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Urban rail transit emergencies in China's large cities are frequent occurrences but currently, operation managers lack effective analysis tools that can help in reducing them. In this study we present a knowledge graph tool, developed using historical emergency text information from Beijing's urban rail transit fault logs from which an information model is developed enabling key information to be mined and subsequently analyzed so that interrelationships within the text can be determined. The knowledge graph tool assists urban rail transit operation managers to analyze more effectively, through knowledge query and semantic search, the relations and attributes of emergencies enabling more insight into their root causes. Compared with traditional first and second order text parsing algorithms, the extended high order parsing algorithm proposed in this paper has better performance in the extraction of both phrases and inter-phrase relations, with an extraction accuracy of more than 85%. Furthermore, compared with traditional failure mode effect analysis methods, the extended method proposed in this paper can also calculate phrase attributes and therefore provide a reference for quantitative risk calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planning controlling post-colonial heritage discourse has long been influenced by changing political and economic narratives. This paper documents diversified uses and narratives of colonial heritage in twelve plans of the Beijing Legation Quarter, China to investigate the influence of multiple identities in Beijing's development. By analysing the particular spatio-temporal dynamics in eleven former legation compounds, it presents three planning strategies used in colonial heritage site regeneration (diminishment, transformation, and enforcement) and argues that the ambivalent or paradoxical discourses of colonial heritage in the Beijing Legation Quarter result from Beijing's multiple cultural identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how returnees' repatriation speed and irregularity affect FDI knowledge spillovers. Using a unique dataset of high-tech Chinese firms located in Zhongguancun Science Park in Beijing from 2007 to 2013, we find that returnees are vital in improving local firms' absorptive capacity and disseminating FDI externalities. Our empirical results show that returnees' high repatriation speed positively contributes to the local absorption of FDI knowledge spillovers, whereas repatriation irregularity dampens it. This research highlights the time-based attributes of returnees' repatriation as a new factor of absorptive capacity when learning from FDI knowledge. It thus provides a more integrated viewpoint on the relationship between returnees and FDI spillovers. Our findings have important implications for policymakers and practitioners. [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]

Over the past 5–10 years, a growing number of Chinese scholars and policy experts have sought to theorise the 'development' of other peoples and places in the Global South. These intellectual efforts include building temporal frameworks for describing development processes, and often, an implicit set of directives for effecting positive change. Drawing on eight months' fieldwork in Beijing, this paper examines the representational practices of depicting development and its temporal dimension that have been mobilised in the ongoing production of Chinese international development thinking. In particular, it is concerned with the ways in which temporal distance and proximity have been constructed to provide a theoretical and moral justification for China's intensifying geopolitical and economic preoccupations. We argue that more than a system of explanations, current Chinese thinking contains and expresses a recalibrated will to geopolitical power, which has had a conditioning effect on the enframing of the meanings and relations of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration or segmentation of regional carbon prices implies that barriers may hinder prices from adjusting efficiently and impede linkages between regional carbon markets. Past studies have found that crossregional carbon prices in China tend to diverge, indicating unbalanced regional markets and that carbon cap-and-trade policies may be insufficiently effective. China's carbon trading pilots opened in 2013. Is the integration efficient? This is the research question addressed in this study. This paper uses the carbon prices of four carbon-trading pilot regions in China (i.e. Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong) over the period of January 1, 2014, to March 23, 2021, to explore whether prices are correlated across three dimensions: long-term convergence, short-term correlation, and volatility transmission by adopting a vector error correction model with heterogeneous variances. And by using longer-term daily data and empirical tests that can account for the multiple-faceted correlations, this paper provides evidence showing that long-term convergence and risk transfer between the four regional carbon prices exist, which indicates significant regional integration. The results indicate that the price behavior of the Beijing pilot is efficient and that the Shanghai pilot has the lowest volatility. The paper also documents an information transfer pattern. For example, the Beijing pilot is shown to be the leading risk transfer market, whereas the Shanghai pilot is shown to be the market where most risk is transferred. Contrary to findings elsewhere, our main results demonstrate that China's carbon markets exhibit integration efficiency and no imbalance between regions. This may be because the efficiency of China's carbon markets has improved over time. The evidence also implies that if a multi-dimensional correlation has not been considered, it may underestimate the efficiency of regional carbon prices' integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most academics regard virtual religious communities to be secondary to in-person religious communities, the virtual Buddhist sangha served as a full and complete social infrastructure that provides purpose to life and spiritual consolation to its members. From the outbreak of the Covid-19 from March to May in 2020, this paper investigates how a Chinese Buddhist group based in Beijing practices Theravada meditation on the WeChat social media platforms. This paper, based on online ethnography and informal interviews, argues that digital media is a significant arena for Chinese Buddhists to conduct Buddhist rituals, transmit Buddhist ideas, generate and accumulate Buddhist merits, and build alternative cyber-Buddhist economies. This paper also highlights that Buddhist groups are continuously growing and rising as highly united and community-oriented digital sanghas within current China's technoculture context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The micropolitics involved in urbanising land is yet to be well illustrated in urban and development studies. With the case of Dahongmen in Beijing, this paper explores the governing techniques for dealing with land