Category Archives: Daniels, Peter

Peter Daniels 教授接受重庆青年报访问

访问连结: http://www.cqqnb.net/ebook/201421/11314.html

彼得·丹尼尔斯(Peter DanielsPeter)是英国伯明翰大学地理系教授。他的研究领域主要以经济地理为主,集中于中国城镇化之下服务业的发展。在谈起借鉴世界城镇化建设的经验时,彼得·丹尼尔斯认为,中国城镇化建设的发展和趋势与欧洲相比,具有较强的特殊性。

中国无太多闲置土地来城镇化

重庆青年报:谈起中国的城镇化,我们总常说要借鉴国际经验。但在您的研究中,有没有发现中国城镇化的特殊性在哪里?

彼得·丹尼尔斯:中国和世界其他地方的城镇化相比,最大的特殊性在于它发展过于迅速。如果和欧洲的城镇化速度相比,中国的城镇化快得太多了。这就会带来很多问题,最明显的例子就是城市里的空气污染。如何合理正确地控制增长速度,比如合理地控制机动车数量的增长,就显得尤为重要。

重庆青年报:城镇化过程中难免会有一些问题存在,中国在城镇化过程中也面临着很多压力,这些压力在欧洲国家是否也同样经历过?

彼得·丹尼尔斯:中国和欧洲相比,最大的障碍在于中国没有这么多闲置土地来进行城镇化。中国拥有的能够养活众多人口、进行农业生产的优质土地相当有限。而且相比欧洲,中国的人口密度过大。随着人们变得更为富裕,收入提高,人们就会想要到外面去闯一闯,这就会带来城市更大的压力。

服务业快速增长面临人才瓶颈

重庆青年报:现在各大城市都在大力发展服务业,以您来看,中国服务业还面临哪些问题?

彼得·丹尼尔斯:中国在这方面的压力在于如何优化经济结构来维持就业,让中国的制造业发挥更大的作用,以及走向现代化。我的研究领域就是服务业的发展。随着城镇化继续发展,对于服务业的要求就会增加很多。中国面临的一个问题是服务业的不合理增加。第三产业发展过于迅速,导致知识、技能、教育远远落后于城市人口的发展,这也是很大的挑战。

除此以外,中国不仅仅存在着城镇化,同时也包含着制造业的现代化。在城镇化和现代化同时到来的情况下,作为发展中的中国,该何去何从?因为制造业的现代化要求的是高质量的生产性服务。但相比而言,中国的三个产业发展不平衡,对于第三产业的“倚重”让第二产业发展滞后。

只有在提升第二产业的情况下,才能更好地发展其他产业,从而使产业整体得到全面发展。而了解、研究生产性服务在中国是如何产生和发展的,同时它是如何运转的,也显得非常重要。

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.

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Peter Daniels interviewed by Chongqing Youth News

Peter DanielsProfessor Peter Daniels is an economic geographer with an international reputation for research, initially on the development and location of office activities in cities, and later on the rise of the service economy and its impact on cities and regions, as well as its role in globalization and the internationalization of service firms. The introduction of Professor Peter Daniels can be found here.

Chongqing Youth News: When it comes to China’s urbanisation, we usually talk about learning from other countries’ experience. From your point of view, what is the peculiarity of China’s urbanisation?

Peter Daniels: Compared with other countries’ cases, China’s peculiarity is its warp-speed urbanisation rate. China’s overall urbanisation is much faster than other cities in Europe. That is the reason why some problems are produced along the way. For example, air pollution. How to properly manage a reasonable growth rate, such as controlling the number of motor vehicles, is very important.

Chongqing Youth News: It is inevitable that some problems would come up during the urbanisation process. The urbanisation process often comes under extreme pressure. Did European countries experience this too?

Peter Daniels: China, unlike other European countries, has the biggest challenge of having insufficient idle land for urbanisation. China needs to feed a very large population, but fertile land is scarce. And compared with Europe, China’s population density is very high. As people earn higher incomes and want to live an affluent life, they’ll want to go outside looking for adventures, which will put greater pressure on cities.

Chongqing Youth News: Many Chinese cities are pushing for the development of the service industry. In your opinion, what are the problems faced by China’s service industry?

