The Urban China Initiative aims to be the source of innovative solutions to urban development issues in China. To achieve this goal, UCI conducts a grant program to support research concerning China’s urban development and sustainability.
UCI accepts research applications on an annual basis for grants up to RMB 100,000. It also provides assistance and guidance during the research process and facilitates the publication of working papers and implementation through city pilots (Click here for more supports UCI GRANTS provide).
The Initiative supports research on the effectiveness of programs and technologies related to urban development; emerging domestic and global best practices in project design, development, and execution; and paths to successful structural adjustment in China’s cities. Grant-supported research focuses on sustainable urbanization (Click here for detailed requirements).
Candidates are required to submit an application package which includes a detailed research proposal and CV (download a. application form and b. proposal template) to grant@urbanchinainitiative.org.
The deadline for the upcoming round of funding is December 31, 2013. Research for the grants is expected to be completed within a year. For inquiry, please contact us via contact@urbanchinainitiative.org or +86(10)-8525-5331.
Category Archives: Monique Abud
A road map for reforming China’s hukou system
By Prof. Kam Wing Chan (University of Washington)
- Date: Monday, 18 November @ 7pm
- Venue: Room Segalen, 25/F, Admiralty Centre, Tower 2, 18 Harcourt Road, Hong Kong (Admiralty MTR station, exit A)
- Reservation & Contact: Miriam Yang
- cefc@cefc.com.hk / tel: 2876 6910
Abstract
China’s new leadership has called for the realization of “Chinese dream” of reviving the national strength and glory. As the country enters the urban age, a critical part of the Chinese dream is the “urban dream” – the promotion of urbanization to generate household consumption to put the economy on a sustainable footing. Yet a third of the 700 million Chinese urban dwellers today are not truly “urbanized”. They are the migrant population, who do not have an urban hukou, or household registration. To accomplish real urbanization, migrant workers need to become full urban residents. That requires offering them an urban hukou with the aim of ultimately abolishing the hukou system altogether. In this talk, Prof. Kam Wing Chan outlines a proposal to phase out the hukou system in 15 years.This seminar will be held in English.
Sebastian Veg, Director of the CEFC, will chair the session.

Chinese social policy in a time of transition
Besharov, Douglas and Baehler, Karen, eds. (2013). Chinese social policy in a time of transition. Oxford University Press. 368 p. ISBN 978-0-19-999031-3
The story of China’s spectacular economic growth is well known. Less well known is the country’s equally dramatic, though not always equally successful, social policy transition. Between the mid- 1990s and mid-2000s—-the focal period for this book—-China’s central government went a long way toward consolidating the social policy framework that had gradually emerged in piecemeal fashion during the initial phases of economic liberalization. Major policy decisions during the focal period included adopting a single national pension plan for urban areas, standardizing unemployment insurance, (re)establishing nationwide rural health care coverage, opening urban education systems to children of rural migrants, introducing trilingual education policies in ethnic minority regions, expanding college enrolment, addressing the challenge of HIV/AIDS more comprehensively, and equalizing social welfare spending across provinces, among others. Unresolved is the direction of policy in the face of longer-term industrial and demographic trends—-and the possibility of a chronically weak global economy. Chinese Social Policy in a Time of Transition offers a foundation from which to explore those issues based on a composite snapshot of Chinese social policy at its point of greatest maturation prior to the 2007 global crisis.
- Table of contents and more information about the book here
- Related: Besharov, Douglas and Baehler, Karen (2013) Prospects for China’s migrant workers. OUP Blog, 10 September. Online at: http://blog.oup.com/2013/09/china-migrant-workers-hukou-social-policy/ (retrieved 28 October 2013).

Beijing’s rise as a global city
Wang, Feng (2013) Beijing as a globally fluent city. Washington, DC : Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy & Global Cities Initiative. 20 p. (accessed 28 October 2013)
Beijing is without any doubt already a global city. A symbol of China’s emergence as a global power, Beijing ranks among the world’s most influential cities. Beijing has developed into an important global city in a relatively short period of time. Beijing has benefited from efforts by the Chinese government and Beijing’s municipal government to elevate the city’s international reputation, and from Beijing’s legacy and position as China’s political and cultural center. There has also been massive investment in infrastructure to support business and innovation activities and to enhance Beijing’s global connectivity. However, Beijing’s rise as a global city is still incomplete.
