China's New Leaders: Perspectives on Geographic Trends and Realities

A senior American specialist on the geography of China examines several aspects of China's society, economy, regional organization, and geopolitical position in light of the change in the country's leadership at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012. After a brief comparison of the incoming and retiring leadership groups in terms of backgrounds and past policy pronouncements (as well as discussing the challenge posed by corruption), the author proceeds to discuss a series of key social and regional development policies that may be subject to some degree of change under the new leadership, including hukou and the one-child policy. He then focuses on the 12th Five-Year Plan, which provides a broad outline of the new leadership's goals, and particularly its emphasis on balanced regional development (a commitment to further develop the interior of the country as well as to revitalize the old heavy industrial region, the Northeast). The author then turns to China's growing military (and particularly naval) power in connection with its increasing assertion of territorial claims in the South and East China Seas as well as ability to project naval power across the Taiwan Strait and beyond into the Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters.     

The political impact of the European Capital of Culture: ‘Maribor 2012 gave us the power to change the regime’

The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) is a cultural political initiative of the European Union and is perceived as one of the most prestigious events in the community. Existing studies have neglected the political effects of hosting ECoC in terms of engendering regime change in host cities. The present study therefore tries to fill this gap and demonstrates how the cultural policy of Maribor 2012, including its implementation, impacted on local citizens’ communication and political activities and contributed to regime change in the city at the end of the cultural year. The paper employed document analysis, participant observation of all the main processes of ECoC Maribor 2012 and in-depth interviews with management, programme organisers, cultural operators and participants. It shows that through the empowerment of local citizens by means of bottom-up initiatives in the effective planning and implementation of ECoC, they challenged the regime and neoliberal system of Maribor.     

British Diplomacy,Propaganda, and War Strategy and the Hungarian-Romanian Dispute over Transylvania in 1939–40

Abstract

Between 1914 and 1935, the cities of Vienna and Pressburg/Bratislava were linked by an electric railway known as the Pressburgerbahn. More than just a line of transportation, the railway became intertwined with the complex politics of identity in Pressburg. The Pressburgerbahn presented nationalists in the Habsburg Empire with a dilemma: it had the potential to contribute to the unification of the nation, but at the same time was transnational by definition. This paradox generated a heated controversy about the Pressburgerbahn between Magyar nationalists and the predominantly German-speaking Pressburg bourgeoisie. Using biologized rhetoric, Hungarian politicians and journalists portrayed their nation as a body politic that was disfigured by having a railway ‘vein’ cross the border into Austria, in particular from such a peripheral location as Pressburg. By contrast, the discourse of the German-speaking bourgeoisie was firmly anchored in an imperial, supra-ethnic landscape. This controversy was replayed following the incorporation of the renamed city of Bratislava into Czechoslovakia in 1919: the Prague-based Ministry of Railways employed the rhetoric of the railway as an integrating structure within the body politic, while the eventual closure of the Pressburgerbahn in 1935 was closely connected to the belated nationalization of Bratislava. The railway to Vienna thus became a symbol of the liminal status of the town as a whole, in terms of nation, geography, politics and culture.     

State policy and contraceptive choices: evidence from China 1979–2012

This study examines the relationship between China’s contraception policy and married women’s (20–49 years) choice between long-acting and short-acting contraceptive methods during two periods–1980–1994 and 1995–2012. The aim is to examine the link between strictness of the contraception policy and married women’s contraceptive choice. Using data from the 1988 and the 2006 National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Surveys, we estimated the effect of contraception policy in the tightened and the loosened policy periods using a permutation test. The results show that while contraception policy promoted long-acting contraceptive methods, many married women themselves preferred short-acting contraceptive methods. During the tightened policy period, we found married women on average were 2.7 times more likely to use long-acting methods. The effect was only 1.7 times during the loosened policy period. The effect was also parity dependent. The more stringent the contraception policy was, the more likely married women used a long-acting contraceptive method. This study provides the first ever proper estimation of China’s contraception policy effects during the two periods.     

Towards Culture 3.0 – performative space in the public library

The aim of this article is to analyse and discuss the development of performative spaces in public libraries from a cultural policy perspective. First, a framework of three concepts of culture, 1.0–3.0, is used as a tool to analyse the overall development of public libraries. Against this background, we introduce the notion of performative spaces in public libraries by highlighting Nordic examples. The tendency can also be seen on a broader level in European and North American libraries, where a ‘performative turn’ can be seen as the relationship between the library and its users, especially the younger ‘digital natives’. The rationales behind the emergence of performative spaces in public libraries are analysed and discussed: democratisation, empowerment and economic impact. This article concludes that the performative spaces are legitimized by multiple rationales in the same way as cultural policies and cultural institutions are legitimised today.     

韩国潜在游客的中国旅游目的地意象认知与行为意图

旅游目的地意象是20世纪70年代以来,地理学和旅游学等学科交叉生成的研究命题,是旅游目的地市场细分、市场定位及竞争分析的重要工具。本文选择中国近缘文化群体客源市场,也是中国最大的入境客源市场韩国为研究对象,以非结构式和结构式研究相互结合的方式,研究分析了韩国潜在游客对中国的旅游目的地意象认知及行为意图,研究结果显示：（1）韩国潜在游客对中国的旅游目的地意象认知由四个基本维度构成,分别是平和、愉悦、动感与现代,其中,平和、愉悦和现代与旅游目的地意象呈正相关关系;（2）韩国潜在游客对中国的旅游目的地意象认知与其行为意图呈正相关关系;（3）中国旅游目的地意象的平和、愉悦特征对韩国潜在游客行为意图有明显的正向影响,呈正相关关系。     

Shifting Resources and Venues Producing Policy Change in Contested Subsystems: A Case Study of Swedish Signals Intelligence Policy