Peter Daniels: The imminent issue now for China is how to optimise the economic structure so as to maintain employment, a sustainable economic structure that may let China’s manufacturing sector play a greater role and become modernised. My field of research is the development of the service sector. As urbanisation continues, requirements for the services industry increase a lot. The problem China faces is that its service sector is increasing irrationally. Hasty development of its tertiary industry causes the levels of knowledge, skills, and education to fall far behind the rise of cities’ population, which also poses a big challenge.

In addition, China is not only undergoing an unprecedented urbanisation process, but also faces the challenge of modernising its manufacturing sector. Going through urbanisation and manufacturing modernisation at the same time is a hard task for China, as the latter requires producer services of high quality. However, the development of China’s primary, secondary, tertiary industry is not balanced right now. The heavy reliance on the service industry causes the secondary industry to lag behind.

To better develop other two industries, the elevation of the secondary industry is necessary; and the full development of the three industries as a whole is then possible. Consequently, understanding and studying how producer services can be developed in China and how it functions is of great importance.

This interview in Chinese can be found here

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.

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Working paper UrbaChina no.2 now online

The UrbaChina team is pleased to announce the publication of the 2nd UrbaChina working paper entitled “Urbanisation and changes in the sectoral structure of economic development: the scale of the manufacturing sector in Chinese cities and the shift towards service industry“.

This paper, edited by prof. Peter W. Daniels (UoB-SERU) and prof. Ni Pengfei (CASS-IFTE), summarizes progress towards servicification and the rationale for undertaking more research that will deepen understanding of the actual and potential contribution of producer services. Some recent empirical evidence on the growth trends for producer service in selected cities, including the four case study cities of Shanghai, Huangshan, Chongqing and Kunming, is presented. It is shown that in majority of cities the manufacturing-services gap remains  a significant.

The UrbaChina working paper no.2 is now available on open access at the hal-FP7 UrbaChina paper collection.

Recommended citation: Daniels, P., & Ni, P. (2014). Urbanisation and changes in the sectoral structure of economic development: the scale of the manufacturing sector in Chinese cities and the shift towards service industry (UrbaChina working paper no.2. February 2014). Paris: CNRS. Retrieved from http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00943972

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)

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UrbaChina programme on China Daily

This week, the China Daily (European weekly edition) has published an article on urbanisation in China in which several members of the UrbaChina consortium were interviewed, including Peter Daniels, François Gipouloux and Athar Hussain).

Cecily Liu, the author of this article, discussed the various challenges associated with China’s massive urbanization. Although this phenomenon creates huge opportunities for development, several issues, including the integration of rural migrants, need to be addressed. Liu believes that China needs to look closely at the EU’s urbanisation model in order to successfully build new cities to accommodate the growing urban population and offer them a better environment. Another challenge concerns China’s transition to a free market economy with a strong service industry. However, to achieve these goals, reforms need to be implemented in local financing.

European cities do have their own issues, but the European experience may offer new perspectives for China to improve its urbanisation. China may be inspired by the diversity of European cities and the various initiatives conducted to answer their environmental issues.

This article highlights the importance of cooperation between China and Europe to tackle the issue of urbanisation.

Cecily Liu (2013, June  14th), “Slick Cities”, China Daily.  Full version

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)

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The Transition to producer services in China: opportunities and obstacles

Daniels, P W (2012) The transition to producer services in China: opportunities and obstacles, in Anthony G O Yeh and Fiona F Yang (eds.) Producer Services in China: Economic and Urban Development. London: Routledge, pp.  29-51.

While knowledge and innovation transfer via foreign producer services with a presence in China (attracted by the major inward invested manufacturing activities) will be important, a transition towards domestic supply of producer services attuned to the needs and expectations of domestic, and ultimately international, business clients will be important.  China is also investing in major domestic infrastructure projects, including schools, hospitals, roads and railways that also stimulate demand for an improved supply of high quality, innovative producer services (logistics, marketing, design, construction, financial, business and professional) that are suitably distributed across the Chinese city system.  But this is not without difficulties.

