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This paper explores the transformations of informal transportation practices in Siberia as an example of the process of social embedding of infrastructure in remote regions. Research about informal transportation is predominantly based on studies of minibuses, motorcycles, rikshaws and other small, low-performance vehicles. Meanwhile, the railroad often best exemplifies formalization, control, and surveillance, the characteristics opposite to informal practices. On the basis of information gathered from local and regional archives and semi-formal interviews with railroad workers, their families, and BAM builders (2016–2020), this paper traces the roots of embeddedness in specific norms and expectations that formed during construction of the railroad and persisted during its operation. Informal transportation became the norm and a resource for coping with a lack of infrastructure. Recent reforms have changed the railroad from a public system to a private, profit-seeking, dis-embedded enterprise. This process affects local communities' access to the railroad. Workers' trains, or okurki, are a last refuge for the retention of local mobility mostly in an informal way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deals with a study which analyzed transformation in the Russian pulp and paper industry in the 1990s, focusing on ownership changes and their effects at the regional and local scales. History of the Russian pulp and paper industry; State of the forest sector in northwestern Russia; Regional variation in mill ownership.

Despite the ongoing debate on the interaction between the informal sector and agglomeration economies in cities, little is known about whether informal agglomeration generates the wage premium in cities in developing countries. This paper provides empirical evidence on the impacts of urbanization and localization, separated from formal and informal sources, on the earnings of informal workers and how the concentration of informal workers affects the wages of formal employees in cities in Vietnam. Using data from the 2013-2020 Vietnam Labor Force Surveys, this paper shows higher wages in bigger cities. In addition to workers' skills and local non-human endowment, agglomeration generates the wage premium in cities. Nevertheless, the impacts are different between small and large cities. Our results show that while informal workers benefit from urbanization and localization in large cities, their existence is over-concentrated in small cities and crowds out the formal sector in large cities of Vietnam. Thus, urban development policies should focus on the over-concentration of informal sector workers in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a strong relationship between regional integration and economic performance. This paper investigates the impact of regional integration on macroeconomic indicators in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) – a trade block created by the former Soviet republics in 2014. This study compares two types of regional collaboration strategies: first, unilateral trade liberalization with the one-sided opening of market access that does not imply any mutual concessions, and second, reciprocal regional liberalization evaluated as the degree of regional economic integration between the countries. We apply a random effect panel data analysis with the dataset over 25 years since 1995 covering five countries (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia). We find that, under the current stage, the EAEU positively affects trade flows, negatively affects the level of employment, and has no impact on other economic performance indicators. We also conclude that despite the declared level of economic integration – customs union – Eurasian block functions mainly as a free trade area facilitating mutual trade, which is different from the broader objectives that regional integration aims to achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the question of choice between regionalism and multilateralism in trade relations of Central Asia introduced by Pomfret (2005). Our study is motivated by a significant restoration of economic links between the former Soviet republics following Russian accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the formation of new trade ties with Vietnam, Iran, and Serbia. Above all, there have been substantial commitments made by the three Central Asian republics of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan toward a multilateral system under the WTO rules. To this end, we apply a multi-region gravity model with interdependent trade flows using bilateral trade data of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to study the ex-ante effects of economic integration with various bilateral, plurilateral, and multilateral partners. Our findings indicate the existence of considerable gains if the aforementioned economies would ascend to the EAEU in comparison to integration with China or Iran. We also document the presence of shared economic links between Tajikistan, Central Asia, and Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protecting traditional common properties is essential for heritage conservation and fulfilling people’s multifaceted needs without relying solely on the market. This paper argues that the fate of commons is related to the values and dynamics of commoners in response to the long-term and broader socio-economic, political, and spatial development and planning practices at different geographical scales. Specifically, we examine the rural commons, the Tso (zu 祖) Tong (tang 堂) land (TTL), in the New Territories of Hong Kong. The New Territories accounts for over 80% of the city’s land. TTL has been in existence long before the development of the capitalist economy in the city. It was set aside in perpetuity by an ancestor to benefit all male descendants, sustain a clan’s ancestral worship, and provide a safety net for its members. Unanimous consent is required to sell TTL. Whether the rural commons thrive or perish would depend on the resilience of the commoners in resolving internal conflicts and articulating the relevance of their commons to the territories’ broader interests. Integrating the rural commons into territorial development and planning will provide spaces for “possible alternatives” to improve people’s livelihoods and identities as well as the cultural heritage of a place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Introduction to the Special Issue on moving post-socialist publics aims to lay out how existing mobility politics and discourses in the region under scrutiny are intertwined with historical, socialist-era mobility practices, and infrastructures. Mobility paths and policies are imbued with a contested understanding of socialist legacies as well as capitalist realities. The Special Issue explores how transport options and choices confront citizens with social diversity, transformations of social norms, institutions and routines, values, concepts, and traditions. Valuable lessons can be learnt in terms of critical mobility geographies beyond the region as post-socialist transformations address justice and changing social norms and understandings of state roles. A decolonial inspiration that challenges existing readings of the formerly socialist region and transgresses the analytical "Othering" of its transition experience can be traced throughout the papers. Instead of arguing whether or not post-socialism is still a valid analytical framework, authors see the region as marked by multiple experiences of modernity and coloniality. In the former Soviet peripheries, urban mobility shapes socio-spatial contentions, making visible multiple and conflicting narratives of modernity and coloniality, tracing flows and dependencies at different scales, and taking into account complex constellations of actors, cultures, and materialities. The post-socialist lens is meant to critically scrutinize