Purpose This study aims to review the variety of smart city development projects in Guangdong-Hong Kong, Macao, and Shenzhen of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) of China, based on social, economic, and political factors. Design/methodology/approach A comparative and actor-focused political-economic method is applied to explore project-level smart city implementation models (SCIMs). A framework is first constructed to assess the state-market-community relationships of smart city projects. Subsequently, the array of smart city projects is examined, along with the explanations of how social, economic, and political factors influence these cities against the backdrop of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle. Findings The findings show four varieties of SCIMs that highlighted proactive government support for smart city development, with place-specific strategies and pathways. With the state-market-community background and engagement of mega-technology firms, a variety of smart cities were found to exist and thrive. Originality/value This study reviews the political-economic framework of smart cities under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle. Different SCIMs are examined and investigated, and the locally adopted pathway for smart city development are identified.

ABSTRACT With the introduction of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the government of Nepal has agreed to develop links with China through the development of cross-border infrastructure such as railway and road networks. It is assumed that increased trans-Himalayan connectivity will bring new dynamics to the socioeconomic development of communities, and tourism is one of the significant factors behind the acceleration of such developments. Improved connectivity promotes accessibility, economic activity, and local development, along with increased tourism development. Most settlements along the Nepal–China Friendship Highway are expected to experience an increase in economic activity, tourism, and local development. In this regard, considering the cases of Dhulikhel and Banepa, key towns on the Nepal–China Friendship Highway, this research aims to explore the various impacts of transport infrastructure on tourism development and associated aspects of tourist destinations. Multiple methods of data collection, including interviews with key informants, questionnaire surveys, participant observations, and archival research have been adopted. Perceived impacts reveal positive and negative effects on infrastructure and tourism and to local communities. It is envisaged that integrated policies of sustainable tourism development and transport infrastructure should be in place.

Nepal has advocated for ecotourism as a strategy to support community development vis-a-vis environmental protection in the Protected Area settlements. In this context, considering the case of settlements along the Everest trail in the Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park, this paper aims to critically examine the environmental impacts of ecotourism, local community’s perceptions towards ecotourism development and its contribution towards achieving sustainability in the region. It has adopted case study as a research strategy and used qualitative approach for detailed investigation. It adopted multiple sources of data collection such as key informants interview, household’s survey, participant observation and archival research. This study concludes that current approach of tourism development and planning does not satisfy the objectives of ecotourism development. It has neither equitably benefitted local residents nor significantly reduced the use of forest resources, environmental degradation, and deterioration of cultural and built heritage. It will further continue inducing impacts on local environment, culture, and communities heading tourism and the destination towards unsustainability. A sustainable approach to ecotourism is needed that integrates local knowledge, skills and cultural values that support conservation agendas, and encourage inclusive participation of communities, stakeholders and promote sustainability.

Sustainable ecotourism has been considered an alternative approach to tourism development specifically to enhance community benefits vis-a-vis the protection of natural and cultural heritage in the indigenous settlements. This study takes the case of the indigenous communities of Xishuangbanna to examine the potential community benefits of ecotourism development and the key issues responsible for promoting sustainable development. It has adopted an exploratory approach to review secondary sources, such as previous research papers and reports specifically on eco-tourism, ethnic cultural heritage, and community development in the Dai villages of Xishuangbanna. Face-to-face and online interviews with tourism academics from China were also conducted. Empirical research conducted by both Chinese and overseas scholars, particularly in the Dai villages of Xishuangbanna, was selected as a reference to perform critical analysis. Findings revealed that local communities have received significant economic benefits from tourism development; however, their local culture and heritage values have been manipulated in the interests of capital and political needs. Indigenous authenticity has been largely influenced by the entrepreneurial interests, bureaucratic mandates, and economic necessities of the local people. As such, the prevailing model of tourism development generally favors the tourism entrepreneurs and the state with less attention to Dai ethnic people. This study suggests adopting inclusive community participation and collaborative efforts to promote sustainable ecotourism and community development in ethnic settlements around the globe especially country like Nepal. The article makes an effort to examine the case of the indigenous communities of Xishuangbanna, the Peoples' Republic of China the theoretical lens of PMPD.