Beijing’s global influence in terms of economic competitiveness and financial interconnectedness still do not measure up to the top cities in the world. In Beijing as a Globally Fluent City, Feng Wang examines four key questions on Beijing’s rise towards becoming a top tier global city:
- What kind of city does Beijing aspire to be?
- How can Beijing improve its governance?
- What does it take to build a more vibrant economy?
- How can Beijing’s global identity be further enhanced?
- Wang Feng (Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy)
Migrant children’s education in urban China
Liu, Jing and Jacob, W. James (2013) From access to quality : migrant children’s education in urban China. Educational Research for Policy and Practice 12:3, pp. 177-191. DOI: 10.1007/s10671-012-9136-y
An increasing number of migrant children are involved in public education due largely to the policy for migrant children education outlined by the Government of China from the late 1990s. In this article, we describe the unique and often difficult situation rural migrant children face after they enter urban public schools. Drawing from the Theory of Inclusive Education and data collected at two public junior high schools in Beijing, we provide an in-depth analysis on migrant children’s education from their own viewpoint and from the perspectives of their parents, teachers, and school administrators. Our survey results identify the need for further adjustments of the existing education system which can help improve migrant children’s education in China. Findings also highlight the dilemmas regarding how to best meet the needs for teachers, migrant parents, and migrant children who attend public schools. In order to provide a quality education for migrant children, we conclude by arguing that there must be a three-pronged partnership to best accommodate the unique education needs of migrant children in urban China.
Read the article online (restricted access or purchase option)
- Liu, Jing (2013) The development of inequality in public school admission : public discourses on ze xiao and practices in urban China, Ph.D. in international development, University of Nagoya, 331 p. Read the dissertation thesis on the Nagoya university repository
- W. James Jacob personal website
Kashgar on the path to future
Rippa, Alessandro (2013, October 14). Kashgar on the move. The Diplomat. (Retrieved 17 October, 2013).
China’s westernmost city, Kashgar lies at the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, closer to Bagdad than Beijing. For travellers and traders coming from Central Asia and Pakistan, the city offers a first glimpse of China. Yet, in most cases, Kashgar strikes them for its similarities to the countries they have just left. Coming from inner China, on the other hand, Kashgar often leaves the impression of entering another country, particularly as one walks through the narrow alleys of the old town, or watches the crowd at the dusty livestock market on a Sunday morning.
Kashgar’s links to the Central Asian world – geographic and cultural – are thus not only a feature of its much-discussed “old town,” which at any rate is being transformed in a massive process of renovation. Central Asia is also an important part of the city’s future plans for development. This future, far from the artisans and mosques of the old town, is reflected in the current construction of the new Special Economic District.
The district will represent the core of Kashgar’s Special Economic Zone (SEZ), as the city was classified in May 2010. Kashgar’s model is Shenzhen, transformed in thirty years from a small fishing village into a large city that is one of China’s wealthiest. If Shenzhen was chosen for its proximity to Hong Kong, Kashgar lies within a day’s ride of four different countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan (though the border at the Wakhjir Pass is not an official border crossing point and it is not served by a road) and Pakistan.
China is not hiding these ambitious plans for its westernmost city. Quite the contrary. Between the end of June and the beginning of July, as foreign journalists in China were busy covering the most recent spate of attacks in Xinjiang, an important four-day fair in Kashgar went almost unnoticed. It was the ninth edition of the Kashgar Central & South Asia Commodity Fair, an important attraction for Central and South Asian traders. The main avenue was the impressive Kashgar International Convention and Exhibition Center, situated not far from the recently constructed Eastern Lake – a major attraction for Chinese tourists. Meanwhile, for the first time in 2013 the China Kashgar-Guangzhou Commodity Fair has been held as part of the main fair, though in a different location: the Guangzhou New City, a exposition complex in the South-Western part of town, on the Karakoram Highway, newly opened for the occasion.
