Foreign Banking in China: A Study of 279 Branch Units in 32 Cities

Two China-based geographers examine the gradual relaxation of restrictions on the activity of foreign banks in China as a prelude to a more focused investigation of the concentrated locational pattern of foreign banking in that country. The study, which embraces 32 Chinese cities, emphasizes the factors that have attracted foreign banks to particular cities and regions of China, including the existence of special banking opportunities, the so-called "follow-the customer" strategy, externalities associated with major financial centers such as Beijing and Shanghai, relaxed banking regimes in particular urban centers and special economic zones, and exposure to international trade and to a variety of foreign business enterprises. The locational preferences of foreign banks in relation to their countries of origin are addressed in some detail.     

Emerging Chinese Role in Shaping St. Petersburg's Urban Landscape: Interscalar Investment Strategies in the Development of a Residential Megaproject

The paper, by an American geographer, discusses the origin and development of a Chinese-financed residential megaproject (Baltic Pearl) located southwest of St. Petersburg's historical district. Viewing Baltic Pearl as reportedly the largest investment project undertaken outside China by a government-sponsored Chinese consortium, the author places it in the context of state-level Sino-Russian relations and Russian unease over the influx of Chinese migrants and culture. Reflecting the author's extensive field work in St. Petersburg and Shanghai, the focus of the paper is on the way the consortium was forced to adopt interscalar (i.e., both state and municipal/urban) strategies responsive to local conditions, providing a potentially useful precedent and model for Chinese and other investors seeking to penetrate Russia's urban markets.     

The ‘radical humanism’ of ‘Cap Anamur’ / ‘German Emergency Doctors’ in the 1980s: a turning point for the idea,practice and policy of humanitarian aid

Abstract

Historiographies of humanitarian aid and aid agencies alike had suggested an ever-growing politicization and militarization following the end of the ‘cold war’. But already in the 1980s, the field of humanitarian aid underwent extensive changes; new aid agencies no longer relied on Christian ideas of charity or leftist internationalism, short-term aid gained new importance and an ever-growing disaster awareness can be observed. The relief organization ‘Cap Anamur ’/’ German Emergency Doctors’ (GED) was founded in 1979 with the purpose of saving the so-called ‘boat people’. Typical for its time, it ascribed to a pure and innate humanitarian impulse summarized under the term ‘radical humanism’. Using the example of GED the article sets out to scrutinise the policies of this new humanitarianism that can be summarized as ‘controlled demerging’. The article brings into focus humanitarian aid as such, its own logic deriving from a particular idea of humanitarianism, considering both site-specific practices and also specific policies that are not necessarily congruent with political or economic interests. It becomes clear that the basis for the new political meaning humanitarian aid gained from the 1990s onwards was already laid by the humanitarian-aid agencies themselves.     

Resistance to alien rule in Taiwan and Korea†

ABSTRACT. Although alien rule is widely assumed to be illegitimate, nationalist resistance to it varies across time and space. This article explores why there was greater nationalist resistance to Japanese colonial rule in Korea than Taiwan from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of World War II. Resistance to alien rulers requires both a supply of participants in nationalist collective action and a demand for national self‐determination. The article assesses two principal propositions: (1) that the supply of participants increases to the degree that native elites are stripped of their traditional authority and offered few incentives to collaborate; and (2) that the demand for national self‐determination decreases to the degree that alien rule is fair and effective. A comparative analysis of the effects of Japanese alien rule in Taiwan and Korea suggests that nationalist resistance is greater in the earliest phases of occupation, that the greater native elites' opportunities, the weaker the resistance to alien rule; and that the fairer the governance, the weaker the resistance to alien rule.     

Resource nationalism or resource liberalism? Explaining Australia's approach to Chinese investment in its minerals sector

Since 2005, a burgeoning wave of Chinese investments has set off a new ‘minerals boom’ in the Australian iron ore and coal mining sectors. While normally a welcome development, the state-owned and strategic nature of the investors has raised concerns in Australia about how these should be regulated. As a result, in February 2008 the Australian government declared an intention to more closely screen foreign direct investment (FDI) from state-owned sources, which both supporters and detractors alike have claimed is evidence of ‘resource nationalism’ in Australia's approach towards its trade and investment relationships with China. This article challenges this understanding through an examination of the characteristics of Chinese mining FDI, the dilemmas these present to the Australian government, and the relatively restrained nature of its response. Through this, Australia's FDI policy is explained as a defensive move against the potential for strategic behaviour by Chinese investors resulting from their state ownership, rather than any national program to subject minerals trade and investment to political control. On this basis, the article argues that Australian government policy instead evidences a ‘resource liberalism’ approach, which intends to ensure that the governance of Australia's minerals trade and investment with China remain market-based processes.     

绅士化语境下的失所现象:概念溯源及研究综述

失所（displacement）现象历来受到国际学界的广泛关注。本文主要探讨因绅士化而造成的失所现象,并对西方理论体系和实证研究进行较全面的综述。因绅士化造成的失所可分为直接性失所和间接性失所。依据不同的形成原因,直接性失所分为物质性失所和经济性失所,而间接性失所包括排斥性失所和潜在性失所。在笛卡尔式空间观的主导下,西方主流失所研究历来偏重直接性失所,而忽视间接性失所。本文认为,间接性失所背后的列斐伏尔空间观应纳入到失所理论体系中,以更好地指导失所实证研究。本文指出,结合中国现实,对失所现象进行理论化与概念化,对于转型期中国可持续城市发展具有现实与深远的意义。     

Trafficking borders

This article offers an empirically informed conceptualisation of trafficking borders as spaces of restriction and negotiation, contingently produced, encountered, and escaped along the mobility routes of the targets of trafficking discourse. The concept of trafficking borders advances critical literature that considers anti-trafficking measures a vehicle of state-authorised bordering practices by demonstrating social and political spaces where the trafficking discourse coalesces several discourses, institutions, and practices as borders. The article draws on participatory action research conducted in Nepal to demonstrate the presence of borders in spaces such as households, communities, government offices, Indo-Nepal state borders, emigration detention and deportation centres, and airports. These spaces contribute to the critical understanding of locations where anti-trafficking measures curtail the rights, mobility, and choices of prospective migrant workers. Prioritising research participants’ experiences of encounters with trafficking borders, the article underscores that borders are the central experience of migrant workers which they must escape to actualise their labour migration projects. The conceptualisation further attempts to position the emigration regime as an important site of theorisation and activism and demands a thorough consideration of the diverse struggles of the labour migrants before they arrive at their labour relations in the immigration regime.     

Talcott Parsons as translator of Max Weber's basic sociological categories

The first four chapters of Max Weber's Economy and Society presented by Talcott Parsons in 1947 as Theory of Social and Economic Organization present a coherent and complete analysis of social, economic and political structures based upon a consistent theory of social action and its understanding. Parsons did not see them this way. His lengthy introduction sought to insert them into his own “action frame of reference”, and his rearrangement of the text made it difficult for a reader to understand why it was constructed the way that it is. This essay describes how Parsons came to be principal translator and editor of the text, examines the changes that he made to it, and links his editorial practice to the analytical procedures that he followed in his Structure of Social Action.