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.     

‘Life in Happy Land’: using virtual space and doing motherhood in Hong Kong

This paper examines how a group of Hong Kong working mothers use the internet in performing and realizing their paid work and domestic role identities. The internet is a technology-enabled space and also what Michel de Certeau calls a ‘practiced place’, where its nature and functions are necessarily determined by the actions and practices of agents. Through participant observation and the analysis of a sample of chatroom and forum messages from a user-driven Hong Kong-based parenting website called Happy Land, I examine the relationship between this virtual space and its users. I find that the website has developed beyond its technology-mediated nature into a community of face-to-face friendships and social and emotional support. In effect, this virtual space plays a role in the social reproduction of the contemporary dual-earner family by enabling working mothers who use the website to perform roles in production and reproduction respectively.     

Making screen production work at the margins: path-dependent development in Brisbane and the Gold Coast

While screen production is notoriously centralised, it is still found outside major media cities where the central problem for actors in these subordinate media cities is how to create sustainable levels of screen production capabilities in circumstances of increasing centralisation and globalisation in media production and its design. This article discusses how the screen production sectors of two subordinate media cities, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, are organised. Each city represents a different pathway for the sustainability of a media sector. The Gold Coast is a production location for globally and nationally dispersed high-budget feature film and TV drama production; while Brisbane is mostly a ‘national production’ location for domestically oriented news, documentary, infotainment and sports programming with a focus on lower budgeted feature filmmaking and occasionally, television drama. These different city pathways are the product of the creative resources and infrastructure evident in each city.     

Knowledge Production,Urban Locations and the Importance of Local Networks

This paper analyses the relationship between knowledge production and urban locations in industrial design, a knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS). KIBS concentrate in urban locations. This is often explained by the co-location of client firms and market access in large cities. Recent research on knowledge production, however, reveals that knowledge productive networks are significant for both the competitiveness and location of KIBS. Thus, to understand the urban location of industrial design, it is important to analyse how knowledge production is organized within the industry. Industrial design is concentrated in urban locations, but most of its clients are located elsewhere. Hence, it seems that industrial design firms concentrate in urban locations mainly because their knowledge networks include specific types of formal and informal local social networks.     

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.     

生产网络演化视角下的城市产业升级路径研究——以汕头市纺织服装行业为例

如何根据自身经济活动所具有的空间组织特征和演化轨迹来选择升级路径,是城市政府需要解决的重要问题。本文以粤东城镇群区域中心城市汕头为例,选择具有传统优势的纺织服装产业,整合经济地理关系范式和演化范式的方法构建分析框架,运用访谈获得的企业关系数据和相关资料,分别对汕头纺织服装行业生产组织的历史路径以及当前在区域生产网络中的地位进行分析,提出汕头纺织服装行业未来进行升级的路径选择。本文在城市产业发展规划如何借鉴西方经济地理新理论范式方面进行了尝试性探索。     

基于中国电影产业价值链分工联系的城市网络研究

选取2003-2015年占据当年票房75%以上的中国电影为样本，基于中国电影产业价值链分工联系数据构建了城市网络。在此基础上，运用社会网络分析法对城市网络的结构特征展开了分析，并进一步剖析了其形成的原因。研究发现：①城市网络的密度为0.25，城市间的联系较为稀疏。②城市网络呈现出“一主两副”的“中心-外围”结构，北京是主核心，香港和上海均为副核心，其它81个城市处于外围。③城市网络中的强联系围绕北京展开。具体来看，香港、上海与北京的联系最为多元和紧密，首尔、台北、曼谷与北京的联系多为价值链的纵向配套，广州、天津、金华与北京之间的联系多为价值链的横向合作。④中国电影产业的三重属性、尤其是政治属性深刻地影响了其城市网络的结构特征。     

Change in the Innovation Process: New Knowledge Production and Competitive Cities--The Case of Stuttgart

