Governing climate change in Hong Kong: Prospects for market mechanisms in the context of emissions trading in China

Hong Kong continues to struggle over which environmental governance approach is in its best interest while fulfilling its environmental obligations. With regard to climate change, Hong Kong's approach is characterised by a passive form of governance that is highly dependent on China's national policy directions. This is reflected, for example, in Hong Kong having not set its own mitigation targets. Market mechanisms have received little attention in developing a city‐wide climate change strategy. A transformative impulse, China's national emissions trading scheme, may provide momentum to a market‐based approach. However, the necessary conditions for such a market mechanism to be successfully implemented in China remain relatively undeveloped. This raises question about early participation by Hong Kong. Direct benefits are likely to be limited, due to Hong Kong's economic structure and weak demand for emissions reduction. Besides, there are regulatory barriers to enforcing emissions targets and/or recognising emissions allowances and credits from China. We therefore argue that nationwide emissions trading may, at this time, present more challenges than opportunities for Hong Kong to leverage its efforts on climate change mitigation. An alternative is to promote voluntary emissions trading that will require active involvement and leadership by businesses.     

What do newspapers make of China in the South Pacific?

The purpose of this research note is to provide an empirical indication of how China's increasing role in the South Pacific has been presented in their own and other nations' media over the last 20 years. What is the tone of coverage? Which issues are salient? How does this vary by nation? What changes are there over time? This research note reports information derived from over 1000 articles published in Australasian, Asian and Pacific newspapers in the last 20 years. The findings demonstrate that nations dealing with ‘China's rise’ in the South Pacific are faced with a range of complex issues, which can produce ambivalent and mixed reactions. For instance, although the tone of Australian and New Zealand newspaper coverage of China's entry into their ‘special patch’ is, overall, more negative than positive, negativity is largely driven by coverage of China's diplomatic efforts in the region and geopolitical considerations. Other aspects of China's expanding role (e.g. economic and cultural aspects) are treated much more positively. Similarly, although the major focus of Pacific newspapers is on Chinese aid and economic impact, which are treated very positively, coverage of other issues can be negative.     

Shenzhen in China's Financial Center Networks

Shenzhen, China, aspires to be an international financial center; however, its financial sector occupies an anomalous position in China's networks. The sector is tightly integrated into mainland networks, and Shenzhen's local banks provide access to Hong Kong's networks. Nonetheless, the city's proximity to Hong Kong, the Asia‐Pacific center of financial networks, confers few incremental benefits compared to those received by other mainland centers. The proposed Qianhai financial district, which is to be a laboratory for opening China's capital accounts, does not differentially boost Shenzhen because other financial centers will be allowed to experiment. A network theory of financial centers provides the explanatory framework for interpreting Shenzhen in China's financial center networks. Empirical analyses focus on Shenzhen's network ties with the Mainland and with Hong Kong. Shenzhen's future rests on the capacity of its financial firms to participate in the networks of South China, as well as to operate across the Mainland.     

Different Institutions,Distinctive Trajectories? Revisiting Maritime Industrial Development Areas with Cases on China's Liaoning Coast

Maritime industrial development areas (MIDAs) are spatial tools designed to accelerate economic growth in backwards coastal areas and thus alleviate regional disparities, and they have widely expanded in both developed and developing countries over the past sixty years. This paper reviews the global development of MIDAs in different historical periods and compares them with cases on China's Liaoning coast in terms of their structure, location, administration, national political‐economic climate and theoretical justification. The results indicate that although those countries have different institutional environments they seemingly once took the same path in their specific stages of development. However, the experiences of developed countries and other developing ones and the current dilemma of MIDAs in coastal Liaoning together demonstrate that MIDAs cannot achieve the policy targets anticipated by decision makers, especially during the economic transitions of China. This finding cautions backwards countries and their lagging areas, such as northeastern China, that the traditional pattern tried by the first developed countries may not be appropriate when the development tool (e.g., MIDAs) is examined in both the framework of international comparison and the socioeconomic setting of a specific country.     