transformation to uncover the nature and conduct of the state in weaving together land and urban questions. Recognising the power of discourses in enacting actions, this paper focuses on two performative moments of the state in reassembling land for the urban process, corresponding to social (re)ordering and economic mechanisms respectively. Both moments are critical since new ideas, concepts, and calculative rationales are invented to reassemble land into the intermediator of the urban process, whereby the state renews its identity and authority. The state, seen from the perspective of performativity, is more like a process (with structural effects) where certain utterances are made and repeated to incorporate multiple actors in land assemblages for the urban political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the implementation of China's clean heating plan in 2017, the progress of natural gas replacing coal for heating is still not ideal. With the proposal of the goal of carbon neutralization and the impact of international war, the price, supply, and demand of natural gas have attracted attention. In case of gas shortage, reasonable schemes are required to be allocated to different industries and categories. Therefore, this research divides the gas field into four levels according to the social utility, and establishes the multi-objective distribution optimization model considering the social and economic benefits. The solution of the model is based on genetic algorithm and realized on MATLAB. Multi-objective optimization strategies and several constraints are used to make the algorithm's process of the search is continuously moving closer to the Pareto optimal front. Taking Beijing as an example, two scenarios are set to simulate and optimize, so as to verify the optimization effect of the model. Better quantitative results are created after reallocation of natural gas. The ideal scenario realizes 5.64% more social benefits than 2019 through additional allocation of 117.288 million cubic meters of reserve gas. The constraint scenario creates 0.67% more social benefits with only 0.07% decrease of the economic benefits. The conclusions show that allocating more gas to three main industries can improve the optimization effect and it is necessary to expand the supply of natural gas reserve volume. This paper provides a new perspective of natural gas allocation category and priority, providing theoretical and practical ideas for the planning of natural gas security emergency plan and the development of gas sales plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As long as maps produced by the official Chinese state mapping agency at scales larger than 1:1,000,000 remain inaccessible, Soviet General staff maps provide the best alternative. Although toponyms are given only in cyrillicized form, vernacular script equivalents may be found on pre-1945 Japanese military survey maps as well as on some maps of the US Army Mapping Service (AMS). A unique feature of the Soviet 1:200,000 map series is the accompanying spravka or descriptive text on the reverse of each sheet, probably constituting in aggregate the most detailed description of China ever compiled. Soviet General Staff plans of Chinese cities include 'objects' of military significance, many of which are omitted or not identified on any other mapping. This paper presents translations of the spravka from a representative sheet of the 1:200,000 series and from the city plan of Beijing, together with an evaluation of the reliability of their content. [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]

As the country with the largest population of older people, while still being a developing one, China is confronted with huge challenges in seeking an optimum response, which is high on the agenda of policy makers in Beijing. This paper makes the case for a radical new strategy on ageing which substitutes an ageing-oriented paradigm for the previous passive, instrumental and economistic ones. We first present an overview of the trend of Chinese population ageing, compared with already aged societies, followed by a summary of its impacts on the social welfare system associated with old age. Then we outline an alternative WHO influenced policy paradigm, active ageing, focusing on health, participation and security. In the light of this new approach, more active policies on ageing are called for, which are rooted in a comprehensive understanding of population trends, draw on international experience and conform to Chinese conditions and traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timely and accurate survey of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) distribution is of significance for managing C&DW and enhancing the quality of the urban environment, especially in rapidly urbanizing country of China. Automatic C&DW recognition using high-resolution remote sensing images is an extremely important surveying method. Existing C&DW recognition methods can only obtain a rough spatial distribution of C&DW. Mapping precise C&DW distribution on large-scale remote sensing images is still challenging. In this paper, to solve the problem of precise C&DW recognition, a novel deep learning algorithm based on high-resolution remote sensing images is proposed, which we refer to as the cross-channel multi-scale gated fusion network (CCMGNet). CCMGNet extracts depth features of C&DW from RGB and NIR bands by using two independent encoding streams. A gated fusion layer and a multi-scale attention module are designed to effectively fuse the features from two encoding streams. We manually labelled the sample set used for training and testing on 26 remote sensing images captured by the Gaofen-2 (GF-2) satellite. These images were taken in nine typical cities in China over the time period from 2019 to 2021. The results showed that the proposed method is effective in recognizing C&DW, realizing 89.42% and 84.52% in precision and IoU, and is superior to other state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms and existing C&DW recognition methods. The effectiveness of all significant components in CCMGNet was confirmed by ablation experiments. The proposed method was applied to extract C&DW regions in large-scale remote sensing images, with an example of a GF-2 image of Beijing. The high extraction efficiency and satisfactory visual effect demonstrate the potential of the proposed method for surveying the spatial distribution of C&DW. The novel method will play a crucial role in automatically surveying the spatial distribution and size of C&DW across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's borderlands have received increased investment and policy attention since Beijing formally launched the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013. This special issue, comprised of four research articles and a photo essay, is designed to provide a timely intervention into the growing literature seeking to situate and assess this important policy campaign. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork in China's southwestern, northwestern, and northern borderlands, the contributing authors analyze recent borderland transformations against the backdrop of the BRI. However, by shifting the analytical focus to prioritize voices and events in borderlands, the papers de-center Beijing-centric discourse on the BRI, and provide urgent reminders of region-specific geographies and histories. Taken together, the papers underscore the persistent social complexity of borderland situations, revealing intricate processes of resistance, adaptation, and muddling through, while highlighting continuities and ruptures associated with the present moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of graduates from institutions of higher education has soared year after year, alongside growth in the demand for high-end talent posed by economic development, a growing number of graduates from undergraduate programs are choosing to continue on to receive graduate education, so as to improve their competitive advantage in the labor market. This paper conducted empirical analysis on data from the Beijing College Students Panel Survey. Studies have found that, among undergraduate students who graduated from institutions of higher education in Beijing in 2010 and 2012, approximately one third chose to continue on to receive graduate education, and both the family background and academic performance of those students who pursued graduate education were significantly better than the students who sought employment directly after graduation. Further analysis indicated that, with respect to access to domestic opportunities for graduate education, the variable of family background essentially exercises an effect by influencing the type of institution at which students pursued undergraduate education, as well as their academic performance. In comparing the two options of studying abroad and pursuing in-country graduate education, the type of institution at which students pursued undergraduate education and their academic performance had no significant impact in this respect, and it was chiefly the family's socioeconomic status that had an effect. The findings in this study have important policy implications for graduate student admissions and training in China at present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Xenoxylon is an important boreal Mesozoic fossil wood genus and has been widely reported from sites across northern China. This paper reports well-preserved Xenoxylon wood from the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary Tuchengzi Formation at Yanqing, Beijing, China. The fossil wood described here is ascribed to two species, i.e. Xenoxylon latiporosum and X. peidense. The present new finding enrichs our knowledge of the floral characteristics, especially the forest composition of the Tuchengzi Formation. These new records enlarge the fossil wood diversity of the genus Xenoxylon of the Tuchengzi Formation up to three species at Yanqing. Statistic results of the annual and mean sensitivity values of the X. latiporosum and X. peidense indicates that the trees inhabited under a sensitive climate with relatively stable interannual water supply. Additionally, some fungal remains represented by fungal hyphae were found with wood tissues of specimens of X. peidense. Typical wood rotting structures resembling those of the extant white rot are also found in X. latiporosum. This is the first record of fungal hyphae in Yanqing, Beijing, China, and provides us with new evidence that can be used to explore interactions between fungi and plants in the Late Jurassic. Institutional abbreviations: YQ = Yanqing Silicified Wood National Geopark, Beijing, China [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The positioning accuracy of Ziyuan-3 01 (ZY-3 01) and Gaofen-7 (GF-7) panchromatic imagery, obtained during the early deployment of the satellites, was verified. Particularly, this paper first validated the geometric positioning accuracy of GF-7 panchromatic imagery. Based on the rigorous geometric model of surveying and mapping satellites, this study applied a geometric calibration (GC) model using the Rodrigues rotation matrix. Also, we employed the self-calibrating bundle adjustment with an additional parameter model to compensate for the internal orientation distortion. The results show that the positioning accuracy can be largely improved with few ground control points. Especially, the horizontal accuracy (specified in x and y) and elevation accuracy of ZY-3 01 in the Anping area are around 4 m and 2 m, respectively, and that of GF-7 in the Beijing area can achieve 3.2 m, 2.8 m, and 1.2 m in the x, y, and z directions, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Latecomer technology imitation and learning is an important driving force to enhance their competitiveness and total factor productivity (TFP). This paper constructs green TFP (GTFP) based on the SBM–Global–Luenberger index, using Chinese provincial panel data from 2003 to 2017. The marginal effects of foreign direct investment (FDI), outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), import and export, and intangible and total international technology spillovers (ITS) on GTFP were assessed. These effects were analysed under the influence of absorption capabilities such as research and development intensity, economic and financial, and openness. A spatial diffusion model based on three diffusion sources in China's first-tier cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, was constructed to describe the heterogeneous impacts of ITS on GTFP under the marketisation of diffusion sources. We found: (1) ITS based on exports and OFDI promote economic, imports and FDI are relatively small, independent technological innovation is the dominant source of economic growth. (2) Considering spatial diffusion, the contribution of Beijing's ITS is relatively weak, and Shanghai's contribution is stronger. Coastal areas have the largest marginal effect of ITS on GTFP, and ITS do not attenuate as geographic distances increase. (3) The market has a multiplier effect, modifying the relationship between ITS and GTFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reflectance anisotropy of land surface serves as an important bridge between surface biophysical parameters and remote sensing observations. It can characterize by the linear kernel-driven bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF), which is the combination of several kernel functions and kernel weights. These kernel weights can be estimated by remote sensing; however, the stability of current kernel weights products is still challenging, especially in urban areas with complex aerosol properties and heterogeneous surfaces. In this paper, we propose a method for robust estimation of kernel weights from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) surface spectral reflectance products (MxD09GA) data based on the constrained least-squares method (CLSM) and a priori knowledge. The kernel weights data were obtained by the CLSM from 2014 to 2017 in Beijing region of China. Validations were carried out using the MxD09GA and BRDF/Albedo products (MCD43A1). The results show that the time series of kernel weights by the CLSM show small variability over different land cover types. The kernel weights estimated by the CLSM can