Inconsistent policy implementation has been widely observed in Chinese institutional reforms. The central government has experimented with policymaking in a strategic way against tensions between inherited regulatory deficiencies and ongoing development. And, despite the central government’s authority over local governments, the latter operate with a remarkable degree of discretion. By synthesizing policy experimentation theories and policy entrepreneurship, we consider the Wujin District government, as a policy entrepreneur that identified and acted within a “policy window” and explore how it interpreted and actualized policy tasks set by the central government in relation to the rural land reform. The central government designated 33 county-level administrations as testbeds for removing institutional obstacles to coordinated urban-rural land governance. The Wujin District was granted greater administrative autonomy pertinent to local reform initiatives. Further, the Wujin District reorganized its inter-governmental relations by delegating power downward to forge a reform coalition. Critically, Wujin succeeded in aligning local development priorities with central policy goals. Taking an agent-centric perspective, we also examine historical and contextual factors relevant for behavioral changes. The findings indicate that the Wujin District government acted as an effective policy entrepreneur and on this basis made crucial contributions to policy innovation.

Urban agglomeration has become a key driver in China's urbanisation. This chapter reviews the evolution of urban agglomeration, as an analytical concept, found within the academic literature in Chinese and its most recent development. It is highlighted that the existence of a number of similar terms to describe urban agglomeration – including megalopolis, extended metropolitan region, city-and-town concentrated area, city-region – perplexes the understanding of this phenomenon. In order to establish a consistent discourse for future research, we scrutinise the origins, similarities, and differences of these terms over different stages of development. We then discuss the trajectory of China's urbanisation strategy since the 1980s on how urban agglomeration has developed. By situating the evolution of urban agglomeration policy in the historical context of China's economic reforms and urbanisation, we identify a clear shift in the planning ideology from an exclusive focus to promote development of small and medium-sized cities to a regional view of promoting urban agglomeration and regional development into the 21st century. We argue that such shift has been driven by both the rapid urbanisation led by local governments and the adaptation of national policies by the central government. Further research is needed to capture the spatial, economic, and institutional characteristics of urban agglomeration and to address the emerging challenges therein.

China’s central government has been devoted to advancing its dualistic land administration system, such as by designating pilot areas to explore rural land circulation and marketization. Given the increasingly liberalized rural land development practices at localities, this paper aims to explore the variations between policy-making by the central government and implementation at the local scale in the context of interactive politics. A case study of Wujin District, located in the economically developed Yangtze River delta, was examined to unfold the local policy implementation process as intertwined with scalar politics, rural land politics, and the experimentation features of China’s reform. Conducted qualitatively, crucial policy actors were interviewed across multiple administrative levels ranging from the province, prefecture, county, and township governments to village collectives. It was found that within China’s hierarchical land administration, decentralized policy experimentation encouraged by the central government was compromised by the scalar politics and local governmental power structure when implemented on the ground (i.e., the city-county struggles and the resultant incomplete authorities of the primary policy actor). The findings highlight that central policy design and the autonomy of local governments during the policy-making process should be coordinated by embracing scalar complexity.

The rise of digital entrepreneurship possibly empowers women. Female entrepreneurial activities and places are mutually constitutive. However, feminist geography research on entrepreneurship is limited, especially at the workplace scale. The gender implications of new types of workplaces are underexplored. This study adopts a feminist geography perspective to explore how the gendering of digital entrepreneurship intertwines with gendered practices in coworking spaces. Data were collected from 40 in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs, coworking managers, and relevant professionals in Shenzhen, China. This study suggests that the socialization of gender identity leads to a gendered digital entrepreneurial process in terms of the under-representation of female leadership, the reproduction of feminine fields, work–life imbalance, stress, and loneliness. The gendering of digital entrepreneurship further imbricates with spatial practices in coworking spaces and hinders the liberating potential of coworking in terms of openness, collaboration, and community.

The uneven geography of economic resilience is generally considered to be dependent on local-specific attributes such as economic structure, human actions, and institutional arrangements. Going beyond these internal attributes, this study draws insights from Harvey's spatial fix concept and explores the impact of the (re)production of space on economic resilience across 285 prefectural-level cities in China in relation to the economic crisis of 2008. Economic resilience was measured by the cities' resistance to decline during the crisis period (2007–2009) and its recoverability in the period immediately afterwards (2009–2016). For each period, we used regression models to assess the relative impact of fixed-asset investment, economic structure, and local government spending on the cities' economic resistance or recoverability. The (re)production of space, as measured by fixed-asset investment in urban space, was found to have a consistently positive and significant effect on economic resilience across the cities. In addition, the manufacturing sector showed a positive and significant effect on the cities' resistance to decline whereas the service sector was key to their recoverability during the post-crisis period. Our analysis extends the perception of space in regional resilience by corroborating the proposition that the built environment can serve as a resource system for sustained and resilient growth. The robustness test confirmed that the spatial-fix effect on economic resilience was consistently significant across Chinese cities regardless of spatial and temporal variations in local contexts.

