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This paper examines three controversies that revolve around the Hong Kong government's efforts to privatise components of its property assets in the years following the Asian financial crisis in 1997. While the rolling back of welfare and privatisation of public goods are typical features of the 'neo-liberal turn', the consequences of and responses to these processes are highly contingent upon specific historical experience and social practices. By examining the narratives of different actors over the course of these controversies, this paper aims to elucidate the contradictions and mutual entanglements between the ideology of neo-liberalism and everyday discourse and how the contestation in each of the three cases worked to reshape and ultimately to preserve the existing regime of legitimation. It also illustrates how the long-running 'laissez-faire' principles of Hong Kong's colonial period have contributed to the ongoing absorption of political critique, thus exposing the limits of 'people power'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the investment-oriented development model for economic growth adopted by Chinese governments has generated spectacular results, the risks of debt-financed urbanisation and economic development have recently become evident in mounting local debts that are undermining the financial system, triggering concerns with respect to local governments’ indebtedness, financial stability and sovereign risk in China. In this paper, we portray the uneven spatial and temporal dynamics of local government debt in China, and examine the ways in which it is intertwined with institutional, political and economic factors. Our analysis shows that while global and national economic conditions have resulted in a dramatic increase in local government debt, particularly in the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the spatial variation of local debt accumulation in China could be partly explained by two institutional factors: land finance and inter-jurisdictional competition. We argue that the behaviour of local governments may harm the long-term future of Chinese cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have found that there is a female disadvantage among rural migrants in the urban labour market in China. It remains unclear whether migrant women also lag behind migrant men in job mobility, an important channel for rural migrants to improve their labour market outcomes. Using data from a large-scale survey conducted in the Pearl River Delta region, one of the most important migration destinations in China, we examine gender gaps in job mobility of rural migrants from 1979 to 2006. Focusing on job mobility, this paper sheds new light on the changing gender dynamics among rural migrants in China. Most of the model results lend support to our hypotheses concerning the gendered job mobility patterns of rural migrants. We find that migrant women are less likely to change jobs for work-related reasons and more likely to engage in family-centered job mobility. Results of fixed-effects models of monthly wage further reveal that the positive effect of work-centered job mobility on rural migrants’ wages is smaller for migrant women. We also find that marriage does not disadvantage migrant women more than men in either work centred or family centred job mobility, and that there is a declining trend of female disadvantage in family-centered job mobility, which all points to the transformative role migration plays for rural migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanisation in China and its rapid increase in recent decades as a result of industrialisation and globalisation are often conceived as a simplified process. Moreover, the speed of the present day process yields the impression that the traces of previous forms of urbanisation are erased for good. Both of these assumptions are challenged in this paper. The built environment resulting from this urbanisation process is to be conceived as a series of layers that reflect different modes of productions and related logics of production of space. Hence, we try to comprehend the spatial arrangement of the city, which can be thought of as a geological metaphor. The social groups that have to be sheltered in urban residential space also radically change in each of these periods. We proceed to analyse these layers and how they combine and interact over time with the concept of socio-spatial configuration, which denotes a precise type of residential environment related to a specific social group in the city. Chinese cities are made up of five types of urbanisation, reflected in five layers and their related socio-spatial configurations: the traditional, proto-globalisation, socialist, market-led and globalisation layers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic cooperation between Hong Kong and Mainland China, especially Guangdong province, has flourished since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 1997. The landmark is the conclusion of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) between Hong Kong and the Mainland in 2003. CEPA covers liberalisation of trade in goods, liberalisation of trade in services, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and other trade facilitation measures. This paper uses the collaborative governance regime framework to analyse the economic cooperation between Hong Kong and Mainland China under CEPA. This case shows that if there are environmental conditions generating incentives for both parties to cooperate, a committed leadership on both sides to drive the regime, and institutional arrangements that could facilitate the collaborative dynamics, effective collaboration between players from different political and institutional backgrounds can still be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's new development wave since the mid-1990s is distinguishable by its strong urbanism. Urban governments, particularly at municipal and county levels, rushed to build industrial parks. Urban landscape was also fundamentally transformed by their massive investments in infrastructures - both residential and commercial properties. How to explain local governments' continuing drive for development? Why has this particular policy combination gained traction among local officials? We approach these questions by making a simple assumption about local governments as revenue maximisers. Their desires for more revenues are constrained by two institutional changes. Vertically, the central government recentralised the fiscal system, leaving local governments in fiscal shortages. Liberalisation and regional competition in the late 1990s further exacerbated their revenue imperative. The land regime provided the final institutional link that enabled local officials to leverage urban infrastructure and real estate for industrial expansion. This study can shed some light on the ongoing debate about China's development model in the urban literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By retrieving household-level information from 127,938 household heads and fiscal data from 177 prefectures located in eastern and central China, this research quantifies the net association between land finance and urban housing tenure. While the results demonstrate that in 2005 China’s urban housing market remained stratified and simultaneously favoured individuals possessing economic, political and human capital, the key finding is that, net of other household- and prefecture-level effects, land finance is significantly and negatively associated with local homeownership. Moreover, both the demand and supply sides of the urban housing market contribute to such net association. By demonstrating the internal links between urban housing and local finance, this research not only provides a more holistic view of housing stratification during institutional changes but also lends empirical support to conceptual frameworks that explain a territory-based coalition between local governments and selective enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study applies a bootstrap panel Granger causality test to determine the relationship between urbanisation and economic growth for China. We find that the patterns of interaction between urbanisation and economic growth vary across different regions. The empirical results show that in urbanisation of the northern coastal region and most of the inland region Granger causes economic growth, whereas economic growth does not have a significant effect on urbanisation, except in the southern coastal region and the inland region. One-fourth of China’s provinces, primarily in the southern coastal region, do not show a Granger causality relationship between urbanisation and economic growth. This finding indicates that urbanisation has promoted economic growth by expanding demand and that economic growth’s effect on urbanisation is restricted by administrative intervention rather than market mechanisms. Thus, the findings for three-fourths of the provinces in China conform to the urbanised economy theory. These results may help regional governments undergoing urbanisation to create fair economic growth policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The unprecedented urban economic growth in China has created a huge demand for urban land. Built upon the standard monocentric city model, this empirical study investigates the determinants of urban spatial scale of Chinese cities using a crosssectional dataset from 650 Chinese cities. The estimates are surprisingly similar to those found for US cities, with four basic factors (population, income, commuting cost and price of rural land) explaining most of the variation in urban spatial scale of Chinese cities. The findings clearly show that although land use in Chinese cities may have inherited many centrally planned features, market forces today exert a very significant influence. The study also shows that the urban spatial scale of Chinese cities is better understood by a model that consolidates features of both 'closed' and 'open' cities proposed in the standard urban land economics literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]