clearly show the phenological signal and fitting ability of surface spectral reflectance is better than that of the MCD43A1 products in Beijing urban area. Experimental results demonstrate that the CLSM has the potential for the robust estimation of kernel weights in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canthaxanthin is a colourant widely used in medicine, food and cosmetics, which is closely related to human eye dysfunction. The EU determines that the daily acceptable intake of canthaxanthin (ADI) is 0.03 mg canthaxanthin per kg body weight. In order to protect people's diet health and avoid the occurrence of food safety accidents, this paper measured the content of canthaxanthin in 114 egg samples sourced from different regions of China using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). The dietary exposure assessment method was used to evaluate the dietary risk to Chinese consumers. Results showed that the content of canthaxanthin varies significantly across regions of origin, with eggs produced in Beijing having a lower amount than those from other regions. The average dietary exposure of children (2–10 years old) was 0.242 ~ 0.653 μg/(kg bw∙d), and the dietary exposure of 95/97.5/99 percentile was 0.246 ~ 1.779 μg/(kg bw∙d). The maximum exposure was 3.089 μg/(kg bw∙d), and its risk quotient was 0.103 (<1), which was an acceptable risk. For the teenager group (11–18 years old), the average dietary exposure was 0.141 ~ 0.247 μg/(kg bw∙d), and the dietary exposure at the 95/97.5/99 percentile was 0.143 ~ 0.671 μg/(kg bw∙d), presenting an acceptable risk. For adults, the dietary risk of eating eggs with canthaxanthin is the lowest among the three age groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the cooperation patent data between 31 provinces in China from 1985 to 2017, this paper portrays the topological structure, spatial pattern and proximity mechanism of China's inter-regional innovation cooperation network by the graph theory, spatial statistical methods and the quadratic assignment procedure model. The conclusions are as follows: (1) the topological structure of China's inter-regional innovation cooperation forms a hierarchical network with Beijing as the core and it exhibits a typical small-world property and 'core–periphery' structure. (2) In terms of spatial distribution characteristics, the 'quadruple' with the Beijing–Tianjin region, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Sichuan as the peaks has become the backbone of the inter-regional innovation cooperation network in China. At the same time, the spatial differentiation of the three indicators of degree centrality, median centrality and intensity centrality is obvious. (3) In terms of proximity mechanism, geographical, institutional and cognitive proximity exert a significant effect on China's inter-regional innovation cooperation network linkage. However, there are significant differences in the effects of various proximity elements on China's regional innovation network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a governmentality approach to examine the political history of human–canine relationships in the People's Republic of China, focusing on the evolution of household dog regulations in Beijing. In doing so, it ties the micropolitics of human–canine relations to transformations in political, economic, and social governance and ways of thinking about and acting on the interactions between human and nonhuman animal species. An examination of successive waves of government regulations reveals a shift from top-down authoritarian approaches to governance toward a greater recognition of (circumscribed) individual responsibility and self-governance, which is emerging under the organizing framework of "social credit." This government-managed rearrangement is contributing to the rise of new understandings of human–canine interactions as co-constitutive relationships based in citizenship rights and obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the linguistic landscape (LL) signs of an "urban village" inhabited by rural–urban migrant workers in suburban Beijing. Migrant workers have moved to urban centers for low-skill low-income jobs on a massive scale over past decades as China has undergone rapid economic changes. Some of them start to invest their time and energy in building a new workers' community and in constructing urban workers' identities through linguistic and semiotic practices. Producing and displaying LL signage is part of this identity construction process. In this study, I present three examples to analyze the relationship between space, LL signs and identity construction. Ethnography allows me not only to observe the LL signs as semiotic resources but also to approach the authors and the audience and to find out their uptake of the signs. The results show that the LL signs shape social meanings of the space and the space in turn is agentive in constructing its inhabitants' identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public participation is playing an increasingly important role in the process of environmental protection, especially in some developing countries such as China. However, the studies that have focused on public participation in air pollution control, especially those that have used quantitative research, are comparatively insufficient in China. This paper investigated residents' participation intention and behavior in air pollution control in Beijing, China, and related the theory of planned behavior and the concepts of risk perception to analyze the formation mechanism of participation behavior. The results indicated a remarkable discrepancy between participation intention and behavior. Subjective norm was the major factor in predicting participation intention, followed by risk perception and attitude. Income was observed to have a negative effect on participation intention and a positive effect on participation behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a small but growing body of scholarship has emerged on the category of the Chinese art district, particularly its institutionalisation amidst twenty-first century creative industries polices. Such research presents important stories of Chinese artists’ negotiations with urban and political authority, thus nuancing paradigms for the comprehension of political work within contemporary China. This current article contributes to this growing research area by considering the spatial conditions for these socio-spatial categories’ emergence, namely, the urban structures in which they first took shape in 1990s Beijing. First occupying traditional villages (cunzi) and later ex-socialist work units (danwei), these arts colonies appropriated existing communal architecture, and turned their designs and physical buildings to their own communal ends. Importantly, these sites were made available by the dramatic reconstruction of the city, and in this sense these occupations were limited to the temporal realm. To describe the nature of occupations, and their eventual impact upon the shape of the city, this paper proposes the category of “the temporal pocket”: a cellular and temporary inhabitance, defined by the shared