continuities and changes, providing particular interpretations for contemporary issues: mobile post-socialist publics are thus a turn away from what was before but in a context in which a strong relation to the past is embedded in several continuities in institutions, materialities, and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In social networks research, geographical distance between places of residence partially explains patterns of friendship ties in semi-isolated communities like classrooms or schools. For example, individuals that live close to one another are more likely to be friends than chance alone predicts. Explaining this pattern, researchers often argue that distance approximates meeting opportunities: when individuals live nearby, they are more likely to meet, both by chance and deliberately. This paper discusses the effect of distance in post-Soviet urban space and argues that, at least in this context, shared access to public transit explains the structure of social relationships better than geographical distance. I model the pattern of friendship ties among a cohort of 145 high-school students considering the distances between residential locations and the available public transit. Results suggest that students that live along the same bus routes are more likely to be friends than those who just live close to one another. I conclude with a discussion about how research in the post-Soviet region can enrich debates about the association between the social and spatial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of differences in geopolitical preferences between the titular nationalities and ethnic minorities has been thoroughly documented for the Association Agreement countries and other post-Soviet states. This paper goes beyond simply identifying the existence of this "ethnic gap" in geopolitical preferences, by also testing some of the common theories that try to explain it. To do so, I use different regression analyses based on survey data from Georgia (2015–2021). The results of a first multivariate analysis that aims to explain the ethnic gap show that the linguistic differences between the titular nationalities and the ethnic groups explain a higher percentage of the gap in support for the EU than differences related to ideology, values, and information. Furthermore, a second analysis that divides the sample into different ethnic groups reveals that certain variables influence the geopolitical preferences of members of the titular nationalities and members of each of the studied ethnic minorities in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 2008 financial crisis, institutional adaptability and economic diversification through smart specialization have been considered key forces for attaining an effective resilience trajectory of regional economies. Successful policy responses should not capture only limited, conjunctural and transitory measures, but should rather promote pro-active capabilities, able to cope with spatial perturbations and related drastic transformations, thus generating a more efficient regional development pattern. In this process, the economic and institutional factors, the conditions under which changes occur, as well as the actors of change play a pivotal role. The paper traces whether institutional arrangements have a decisive impact on the recovery of the European Union's lagging regions after the economic crisis and whether these could be instrumental in developing a smart specialization potential, which could make regions even more capable to enhance strong adaptive mechanisms. Using a mix of econometric methods (e.g. panel analysis, logistic regression) to emphasize both institutional and smart specialization aspects in the European Union core-periphery differentiation, the present study is based on a multidisciplinary approach. The results highlight that the existence of smart specialization capacity is associated with higher institutional adaptability; they also distinguish between relevant resilience characteristics of the European regions and formulate appropriate response policies for strengthening their specialization potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a mega-project of primarily infrastructure-related loans and investments in Pakistan. Recently, the official discourse has increasingly shifted to the agricultural sector. For the region of Gilgit-Baltistan bordering China, academic and policy debates highlight the potential boost of fruit exports to China as the most promising opportunity to be leveraged through the CPEC. This paper scrutinizes these promises from a locally grounded perspective, investigating potential benefits and risks for local farmers. To make sense of the complex interplay between external and local actors, interests, markets and (infra)structures, the paper follows an assemblage-inspired approach to map out local trajectories. Contrary to the CPEC narrative, agricultural exports from Gilgit-Baltistan recently came to a halt, due to increasing trade barriers and seemingly competing agricultural developments in neighboring Xinjiang, China. Moreover, the economically most promising local crop for export to China, namely cherries, does not seem too promising for the majority of small farmers. There are other commodities with export potential, but overall, prospects appear to be limited. There is a need for a deeper engagement with the inherent complexities of CPEC trajectories, particularly in regards to local farming contexts in Pakistan and relevant developments in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a critical analysis of the Russian National Atlas (2004–2008), the presentation of which is based on the tradition of the Soviet school of complex atlas production, and which is the first (and so far only) Soviet and post-Soviet Russian national atlas. Following the critical cartography approach, this paper deconstructs the atlas' structure and the range of presented maps to decode the construction of the national spatial identity and the imposed "cartographic silences". The paper shows how the presented maps and texts aligns with the overarching image of the Russian State as strong military state, and reveals the colonial narratives toward its Northern and Eastern peripheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current research is concerned more with transboundary river interactions among the asymmetric riparian parties, lacking analyses on the influence of borders and bordering processes. Given that rivers that also form national borders have particular geopolitical features that are distinct from transboundary rivers, this paper approaches border river governance with the functional complexity of security and development. Affected by heterogeneous water-related issues and their interdependent relations, border river governance reflects nonlinear functions of security and development, respectively or collectively. Taking the Khorgos River as an example, we argue that, although the river governance was confined to water distribution because of the Sino-Soviet Split and the Sino-Kazakh boundary negotiations in the 20th century, friendly inter-state relations and increasing cross-border mobility have encouraged China and Kazakhstan to adopt a hybrid approach to water distribution, water monitoring, data exchange, riverbank protection, and water infrastructure for both water utilization and flood control since the 21st century. In response to water supply challenges made by increasing economic agglomeration and complex administrative divisions on China’s side, the local government has decided to take new measures to keep water security and development in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose an analytical framework to examine how various dimensions of proximity between home and host countries could account for the trajectories and specificities of cross-border acquisitions of technology assets (CATAs) conducted by acquirer firms in latecomer economies. As Chinese