This study examines the production of coworking spaces in Shenzhen, China. Coworking space is a global phenomenon that has been continuously growing since the late 2000s. From a user perspective, this phenomenon is mainly attributed to the increasing number of freelancers and start-ups seeking community and knowledge spillovers. From the supply side, the movement is believed to be integrated into the neoliberal urban development process. However, the burgeoning of coworking spaces in post-socialist China arguably deviates from the neoliberal model with its strong and direct state interventions, multi-faceted public private relations, and considerable emphasis on social goods. The central state proposes an entrepreneurial policy and supports the production of coworking spaces as a spatial fix for the national economic transitional crisis, while the local state promotes local competitiveness. However, numerous founders of coworking spaces tacitly strive to maximize utilities in the national entrepreneurial movement. Inevitably, this movement leads to uneven distribution of social goods and quasi-coalition among techno-capital, real estate, and policy free-riders. With the aim of understanding the complex development of entrepreneurial spaces, this study investigates co-working spaces using interviews with managers, entrepreneurs, and experts in Shenzhen.

Confronted with increasing natural and anthropogenic crises, sustainable urban and regional development requires a sound understanding of how cities and regions respond to those crises and how that response shapes their continued development. The conceptual ambiguity and missing link among varied perspectives of resilience studies have given rise to a sneaking suspicion about the contribution of resilience thinking. By conducting a network analysis of 1,274 papers published between 1991 and 2019 using CiteSpace, we detect and visualize the intellectual pathway of resilience thinking and argue for its malleability to deepen our understanding about human-environment dynamics. Three major research clusters were identified: adaptive capacity of ecosystems, regional variation in economic resilience, and social resilience of disadvantaged communities. Resistance and recovery of systems are the key concerns in the first two clusters, whereas social resilience emphasizes opportunities and processes of restructuring rather than returning to the pre-crisis status. The extension of resilience thinking to the social realm is a promising area for future research. It calls for a shift of epistemology from the deterministic structure-function hypothesis which is place-less toward a situated understanding of context, relation, and human adaptation despite the methodological challenges ahead.

This study explores the structural effect of economic resilience with a case of China by examining the extent to which the major economic sectors contribute to the relative resilience of China’s overall economy. By applying a time series analysis, we use the Hodrick–Prescott filter to delineate China’s national economy on a quarterly basis and reveal different performances in responding to two recent economic crises in 1997 and 2008. Using quarterly data pertaining to eight economic sectors (including agriculture, industry, and major service sectors) and the national GDP from 1993Q1 to 2017Q2, we examine their effects on China’s economic resilience by simulating the responses of the national economy to a unit shock from each sector. Results show that the construction, real estate, and financial services have the greatest potential to “disturb” the national economy whereas the industrial sector has the greatest potential to “stabilize” it. The findings correspond with the understanding that extensive infrastructure development and the real estate boom have driven China’s rapid urban development and created economic prosperity, whereas the sectoral decomposition of economic resilience compels a critical reflection on the risks of this growth model.