investments of its participants, and one that is both discrete (in the sense of its spaces) and discreet (in the sense that this can be understood as a non-oppositional politics). The article is informed by spatial and cultural theory, literature on Chinese urban planning and art history, as well as primary documents (such as documentaries, art works and archival material) and interviews conducted by the researcher in Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China’s defence expenditure has been growing rapidly along with GDP growth during the past two decades. Meanwhile, the income gap has continued to increase. There are conflicting views regarding whether the defence expenditure is capable of reducing income inequality. Therefore, this paper investigates the existence of any spillover effect of defence expenditure on income inequality, with a special focus on the regional differences among 31 provinces and 7 military regions in China. We extend panel cointegration and the impulse response function by using panel data during the period of 1997–2012. The empirical results show that the defence expenditure has an impact on income inequality, and the effect varies over different regions in China. The defence expenditure has a spillover effect on income inequality in the full sample panel and the southeastern panel. An increase in the defence expenditure does not crowd out social welfare spending due to the high level of economic development and government expenditure. On the contrary, in the northern panel, the effect is opposite because of the unbalanced economic development levels within the panel. Beijing as the capital of China, benefits more from the expansion of defence expenditure thus widening the income gap. In addition, the impulse response analyses further confirm a stronger effect of the defence expenditure on income inequality in the northern and the southeastern panels over a short period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits China's recent experiences of hosting three international mega-events: the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games. While maintaining a critical political economic perspective, this paper builds upon the literature of viewing mega-events as societal spectacles and puts forward the proposition that these mega-events in China are promoted to facilitate capital accumulation and ensure socio-political stability for the nation's further accumulation. The rhetoric of a ‘Harmonious Society’ as well as patriotic slogans are used as key languages of spectacles in order to create a sense of unity through the consumption of spectacles, and pacify social and political discontents rising out of economic inequalities, religious and ethnic tensions, and urban–rural divide. The experiences of hosting mega-events, however, have shown that the creation of a ‘unified’, ‘harmonious’ society of spectacle is built on displacing problems rather than solving them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a mathematical model to calculate the average waiting time for passengers transferring from rail transit to buses based on the statistical analysis of primary data collected in Beijing. An important part of the average waiting time modelling is to analyse the distributions of passenger arrival rates. It is shown that the lognormal and gamma distributions have the best fit for direct transfer and non-direct transfer passengers, respectively. Subsequently, an average waiting time model for transferring passengers is developed based on passenger arrival rate distributions. Furthermore, case studies are conducted for two scenarios with real and estimated data, resulting in relative errors of −3.69% and −3.77%, respectively. Finally, the paper analyses the impacts of bus headway, the headway of rail cars, and the proportion of direct transfer passengers on average waiting time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The links between urban form and travel behaviour have been widely studied in the field of travel demand management. However, the existing literature is dominated by case studies from the developed countries. A study of a city in a developing and industrialising country can add some fresh evidence to the debate on the impacts of urban form on travel patterns. Using household survey data from Beijing, this paper finds that aspects of urban form have significant effects on workers' car use and the duration of travel by car in journeys to work, while controlling for socio-economic factors and households' preferences related to residential location. The sprawling patterns of land development play a negative role in reducing motorised commuting trips and shortening vehicle hours travelled in the current processes of rapid urban expansion and motorisation. Since urban sprawl is greatly influenced by growing market forces, the findings in this paper reveal the negative effects of regulation-liberation of land development management on travel behaviour modification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using firm-level data collected through a survey in 2008 followed by semi-structured interviews with firms in 2009-2010, this article systematically compares the geography of linkages of the software industry between two regions, one in India (Pune) and one in China (Great Beijing). In contrast to what the literature on knowledge bases and regional innovation systems argues the paper points out to marked differences both in the organization as well as in the geographical spread of the knowledge sources in the software industry between Pune and Greater Beijing. The paper suggests that the literature of knowledge bases could benefit from incorporating the insights from strategy studies as well as innovation systems studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in addressing moral aspects in the research and education of socio-scientific issues. This paper investigates students' interpretations of climate change from a moral perspective. The students were 14 years old, studying at Green Schools in the Beijing area, China. The study was based on semi-structured group interviews and the data were analysed from an intentional perspective, which means that both cognitive and situational aspects were taken into consideration in the analysis. Previous research has revealed a close relation between morality and socio-scientific issues and also advocated the need for addressing ethical aspects in science education. However, empirical studies exploring the question of what students' moral reasoning might look like at the individual level have not yet generated enough attention. In this study this is the core focus of interest. The findings show that the students conceptualise the solutions to mitigating climate change in relation to two different stances. That is, they contextualise the problems and solutions by addressing the individual, where the individual is either 'myself' or 'someone else'. The different notions of the individual become crucial as the students' views and considerations for the environment, as well as society, change according to the different contexts. From a moral point of view, the students seem quite unaware of