Making cultural cities in Asia
Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Tampa, FL, April 8-12th – 2014
Session Title: Making Cultural Cities in Asia
Organizers
Jun Wang (City University of Hong Kong)
Tim Oakes and Yang Yang (University of Colorado at Boulder)Discussant
Tim Oakes (University of Colorado at Boulder)Session Abstract
In an increasingly globalizing world, many ‘ideas’, ‘innovations’, and ‘best practices’ derived from the West have flocked into Asian cities without much critical assessment of their contextual appropriateness and consequences. “Cultural/creative cities” is one such example. However, such occurrences in Asian cities linked to global networks of urbanism have only recently been taken up for examination, as empirical studies on Asian cities are few and far between. As for recent literature on creative/ cultural cities and industries in Asia, a growing body of scholarship has focused on this topic. Yet, less attention has been given to the critical issue of the applicability, transferability, and translation of “creative/cultural cities” from their Euro-American origins to Asian contexts.Highlighting these issues, we intend to collect various explorations on the question of state-society interrelations amidst the mobility and territorialization of “creative/cultural cities” policies. We contend that the project of producing new urban spatial orders in a global network may be interpreted as a dynamic process: how the mobile idea of cultural/creative cities has been channeled to and territorialized in Asian cities, and how the mutated or re-invented versions have been territorialized, institutionalized, branded and, perhaps, exported.
On the one side of the spectrum, we call for studies on policy mobility, in particular the political construction of the “web” of communication and the restructuring or rescaling of the state. On the other side, we look for studies that examine the impact of cultural/creative city projects on urban society, in particular the increasingly fragmented social forces, their changing roles in the process, their negotiations, alignments, and resistances.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Jun Wang (june.wang@cityu.edu.hk) or Yang Yang (yang.yang@colorado.edu) by November 15, 2013. Priorities will be given to those who submit before October 23, 2013. Please feel free to contact them with questions about the session.
See the AAG Annual meeting website
Urban infrastructure governance and urban growth
Call for paper, AAG 2014: Urban Infrastructure Governance and Urban Growth
Urban infrastructure (e.g. electricity supply, water supply, transportation, communication, etc.) is at the very heart of economic and social development of a city. It provides the foundation for virtually all modern-day economic activity, constitutes a major economic sector in its own right, and contributes importantly to raising living standards and the quality of life. With the continuously expanding urban population and land use, governments are confronted with new challenges for planning & governance of urban infrastructure provision. Meanwhile, many cities, both in China and West, are trying to maintain continuous urban growth by providing more and better urban infrastructure. The majority of China’s cities, for example, are building industrial parks to attract internal and external investments.
The aim of this session is to encourage submissions that address any issues related with urban infrastructure planning & governance and the role it plays in urban growth in China and the West. Both theoretical and empirical research contributions are welcome.
Please e-mail the abstract and key words with your expression of intent to Rongxu Qiu or Yin Yang by November 19th, 2013.
ORGANIZERS
Yin Yang, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. Email: yin.yang@ouce.ox.ac.ukRongxu Qiu,Department of Geography, University of Lethbridge. Email: rongxu.qiu@uleth.ca
TIMELINE
October 7th, 2013: Call for papers.
October 23rd, 2013: You can benefit from a reduced registration fee if you register for the conference prior to Oct 23 (you can submit your abstract later).
November 19th, 2013: Abstract submission and expression of intent to session organizers.
November 22nd, 2013: Session finalization.
December 1st, 2013: Final abstract submission to AAG, via www.aag.org.
December 3rd, 2013: AAG registration deadline. Sessions submitted to AAG for approval.
April 8th -12th, 2014: AAG meeting, Tampa Bay, Florida, USA.More infomamtion at the AAG annual meeting webpage

China’s future and scarcity
Ma, Damien and Adams, William (2013). In line behind a billion people : how scarcity will define China’s ascent in the next decade. Pearson Education, FT Press, 352 p. ISBN: 978-0-13-313389-9.