firms have been increasingly using CATAs as a mean to catch up with their counterparts in advanced economies, we referred to their acquisition records to illustrate the applicability of the proposed framework. Based on a compiled dataset of the number of CATA transactions from 2001 to 2018, this paper examines the effects of various dimensions of proximity on the spatio-temporal patterns of Chinese CATAs using negative binomial regression models. Our findings demonstrate that the difference in governance between China and host countries (institutional proximity), the size of overseas Chinese population in host countries (social proximity), and the value of import from host countries (economic proximity) have significant effects on the propensity of Chinese firms to engage in CATAs. Physical distance and cultural gap between China and host countries, however, have no significant impact on CATAs. Further examination of the results reveals that Chinese firms tend to acquire target firms outright in culturally distant host countries to reduce the risk of their overseas acquisition in CATAs. In addition, we also found that there is a dynamic relationship between different dimensions of proximity and CATAs: from the relative importance of economic proximity between 2001 and 2012 to the rising influence of social and institutional proximity between 2013 and 2018 on CATAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese banks have been building an extensive network of branches and subsidiaries across the European Union, which they govern from their European headquarters in Luxembourg. This striking observation guides this paper’s research questions: Why do Chinese banks create such branch-cum-subsidiary structures across the EU, and why do they do it in Luxembourg? The paper dissects forensically these financial structures and mechanisms forged through the co-design of Luxembourg’s legal-business environment and Chinese banks’ internationalization strategies. We argue that Chinese banks facilitate Chinese FDI, and that this function determines the particular branch-cum-subsidiary structure of Chinese banks in the EU. It is a unique feature impossible to establish outside the EU. Chinese state-owned banks in Luxembourg are thus important, yet analytically widely neglected actors in the formation of global financial networks (GFNs). This research is particularly significant when considering the intensifying integration of the emerging Chinese market into global finance and, in particular, into the EU banking union. Empirical findings suggest that Chinese banks in Luxembourg use the specific branch-cum-subsidiary structures to (i) finance both their large Chinese and European corporate clients, which (ii) allows Chinese banks to circumvent specific regulatory and operational constraints in other EU member states, especially when (iii) serving Chinese corporations in their FDI to the EU. The internationalizing Chinese bank networks in the EU can thus be defined as FDI-oriented by legal and strategic design. This research highlights their constituent features and the resulting capabilities of GFNs that affect regional investment activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently the Chinese government has been actively collaborating with nonprofit nongovernmental organizations to provide social welfare services to older adults at the community level. The role played by NGOs in facilitating governance has only recently gained attention in the literature on Chinese NGOs and urban governance. Addressing this gap, the paper advances geographers' understanding of State–NGO collaborations in facilitating urban governance in the Chinese context using fieldwork in Beijing and Shanghai on the provision of community eldercare services as an example. It also explains the political control of these NGOs and their changing role in the eldercare market. We argue that collaborations between the state and NGOs in China have gradually transferred eldercare services to the NGOs, and led to a fragmented welfare system, which, as a consequence, has facilitated entrepreneurial urban governance. The paper sheds light on community-based organizations, their collaboration with local governments, and how they have become not only welfare providers but a significant site for social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale transport systems project expansive geographical reach via far-reaching connectivity and spillovers. This phenomenon, however, is understudied for its impact on economic and spatial relations across geographic scales and economic domains and the mechanism carrying and transmitting that impact. Despite its short existence, the China–Europe Freight Train (CEFT) has already created a long geographical reach and major impact on the transport landscape spanning China, Central Asia, and Europe. This paper argues that a new logistics state in China at the local level is driving and sustaining the CEFT from below relative to the national government and market forces. Using the ancient city of Xi'an as a characteristic embodiment of a logistics state, this paper demonstrates how the logistics state-driven CEFT has multiplied routes and redirected trade flows between China and Europe, reorganized inter-city and cross-border production and supply chains from China to Europe, stimulated a new geography of globally oriented and nationally rebalanced local consumption in China, and fueled major new development in an ancient and economically lagging city. The paper concludes on critical complications and implications from the Chinese local logistics state for the CEFT's sustainability and future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, Uzbekistan initiated a clustering policy in the national cotton sector. Based on case studies, this paper investigates the recent changes in cotton production under the emerging clusters. Our findings show a mismatch between the meaning of clusters in the industrial policy literature and practice in Uzbekistan. The supervision of cotton growing passed from the state to private enterprises (clusters). This transformation has perpetuated monopsony conditions under which farmers have no alternative marketing channels. The input markets have been disconnected from state agencies, however farms lack access to private input markets, since clusters supervise the input use. Our analyses show that forced and child labor has receded. In general, the cluster reform hardly took into account the principles of industrial policy. For example, the establishment of clusters among farmers widely lacked transparency. Instead of a hastened establishment of clusters in large scales, an institutional environment that enables bottom-up initiatives should be promoted. Overall, from the farmers’ perspective, recent reform steps led to moderate changes at best, while clusters started to play a dominant role in the cotton sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, the Yunnan-Myanmar borderlands in Kachin State have become a major investment frontier for large-scale agribusiness. Chinese private capital, supported by state-led opium substitution programs, has turned thousands of hectares of forests into plantations. As in many such cases across Southeast Asia and beyond, this rapid development has come at the expense of local communities and displaced persons relying on these lands for their livelihoods and refuge. Caught between Chinese market expansion, and an ongoing war between the Myanmar Army and the Kachin Independence Organization/Army (KIO/KIA), plantations have become sites of often overlooked confrontations, compromise, and conflict operating behind the more spectacular politics of the grand infrastructures like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in this region. Moving across plantation sites, armed bases and border markets; and building on interviews with Chinese entrepreneurs, Kachin leaders, and farmers, the paper explores how plantations have transformed not