The location of most of the leading and economically diverse cities in the coastal regions has left many of the large cities in the inland provinces under-provided with producer services.  Quasi-marketization has created challenges in so far as local and provincial governments, together with the large state-owned enterprises (SOEs), exercise significant influence on the patterns and priorities for investment in cities and regions.  Apart from obvious exceptions such as Shanghai, the more rapid and visible returns from supporting the growth and development of manufacturing eclipse any enthusiasm for initiatives promoting the development of producer services are muted since they are less tangible, difficult in many cases to measure, and the benefits may only be evident over the medium or long term (say five or more years).  While the policy commitment to the development of producer services in progressive cities like Shanghai is commendable it is far from the norm and in any event tends to be couched in terms of physical development (such as dedicated zones for various types of services) rather than ‘softer’ regulatory or other instruments tailored to the needs of producer services.

There remain as many questions as there are answers about the most efficient and effective ways to ‘bring on’ the development of producer services in China in ways that enhance the national economy in general and cities economies in particular.  The agenda for some recently commenced research on urbanization, economic development and producer services as part of a four-year EU-China Collaborative Research Programme (URBACHINA) is outlined.

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)

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UrbaChina Paris workshop

On December 20, 2012, an UrbaChina workshop was held in Paris. Every European academic member of the consortium was represented. Cristina Marcuzzo (European Commission) attended this meeting and highlighted the importance of the UrbaChina FP7 programme on the future of EU-China academic relations. This meeting was an opportunity for the participants to review the work and progress made so far.

From left to right: Hanna Ai (CNRS), Cristina Marcuzzo (EU commission), Stephan Feuchtwang (LSE), Jacqueline Nivard (EHESS), François Gipouloux (CNRS), Athar Hussain (LSE), Andrea Ricci (ISIS)

Each workpackage leader presented to the audience his or her first fieldtrip results and his or her observations about a particular topic on China’s urbanisation trends.

  • Prof. Gipouloux (CNRS) and Prof. Daniels (University of Birmingham) focused on the consequences of fiscal policies on urban design and service industries in Chinese cities.
  • Prof. Hussain (LSE) presented the audience with his latest results of studies on property rights in Chongqing.
  • After a presentation on urban planning, Prof. Bina (ICS) and Dr. Ricci (ISIS) focused on the predominance of economic growth as the main driving force behind urban policies in China.
  • Prof. Feuchtwang (LSE) pointed out the difficulties that municipalities face in building low cost housing.

Management and dissemination issues were also discussed during this workshop. Participants agreed to increased cooperation for fieldtrips. They also decided to start conducting surveys on improving syllabuses for urban studies in Chinese and European academic institutions.

The second international UrbaChina conference, including both European and Chinese institutions, will be held in Kunming, China on June 3-5, 2013.

「城镇化中国」项目于2012年12月20日在巴黎召开欧盟伙伴会议,席中每一位欧盟成员皆出席,欧盟委员会(European Commission)的Cristina Marcuzzo在会议中再次强调了欧盟第七架盟下: 「城镇化中国」项目中,欧盟与中国伙伴间合作交流关系的重要性。此次会议的目的,在于提供与会者交流并检讨过去项目计划的缺失与改进方法。

「城镇化中国」项目计划中的每位专题主持人,皆介绍了他们的调研成果与发现,也分享了他们对未来中国城镇化的看法 :

  • Gipouloux教授(法国国家科学研究院)与 Daniels教授(英国伯明翰大学)针对中国城市的税务政策与服务性产业发展提出看法。
  • Bina教授(萄葡牙里斯本大学)与 Ricci博士(罗马系统整合研究中心)在介绍城市规划现况后,认为经济增长是中国城市政策实施的主要动力。
  • Feuchtwang 教授 (伦敦政经学院)则针对城镇化中面对的困难提出看法,例如设立廉租房的议题等。
  • Hussain 教授(伦敦政经学院)则介绍了他对于重庆产权的最新研究成果。

会议中也针对「城镇化中国」项目研究成果的管理与未来传播管道进行讨论,与会成员皆赞同未来各专题间共同参与调研的可能。在项目计划专题6 (Workpackage 6)中,未来将对中国与欧洲学术机构在促成城镇化发展中,所开设的课程进行比较研究。

城镇化中国项目的国际年度会议将于6月3日至6月5日在云南大学召开,会议将邀请欧盟与中国项目伙伴出席,共同参与讨论。

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)

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