The global integration of economic activities is bringing with it major changes in innovation processes. New kinds of innovation, such as service and organizational innovations, became increasingly important in the 1990s. The shift to new forms of knowledge creation reflects the emerging knowledge based economy. This has effects on the existing comparative advantages of metropolitan innovation systems and is a major challenge to the ability of cities to adjust, especially those in mature industrial sectors whose competitiveness is based on innovations in industrial technology and scientific and technological knowledge production. Stuttgart is one of these cities. Much of the comparative innovative strength of the Stuttgart region derives from the generation of synergy effects of its technological and institutional development paths. The high levels of industrial exports and the competitiveness of the global players in the Stuttgart region indicates how advantageous the technology based knowledge production and diffusion in the region has been for the innovativeness of the core industrial branches. The crisis at the start of the 1990s showed that the economic success of particular firms does not mean that the metropolitan region as a whole is innovative and competitive. The institutional structures used to establish and maintain the comparative innovative advantages of the industrial sector have hindered adjustment to new forms of knowledge production and diffusion. The paper examines the adjustment processes in the Stuttgart region which are changing the organization of innovation and learning in a way that makes it receptive to new forms of knowledge production and diffusion.     

Distinctive patterns of industrial urbanisation in modern Tokyo,c. 1880–1930

Industrial growth in Japan's largest cities has followed patterns that are distinctive, and are significantly different from those that have been adduced in the recent literature on North America. This paper focuses on Tokyo, and in particular its north-eastern part, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that a process of ‘industrial urbanisation’ occurred in Japan's capital city, a process that was shaped by the existence of a large proto-industrial base and sophisticated consumer economy and characterised by dynamic but disorderly growth in factories largely supplying consumer goods to the urban market. The paper reviews the disparate, not to say confused, nature of industrial growth in Tokyo, noting the variety in factory size and products as well as production methods. Central to the argument of this paper is that industrialisation preceded attempts at urban planning and that the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation occurred concurrently, laying the base thereby for the large mixed-function districts that became a common feature of Japanese cities.     

长春市电力消费与经济发展关系研究

利用柯布·道格拉斯函数的形式,把能源引入生产函数,从而可以探讨普遍意义上,能源和经济的关系,以及这种关系在发达地区和欠发达地区之间的区别。事实上从结论可以看出,不光劳动、资本以及科技进步能够促进经济增长,人们生产和生活用能的增加也能促进经济的增长。电力作为能源的一种重要形式,深刻地影响着现代人们的生产和生活,更是现代城市文明的一种深刻体现,上述能源和经济之间关系的探讨,为各种城市合理利用电力,促进经济增长提供了理论支持。     

尺度重组理论视角下的粤港澳大湾区建设研究

粤港澳大湾区建设是由中央政府推行的新的区域发展政策安排,旨在调控国家、区域和城市尺度之间的关系进而引导资本流动以实现特定的空间发展目标,因此可视之为新一轮国家的尺度重组。借鉴西方的尺度重组理论,本文主要从大珠三角城市在经济上的空间联系以及香港问题在政治上的领域关系等两个方面,探讨关系空间如何影响到国家的尺度重组,以及国家的尺度重组对城市的尺度重组的影响。研究认为,粤港澳大湾区建设在于重塑资本流动的地方空间,为“资本固着”提供社会活动平台,继续参与国际劳动分工,深化经济合作,提高区域的全球竞争力。与此同时,国家也通过尺度重组来解决经济全球化过程中出现的领域政治问题,通过新的空间规划把边界问题纳入一体化的经济发展体系之下,保证政治稳定。中央政府把国家建设的尺度下移到粤港澳地区,促进了粤港澳的城市发生多元尺度重组策略,包括城市内部的尺度上推和尺度下移,城市外部的合作联盟和尺度政治。最后,文章从区域发展的角度分析粤港澳大湾区建设带来的影响,讨论粤港澳大湾区的建设与实践对尺度重组理论的补充和对认识国家政治经济发展的启示意义。     