only environmental space but also social-political dynamics of Kachin State in ways, we argue, that are more difficult to reverse than previous or ongoing military territorialization. In doing so, we aim to localize and contextualize the plantation as a key force rapidly transforming Asian borderworlds, over which broader socio-political struggles, environmental transformations, nature loss, connectivity and developmental become imbricated with bordering space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-2000s, the Russian Far East (RFE) has seen a revival of agriculture accompanied by rapid agrarian transformation that has taken a unique form because of the area's proximity to China. However, the existing literature either does not recognize Chinese presence or only studies it in terms of capitalist relationships transplanted directly from China and isolated from local realities. This paper seeks to remedy this oversight by exploring the influence of the multifaceted Chinese presence on RFE agriculture. We use the concept of social topology to demonstrate how different forms of economic life have not evolved as "Russian" or "Chinese," but instead present a bundle of capitalist and non-capitalist relationships that are continuously changing and rewriting themselves. We also explain the observed effect of China's simultaneous presence and absence in RFE's agriculture: Chinese agricultural practices are tightly embedded in local social networks and are loosely tethered to local infrastructure, but the Chinese presence also manifests in perceptions and imaginaries that influence and determine the strategies of the Russian state, agroholdings, and Russian farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers have studied memory for decades, but there is currently a renewed interest in places of postmemory: sites to which memories of a past are connected, that engage those who have no living memory of the past in question. By combining a process-tracing approach to several post-communist surveys with in-depth interviews with members of the younger generation about their postmemories of the communist past, this paper explores places associated with postmemories of communism amongst young people in contemporary Romania, focusing on two types of place: (1) mega-constructions, prisons and deportation sites; and (2) sites connected to everyday life (home, shops, hospitals). The findings suggest that "postmemories in places" are reproduced and co-produced by younger people in a nuanced and complex way. Spatial postmemories of communism are not simply formed by parental or grandparental experiences of communism itself, but are also shaped by experiences of the initial post-communist period. Younger people's complex range of "postmemories in places" toward the communist past are politically multivalent: postmemory of specific sites related to the cultural welfare of the communist past did not necessarily indicate a political commitment to its restoration amongst interviewees; and postmemories of political violence associated with particular sites did not preclude unilateral pride in national achievements prior to 1989. Furthermore, "postmemory in place" is not a passive process, but one that is shaped by both a critical attitude to the responses of older generations toward particular places, and the challenges of the capitalist present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does political nostalgia influence voting? Although nostalgic voters have been often mentioned as central to the rise of populism in the West, scholars have rarely shown empirically how nostalgia influences electoral choice. In this paper, I use survey data from 2009 and 2016 to investigate the extent and electoral impact of Soviet nostalgia in the context of democratizing Moldova. First, the paper reveals and explains why political nostalgia is distributed unevenly across Moldova's territory with certain regions and ethnocultural groups embracing romanticized views of the Communist past more often than others. Second, the paper demonstrates that nostalgic orientations toward the past and cultural factors rather than perceptions of economic conditions structure party choice in post-Soviet Moldova. The paper also identifies the discursive similarities between varieties of Western populism, Euroscepticism, illiberal worldviews, and the nostalgic appeals of the Moldovan Left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plans to open a globally significant gold mine at Roşia Montană, in the Transylvanian region of Romania, have led to decades of controversy and struggle. This paper explores different understandings of extraction amongst advocates for and opponents of the mine over the last two decades. We discuss the shifting roles of capital, the state, civil society organizations, and the local community over time, arguing for the need to distinguish between their different positions on mining. In particular, we contend that the understanding of extraction promoted by the owners of the mine, and by the local community, is fundamentally different in terms of cultural, social, and economic priorities. The local community argue for a traditional type of mining, embedded in local ownership and established labor identities, whereas the neoliberal vision of capital for the Roşia Montană site is that of a globally competitive, technologically advanced form of extraction. In uncovering and developing these hermeneutic differences, the paper reveals that pro-traditional development attitudes among economically marginalized groups are not necessarily attuned to the material global interconnections shaping neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops new ontological and epistemological terrain to advance critical understanding of migrants’ everyday lives in urban china. More specifically, we highlight the opportunities afforded by pluralist relational theoretical and comparative empirical interrogation of emotions across diverse work, domestic, family and leisure times/spaces both within and, beyond cities. To that end, we apply a counter-topographical approach to a kaleidoscope of imaginative, implosive, and mutual emotions as competences and resources that constitute past, present, and future lives of female building-workers. Concluding, we signpost fruitful avenues for ongoing migration research in China, as well as reflecting on broader opportunities and challenges when exploring the complex emotional lives of urbanites no matter where in the world studies are undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to put forward a quantitative assessment via patent-based indexes to frame the innovation dynamics of three highly acknowledged Satellite Platform regions – Singapore, Dublin and Penang. A Satellite Platform is generally viewed as a comparatively less sticky region hosting the operations of many different uncooperative multinationals. They faced a common dilemma, namely non-committal of MNCs in defining a local structure to generate knowledge and innovation. Nonetheless, we observed diverse intervention from different local governments to pivot away from the dilemma and compensate for the lack of patient capital from multinational firms. Divergent paths in terms of inventiveness were observed. Singapore stands out as a region obtaining indigenous patenting capabilities – achieving higher localization, de-concentration, diversification and university-industry linkage indexes. On the other hand, Dublin emerged to derive an exploitative patenting route – witnessing higher science-based linkage indexes. Meanwhile, Penang – as a region that has been focusing on upskilling its blue-collar population – is relatively behind in performance for almost all patenting indexes compared to the other two. The framing and findings of this paper contribute to theorizing the divergence of interventions for knowledge-based economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in Africa has attracted much discussion on the competitive relations between Chinese companies and their foreign or local counterparts. There is however limited research examining the increasingly competitive relationships among Chinese business actors themselves and the complex implications of their activities for African economic development. Existing studies often either treat Chinese actors as a homogeneous entity pursuing a collective, state-directed agenda or emphasize the collaborative networks among Chinese business groups during their transnational entrepreneurial expansion. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the nature and consequences of intra-Chinese competition in Africa. It draws upon a critical reading of multidisciplinary literature in international businesses, management studies and economic geography, an extensive review of empirical cases across Africa, as well as field research in Ethiopia and Nigeria. Findings shed light on the competitive interests, logics, and strategies of Chinese overseas actors in construction, telecommunications, manufacturing, and retail sectors, and identify the challenges associated with managing intra-Chinese competition and fostering positive economic impacts in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the determinants of regional government debt in the Russian Federation using data from 2005–2017. We document that total indebtedness of Russian regions has grown substantially since 2010 and find significant changes in the structure of regional debt, primarily the increased use of budget credits offered by the federal government. Market debt instruments are determined by a different set of factors than non-market instruments. In fact, poorer and less fiscally independent regions have lower access to budget credits and are forced to rely on more expensive market debt instruments, particularly commercial loans. Budget credits and commercial loans are shown to be substitutes, although the nature of this substitution is contrary to declared redistributive goals of public policy. Finally, we find the presence of horizontal strategic interactions in debt issuance across Russian regions: regions react positively to increased debt issuance in the same federal district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comprises original research on China's use of bilateral media cooperation to mediate its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Building upon the literature on strategic narratives, aesthetic power and the Silk Road as a foreign policy concept, we present a detailed case study of the visual imagery of the "Silk Road" documentary collaboration between China's and Russia's state-owned international broadcasters, China Radio International and RT (formerly Russia Today). We employ a visual methodology to interrogate the formation and projection of multimodal (visual, textual and oral) narratives about China's infrastructural activities along this metaphorical new "Silk Road". We examine how the Silk Road series gives sense to China's BRI, the relative weighting of Chinese and Russian strategic narratives about the BRI, and how power is distributed in this Chinese-Russian media partnership. Our analysis reveals that in re-packaging visual imagery that applies nostalgia to the history of core places and technologizes their future, the series projects a pre-curated Chinese visual narrative that emplots the BRI as human and cultural development. Russian regional strategic narratives are marginalized. China is applying its aesthetic power to Russian journalists and politicians; RT obtains some commercial benefits, but the Russian state's aesthetic power is ceded to China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses intercity networks within the former Soviet Union (FSU), a semi-periphery of the global economic system of interactions. Intercity networks are constructed following an assumption that interaction between offices of the same corporation indicates connectivity between cities. In the FSU global corporations operate against a backdrop of continuous uncertainty. Consequently, it is possible to estimate temporal dynamics and spatial distribution of uncertainty by looking at the evolving structures of global companies with the example of global advanced producer service (APS) companies. These companies are regarded as brokers, integrating the region into the global business activities. The dataset comprises structures of the APS firms within the region in 2015 and 2018. A comparative analysis of networks in 2015 and 2018 demonstrates temporal dynamics of network reconfiguration and unequal spatial distribution of corporate offices in uncertain conditions. Through the lens of the network transformation, we reveal the continuous restructuring and peripheralization of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the thesis of the mobile border and the growing interest in cross-border mobilities and practices to understand how borders provide a raison d’être for the organization of everyday life for people living in China’s Southwest borderlands. Through a conversation between the literatures on cross-border mobilities, practices and livelihoods, this study moves beyond the mobile border thesis’s lopsided focus on diffused and dispersed practices that strengthen state sovereignty and border security, but instead emphasizes the kaleidoscopic everyday practices asserting and erasing borders at the same time, the plural rationalities of state governance, and grassroots actors’ agencies and skills in appropriating or transgressing borders. In sum, this study re-appropriates the mobile border thesis to argue that borders are mobile because of their permeation into the textures of everyday life. The empirical study elucidates this argument by investigating two border regions in China, Hekou, and Ruili in Yunnan Province. Specifically, it unpacks four sets of cross-border practices – cross-border socialities and kinship ties, cross-border marriage, labor mobilities, and everyday spaces of exchange – to reveal how what is possible at the everyday level is overdetermined by official territorialities, bottom-up negotiations, and the flexibility of state governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a case study in frontier colonization, and the subsequent transformation of that colonization into heritage, in order to explore the peripheral processes and projects of state making in China. The paper approaches China’s frontiers as exceptional spaces that compel the state to perform projects of purification. Such projects aim to order frontier space through bordering and “civilizing” practices, yet tend to also have disordering effects. The paper argues that state territorialization of frontier space is achieved through ongoing efforts to order space through such purifying projects which, in turn, generate new disordered outcomes. This argument is developed through an analysis of historiography and heritage-making of “tunpu” (屯堡) culture in central Guizhou. The historiography of tunpu culture provides insight into the ways genealogical records, state minzu ethnic classifications, and contemporary efforts at heritage promotion can all be understood as purifying projects of bordering that in fact introduce outcomes which require more borders. Tunpu, in other words, provides a lens through which to appreciate the central role of the frontier bordering in Chinese statecraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the interplay between economics and the politics of state-owned enterprises confronted with changes concerning the value of environment under post-1990 transformations. It examines the value of the environment as a result of state-public firm relations grounded on the multiple and often conflicting demands within the changing context and requirements of the EU environmental policy. By process-tracing two Romanian SOEs in the coal energy industry, the paper looks into: i) the hierarchical coordination and negotiation systems of state and SOEs in relation