Reforms,Globalization, and Urban Growth in China: The Case of Hangzhou

Chinese cities have experienced unprecedented growth and restructuring during the reform period. This study by two geographers examines the rapid growth of urban population in the relatively typical large city of Hangzhou (one of China's historical capitals), and investigates underlying factors by highlighting the significance of reforms and globalization in the growth of Chinese cities. The authors also discuss problems that Hangzhou (currently with ca. 4 million inhabitants) faces in coping with rapid urban growth and restructuring. They argue that "control" and "management" approaches to urban growth have limitations in China's transitional cities, and that the gradual process of reform is incompatible with the nature of urban planning in China. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, O20, R23. 4 figures, 44 references.     

The Chinese Hukou System at 50

A noted American authority on urbanization in China presents a retrospective analysis of China's hukou (household registration) system on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of its promulgation, reviewing the history of that system from a broad socio-political perspective. More specifically, the paper focuses on revealing trends in the development of the system over time and identifying many of its important ramifications for modern Chinese society, as well as on the impact of hukou on the country's industrialization, urbanization, and social and spatial stratification. The author argues that the hukou system now presents a major obstacle to China's quest to become a modern, first-world nation and global leader. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O180, O530, P200, R120. 2 figures, 3 tables, 111 references.     

中国户籍制度现代化演进路径的历史考察(1908—1949)

中国户籍制度的现代化转型是从清末民初开始起步的,当时的执政者把推行现代户籍制度作为实现宪政的一项基本制度条件。国民党执政时期,国民政府把户政建设视为"庶政之母",列为"训政时期"基础性的国家政治建设,即使八年抗战时期也没有停顿,从而构建了一套比较完备的现代户籍法律体系。但是,这个制度建设的步伐在实践中受阻于战乱,到1949年以后则完全中断了。新中国的户籍制度建设走上了另一条路线——计划经济的人口统制管理方式,在各种因素的影响下,最终形成了城乡二元户籍制度。     

Real Estate FDI in Chinese Cities: Local Market Conditions and Regional Institutions

Two China-based geographers test the importance of market conditions and local institutions in determining the locational pattern of foreign direct investment in real estate development (FDIRE), a major component of China's urban growth since the 1980s. Using data from 35 major Chinese cities, they trace the diffusion of FDIRE from a concentration in China's major coastal cities in the late 1990s to a more dispersed pattern including large inland cities in 2008. In addition to investigating the general association between FDIRE, local market opportunities, and liberalized economies/more developed land markets, the authors assess differences in the locational behaviors of developers from Hong Kong-Taiwan-Macao and foreign countries. A concluding section explores the implications of FDIRE activity for the restructuring of China's urban system. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F210, L850, O180, R330. 3 figures, 7 tables, 35 references.     

Trans-border Exchange between Russia and China: The Case of Blagoveshchensk and Heihe

Two Russian-trained geographers investigate the multiple and largely informal and illicit forms of exchange between two provincial cities of roughly similar size located on opposite banks of the Amur River, namely Blagoveshchensk, in Russia's Far East, and Heihe, in neighboring northeast China. The study is based on interviews and field observations from 2002 to 2009 in Blagoveshchensk, as well as official statistics from the relevant Russian and Chinese provincial governments. Particular attention is focused on the activities and treatment of Chinese guest workers comprising a material component of the labor force in Amur Oblast (e.g., in construction and agriculture), unregistered Chinese entrepreneurs in retailing and catering, and trans-border logging operations of Chinese timber/wood products companies. Also covered are the activities of visiting Russian nationals in Heihe and the extralegal activities of Russian entrepreneurs and bureaucrats. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F20, J61, O17, O18. 5 figures, 1 table, 50 references.     

Geopolitics and Mongolia's Search for Post-Soviet Identity

An official in Mongolia's Foreign Ministry examines the forces shaping that country's efforts to forge a new identity and relationship with neighboring and more distant states in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR. The paper explores both geographical and cultural dimensions of Mongolian identity before examining the interplay between the evolving Mongolian identity and the reorientation of Mongolian foreign policy. Of particular interest is the discussion of arguments for Mongolia's closer alignment with Northeast Asia and Central Asia, and on the need for a powerful "Third Neighbor" to counterbalance Russian and Chinese influence. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, O53, Z13. 1 figure, 1 table, 34 references.     

China's Energy Security: Challenges and Priorities

In a companion paper to the essays comparing China's and India's economic rise (Prime, 2009) as well as India's energy security (Dadwal, 2009), two specialists on China's energy industries review the country's challenges posed by the need to dramatically increase energy use in order to support economic growth while coping with pressures to reduce environmental impacts from emissions of greenhouse gases. After reviewing the current mix of fuels in the economy and discussing each major energy resource (in terms of proven reserves, production, consumption, and foreign import requirements), the authors focus on measures undertaken by the Chinese government and corporations to improve access to vital supplies. The paper covers efforts to enhance the country's energy security, which include diversifying sources of oil supply, purchasing oil and gas concessions and financing of energy infrastructure development in African and Central Asian countries, instituting reforms to encourage more efficient energy use, and developing alternative energy sources. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O130, P280, Q400. 7 figures, 2 tables, 82 references.     