Diasporic Chinese voluntary associations engage China's rise

Since the late 1970s, China has gradually risen as a global power, which culminates in the present moment when large-scale geopolitical and economic ventures such as the Belt and Road Initiative have generated diversified cross-border connections. This is most forcefully felt in the Chinese diaspora, and particularly those in Southeast Asia since the region is home to the largest and most diverse diasporic Chinese population. Chinese voluntary associations (CVAs), as crucial social institutions in the Chinese diaspora, are actively engaging with China's rise and responding to the (trans) regional political-economic and socio-cultural changes. In this introduction of the special section, we open up a collection of five research articles and one commentary that discuss the ambivalences and tensions in CVAs’ engagement with China's rise. We conceptualize CVAs as ever-evolving ancestral communities which actively (re)position themselves in relation to complex configurations of power dynamics taking place between actors in China and the Chinese diaspora. Ancestral communities evolve through a constant mediation of the two mutually-constitutive processes of transnationalization and localization, which take on dual-facing and double-embedded orientations. This special section also highlights the continuing significance and renewed engagement of CVAs and potential tensions and conflicts generated in changing geopolitical and domestic environment.     

Emerging geography of technological innovation in China's ICT industry: Region,inter‐firm linkages and innovative performance in a transitional economy

This study critically evaluates the relevance of the existing theory of technological innovation to the case of China's information and communications technology industry. Based on a large‐scale questionnaire survey conducted in China's three most important city‐regions, namely, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, where the core of China's information and communications technology industry is located, this study reveals a significant regional variation in technological innovation in a political economy undergoing marketisation and globalisation. This research has found no significant relationship between the innovative performance of firms and the extent of production linkages; nor was there a significant knowledge exchange among firms. A further analysis has identified the significant role played by government purchases, research and development capital input and export propensity in the process of technological innovation. The findings of this research cast doubts over the prevailing theory of ‘new economic geography’ in which soft and unbounded relational assets have been overemphasised at the expense of some solid and bounded actors and agents that are pivotal to technological innovation in a developing economy.     

人民币汇率升值对中国粮食安全影响的一般均衡金融模型分析

通过构建一般均衡金融模型,分析了汇率变化对中国粮食安全的影响。模拟结果显示,现有中国经济增长条件下,人民币升值5%、10%、20%,对中国经济增长产生了较为持久的负面影响。与工业部门一样,人民币升值对农业部门也产生了产出、就业、投资及产出价格下降的严重影响,这种影响关系到农产品生产和供给,与中国的粮食安全息息相关,自2005年以来,人民币实际升值22%,过去的几年中,除粮食生产外,中国农产品生产遭受诸多价格风险,理论上,隐藏在农产品价格风险背后的因素,人民币升值有一定的作用。所以,人民币升值进程中,必须密切关注中国的农产品生产特别是粮食生产的安全。     

FIJI Water,water everywhere: Global brands and democratic and social injustice

Over recent decades, the demand for bottled water has grown exponentially at the global scale. In the marketing of such products, discourses of purity and paradise have often been invoked. Marketed as a ‘Taste of Paradise’, FIJI Water has gained enormous international success as an ostensibly clean and green product. Celebrity endorsements – reaching as high as US President Barack Obama – have abounded, driven in part by the belief that the corporation is both environmentally and socially responsible. This paper describes and analyses the rise of FIJI water and critically assesses the sources and impacts of its economic success. It goes on to explore its local social and environmental impacts in the context of a country that has been subject to waves of democratic crises where the fate of the polity has been influenced by FIJI Water's actions. FIJI Water has come to assume the role of development trustee in the villages most affected by the growth in exports. The democratic crises in Fiji has given FIJI Water profound developmental influence, and this has brought both costs and benefits at the local socio‐environmental scale.     

Social geography of sexually transmitted diseases in China: Exploring the role of migration and urbanisation

Abstract: This paper examines the social geography of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in China, focusing on the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the extent to which migration and urbanisation might be contributing to both the spread and the increasing prevalence of these diseases. The paper begins with a discussion of the early years of the epidemic (beginning in the mid‐1980s), when the consensus view was that STDs and HIV were geographically marginal phenomena, occurring either on China's periphery, or in isolated parts of its rural interior. This characterisation seemed to be less appropriate in the latter part of the 1990s, when it became clear that temporary and circular migration had the potential to spread the diseases from one part of the country to another. The second part of the paper examines the connection between migration and the prevalence of STDs and HIV, reporting on some of the empirical evidence to support such a hypothesis, and speculating on the theoretical underpinnings of the migration/STD relationship. The third part of the paper considers what might lie in store for China in terms of its HIV epidemic. One distinct possibility is the spread of HIV to China's booming cities, and to explore this possibility in theoretical terms, a number of interrelated aspects of urbanisation that might be associated with higher rates of HIV‐related risky behaviours are considered. It is suggested that these overlapping sets of forces could be related to the emergence of new behaviours and lifestyles that may be putting a growing number of Chinese people at risk in the new millennium.     