to the environment; ii) how the economic and political elites deal with the competition on free markets and use various mechanisms to empower the survival of SOEs that eventually translate into economic performance and environmental behavior. The findings suggest the salient decapitalization of SOEs due to the state behavior embedded in confusing procedures and actions that made room for political maneuvering. Also, the organizational culture of working in a "closed circle" may have strengthened the liabilities accrued to SOEs and undermined their capacity to deal with environmental requirements. Hence, a double-layered "dissonant" environment stems from the opposition between the requirements of the EU environmental policy and the commitment of domestic economic and political elites to support the survival of energy SOEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about a package of infrastructure investment, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This paper uses a range of theoretical perspectives (buttressed by historical and contemporary evidence) to think about the likely impact of CPEC on economic (especially industrial) growth in Pakistan. The theory includes crowding in of private by public investment, social savings, spillovers and the leading sector, and industrial policy. Theory points to some likely growth promoting effects of CPEC, on corporate logistics, shorter transport routes to China, and greater local production of cement. The impact of CPEC is unlikely to be transformative. There is little evidence that CPEC has improved corporate logistics in Pakistan. CPEC may reduce physical distances for overland trade with China but trade is likely to remain seaborne. CPEC construction activity has generated positive spillovers in local construction employment and cement production but no spillovers in either bitumen or steel production. Pakistan lacks a capable state and commitment to an industrial policy that historically have proved important in leveraging transport infrastructure into domestic industrialisation. The most important reason is that Pakistan is a middle-income country and CPEC is too small to create more than modest economic growth benefits for Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of studies have dealt with the effects of economic integration on foreign direct investment, yet without a comprehensive and simultaneous analysis of the overall positioning of the countries involved along the investment development path (IDP). In the current paper, a comparative analysis of IDPs of five Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, both members and nonmembers of the European Union (EU), is conducted. The purpose of the paper is to determine the effect of economic integration on foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and on the movement of these CEE economies through their IDP stages. An attempt is made to identify the positioning of the sample countries on the IDP, using trend estimation depicting the relationship between net outward investment (NOI) per capita and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, as well as detailed descriptive data on inward and outward FDI stocks and flows, subsequently complemented with econometric analysis. While the findings point to a generally positive effect of EU membership on FDI growth and IDP trajectories, integration tends to exert a stronger effect on inward FDI than on outward FDI of the investigated member countries. At the same time, the study's findings reveal the need to add new theoretical considerations to the interface between EU integration and the IDP model, as well as formulate certain policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted substantial academic attention right after its establishment in 2013. It has produced an array of scientific works analyzing various aspects of this multi-component phenomenon. Our paper is an attempt to systematically classify and further scrutinize the BRI literature within the management and economics field in order to navigate further academic inquiry into the BRI phenomenon. We used the Scopus database and a guided delimitation approach to ensure the quality and relevance of the selected papers. Based on the identified themes we propose promising avenues for future research within the Economics and Management research domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is currently a great deal of confusion about the impact of robotisation, mainly due to the lack of clarity in research on timeframes and technologies. To overcome this, we distinguish between two basic narratives. The first - 'robots in the cages' - is an old story of automation which means that the industrial robots are pre-programmed high-precision machines that are used on a large scale but only in a few industries. In contrast, the emerging story - 'robots are moving out of the cages' - is about the more flexible and autonomous robots at present used on a small scale in the service sector, albeit the application areas are expanding rapidly.The objectives of this paper are first to analyse these two stories in terms of their technological, industrial and organisational characteristics, second, to examine the geographical pattern of global competition for robotisation in these narratives, and third, to discuss briefly the policy challenges involved. For the analysis, we use information from the International Federation of Robotics, the EPO Worldwide Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT) and the Dealroom.co start-up database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the extent to which inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in advanced business services (ABS) – a result of so-called offshoring of white collar jobs – contributes to the structural change of employment in regions of host economies. We use a fixed-effect regression model based on cross-regional panel data for Hungary and Poland for the period between 2005 and 2014. Our findings show that ABS FDI carries structural impacts: employment in foreign-owned firms increases the share of the tertiary sector in a region both directly and indirectly through inducing other tertiary activities as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs the Urban Political Ecology (UPE) framework in order to decipher the unequal geohistorical developments of the Green Spaces of Socialist Housing Estates (GSSHE) in Bucharest under socialist and post-socialist urban political economies. We respond to the call for provincializing and expanding UPE research beyond the Western world with our theoretically informed, empirically grounded study, as literature on socialist and post-socialist socio-natures is virtually non-existent. Bucharest’s GSSHE developed during the socialist era through an allocation of informal temporary land use rights that engendered practices of gardening and agriculture. During post-socialism, residents retained informal rights to use the land, engaging in activities such as gardening, temporary constructions, and house expansion. Simultaneously, patterns of both formal and informal privatization also began to emerge. The last decade brought strong institutional-led change, as district mayors of Bucharest redeveloped green spaces to serve the shifting conditions within the capitalist urban political economy. As some spaces have been completely destroyed, converted to parking spaces, bulldozed for temporary and illegal constructions, or placed under a green revitalization program, these more recent developments have come into conflict with, and partially into a negotiated relationship with, the past legacies of gardening, alternative welfare, and their preserved inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the geographical idea of the Carpathian Basin has been employed in post-1989 Hungarian conceptualizations of regional development across state borders. This involves understanding the tensions that have emerged between different and partly competing