their varying consideration for others, the environment and society. The paper ends with a discussion of implications for practice and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the urban water management framework that China's central government has adopted to manage the supply of water to the country's urban areas. These laws, policies and institutional arrangements cover water resources management, urban planning and environmental management issues. This paper considers the application of this framework in three urban areas: Beijing, Shanghai and Shaoxing Prefecture in Zhejiang Province. These case studies are used as the basis of a discussion on the ways that the framework could be enhanced, both structurally and in terms of its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increases in commuting time have caused serious social and environmental problems in a physically fragmentizing mega-city. Some policy-makers attend to solve commuting-related problems through alternative land-use policies, in particular mixed land use and multi-functional structures, rather than mere transport programmes. This paper investigates the effects of the jobs-housing balance on commuting time at the community level in Beijing. The paper puts forward a new indicator of home-based job proximity to measure the jobs-housing balance. A 1500 household-based travel data set was used to aggregate the average commuting time of the 60 communities studied. Based on the results of a correlation analysis, findings suggest that home-based job proximity has the strongest significantly negative relationship with average community commuting time. In fact, the results of a two-step regression analysis suggest that 68.6% of the changes in average commuting time are explained overwhelmingly by the home-based job proximity variable. However, there are no significant associations between average commuting time and the variables of local public transport accessibility and private vehicle transport accessibility. Obviously, current urban policy, which relies predominantly on ambitious and expensive programmes of transport infrastructure provision must be rethought in Beijing. Improving the jobs-housing balance through the implemention of compact land development may be an alternative to reducing overall commuting duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the meaning of “old age” in reform-era Beijing from complementary perspectives. Based on extensive, multi-sited anthropological fieldwork and document analysis, it contrasts the experiences of older people in Beijing with a critical investigation of public debates about “old age”. The paper examines older people's narratives about their gains and losses in the reform era and analyses several of their strategies to deal with rapid social change. It is argued that current debates about “old age” in Beijing tend to view older people as a collective, quantitative threat to the social structure or as pitiful recipients of rapid social change. Older people as active agents of social change are largely absent from these debates. It is suggested that the tension between public portrayals of “old age” by younger and middle-aged people and the experiences of older people is indicative of different, generation-based judgements of continuity and change in the reform era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most R&D resources in China were allocated to public research institutes/universities until the economic transition of the mid 1990s. To maximize the return from these resources, it is important to have a healthy collaboration between industry and research institutes/universities on industrial innovation. This paper examines that relationship and discusses some empirical evidence on its efficiency with particular reference to industry in Beijing. Following a survey of 950 industrial enterprises, the influences of the collaboration relationship on industrial innovation were analyzed. The main findings indicate that the technology novelty of industrial innovation is positively related to that relationship, i.e. the more the collaboration, the higher the technology novelty of the innovation. However, the collaboration relationship is less efficient in terms of economic performance indicators such as innovation sales and profit ratios, to measure innovation. Moreover, the collaboration relationship is still far from efficient in stimulating industrial innovation in China. The major barriers to successful collaboration have also been addressed in this paper with the aim of devising policies and suggesting possible improvements to collaboration efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents key findings of a situational analysis of institutional and structural levels of HIV/AIDS-related discrimination in Beijing, China, with a focus on the area of health care. Initially slow to respond to the presence of HIV, China has altered its approach and enacted strict legislative protection for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). In order to determine whether this has altered discrimination against PLWHA, this study examined existing legislation and policy, and interviewed key informants working in health care and PLWHA. The overall findings revealed that discrimination in its many forms continued to occur in practice despite China's generally strong legislative protection, and it is the actual practice that is hindering PLWHAs’ access to health services. A number of legislative and policy gaps that allow discrimination to occur in practice were also identified and discussed. The paper concludes with a call to rectify specific gaps between legislation, policy and practice. An understanding of the underlying factors that drive discrimination will also be necessary for effective strategic interventions to be developed and implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the transformative process of female vendors in the Silk Street Market, Beijing. They are female internal migrants hailing from a wide range of provinces including Anhui, Heilongjiang, Zhejiang and the city of Shanghai. The Silk Street Market has undergone a transformation beyond recognition from a makeshift open air market into an iconic place of modern Beijing located in the Central Business District. This global-meet-local marketplace not only provides female vendors with a living but also serves as an arena where they learn how to create upward mobility and thus contribute to the well-being of the family. Despite the obstacles of low educational attainment they manage to acquire everyday cosmopolitan skills enabling them to survive and flourish in the postmodern competitive urban jungle of Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores why Zhejiangcun's Wenzhou migrants and Wangjing's Chaoxianzu migrants were able to maintain and actively restructure their settlements in Beijing while Beijing's other migrant settlements either disappeared or were forced out from their original locations. Highlighting the role of the Wenzhou model in Zhejiangcun and that of the transnational ethnic ties in Wangjing, this research illustrates how certain rural migrants emerged as a new social group by