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.     

Cross‐border ‘Traffic’: Stories of dangerous victims,pure whores and HIV/AIDS in the experiences of mainland female sex workers in Hong Kong

Abstract: In recent years, dramatically increasing numbers of mainland Chinese women have entered Hong Kong to engage in sexual labour. Public discourses on the threat of HIV/AIDS increasingly locate these women's bodies as sites of danger, colluding with pre‐existing imaginations of mainland rural women as ignorant, desperate and deceptive in representing these women's penetration of Hong Kong's border as a primary means of infection of the Hong Kong body. Drawing on state, media and popular representations, and the narratives of female sex workers themselves, this paper examines the interwoven bio‐medical, gendered, sexual and cross‐border relationships that intersect in the experiences of mainland Chinese sex workers in Hong Kong. I argue that while images of disease and danger have been used to regulate these women's bodies, mainland female sex workers challenge these images by drawing on other popular stereotypes of mainland women as pure, feminine and traditional. Although images of the related but still ‘other’ figure of the mainland Chinese woman are powerful mechanisms for the regulation of these women's bodies, mainland female sex workers skilfully use inherent tensions in those images in resisting that control and in struggling to achieve their own personal and economic goals.     

China’s transport and communications firms: transforming national champions into global players

China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) exposes its state‐owned maritime, aviation and telecommunications operators to unprecedented competition. This development raises a series of critical issues about China’s transition from a state‐planned regime towards a real market economy. How will China’s leading state‐owned firms in deep‐sea container shipping, air passenger transport and telecommunications respond to the dilemma posed by the World Trade Organisation and to what extent has Hong Kong been involved in China’s transport and communications restructuring process? These broad issues are addressed by examining progress on the Chinese Government’s post‐1993 plans to restructure each of the key state enterprises in sea‐land transport, air transport and telecommunications. Specifically we are concerned with the degree to which China’s national champions in these transport and communications arenas have been remade into global players. Particular attention is paid to the role of Hong Kong in this transformation since its return to China in 1997. Our studies show that China has transformed its national champions into a global players in container shipping. The process may be beginning to happen in air transport but has yet to get underway in telecommunications.     

The impact of climate changes on agriculture export trade in Pakistan: Evidence from time‐series analysis

Agriculture is one of the primary contributors to Pakistan's economy. However, over the last few decades, the atmospheric carbon dioxide emission has been amplified to a great extent in Pakistan. This amplification may cause climate change, global warming, and environmental mitigation in Pakistan. This paper empirically investigates the impact of CO₂ emissions on the agricultural export trade of Pakistan over the period 1975–2017. Evidence suggests that climate change could be a primary cause for the decline in Pakistan's agriculture export trade; no studies have been carried out for this specific issue, particularly over time. In this paper, the empirical analysis suggests the negative coefficient of agriculture export trade with CO₂ emissions subsequently decreases agriculture export trade, which leads to direct impact on Pakistan's economy. Both theoretical and empirical outcomes suggest that the adaptation of clean and green energies and technologies are the key to reduce pollution in Pakistan. Overall, the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on agriculture export trade are stronger in the long‐run dynamics, thus making the finding heterogeneous. Possible initiatives should be taken by the government of Pakistan to improve the agriculture sector and it should also introduce new policies to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide.     

China's compliance in global environmental affairs

Abstract: As the most populous country on earth with 10 per cent of its rare species of flora and fauna, China's environmental practice is of great importance. Already the country is one of the most polluted places in the world. At least seven out of the ten of the world's most polluted cities are located in China. It is the second largest producer of greenhouse gases after the United States, inflicting heavy, long‐term casualties on its own public health and economic development as well as on those of its close neighbours in the Asia‐Pacific region. How to strike a proper balance between environmental protection and fast economic growth will have an important impact on China's modernisation outcome and its international standing. The country began to pay serious attention to environment problems in the 1970s. Since the adoption of the reform and opening‐up policy in the late 1970s, it has signed or ratified many international treaties dealing with environmental issues. By now, it has entered into most international environmental regimes. But how compliant is China with respect to commitments made to these regimes? How willing and capable is it in complying with international environmental norms and rules? What does sustainable development mean to China? How do red tape, fear, inexperience, and ignorance affect China's efforts to protect its environment? And how do inter‐ministerial wrangling and the growth of green NGOs within China affect its compliance? This paper tries to answer these questions.     