notions of the Carpathian Basin as a cooperation space that reflects "Europeanization" and as a geographical context that is central to Hungary's sense of place (neighborhood) in Europe. These tensions are reflected in concerns expressed by neighboring states that regional cooperation in fact promotes Hungary's ethnopolitical agendas. Our approach is based on the assumption that links between geography, geographical imaginaries and questions of national identity remain highly salient. We thus take inspiration from traditions of geographical research that emphasize the subjective nature of space–society relations and their representation in geographical imaginaries. The sources used reflect scholarly and political narratives, primarily geographic and regional research, and politically narrated geographical imaginaries. As part of this undertaking, we will highlight change and continuity in the use of the Carpathian Basin idea from the 1920s to the present. More specifically, we will consider the consequences of Hungary-centric neighborhood imaginaries for territorial cooperation as well as the difficulties involved in the institutionalization of the Carpathian Basin as a project region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the significance and potential consequences of illiberal politics for the Visegrád Group's (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) role as a regional integration platform. Moreover, links between Europeanization and V4 geopolitical identity will be explored as part of investigating discursive framings of Central Europe's "illiberalism." I suggest that illiberal regionalism is a useful concept in that it problematizes political and popular narrations of East-West difference as competing projects of Europeanization. I will also argue that instead of a fundamental regional illiberalism what we find is an unstable, temporally limited and contingent constellation of political and social agendas. Illiberal regionalism can thus be read as strategic, aguably opportunistic, contestations of EU policies that reflect economic, political, and social uncertainties. Tensions involved in this regionalist shift are exemplified by "revolutionary" Hungarian and Polish national conservative agendas and their interaction with the more measured pragmatism of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is also clear that illiberal regionalism reflects the reciprocal and interdependent nature of the V4's political relations within the EU. Benefits of EU membership, such as leveraging and enhancing national status, continue to act as powerful counter-currents to more radical projects that would, for example, contest Euro-Atlantic alignments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to reconstruct the "Asian" dimension of Russian national identity discourse by using relations with China as a case study. It analyses the foreign policy debate before and after the 2014 Ukrainian crisis (2010–2016) by focusing on the emerging concept of "pivot to the East." Based on a discourse analysis of official documents, elites' speeches, and think-tank views, this paper inductively recovers the identity discourse, structured around linking/differentiation and such themes as the relative perception of China's threat. This research shows that the identity structure put several limitations in the way of engagement with China. These interlinked structures made it extremely difficult for the more intense economic turn toward China, which eventually occurred only when the relationship with the West (as the significant Other in Russian identity) broke down after the 2014 crisis. By comparing the identity structure and policies before and after the crisis of 2014 and following the poststructuralist notion of mutually constitutive relations between identity and foreign policy, this paper argues that policy changes after 2014 affected the gradual changes in identity narratives. However, there was not enough time and pressure to change the deeper layer of the core identity discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China and Russia discover common ground in exploring the Arctic, the changing spatial dynamics create the possibility for new styles of governance in the area of combating corruption. This paper will ask whether the configuration of collaborative projects between Russian and Chinese partners will open up avenues for a shared governance of anti-corruption or whether, perhaps alternatively, there is the possibility of a non-state and post-sovereign governance model emerging. As there is little empirical evidence yet, this paper will focus on the case of "Arktik LNG-2" as the most substantial Russian-Chinese project in the Arctic to date. It argues that the set-up of this project expresses neither a shared governance nor a post-sovereign governance approach to anti-corruption. On the state-to-state level, there is no sign of China engaging with Russia. On the non-state level, there are no stakeholders that would articulate demands for anti-corruption. Instead, it is through corporate compliance policies that anti-corruption rules become applicable. But these rules are not "private" in the conventional sense. They represent a sub-state policy in the case of Russia and Party rule in the case of the Chinese counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) intersect and overlap in Central Asia at the heart of Eurasia. Whereas the literature has commonly focused on the economic aspects of these major regional policy initiatives, efforts to create a common Eurasian higher education space through these regionalisms have barely been studied. In response, this paper compares the development of Russian and Chinese led visions for Eurasian higher education regionalism in Central Asia and the extent to which these constructions overlap. The paper also sheds lights on the perspectives of Central Asian states by investigating how these countries are approaching these efforts to construct a Eurasian higher education region. The conceptual framework brings together higher education regionalism with overlapping regionalism and takes a policy-oriented methodological approach. The paper introduces the new term of "points of correspondence" based on language used in both Russian and Chinese policy discourse to explain how constructions of a Eurasian higher education region can overlap without duplicating or flowing into each other. "Points of correspondence" emphasizes neither competition nor collaboration but rather the ongoing pursuit to find ideas and policy tools that best fit one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes Mongolia's attempts at balancing its relations with China and Russia and the dilemmas it faces as China's influence grows in the wake of its "Belt and Road Initiative". Mongolia has embraced China's connectivity projects and a new form of trilateralism, even though Mongolia was not included in the initial five economic corridors proposed by Xi Jinping in 2013. Mongolian concerns over geo-strategic isolation led to a renewed effort to embrace its two big neighbors, resulting in the proposal of the trilateral "Economic Corridor" in 2016, followed by further trilateral summits. The paper thus seeks to answer the puzzle how Mongolia's self-perception as a geopolitical bridgehead state can be reconciled with the partially diverging interests of its two neighbors. Drawing on interviews with Mongolian experts and officials as well as qualitative document analysis, the paper adds empirical nuance to the debate about Sino-Russian interaction in Eurasia, but also to the understudied dimension of the agency of the "in-between countries" in their shared neighborhood. It argues that the spectrum ranging from competition to accommodation between China and Russia is further complicated by the choices and policy responses of actors "in between", like Mongolia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploring im/mobilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper theorizes its effects on the interplay between mobility and governance as well as contributing to debates on the city, power, and spatial strategy. To explain governing power in the rearrangement of im/mobilities and urban life during the pandemic, the paper employs the concept of "governmobility." The term refers to governing through (im)mobility, and the technological self-governance discussed is not only constituted by the internalized regulation of im/mobilities but more specifically those mobilities enacted through communication technologies facilitating collective relations. This paper argues that technological self-governance maintains governmobility by enabling people to adjust to their "new normal" and continue with their daily lives. Governing, norm-making, and places are interwoven in the city's im/mobility regime, and resistance and criticism are intrinsic in the process of forming governance. The paper suggests considering place-(re)making at various levels as a proactive response to the new norm. Place-(re)making is constituted by governing activities of state and market as well as citizens to reshape their society and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wansheng is a small and historically wealthy industrial territory currently under the jurisdiction of Chongqing provincial-level city as an economic and technological development district. The overlapping territorial policies through which the central government reconfigured Wansheng constituted the conflictive setting of the reform approved by the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the State Council that merged Wansheng district and Qijiang county to establish Qijiang district in December 2011. This decision immediately produced discontent and social chaos in the former Wansheng district. Four months later, the central government repealed the original merger, establishing Wansheng as an economic and technological development district. Changes in administrative borders of sub-national territories in China are complex state strategies that intrinsically involve local bureaucratic conflicts and socioeconomic contradictions. This paper analyzes, through the disciplinary lens of political geography, the Wansheng-Qijiang merger as a contested and contradictory territorial strategy whose main goal was the centralization of power relations in Chongqing city by integrating two territories with extremely different socioeconomic and administrative conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project in Myanmar, this paper contests the proposition that China's state-coordinated investments are, by nature, more accommodating to local people's demands than Western investments. Tension between Myanmar villagers and the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) in a copper mine project does not square with Beijing's "inclusive globalization" narrative. Drawing upon extensive semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in a Sino-Myanmar copper mine project, as well as other secondary data, this study finds that the Chinese SOE's operation was reactive to the ebb and flow of social resistance and the government's pressure amid the host country's democratization in the 2010s. Reforms were more likely to occur when the Chinese SOE observed more domestic constraints in its operation environment. It showed less incentive to improve its business practices when societal actors failed to display strong resistance, and the host government did not care about its legitimacy. Despite Beijing's efforts to craft an image of itself as a responsible power, conflicts in the BRI project should not be simplified as the SOE's defiance of the state's regulations. They are rooted in the state-centric foreign policy that systematically overlooks societal actors in state-coordinated investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian leaders rely on regional leaders for both political support and the fulfillment of their policy objectives. In addition, top leaders face trade-offs between following established rules for managing bureaucratic officials' careers and exercising a free hand in choosing regional officials. This paper compares patterns of appointment of regional officials in Russia and China before and after 2012. In recent years, the leaders of both countries have centralized and personalized state power. We hypothesize that these changes have altered policies for managing the appointments of regional leaders in such a way as to increase their dependence on the central authorities and reduce their autonomy to create their own networks at the regional level. We analyze a comprehensive original set of biographical data on all top regional officials from 2003 through 2019 in China and from 2000 through 2019 in Russia. We discern clear differences between the pre- and post-2012 period for China and less marked differences for pre- and post-2012 Russia. Turnover of regional officials has become more frequent in both systems; average tenure in office has fallen; and the share of "outsiders" has risen. However, the corps of regional officials has not been rejuvenated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labor force contingent is a very complex and dynamic phenomenon, sensitive to demographic and socio-economic changes. In many countries, the labor force is shrinking and it has undergone a major transformation, which is expected to continue in the future. Serbia is affected by the same problem. This paper focuses on the demographic aspects of labor force formation in Serbia. The aim is to estimate the components – working age population, cohort turnover, net migration and their interrelation - in order to identify and quantify fluctuations in the labor force. Seeking to identify regional disparities and areas with a "weak" or "strong" labor force potential, this study highlights the importance of the spatial dimension. It was conducted at the municipality level and a typology of five different types of municipality is established. A decline in the labor force is observed in most municipalities in Serbia. The municipalities with a significant economic downturn in the past decades experienced intensive emigration, which is reflected in the weakening of the labor force. At the same time, other municipalities failed to achieve labor force increase despite a good demographic potential, due to intensive emigration of young people. Positive changes were identified only in eight municipalities in Serbia, due to a favorable fertility rate, age structure and, to a lesser extent, immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To contribute to the debate on the importance of state vis-à-vis inter-firm competition in regional development, this paper examines a representative dataset of the relocation of manufacturing firms in Guangdong province of China with multinomial logistic regression models. To improve the competitiveness of manufacturing in the Pearl River Delta, the Guangdong government implemented pro-active policies to encourage the relocation of existing manufacturing firms to their designated industrial parks during the 2000s. Although the initial results appear to support the usefulness of relocation policy, further examination reveals its effectiveness depends on the industrial sector and profiles of the relocated firms. In fact, the relocation of large-scale labor-intensive firms is not driven by local government initiatives. The physical proximity of high-technology parks to airports/ports has a bigger impact on the relocation of small-scale locally-funded high-technology firms into designated parks. In the case of locally-funded firms in polluting sectors, they are expanding rather than relocating to designated industrial parks. The empirical evidence indicates the non-binary nature of the industrial relocation policy. The nuances of relocation policy and its multi-scalar effects on relocated firms rejects any simplistic generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]