Within a decade, China will have the world’s largest economy. In this book, two China experts turn the conventional wisdom on its head, showing why China’s economic growth will constrain rather than empower it. Political analyst Damien Ma and global economist William Adams reveal why, having 35 years of ferocious economic growth, China’s future will be shaped by the same fundamental reality that has shaped it for millennia: scarcity. Ma and Adams drill deep into Chinese society, showing all the scarcities that will limit its power and progress. Beyond scarcities of natural resources and public goods, they illuminate China’s persistent poverties of individual freedoms, cultural appeal, and ideological legitimacy — and the corrosive loss of values and beliefs amongst a growing middle class shackled by a parochial and inflexible political system.
Download sample pages (Table of contents, Introduction and Index)
- Interview of the authors on Bloomberg Business Week (accessed 11 October 2013)
- Interview of the authors on China Real Time Report (accessed 11 October 2013)
China’s adaptation challenges
Ploberger, Christian (2013). China’s adaptation challenges : a critical assessment of China’s ability to facilitate a strategic shift towards a low-carbon economy by applying the structure–agency framework. Journal of Contemporary China, 22(84), pp. 1028-1047. DOI:10.1080/10670564.2013.795314
China’s reform/opening process has been exceptionally successful at generating lasting economic growth and in lifting millions of people out of absolute poverty. However, this success came at a significant price. Environmental degeneration represents one critical issue. Other serious topics include an increasing income and development gap between and within provinces, and between rural and urban areas. A proposed shift towards a low-carbon economy seems to provide an answer in addressing this complex environmental–development challenge. However, decisions on a future course of action are not made in a political, economic or social vacuum, instead decisions are made in the context of a particular structural environment, which restricts the options available for actors. Applying a structure–agency approach will help to identify and highlight the existing structural challenges inherent within China’s development strategy.
Read full text article (restrited access)
Car parking in China
Eeckhoff, Insa (12 August 2013). Does Beijing really need 2.5 million parking lots? GIZ China Transport Blog. (accessed 28 September 2013) [GIZ=Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit]
Parking problems are always a hot topic among Beijingers. Cruising around for a long time until you find a parking space is a daily experience for inhabitants of the Chinese capital. In Beijing you may observe pedestrians and cyclists being forced to transit along the motor lane because the cycling lane or side walk is being occupied by parked vehicles. However, can the perceived parking problem be affiliated to a parking slot shortage? Does Beijing need 2.5 Million Parking lots? It occurs quite similar to the problem with traffic congestion in Beijing. Does Beijing continuously build new roads to meet the continuously growing transport demand? Maybe not. New roads and parking spaces can also trigger new demand. Hence, new parking facilities can possibly induce more traffic.
Au, Vincent (2012). Car parking in China : issues and solutions. In Sustainable Transportation Systems, éd. Yong Bai [et al]. Reston : American Society of Civil Engineers, p. 130-137. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/9780784412299.0016 (accessed 28 September 2013)
Car-parking has always been an unresolved issue in most municipal cities in China. Despite efforts by officials of the relevant government departments to put forth new policies and launch various solution proposals from time to time; followed by aggressive actions in the implementation of improvement action plans, their work seldom yield tangible/visible outcome, and the problem remains. This paper aims to examine what has gone wrong in the government policies and actions, and to make suggestions to resolve the long-standing entangled issues of car-parking in municipal cities in China.
Wang, Rui and Yuan, Quan (2013) Parking practices and policies under rapid motorization : the case of China. Transport Policy, 30, p. 109–116 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2013.08.006 (accessed 28 September 2013)
With the rapid motorization in China, parking has become increasingly difficult and costly for automobile users. However, the effects of parking on the society go far beyond vehicle owners’ costs. To inform decision makers in China and cities in similar motorizing societies, this study describes the market and policy trends of automobile parking in Chinese cities. Available data show that the gap between supply and demand in parking has enlarged, while most city governments have little experience and are institutionally unprepared for the proper planning, regulation, and management of parking. International experience and the Chinese problems call for a reform in urban parking management in order to promote sustainable urban transportation and maximize social welfare. This paper offers policy and planning suggestions regarding on- and off-street parking.