Does carbon emission trading contribute to reducing infectious diseases? Evidence from China

Research at the biophysical level constitutes the main approach to study the path through which climate influences infectious diseases, but the influence of socioeconomic factors on climate change and the spread of infectious diseases also cannot be ignored. In the current context, with its emphasis on carbon emission reduction, countries have begun to adopt “total control and trading” methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper is based on the monthly relevant data of various provinces and cities from 2015 to 2019, adds the moderating variable of “carbon emission trading volume” based on current research results, establishes a static model of unbalanced panel fixed effects and a dynamic panel model, and deeply analyzes the impact of climate change on infectious disease popularity and the moderating effect of the carbon trading market. The study found that climate warming, frequent precipitation, and shortened sunshine duration will lead to an increase in the number of infectious disease cases and that the “carbon emission trading volume” variable plays a negative role in the positive correlation between climate change (temperature/precipitation) and the number of infectious disease cases. There are seasonal differences, and the moderating effect in summer/autumn is more obvious than that in winter/spring.     

Net primary productivity-based factors of China's carbon intensity: A regional perspective

Reducing carbon intensity (CI) is one of the core steps of climate change mitigation. This study emphasized the roles of ecological services and regional heterogeneity in determining CI. We considered heterogeneities based on geography and income and explored the roles of net primary productivity (NPP)-based carbon footprint and CI in the changes in China's CI over 2001−2015 using an extended production-theoretical decomposition analysis and matching the socio-economic data sets with NPP data from a remote sensing satellite. We found that group technological change, reflecting the effect of shrinkage or expansion of the group best practice frontier, and the potential NPP-based carbon footprint, reflecting the impact of energy-related CO₂ emissions on ecological carbon absorption, are the most significant factors accounting for the increase and decrease in CI, respectively, while NPP-based CI generally accounts for the decline in CI. We further showed that the technology gap change exhibited by an invert U-shaped curve contributed to the increase in CI under geography-based heterogeneity. We advise that China's policies should be more focused on ecological factors and regional heterogeneity in regions with abundant NPP (e.g., Yunnan and Sichuan) to further reduce CI.     

Scaling the environmental commons: Broadening our frame of reference for transboundary governance in Southeast Asia

The transboundary environmental commons in Southeast Asia are normally conceived in terms of shared resources and environmental impacts that transcend national borders. The Mekong's ‘fugitive resources’ of water, fish and sediment and the issue of Indonesia's smoke haze drift into Malaysia and Singapore dominate discussion. Assumed national interests shape actors and institutional arrangements for transboundary commons governance. Failure to address the governance challenges is explained in terms of their politico‐cultural failings (e.g. the ‘ASEAN Way’ of non‐interference), the weak regulatory remit of agencies with a specific transboundary governance role (Mekong River Commission), the dominant developmental agenda of subregional cooperative arrangements (Greater Mekong Subregion) or the geopolitical dominance of China (Lancang–Mekong Cooperation). This article builds on these critiques by considering the relationship between the local commons impacted by transboundary projects and the framing of the commons at an inter‐governmental level. It shows that neglect of the local commons and the impacts on them of projects with transboundary effects is partly to be explained by the institutional scaling of the transboundary commons at a country‐to‐country level. It also argues for an expanded notion of transboundary, including investment and governance flows as well as the material environmental footprint of large‐scale investments.     