In the last decade and across countries, changes in national intelligence policies have spurred widespread political opposition and public protest. Instances of intelligence policy change warrant close academic attention to cast light on the dynamics of policymaking in contested policy areas. In an effort to contribute to further development of a theory of policy change within the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), this article analyzes the adoption of legislation in Sweden to expand the mandate for signals intelligence gathering. Three explanatory variables are derived from the ACF to explain policy change in this case: shifts in advocacy coalition membership, distribution of coalition resources, and access to policy venues. Whereas shifts in coalition membership were unrelated to policy change in this case, the case‐study lends partial support to the role of resource distribution and policy venues. To promote the progress of an ACF theory of policy change, the study concludes by drawing two theoretical implications: (i) introducing hierarchical classification of coalition resources and (ii) identification of revised policy narratives and exploitative policy entrepreneurship as causal mechanisms linking external shocks to venue shifts and policy change.     

Women’s gender role attitudes and fertility intentions of having a second child: survey findings from Shaanxi Province of China

China is a country with a unique history of gender traditions and birth-control regulations. Traditional gender role attitudes, closely related to son preference, exert entrenched influence on the fertility intentions and behaviours of women in China. In recent years, despite the fact that employment characteristics and educational attainment of women have caught up with men, China has witnessed a resurgence of patriarchal Confucian tradition. Gender relations in the private sphere are increasingly regulated by traditional gender norms. Considering the declining fertility in China and recent fertility policy adjustments, this paper analyses the varying effects of gender role attitudes on fertility intentions of women under different birth control policies, utilising data from 1,422 questionnaires conducted in 2015 in the Shaanxi Province in northwestern China and using the Multinomial Logistic Model. Our findings imply that the relationship between women’s gender role attitudes and fertility intention differs between women affected by different birth control policies. We find that among married women with one child who are restricted to one child, the more egalitarian the gender role attitude, the more likely they intend to have a second child. Among married women who have had one child and are allowed to have two children, the more egalitarian the gender role attitude, the less likely they intend to have a second child. The results also indicate that traditional gender role attitudes and norms still play an important role in Chinese women’s fertility intentions.     

Between National Socialism and expert internationalism: Karl Strölin and transnationalism in urban planning, 1938–45

This essay examines the transnational activities of National Socialist experts, focusing on the endeavours of the burgomaster of Stuttgart, Karl Strölin. In 1938, Strölin became president of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP), one of the most distinguished international expert institutions for European and North American urban planning. The article discusses his belief that promoting an international convention on the protection of urban populations would contribute to German diplomacy in the initial period of the Second World War. Then it investigates the IFHTP president’s efforts to transform his institution into an outlet for National Socialist ideas against the background of the German advance through Europe. A final section deals with Strölin’s attempts to transform the IFHTP into a forum for evaluating urban reconstruction policies in the last year of the war. This biographical study shows how it was possible to juggle the logics and expectations of seemingly contradictory spatial and political realms during and after World War II. National socialist politics and ideology exacerbated the tensions between local, national and international affiliations, but at the same time never fully permeated the mechanisms of expert internationalism. By revealing how Strölin navigated between local ambitions, the demands of domestic foreign policy and the ethics of expert internationalism in three markedly different projects, this essay contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the cross-border activities of National Socialist professionals in (occupied) Europe.     

Focusing on Chinese nationalism: an inherently flawed perspective? A reply to Allen Carlson

My article replies to Allen Carlson's critique of the existing literature on Chinese nationalism (Carlson's article was published in Volume 15, issue 1 of Nations and Nationalism, 2009). I address Carlson's criticisms and proceed to evaluate his proposal to move away from an allegedly unhelpful focus on nationalism towards the allegedly more illuminating framework of national identity construction. My approach to the existing literature on Chinese nationalism acknowledges efforts made within it at grappling with issues of theory and definition and builds on this acknowledgement to operate a selective appraisal of its strengths and weaknesses. I argue that while some of the problems identified by Carlson do indeed plague the literature, his advocacy of abandoning nationalism as a focus of research is unwarranted. There is continuing validity in using nationalism as a lens for understanding how China sees its place in the world.     

人文地理研究能为制订国家政策作贡献：——以城市发展方针研究为例

本文综述了我国关于城市发展方针的争论和最新动态。作者以自己多年来围绕中国城市发展方针的研究为例,说明人文地理学能够为国家制订政策作贡献。其感受是要敢于面对问题;通过深入研究,有站得住脚的观点;要坚持不懈,不怕坐冷板凳。     

中国国际军备控制政策演变论析

近60年来,中国国际军备控制政策的发展经历了三个阶段:改革开放前坚持立场、独树一帜,长期处于国际军备控制体制之外;改革开放后选择参与、逐步深入;冷战结束后主动融入、广泛参与。近年来军备控制政策的变化及趋向,彰显了中国作为一个负责任的大国建设和谐世界的决心和诚意。     

建国初期农具改良政策及实效分析

建国初期,为了迅速恢复和发展农业生产,在中央政府的领导下,我国农村开展了全面的农具改良工作.政府通过建立农具管理和服务机构,兴办工厂,开展宣传教育、发动群众,大量增补旧农具,积极推广使用新式农具.农具改良在一定程度上提高了农业生产技术,改进了生产效率,增加了农业产量,同时奠定了农机产业的基础,为后期的农业机械化进程做了铺垫.由于对农村的具体情况和农具的实际需求了解不充分,农具设计和制造水平低,新式农具质量较低,价格偏高,技术传授和维修服务差,经营管理相对落后,新式农具推广使用未能达到预期的目标,发挥应有的作用.农具工作政策和措施的失误,不仅造成了人力和物力资源的浪费,也损害了政府在群众中的形象.