China’s Li Keqiang about urbanization
Economy, Elizabeth C. 2013, September 10. China’s Li Keqiang on the urbanization warpath. Asia Unbound. http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2013/09/10/chinas-li-keqiang-on-the-urbanization-warpath/ (accessed 19 September 2013)
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is on the urbanization warpath. For Li, urbanization—transforming rural Chinese into urban dwellers—has become perhaps the most important issue of his early months as premier. Most recently, on September 7, in advance of November’s Party Plenum to lay out the country’s economic blueprint, he met with a group of experts to discuss urbanization strategies. Scarcely a month goes by where he does not give a speech or offer some commentary on the issue. For Li, successfully urbanizing China is at the heart of the country’s ability to continue to grow economically. He notes that urban residents spend 3.6 times more than rural residents, for example, underscoring the importance of urbanization to China’s economic rebalancing from an investment and export led to consumption-based economy. His remarks in March 2013 make clear his fears that if China does not find the correct urbanization path forward, it will fall into the trap of many Latin American countries with “dual” urban structures characterized by “urban slums” and “other social problems.”
Urban studies in France
Anaïs Collet & Philippe Simay & translated by Oliver Waine, « Urban Studies in France », Metropolitics, 11 September 2013. URL : http://www.metropolitiques.eu/Urban-Studies-in-France.html (accessed 25 September 2013)
Can French research into cities and urban territories truly be considered “urban studies”, in the cross-disciplinary sense of the term understood in English-speaking academic circles? The history of the “urban” social sciences in France and the institutional structure in place have shaped the production of research, which remains largely confined to traditional disciplines and steered by “social demand” and objectives with a number of blind spots. What are the specificities of French urban research, and what developments could lie ahead in this field, in light of practices elsewhere in the world?
Urban China on screen: the postsocialist cinematic city
Berra, J.1 (2013) Urban China on screen: the sixth generation and the postsocialist cinematic city. Geography Compass. 7 (8) pp.588–596. DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12061
This article will consider the relationship between the city and the cinema with regard to the films of China’s ‘Sixth Generation’, a group of filmmakers who mostly graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in the late 1980s and proceeded to make films on the subject of their nation’s urban fabric. These are films which utilise city narrative to comment on social–economic change, but largely observe such conditions, rather than to take apolitical stance. To explore the urban representation of the Sixth Generation, this article will provide analysis of three works that depict life in top-tier or second-tier mainland China cities: Biandan, guniang/So Close to Paradise (1999), Suzhou he/Suzhou River (2000) and Xiari nuanyangyang/I Love Beijing (2001). The manner in which urban space is represented will be considered, alongside the social positioning of the characters, in order to address arguments made by scholars that these films focus on the plight of the individual rather than considering the wider implications of urban planning.
Read full article on Wiley online library (restricted access or purchase options)
- School of Liberal Arts, Nanjing University, China
Housing, urban renewal and socio-spatial integration in Beijing
Hui, Xiaoxi (2013) Housing, urban renewal and socio-spatial integration: a study on rehabilitating the former socialistic public housing areas in Beijing. A+BE : Architecture and the Built Environment. 3(2) pp.1-796. doi:10.7480/abe.2013.2. (accessed 20 September 2013)
Based on the background of privatization, the former socialistic public housing areas in Beijing confront the ambiguity of their housing stock and the confusion of housing management. While they still accommodate the majority of urban residents and are identified by their good places, (social and programmatic) mixed communities, vibrant local life, and diversified housing types, they are facing the serious challenges of physical deterioration and social decline. Therefore, urban renewal was thought as an effective solution seeking to improve the living conditions in those neighborhoods. Nevertheless, urban renewal in itself is also a controversial issue. In order to solve the housing problem, the large-scale urban renewal in Beijing started at the beginning of the 1990s. The radical housing reform further boosted urban renewal, often in the form of wholesale reconstruction and linked to real estate development. The market-driven urban reconstruction resulted in the resident displacement, community destruction, disappearance of historical images and, more threatening, socio-spatial segregation. It encountered the rising criticism from scholars and activists and resistance from the residents. As a result, many housing renewal projects, including the reconstruction projects of former public housing areas, had to be stopped or suspended in Beijing after 2004. Nowadays there is a dilemma for the urban renewal of Beijing’s former public housing areas.