基于产业群视角的河南省产业配套能力分析

产业配套能力是企业在选择投资区域时最关注的外部条件。吸引投资是促进河南省经济发展的重要途径,利用产业配套能力来评估投资环境显得尤为重要。本文利用《2007年河南省投入产出表》,采用主成分分析法,识别出河南省目前存在18个具有内在经济联系的产业群。通过对各产业群的经济关联和空间分布的分析,发现林木产业群、耐火材料产业群是河南省配套能力最完善的产业群类型,煤电产业群和烟酒制品产业群的配套能力也相对完善,其余各产业群由于存在较低的产业关联度或空间分布过于分散,导致配套水平偏低。     

Getting the China Story Right: Insights from National Economic Censuses

Two Hong Kong-based geographers critically interrogate competing interpretations of the nature and dynamics of China's ongoing economic transformation. Based on the data gathered from China's first and second national economic censuses, they examine the pattern and process of ownership transformation in the Chinese economy, focusing on employment, capital assets, and output as well as productivity and industrial innovation. Emphasis is placed on the following critical issues: (1) after three decades of opening, China's national economy continues to be dominated by domestic enterprises (with foreign and overseas Chinese-invested enterprises limited to only a few industrial sectors and highly specific locales); (2) the bulk of capital assets and key large-scale industrial sectors remain in state ownership; and (3) spontaneous, bottom-up privatization of the labor market has occurred without a corresponding privatization of the capital market. In examining these and other issues, the authors argue that the evolving, complex "China story" can be better understood only after abandoning reliance on preconceived theoretical models derived primarily from Western experience. They support their case by first challenging the conventional neoliberal view of privatization as an independent force or predetermined condition, arguing instead that it is conditioned by prevailing social and political influences. Likewise, they posit that rapid expansion of private and individual businesses at the grassroots level has owed more to relaxed state control than to active state involvement envisioned by the thesis of state corporatism. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: E22, E23, E24, O11, P20. 8 figures, 6 tables, 87 references.     

Capitalism, cities, and the production of symbolic forms

A striking characteristic of contemporary capitalism is the increasing importance (in terms of growth, employment, revenue, etc.) of sectors whose outputs are imbued with significant cultural or symbolic content. Sectors of these sorts are predominantly, though not exclusively, located in large cities. I describe how these cities function as creative fields generating streams of both cultural and technological innovations. Post-Fordist cities are shown to be especially fertile terrains of commodified cultural production. A number of these cities have become major centres of image-producing industries such as film, music recording, or fashion clothing, and this phenomenon is also often associated with profound transformations of their physical landscapes. I argue that the economic foundations of these trends reside, in part, in the structural characteristics of image-producing industries, marked as they frequently are by modularized, network structures of production and a strong proclivity to geographic agglomeration. At the same time, the main centres of the contemporary cultural economy are caught up in insistent processes of globalization. I suggest that after an initial phase of product standardization and concentrated development in only a few major centres, the cultural economy of capitalism now appears to be entering a new phase marked by increasingly high levels of product differentiation and polycentric production sites. I also submit that the contemporary cultural economy of capitalism constitutes a historical shift beyond consumer society as such.     

GROWTH,FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT,AND THE ENVIRONMENT: EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE CITIES

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate the relationship between economic growth and industrial pollution emissions in China using data for 112 major cities between 2001 and 2004. Using disaggregated data, we separate foreign direct investment inflows from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan from those of other foreign economies. We examine two industrial water pollution indicators (wastewater and petroleum‐like matter) and four industrial air pollution indicators (waste gas, sulfur dioxide, soot, and dust). Our results suggest that most air and water emissions rise with increases in economic growth at current income levels. The share of output of domestic‐ and foreign‐owned firms increases several pollutants in a statistically significant manner while output of firms from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan either reduces pollution or is statistically insignificant.     