我国种植业无公害农产品产地环境标准发展历程及特征分析

无公害农产品产地环境质量标准是无公害农产品产地认定的依据,后者又是产品认证的前提和基础。本论文通过查阅文献资料,从标准类别、发展历程、特征分析等方面着手,梳理了中国种植业无公害农产品产地环境标准的发展历程及特点,探讨了中国现有的种植业无公害农产品产地环境标准的特征。结果表明,我国种植业无公害农产品产地环境标准发展较快,经历了数量上 “少-多-少”、种类上“单个农产品-农产品大类-综合性种植业农产品”的发展历程,2001年起步,2002年快速发展,2003年至2014年稳定发展,2015年和2016年完成标准整合,整合后的产地环境条件标准没有对环境空气质量设置要求,其技术指标仅包括灌溉水质量和土壤质量。同时指出了现有标准的优势及存在的主要问题,研究结果可为中国无公害农产品的发展提供依据。     

Dynamics of the Russia–China Forest Products Trade

Relying primarily on English language scholarship, this paper seeks to highlight the dynamics of China's economic integration beyond its borders as Chinese economic actors extend their search for commodities—in this case into the Russian Federation for timber products. The paper considers the shifts in the political economy of Russian forestry exports from a predominantly domestic and Japan‐focused trade during the 1947–1991 Cold War era to a north–south trajectory increasingly emphasizing trade with China from 1993 to 2010. Chinese and Russian bilateral trade data, acting as a barometer of national forestry‐related policies, highlight the economic convergence and benefits brought to both the Russian and Chinese timber sectors over the past two decades. Far from being an environmentally deterministic process—one based on the physical geographic characteristics on the ground in both of these states—this binational commodity trade shows that the geography of the Russia–China forest product trade is highly dynamic, temporally variable, and intimately intertwined with national political and economic considerations.     

Physical Capital,Human Capital,and Social Capital: The Changing Roles in China's Economic Growth

This paper examines the roles of physical capital, human capital, and social capital in China's economic growth during the reform period 1981–2010. Empirical estimation confirms that physical capital and human capital contribute to the economic growth, probably due to the capital accumulation and the improvement of labor productivity. The impact of social capital turns from being insignificant in the 1980s and the 1990s to be positive in the 2000s, suggesting its rising importance in recent decades. A declining role of physical capital in the economic growth in China from 1990s to 2000s is also found. The findings hold for several additional robustness checks, including focusing on longer term determinants of the economic growth, subregional analysis, and endogeneity. Furthermore, the foreign direct investment inflows and adjustment of economic ownership structure are also important for economic growth in China.     

Spatiality,belonging and citizenship in the age of migration in contemporary China

While internal migration in contemporary China ascribes a great change to urban China's demographic composition, social structures and economic development trajectories, it is yet to restructure the formal definitions of urban identity and belonging, which are still dominated by the household registration system (hukou). The paper suggests that as a result of changes in the political, economic, demographic and social contexts within which China's internal migration develops, there emerge a crucial need to re‐examine the crude forms of determining identity and belonging, questioning the addressing of spatiality within the existing mechanisms (such as hukou system or the shiminhua discourse). To do so, the paper argues that the existing de‐territorialisation of the migration experience has to be replaced with a more nuanced understanding of how spatial practices and conceptualisations shape migrants’ experiences, as it is becoming imperative to develop a new framework that is more sensitive to migrants’ lived process of identification and belonging, especially as these traverse multiple geographies and spatial scales. This close engagement with migrants’ spatiality can then be used as a base from which to engage with a more complex view of migrants’ spatial and social relatedness, as well as the development of their urban belonging and identity.     

Reviews

Books reviewed: Ross McLeod and Ross Garnaut (eds), East Asia in crisis: from being a miracle to needing one? Anthony Reid (ed.), Sojourners and settlers: histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese William Callahan, Imagining democracy: reading ‘the events of May’ in Thailand Lynne T. White, Unstately Power, Volume I: Local causes of China's economic reforms; Volume II: Local causes of China's intellectual, legal and government reforms Michael Young, Malinowski's Kiriwana; fieldwork photography 1915‐1918 Colin Filer with Nikhil Sekhran, Loggers, donors and resource owners. Policy that works for forests and people Michael Dutton (ed.), Streetlife China Kimberly Ann Elliott (ed.), Corruption and the global economy     