Urbanisation in China since the economic reform and opening up of the country is characterised by an unprecedented amount of land development resulting from privatisation, marketization, and commodification of land in the urbanisation process. This study extends the focal points of speculative urbanism through an analysis of land finance, a phenomenon of the financing arrangement for urban development. It reviews and compares three different modes of land finance, and examines the interplays between agencies, focusing on the exchange of land resources for capital. The collaborative mode of land finance practised in Nansha Free Trade Zone that involves the participation of strategic partners, represents a new financing model which is encouraged by the Central People's Government as a solution to reduce local debts as well as to stimulate market incentives through direct or joint investment in the urban development process.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsUnderstanding China’s Urbanization: The Great Demographic, Spatial, Economic, and Social Transformation, by Li Zhang, Richard LeGates, and Min Zhao. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016. v+426 pp. £100.00 (cloth).Roger C. K. ChanRoger C. K. ChanUniversity of Hong Kong Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 78July 2017 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/691724 Views: 117Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Grounded in the interpretive tradition, this paper applies the theory of New State Space (NSS) to China’s city regionalism. We argue that in the NSS effort in China, planning discourses enable a regulatory framework to be applied at the level of city region. City regionalism corresponds to the conceptualisation of NSS in two dimensions. First, the rise of the city region gives rise to a new territorial form of state administration. Second, the city region is made to be the most appropriate scale encapsulating capital–labour relationship (CLR). This study uses NSS to examine the regional strategic development plans (RSDPs) of the Pearl River Delta Region and presents two primary arguments based on an interpretation of the Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta (2008–2020) (OPRDPRD) and the preliminary actions of various levels of government based on it. First, RSDPs serve as effective regulatory tools that not only enable new state administration articulating regulatory responsibility throughout the various levels of governmental hierarchy, but also elaborate the CLR in the interest of regional based industrial development, infrastructure construction, and formulation of social policies. Second, the city region has become a site for political rhetoric and related actions whereby regulatory order is unfolding in order to itself effect an economic restructuring and political reshuffle. Creating a city region is ‘planning ideological’ and solving problems is difficult because of the asymmetric jurisdictional power relations between municipalities.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an in-depth understanding of China's ongoing urban development by engaging with the theoretical dialogue of neoliberalism. It takes decentralization and marketization as the governance background to examine the evolving policy of land, housing and public service in China, with a particular focus on Chongqing. The mismatches experienced under the evolving policy are also discussed.Design/methodology/approach - By reviewing and consulting related literature, archives, statistical yearbooks, government reports, local newspapers and urban planning documents, this paper offers an overview of urban policy in China. The authors have also taken two field trips and conducted interviews in Chongqing in Summer 2012 and Winter 2013.Findings - This paper finds that urban China's land, housing and public service markets have been re-regulated, with a rescaling of statehood, recalibration of central-local relations and reinvented urban governance in the post-reform era. These policies have evolved from the market-oriented principles of early reforms to a more hybrid approach for which the policies have matured and state intervention has been reintroduced. Mismatches have been generated by this evolution.Originality/value - This paper provides an up-to-date examination of new initiatives for policy adjustment in urban China, with a closer look at Chongqing, one of the most dynamic contemporary metropolises in the country. It has important implications for the debate over China's engagement with neoliberal urbanism. Also, it empirically reveals the mismatches created by the latest policy initiatives.

Existing research on the growth coalition of China mainly focuses on the process of urban land development and concludes that the strategic alliance of local states and market gradually emerged with the exclusion of communities in the course of development. Empirical evidence on whether or not a coalition can involve the villagers and how a coalition capacity is delivered with legitimacy is lacking. This research revisits the growth machine thesis in the redevelopment of an urban village in Guangzhou where pseudo use value is examined. Pseudo use value reflects a hybrid of the appreciation of land, which incorporates the nostalgia for the rural past and the desire for improvement. Results show that complementary expectations in the redevelopment of urban village formed an ad hoc growth coalition that incorporates the municipal government, private developers, and villagers. The generation of output legitimacy is grounded on frequent exchange of resources (i.e., land, private capital, manpower, and regulatory capacities), which also relies on empowerment and an intermediary made of the rural collective to stimulate coalition capacity. Pseudo use value makes indigenous villagers a part of the growth machine. Although the formation of local growth coalition acknowledges the role of private developers and villagers, a counterpart emerged in which the development became a political rhetoric for achieving recentralized land governance.

THE CHINA REVIEW Published three issues per year in February, June, and October by The Chinese University Press … ADVISORY BOARD Gregory Chow, Princeton University; Howard Goldblatt, University of Notre Dame; Ambrose YC King, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Nicholas R. Lardy, Peterson Institute for International Economics; Nan Lin, Duke University; Thomas G. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh; Vivienne Shue, University of Oxford; Vaclav Smil, University of Manitoba; William Tay, Hong Kong University of Science and Tech- nology; Tu Wei-ming, Peking University; Ezra F. Vogel, Harvard University; Andrew G. Walder, Stanford University; Wang Gungwu, National University of Singapore; Yeung Yue-man, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Ying-shih Yü, Princeton University EDITORIAL BOARD Kam Wing Chan, University of Washington; Roger CK Chan, University of Hong …

This study presents pragmatic evidence to make learning a geographical process. It investigates how place-based education (PBE) can deepen the sense of place and vice versa. The study first reviews the meaning of PBE and continues with an ontological discussion of place. As place is theorized, learning practices in the course Sustainable Urban Development and Hong Kong are outlined. The submissions of students are analyzed, and selected reflections are presented to interface with the ontological construct of place. We examine how PBE can enrich student awareness of place and in what way student appreciations of place can add values to the geographical reasoning on sustainability- and urbanism-related topics. Results show that site selection is important and place in PBE is both real and imagined. Heritage conservation and place revitalization are potential reflective topics to design a PBE-based teaching praxis.