Search

This paper examines how Chinese transnational investments, as (re)framed in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), contribute to changes in urbanisation processes in Southeast Asia. On the ground, the BRI becomes contextualised and intersects with local and national development trajectories. The growing presence of Chinese actors in the region intensifies urban dynamics, especially in secondary cities and emerging urban sites, where the BRI is used as a lever for local internationalisation strategies. The heterogeneous nature of the links between the BRI and various large urban projects is demonstrated on the basis of case studies involving changing consortia of private and public Chinese and Southeast Asian actors. A regional approach allows us to identify connections and shared processes across Southeast Asian countries. It provides a historically grounded understanding of how the BRI incorporates long‐term interactions with China and more recent partnerships in Southeast Asian countries. The paper paves the way for a research agenda that contests the image of China as a monolithic actor implementing the BRI uniformly and consistently. Further analyses are needed to examine systems and networks of actors as well as the local urban politics that affect the BRI on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green innovation (GI) can enable win‒win style economic and ecological benefits. Using China's pilot scheme for the construction of the intellectual property protection (IPP) system as an example, this paper empirically tests the impact of IPP system reform on the GI level and its spatial spillover effect. The results show that IPP system reform has significantly promoted urban GI, indicating that a progressive reform model characterized by experimentalist governance is applicable to innovation policy practices in developing countries. The dynamic effect analysis shows that IPP system reform can be applied to continuously promote urban GI. The mechanism analysis shows that such use of IPP system reform can improve the level of urban GI by promoting investment and talent agglomeration, confirming the viewpoint of the institutionalist school. The heterogeneity analysis shows that IPP system reform plays a stronger role in promoting GI in peripheral cities than in central cities, in cities with lower rather than higher scientific and educational levels and in cities with weaker rather than stronger GI capacity. Consistent with the theory of institutional diffusion, IPP system reform has a significant spatial spillover effect, promoting GI activities in surrounding cities while working to improve the local GI level. This paper affirms the effectiveness of the pilot regional innovation policy with Chinese characteristics, with important theoretical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of the political hierarchies of cities in China from different perspectives. First, we examine the economic disparities between prefectural cities and municipalities. Furthermore, this paper draws upon a quasi‐ experiment to analyze the impact of upgrading Chongqing to a municipality in 1997 using the synthetic control method. The city‐upgrading policy significantly increased Chongqing's gross domestic product (GDP) in the following 4 years. Finally, we find that the policy increased GDP in treated cities within 1200 km of Chongqing by about 10%–13% relative to the control cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2015 China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) this paper examines the effect of culture on the gender gap in financial literacy. We exploit geographical differences in culture in China, comparing outcomes between rural and urban areas and between areas in the east and west (Shanghai and Chongqing). Using the Blinder‐Oaxaca decomposition we show that, nationally, the gender gap in financial literacy is entirely the product of differences in the way men and women acquire financial literacy. It is a result consistent with cultural effects. When considering just women in Shanghai and Chongqing we observe a raw financial literacy differential of 13% (favoring Shanghai). This gap is also the product of differences in the way financial literacy is acquired. It provides additional evidence as to the importance of culture when it comes to understanding financial literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]