The relationship between China's income inequality and transport infrastructure,economic growth,and carbon emissions

Since the beginning of the 21st century, accompanied by the tremendous achievements of China's economic growth is an increasingly severe income gap between the rich and the poor. Based on panel data from 2000 to 2018, this study systematically examined the relationship among transport infrastructure, economic growth, carbon emissions, and income inequality in China, using the panel vector autoregressive model estimated by the generalized method of moments. We further divided China into three regions to investigate the regional heterogeneity of these relationships. The results show a long‐run equilibrium relationship between transport infrastructure, economic growth, carbon emissions, and income inequality. Income inequality in the previous year significantly affects that in the current year positively. Whether at the national or regional level, economic growth affects income inequality negatively. For the national sample, the highway reduces income inequality, while the railway increases income inequality. For both the subsamples and the national sample, carbon emissions significantly increase income inequality and are the Granger test cause for income inequality. Furthermore, we discuss some of the possible mechanisms of these results. Our findings generate policy implications for reducing income inequality in regard to economic growth, transport infrastructure, and carbon emissions.     

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.     

The threshold effect of the efficiency of science and technological services on regional environmental governance in China

Through panel data for every province in China from 2006 to 2016, this paper studies the impact of the efficiency of science and technological services and the level of economic development on environmental governance, with the efficiency of science and technological services as the threshold variables. The results of the research indicate that the efficiency of science and technological services in China's provinces is low, while the regional gap is expanding. When the efficiency of science and technological services is the threshold variable, single threshold results are significant. When the efficiency of science and technological services is the threshold variable and when the efficiency of science and technological services is lower than the threshold value, there is a significant impact on environmental governance. If the efficiency of science and technological services crosses the threshold value, the impact of science and technological service efficiency on environmental governance becomes insignificant. For the level of economic development, it is a core explanatory variable and has a significant impact on environmental governance only when the efficiency of science and technological services is below the threshold value. According to the empirical results, this paper proposes corresponding countermeasures and suggestions.     

Explaining urban governance in the midst of political transformation: The city of Macao

This paper takes a close look at the urban governance and political culture of Macao, the world largest casino city. Macao has experienced spectacular economic growth since gaming liberalisation in 2002 and China's Free Individual Travel scheme launched in 2003. However, the booming gaming sector has crowded out other sectors of Macao. It has not only made the city's economy mono‐structured and consequently extremely vulnerable to external shocks and fluctuations but also induced serious social divisions and political controversies within the local community. By tracing the root cause of the ongoing dilemma and crisis in the mode of governance, the dynamic relationships between formal and informal institutions, consensus politics and the social group culture are intensively discussed in a historical context. In fact, the sustainable development of the former Portuguese colony has largely been hindered by its residents' passive attitudes toward political communication, non‐transparent urban governance, the absence of a middle class and the dominance of pro‐establishment social groups.     

The effects of China’s growth slowdown on its provinces: Disentangling the sources

Since 2007, China's growth has fallen from around 10% to about 6%–7% per annum. This paper investigates the experience of this slowdown at the provincial level. We use a vector‐autoregressive modelling approach and annual data from 1978 to decompose each province's growth into various factors. We find that (a) all provinces experienced the slowdown; (b) there is considerable variation in this experience across provinces; (c) national factors dominate the provincial slowdown while province‐specific factors explain most of the interprovincial variation; (d) when the national factor is separated into supply and demand components, the supply component dominates.     

The urban governance of brownfield restructuring in China: The case of Guangzhou's T.I.T Creative Industry Zone

Over the past several years, the creative reuse of brownfields has played a major role in Chinese cities to give their urban landscape a so‐called second development. This paper analyses the governance of the brownfield restructuring in Guangzhou (Canton). The research is based on a study of the T.I.T Creative Industry Zone, a highly successful creative space currently in danger of demolition. This paper follows DiGaetano and Strom's ( 2003 ) analytical governance framework. This approach allows for deciphering the complexities of decision‐making through a well‐structured set of interdependent categories. In Guangzhou, new policies and institutions have been promoting the restructuring and have contributed to the formalisation of public–private interactions. In general, this indicates a shift towards a more corporatist governance. However, the study of T.I.T reveals a rather intricate picture: the policymaking remains influenced by a top‐down authoritative style – sometimes in an arbitrary manner – and to some extent also by particularistic exchanges. This indicates a complex mode of urban governance consisting of increasingly corporatist elements but still with managerial, and to a lesser extent, clientelistic elements. Finally, the coexistence of different governance modes seems to be a typical outcome of China's transition while still remaining more adaptive, experimental and flexible in nature.     