Market mechanisms and migrant settlement intentions in urban China

This study examines the settlement intentions of migrants based on original survey data collected from four large Chinese cities. Despite the long-lasting institutional effects of the hukou (household registration) system, market mechanisms are becoming increasingly important in affecting migrant settlement intentions. Although rural hukou holders are more likely to return to their places of origin, migrants who have received higher education, who are self-employed or who own homes are more willing to permanently settle in cities. The influences of market mechanisms are also reflected in recent policy reforms related to education, housing and the hukou system.     

New Perspectives on Spatial Patterns of Agrarian Reform: A Comparison of Two Russian Oblasts

The author, based on field work, interviews, and examination of local and regional literature and official statistical sources, compares the experience in agrarian reform in two disparate locations—KostToma Oblast, northeast of Moscow in the Noncher-nozem Region, and Rostov Oblast on Russia's Black Sea littoral in the fertile Chernozem (Black Earth) region. It examines both the reorganization of state and collective farms and the establishment of private peasant farms in the two oblasts, with particular emphasis on the latter. The sections on private farms represent an initial attempt, based on in-depth information for a limited sample population, to garner insights, at the rayon level, into factors that may be influencing regional variations in the number, size, and location of private farms across the Russian countryside. 2 maps, 6 tables, 53 references.     

China's Household Registration System under Reform

China's household registration system is the central element in a policy of rapid industrialization with low urbanization. Figures on the non-agricultural population show that the system was initially successful, but less so during the 1980s. As a result, a number of reforms were introduced, which are described in some detail here. The registration system must be viewed as playing three interrelated roles: it is an instrument of development policy, aimed at keeping urban populations small while fostering industrial development; a social institution which rigidly divides Chinese society into a rural and an urban segment; and an instrument of state control, which the state employs to cultivate client groups. This article further argues that the contradiction between the need to adapt the system to changing realities, dictated by its developmental role, and the tenacity of the vested interests inherent in the social institutional role of the system, form a major obstacle to fundamental reform.     

Population Change and Regional Development in China: Insights Based on the 2000 Census

The People's Republic of China conducted its fifth population census in November 2000. This paper draws from that census and recent data to examine national and regional demographic changes in China over the past two decades. Nationally, the impact of fertility decline on rates of population growth, age composition, and household size is investigated. Regional population trends include the rising population share of the eastern region as a result of population growth due to migration and in response to the widening economic gap between coastal and interior China. Demographic differentials between the eastern region and the rest of China (i.e., in proportion of working-age population, household size, sex ratio, and levels of urbanization and educational attainment) suggest that migration is playing an increasingly important role in shaping regional population distribution and that the acceleration of uneven regional development poses a major challenge to policy makers. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J11, J61, O15. 4 figures, 5 tables, 52 references.     

National and Regional Population Trends in Azerbaijan

An American specialist on urbanization and population dynamics in the countries of the former Soviet Union examines changes in Azerbaijan's population revealed by analysis of that country's first post-Soviet (1999) census and official 2002 population estimates. Particular attention is devoted to the ongoing conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the contested territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, in terms of its effects on total population size (mortality and refugee flows into and out of the country) and the internal distribution of population within the country (involuntary migration of internally displaced persons). Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J11, O18, R23. 2 figures, 4 tables, 44 references.     

Vietnam: Two Decades of Urban Development

Doi moi, adopted as a policy of economic reform in Vietnam in 1986, has ushered in fundamental and sweeping economic and social changes spearheaded by its cities. The paper, by a senior Hong Kong-based geographer, reviews the country's progress over a twodecade period ending in 2006. Discussion of the first decade focuses on deterioration of urban infrastructure and its causes (as well as the onset of reconstruction) based largely on field interviews, reconnaissance, and review of official documents and reports. Coverage of the second decade's more rapid change highlights legal reforms, privatization, foreign direct investment, as well as regional development. The favorable prognosis for urban Vietnam is examined in the context of the country's accession to the WTO and its hosting of the APEC Summit in late 2006. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O10, O18, O30, P20. 4 figures, 1 table, 26 references.     

Smart growth strategies,transportation and urban sprawl: simulated futures for Hamilton,Ontario

North American cities have undergone dramatic changes over the last century. Locations that were once inconvenient have become accessible through extensive road networks leading to population decentralization from the traditional urban centre to suburbia, creating polycentric sprawls from once monocentric communities. Hamilton, Ontario is one such city. The decentralization and urban decline of the city is widely attributed to sprawling development. This change in the sociospatial structure creates challenges for transportation planners as we see greater automobile dependency, greater commuting distances and increased congestion. Smart growth policies such as urban residential intensification (URI) aim to increase population densities in the urban core. This exploratory study estimates the benefits of such policies from a transportation aspect. It is predicted that the City of Hamilton will experience household growth of approximately 80,000 households over the period 2005–2031. Using IMULATE, an integrated urban transportation and land‐use model, a variety of development scenarios model this anticipated growth. Changes in vehicular emissions, traffic congestion and energy consumption as a result of URI are examined. Models of the land‐use/transportation relationship demonstrate how increasing population densities within a city's urban centre drastically reduce congestion, emissions and gasoline consumption.     