Decoding Australia's China threat narrative during 2016–2021

Australia–China relations began to sour in 2016, and the China threat narrative began to dominate since then. Unlike previous studies which either use a qualitative approach or cross-sectional dataset for empirical analysis, this study creatively creates high-frequency weekly and monthly time series datasets using the Google Trends search results during January 2016–February 2021. Based on a series of time series modellings, this study examines the roles of various actors, including China's own policies, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Clive Hamilton, various factors, including Chinese purchase of Australian housing, Chinese investment in Australia, Chinese students in Australia and China's rise and various media outlets, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun, in contributing to Australia's China threat narrative. This study makes significant contributions to academia in methods by bringing a new quantitative approach to international relations studies and to policy-makers as well by quantifying the roles of various actors, factors and media outlets in Australia's China policy debate.     

Institutions and local growth coalitions in China's urban land reform: The case of Hangzhou High‐Technology Zone

Abstract: China's urban land reform is a gradualist process of transforming a planned land allocation system to an open land market system, while the ownership of the land remains under the control of the state. This process defines the relationships between local government and emerging non‐public interest groups in the land development process. These issues can be most clearly seen in the State‐Approved Development Zones, where municipalities have been encouraged to promote economic development and test out land policy initiatives. Using the institutionalist and urban growth machine analytical approaches to land development processes, this study examines the operation of development processes and the role of local government and its relationship with other interest groups. By employing a case study research strategy, focused upon the Hangzhou High‐Technology Zone, the study uncovered a local government‐led growth coalition which featured participation by other interest groups and revealed the applicability and variations when applying two strands of theories to a socialist economy in transition. Besides the land reform policy implications drawn from the case study evidence, the study concludes that the presence of interest groups and the missing community organisations unique to China give new theoretical implications and that both theories work much better with the economic domain than with the political domain largely because of a lagged political reform.     

“Moderate” Environmental Amenities and Economic Change: The Nonmetropolitan Northern Forest of the Northeast U.S., 1970‐2000

ABSTRACT Population, employment, and income changes in a region comprised of eighteen nonmetropolitan counties of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York are described using Bureau of Economic Analysis data covering 1970 to 2000. Changes at the county level are examined as net differences using pooled cross‐section time series analysis. The specific focus of the empirical analysis is the effect that environmental amenities have in population and economic change. Empirical results indicate that a county's relative endowment of environmental amenities has positive economic change effects, but only when the county is relatively accessible as well. Further, the environmental amenity effects vary in their temporal consistency, even when accessibility is taken into account. In general, however, the reported results support the proposition that even relatively moderate environmental amenities can hold positive effects for economic change.     

Does Creative Destruction Work for Chinese Regions?

Creative destruction is a key driving force behind industrial development. The continuing process of creative destruction provides an impetus to regional industrial renewal. Our analytical framework emphasizes the ways in which firm exit creates a stimulus for firm entry is complementary to the process of technological change and industrial renewal articulated by Schumpeter who pays attention to how new entrants bring in radical innovation and new products, making incumbents' products and technologies obsolete and forcing them to exit or catch up. Using firm‐level data of China's industries during 1998–2008, this paper seeks to argue that the relationship between firm exit and entry has been constantly shaped by an assemblage of various factors, including not only firm characteristics, but also industrial linkages, and most importantly, national and regional institutional contexts, particularly in the context of China where a triple process of decentralization, globalization, and privatization has resulted in enormous spatial and temporal variations in the economic and institutional landscape.     

Tourism and transitional geographies: Mismatched expectations of tourism investment in Vietnam*

Abstract: The Vietnamese state's interaction with international capital has been influenced by the Communist Party's strategy to develop a ‘socialist market economy’ which aims to maintain the leading role of the state and its one party dominance while implementing economic reforms. This is at odds with alternatives proposed by neo‐liberal institutions such as the IMF and World Bank who favour a progression towards a more fully‐fledged market economy coupled with political pluralism. As a result, foreign investors and the Vietnamese government have had a turbulent relationship over the past decade stemming in large part from differing perceptions of a market economy and what foreign investment should entail. This paper depicts the principal issues that lay behind the restrictive policies toward foreign tour operators through a case study of their management and regulation in Vietnam throughout the 1990s. It is argued that foreign tour operators and Vietnamese tourism authorities perceive the role of international capital in tour operations quite differently. Over‐regulation has provided little space for foreign tour businesses to operate in a manner that has met their expectations, while government policies have been intent on ensuring that profits remain in the country. This paper also illustrates how social networks undermine top‐down government policy directives and allow foreign tour businesses to continue operating, albeit in a complex and insecure environment.