Low‐carbon evaluation of rural neighborhood: A case study of Yanhe Village,Hubei Province,China

Climate change has become a global issue influencing human survival and development while low‐carbon is the inevitable choice. As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has become an important force that influences the cooperation of climate change. China is a large agricultural country, and the rural carbon emissions have been gradually increasing. We consider rural neighborhood as an important space for the use of low‐carbon ideas to address climate change. There is no specific assessment system for a rural neighborhood. The studies of rural neighborhood low‐carbon mainly focus on the method of calculation carbon emissions. However, only quantifying rural carbon emissions is insufficient. In this paper, a low‐carbon evaluation indicator system has been proposed for rural neighborhood and Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation has been applied to get the low‐carbon degree. Considering the influence and feedback inside the indicator system, Analytic Network Process was applied to get the weights. Furthermore, a case study was carried out for the using of the proposed method in an eco‐village of China. Our practice has proved that the system is easy to operate in rural neighborhood.     

Mission possible? Chinese provincial congress deputies’ involvement in an environmental dispute in Guangdong

Abstract: Despite its rubber‐stamp image, the involvement of China’s unicameral legislature (People’s Congress, PC) in the country’s environmental governance has become more visible in recent years. Using an environmental dispute taking place in the county‐city of Sihui, Guangdong Province as a case study, this paper examines how the congress deputies at the provincial level were involved in the domestic environmental controversy, which comprised a landmark congressional inquiry into the provincial environmental authorities. Through dissecting the practice and behaviour of the Guangdong Provincial PC and its deputies in relation to the environmental dispute settlement, the paper recognises the inquiry as an achievement test, and unravels the political and institutional roots of China’s environmental governance from a congressional perspective.     

Hong Kong and the globalisation of the Chinese diaspora: a geographical perspective

This study examines the processes of spatial restructuring in the Hong Kong–South China region. The paper analyses urban‐rural interaction in a historical and transnational context. Based on detailed census data collected in 1961 and 1996, this study traces the origins of the Hongkongers and maps out their spatial distribution according to their native place identities. The heightened population movement between the rural hinterland in the South China region and the Hong Kong metropolis is inseparable from territorial organisation on the Chinese mainland. The great spatial mobility demonstrated by the Hongkongers, or, their ‘refugee mentality’ as it is known, is found to be deeply rooted in their marginal sub‐ethnic identity in the nation. A systematic analysis of spatial data reveals that the diasporic landscape developed in Hong Kong has been polarised by the élite English and Shanghainese speakers on the one end and the Kejia people on the other end. Despite the processes of globalisation, the great spatial mobility of the Hong Kong sojourners and the diasporic landscape they have created have been effectively shaped by their place‐based ethno‐linguistic identities. If the transnational movement of people is considered an important component of globalisation, then this study reinforces the importance of locality and contests the fashionable notion of globalisation as a ‘placeless’ phenomenon. The seemingly displaced empire of Chinese diaspora capitalism, in which Hong Kong has played a crucial part, has remained grounded by pre‐existing place‐specific conditions.     

Flexibility and Adjustment: The Hong Kong Watch Industry and Global Change

A case study of the Hong Kong watch industry demonstrates the adaptive flexibility of labor-intensive industrial clusters. The study describes the evolution of industry in Hong Kong, and highlights the unique attributes of the country's economic history which have influenced the structure of production systems in the country. Focusing on the role of global competition, the case study identifies the constraints posed by a labor-intensive flexible production system in the face of continuous technological change in the industry.