case of Chongqing certainly, which is the reason why the motorbike industry developed rapidly there). Likewise, some cities have launched bike share schemes. In 2013, the Beijing municipal government funded a bike share with 14,000 bicycles distributed across 520 stations. According to the website Bikeshare.com, the program has not been very successful so far, with less than one rental a day per bicycle. It attributes part of this failure to the inconvenient location of the stations. Likewise, it reveals a change on the perception of bicycles. Owning a bike was a luxury just thirty years ago, but it became an undesirable, “common” means of transport. Car ownership is still a status symbol for many. The bigger the better, a philosophy which appears all over the world. Perhaps circumstances will make residents reconsider the bike as synonymous of convenience and simplicity, the ultimate sophistication according to Leonardo da Vinci. No doubt there would then be plenty of sophisticated riders commuting by bike and, consequently, air quality would be greatly improved.

Cycle rickshaw, Elosua MiguelCycle rickshaw in Wenchuan, Sichuan. Photo taken in March 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Source URL: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-02/16/c_122713279.htm, accessed on 15 January 2014. []
  2. Source URL: http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1111021/growing-numbers-urban-dwellers-switch-convenience-carpools, accessed 15 January 2014. []

Miguel Elosua

Spanish qualified lawyer; PhD in Chinese Law. UrbaChina Research Officer. Has lived in China since 2006.

More Posts

Central urbanisation work conference

The Central urbanisation work conference was held in Beijing from December 12 to 13.  The two-day meeting counted with the presence of President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, and the other members of the Politburo Standing Committee Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan, and Zhang Gaoli.

The leaders stressed the importance of promoting a human-centered urbanisation (yirenweixin – 以人为心). The meeting focused on the reforms on the hukou system, the importance of a green and low-carbon economic development, and the need for a more efficient utilisation of urban construction land.

The statement called for a realistic and practical approach to urbanisation, warning officials that urbanisation should not be the result of administrative decrees. It emphasised the need to preserve the country’s arable land.

For more information click here : http://news.xinhuanet.com/

 

Miguel Elosua

Spanish qualified lawyer; PhD in Chinese Law. UrbaChina Research Officer. Has lived in China since 2006.

More Posts