China's Special Economic Zones at 30

Three Hong Kong-based geographers assess retrospectively the performance of special economic zones (SEZs) in China on the eve of the 30^th anniversary of their founding. After exploring the general rationale and historical context for the launching of the SEZ concept, they devote considerable attention to the divergent development paths and outcomes of the five SEZs established in China during the 1980s. Of particular importance has been the differing specific roles assigned to the SEZs based on their internal characteristics as well as location relative to (and interactions with) areas of intense commercial activity (Hong Kong and Macao) subsequently coming under Chinese sovereignty. The paper concludes by viewing the past performance of the SEZs within the context of the gathering momentum of globalization that afforded entry for their export-oriented manufacturing activities into world markets, and explores some implications of the current worldwide financial crisis for their future. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O180, O200, P200, R120. 1 figure, 3 tables, 56 references.     

资本、权力与空间:“空间的生产”解析

全球化时期的生产方式从根本上决定了资本和权力是城市空间产生和演化的主要动力。它们分别展现了不同的作用范围、形式及效果:资本主要作用于物质的、社会—经济空间的生产,而权力主要作用于抽象的、政治—制度空间的生产。这两个过程相互影响、相互交织。本文将"空间的生产"理论与城市空间实践结合起来进行转型中国语境下的解析,尝试提供一个研究我国城市与区域空间重构问题的马克思主义政治经济学视角。     

Urbanization,Place of Experiment And How the Electric Fish Was Caught by Emil Du Bois-Reymond

Laboratories, along with the researchers, organisms, instruments, and experiments associated with these places of investigation, are not isolated from the world beyond their physical and institutional boundaries. Both laboratories and the cities in which they are embedded are subject to change, as was most dramatically apparent in their dynamic and far-reaching transformation during the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. Using the example of Berlin and the institutionalization of experimental physiology by Emil du Bois-Reymond, in this paper I study experimental work on frogs and fish in order to demonstrate how a city and a laboratory cooperate in the production of knowledge. Emil du Bois-Reymond's research on electric fish illustrates how an exotic organism and a laboratory came together in a city and how the research was driven by innovation and development in urban and industrial technology. Ongoing changes in the urban landscape entered du Bois-Reymond's workplace and became part of the material culture of his experimental physiology and his attempts to demonstrate that the electric fish discharge is fundamentally similar to the excitation of nerve and muscle.     

Cultural icons and urban development in Asia: Economic imperative,national identity,and global city status

Global cities are characterized by the multiplicity of flows that they are implicated in – flows of people, goods, services, ideas, and images. Yet, global cities do not derive their status only on the basis that they are networked nodes. They also require particular forms of cultural capital. Cities with global aspirations have thus increasingly recognized the need to accumulate cultural capital, for which one means is to create new urban spaces, in particular, new cultural urban spaces (e.g. grand theatres, museums, libraries). These often monumental structures are intended to support a vibrant cultural life, in order to attract and sustain global human and economic flows. In this paper, I examine the efforts by Shanghai's, Singapore's and Hong Kong's governments to develop cultural icons as part of the strategy to help their cities gain global city status, and in the process, constructing shared national and city identities. I illustrate how such efforts are not universally interpreted in the manner intended, with city populations sometimes protesting, sometimes simply oblivious. At the same time, I argue that such strategies to achieve global city status are sometimes at odds with projects of nationhood.     

Urbanization, place of experiment and how the electric fish was caught by Emil du Bois-Reymond

Laboratories, along with the researchers, organisms, instruments, and experiments associated with these places of investigation, are not isolated from the world beyond their physical and institutional boundaries. Both laboratories and the cities in which they are embedded are subject to change, as was most dramatically apparent in their dynamic and far-reaching transformation during the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. Using the example of Berlin and the institutionalization of experimental physiology by Emil du Bois-Reymond, in this paper I study experimental work on frogs and fish in order to demonstrate how a city and a laboratory cooperate in the production of knowledge. Emil du Bois-Reymond's research on electric fish illustrates how an exotic organism and a laboratory came together in a city and how the research was driven by innovation and development in urban and industrial technology. Ongoing changes in the urban landscape entered du Bois-Reymond's workplace and became part of the material culture of his experimental physiology and his attempts to demonstrate that the electric fish discharge is fundamentally similar to the excitation of nerve and muscle.