Women's Property,Women's Agency in China's ‘New Enclosure Movement’: Evidence from Zhejiang

Who gets what, why and how, when Chinese villagers' land is enclosed? Focusing specifically on changes in women's property rights and drawing on data from Zhejiang province, this article shows that state, village and household institutions interact to produce significant gender disparities in both the compensation paid to expropriated villagers and the registration of ownership of household assets. Yet it would be incorrect to conclude that, dispossessed, women thereby lack agency. Analysis of women's responses to expropriation suggests that by selectively deploying laws, rules and norms in different settings, women are influencing not only compensation distribution, but also the terms under which the state compensates villagers for their expropriation and the gender relations in which property is embedded.     

Migrant household homeownership outcomes in large Chinese cities - the sustained impact of hukou

Homeownership by migrant households in large Chinese cities is increasingly evident and sometimes blamed for driving up local housing prices. Hukou reform grants local hukou to migrants in small cities while it allows large cities to set up hukou entry barriers to control migration. This paper explores whether migrant households’ micro-level characteristics and macro-level urban policies relating to hukou reform have any impact on their housing tenure choices. Using data from a 2009 survey of migrant households in six large cities, this study adopts logistic regression models to examine factors influencing labor migrant households’ tenure decisions. We find that household income and head of household hukou type, contribution to pension fund, and enrollment in health insurance all positively predict homeownership. Migrant households are more likely to be found in cities with larger population size. We argue that city entry barriers create new forms of institutional haves and have-nots and new forms of inequality. The sustained impact of previous hukou types suggests inherited inequalities through intergenerational wealth transfer, which calls for targeted welfare policies to mediate.     

Accessibility interrupted: the Shimshal road,Gilgit‐Baltistan,Pakistan

Geographers working in mountainous northern Pakistan note that gains in accessibility following the Karakoram Highway's official opening in 1978 significantly reshaped social organization, economic activity, and land use across the region. These valuable regional‐scale analyses provide few insights regarding the contingent and variable ways new roads are conceived and experienced at the community and household level by the people whose mobility they drastically impact. This article addresses that limitation of regional research by focusing on an individual agricultural community called Shimshal that in 2003 completed a 40‐kilometre link‐road connecting it to the highway. Drawing from qualitative information gathered before and after the Shimshal road's completion, we briefly describe the community's motivation for constructing the road, villagers’ accessibility‐related hopes and concerns as it was being built, and some of the social, cultural, and economic changes that followed the road's completion. The article concludes by summarizing the community's response so far to landslide‐induced destruction of over 20 kilometres of the Karakoram Highway which, since January 2010, has left community members without vehicular access to the rest of Pakistan just seven years after their link‐road's completion.     

Hong Kong and Macao under Chinese Sovereignty

A team of Hong Kong-based geographers led by a noted specialist provides a comparative overview of Hong Kong and Macao under Chinese sovereignty (respectively, since 1997 and 1999). The authors outline the historical development of both cities, identifying their common legacies as colonial enclaves as well as shared economic experience as autonomous Special Administrative Regions (SARs) under the "one country, two systems" formula devised in Beijing. The paper includes up-to-date statistical information (some through March 2008) on per capita GDP, visitors from Mainland China and from abroad (for both cities), direct investment, employment in financial services, trade and logistics, and tourism (for Hong Kong) as well as revenues from gambling casinos in Macao that are reportedly surpassing those of Las Vegas. Journal of Economic Literature, O16, O18, O20, R11. Classification Numbers: 11 figures, 4 tables, 46 references.     

Bank Depositor Behavior in Russia in the Aftermath of Financial Crisis

An international team of economists examines the factors influencing the behavior of Russian depositors in the immediate aftermath of that country's 1998 financial crisis, drawing upon two largely unutilized data sources—data from the Russian state savings bank Sberbank and a November 1998 household survey. After first reviewing the evolution of the household deposit market during the 1990s, they explore regional variations in net withdrawals from Sberbank branches during the period August-October 1998 as well as identify characteristics of individual/household depositors making (or attempting to make) such withdrawals. More severe runs on Sberbank outlets are found to be associated with more affluent and entrepreneurial regions, regions of more youthful and less educated population closer to Moscow, and areas with greater media freedom. Subsequent public opinion survey analysis of the socioeconomic correlates of runs on all Russian banks during the 1998 crisis reveals some interesting differences (in the effects of education in particular) on the propensity to successfully withdraw deposits.     

In Defense of "Geopolitical Remote Sensing": Reply to Moisio and Harle

The author of a recently published paper on Finland's identity politics and national identity (Antonsich, 2005) responds to comments presented in the preceding paper in this issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics (Moisio and Harle, 2006). The rejoinder focuses on the nature of place knowledge acquired "in place" versus "at distance" as well as on more specific differences in perspective (e.g., use of sources, terminology, critical geopolitcs). Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O52, Z13, 14 references.