utilizing their cultural capital based on native-place and ethnic ties and newly found economic power. The present study examines the urban space of Zhejiangcun and Wangjing where alternative sources of economic power and social networks were created and utilized and therefore offers a unique perspective by locating a specifically-founded ethnographic analysis within the general debate on the restructuring of post-reform urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to look into the transformation of local innovation systems in the high-tech parks of Shanghai and Beijing and their technological learning and upgrading. The areas that we have chosen to investigate are Beijing's Zhongguancun and Shanghai's Yangpu District. The main reason that we selected these two areas for study is because they are home to most of the top universities and R&D institutes in these two cities. Our main focus will be on how institutions—the local state, inter-firm relations and the relationship between R&D institutions and firms—are co-evolving to shape and constrain a local system of innovation. Our research finds that the capacities and autonomy of the Zhongguancun of Beijing's Haidian District and Yangpu District of Shanghai differ in various aspects, but both regions are struggling to upgrade innovation and enhance economic development. The ‘high-tech cluster’ provides a useful instrument or label to achieve goals other than innovation and R&D. Elite universities are regarded as engines for network formation, but visible and invisible walls of Chinese universities discount efforts to foster a university-centered innovation hub which especially shows in the Yangpu case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a proposed centralised greywater reuse (CGR) system for Daxing New City, Beijing. This system would use separate greywater and blackwater discharge pipes in residences and public buildings. Greywater would be treated in a centralised plant and reused for public purposes. Water supply–demand balance analysis showed that this system would conserve 28.5% of freshwater resources. A centralised wastewater reuse system that would conserve the same water resources and serve the same consumers was developed for comparison. The greywater reuse system would cost 1.2% more than the reference system, but would decrease the pollution load by 10% and improve the water-quality compliance of the Xinfeng River (total phosphorous: 24–42%, total nitrogen: 0–7%). The proposed CGR system exhibited acceptable water conservation, environmental impact, and construction and operation costs, and would thus be suitable in urbanising areas that face water shortages and aqueous environmental deterioration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rise of authoritarian great powers has raised questions about the dominance of the liberal democratic model and has led to a perception that the relative balance between democracy and authoritarianism is shifting. Consequently, there is increasing interest in and concerns about the diffusion of alternative ‘models’ of political and economic development. Given that China's impressive economic development has led to growing military strength and geopolitical prestige, evaluating perceptions of the legitimacy, effectiveness, and applicability of that country's model of ‘illiberal capitalism’ is a good place to start. This paper evaluates whether the ‘China Model’ or ‘Beijing Consensus' is gaining traction internationally through a content analysis of eight years of US and non-US media sources. It finds that concerns about the beginnings of an anti-democratic ‘reverse wave’ are exaggerated and that at the present time there does not appear to be a decisive shift in favour of a model of authoritarian-capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, there is a growing group of ‘migrant children’, who reside in the city but do not have full rights to access education. Many have been granted a chance to study in public schools after the policy change, but they continue to have lower educational outcomes than the local students. To understand the inequality, this paper examines the educational goals of migrant families in Beijing. Based on the field interviews, it shows that even migrant children who aspire to attain higher education are nonetheless ‘blocked’ by discriminatory examination laws and limited resources. Their subjective outlook is derived from objective conditions and concrete experiences. Their family of origin determines the types of resources available to them, and thus plays an important role in the formation and justification of their educational goals. A realistic assessment of their chances of achieving their aspirations leads them to have lower expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After the launch of the new curriculum reforms at the beginning of the new millennia, teachers were expected to transform their conceptions of education by absorbing ideas such as "dual subjectivity," "democratic equality," "scientific inquiry," "collaborative learning," and so on. What sorts of conceptions of teaching are manifested in instructors' teaching practices within the routine school environment? This paper will introduce a case study of a Beijing elementary school. The information was collected through interviews and observation of instructors' classroom teaching practices and conceptions of education. The findings show that teachers' views of knowledge have not substantially changed since the introduction of the reforms: teachers still see themselves as "monopolizing" and "selling" knowledge. This traditional view of knowledge makes interactions between teachers and students in the classroom very one-sided. It is therefore necessary to review and discuss the "practical conceptions of teaching" that teachers manifest in their classroom teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports results from comparative studies of residents and businesses in Shi Cha Hai Hutong, Beijing, for 2006 and 2008. The study illustrates the speed and scale of tourism development in China and is based on the global literature describing social, economic, environmental and cultural impacts of tourism as well as place attachment and identity. The 2006 sample comprised 400 residents, while the 2008 sample had 352; in both years, approximately 40 business managers and owners were interviewed. Results show that while businesses welcome tourism, residents are more ambiguous in their response patterns, which are characterized by “desirable” response sets, to some extent an unwillingness to criticize planning authorities and a sense that many respondents have little say in planning processes. Nonetheless, contrary to Doxey's Irridex model, the passing of time brings greater tolerance of tourism – a conclusion based in part on findings derived from a cluster analysis. It is noted that other factors also impinge on the Hutong, including a process of gentrification. Two key suggestions emerge, namely (1) city-based tourism research can be more closely linked with that of urban planning, and (2) processes of urban gentrification must be incorporated into the Butler model of destination evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A person's identity is shaped by one's life experiences. Aside from family, school forms the major backdrop of the everyday experiences of children and plays an important role in shaping identity. This paper examines education and the development of identity among school-age migrant children enrolled in Beijing's schools. Marginality is the theme running through this analysis. The marginalisation of migrant children in Beijing is defined and sanctioned by the outdated household registration system that excludes them from enrolling in public schools. Many attend segregated migrant children's schools. Even after the government has relaxed its rules to allow migrant children into the public system, they suffer discrimination based on their low social status and rural origin, each reinforcing the other. These experiences shape their sense of identity. They want to stay in Beijing but know they are not accepted. They call themselves as members of their home regions, but would have difficulty fitting into their home communities and have no intention of living there. This study helps us understand how school interactions shape the identity of migrant children not only in Beijing but of the estimated 20 million migrant children in China's other major urban centres albeit with some differences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the most important strategies for five-star Chinese restaurants when designing their wine lists and how restaurant characteristics influence their strategies. Forty five-star restaurants participated in this research based on snowball sampling. Data were collected by face-to-face interviews. The main part of survey was designed by using the Best-Worst Scaling method. ‘Competitive price fit for the price range of food’, ‘Popular wines’ and ‘Balance of varieties’ are the three most important attributes for restaurants when making wine lists. Some differences emerged between small and large restaurants. The use of Best-Worst Scaling made it easy for the Chinese sample to respond and 40 surveys were enough to find clear differences among the items tested as well as between different types of restaurants. The outcomes show that some Western platitudes, like matching wine to the food, are not relevant for five-star Chinese restaurants in Beijing, and that wine salespeople need to focus on different factors depending on the restaurant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Among other issues, the degrading environmental and ecological situations, the low performance scrambled city form and the loss of cultural identity in Beijing City have proved that the conventional ‘population projection-urban infrastructure-land use’ approach and the architectural urbanism approach to urban growth planning failed to meet the challenges of swift urbanisation and sustainability issues in China in general, and Beijing in particular. The ‘negative approach’ is proposed that defines an urban growth and urban form through the identification and planning of Ecological Infrastructure (EI). This approach has evolved from the pre-scientific model of Feng-shui as the sacred landscape setting for human settlement, the nineteenth century notion of greenways as urban recreational infrastructure, the early twentieth century idea of green belts as urban form makers, and the late twentieth century notion of ecological networks and EI as a biological preservation framework. EI is composed of critical landscape elements and structure that are strategically identified and planned to safeguard natural assets and ecosystems services, essential for sustaining human society. EI is strategically planned and developed using less land but more efficiently preserving the ecosystems services. Using Beijing City as an example, this paper demonstrates how to use EI as a tool to guide and frame sustainable urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The environmental impact of rising motorised travel has become a key issue regarding low-carbon development in China. Drastic urban expansion under the current rapid urbanisation process tends to worsen these impacts. This paper examines the impacts of the patterns of urban development on motorised travel in the case of Beijing. By using household survey data, the analysis finds that the patterns of urban development on the urban fringe have a significant impact on workers' car use for their journeys to work when their socio-economic characteristics, household preferences for housing location and level of public transport accessibility are taken into account. Sprawling industrial and real estate development, characterised by a low degree of self-contained development and low-density land use, tends to increase the need to drive. The findings suggest that growth management to control sprawling development would play an important role in containing the motorised travel demand in China where transport policies are usually focused on huge and expensive transport projects. Urban growth management can have significant implications for achieving the objectives of creating a low-carbon city in China in the current process of rapid urbanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the exponential growth of Chinese migrants in Australia, and despite the sizable body of work in various locations, the picture of how the Chinese-language media have developed in Australia over the past decade is still somewhat unclear. Even less clear is a sense of how the field has changed since the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games, a significant event that signalled China's ascent on to the global stage. This paper seeks to update the picture of the Chinese-language media landscape in Australia. We explore a number of angles, which work in articulation to produce a picture of growing complexity and fluidity. In doing so, we put forward a number of arguments. First, the diasporic Chinese-language media are subject to, as well as respond to, the vagaries of the wax and wane of the multicultural polity of the host nation. In addition, the diasporic Chinese-language media, for a wide range of reasons - technological, cultural, and economic - need to reassess their cultural role and strategies in the wake of the PRC's new status as a global power and its push for expansion of its media content and cultural impact outside China. Furthermore, to a varying extent and in a variety of ways, the diasporic Chinese-language media have become part and parcel of the global transnational cultural economies of Chinese-language media productions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2008, Tibet erupted in the biggest challenge to Chinese rule since 1959. While Beijing and Dharamsala engaged in their familiar battle of representations, pundits speculated on the causes of the uprising, ranging from conspiracy theories to informed policy analysis. Applying the framework of the insecurity dilemma, this article argues that Tibetan identity insecurity on account of the post-1989 hard-line Chinese policies was the chief cause of the uprising. Largely peaceful protests and occasionally violent riots in Tibet have been integral to Tibetan efforts to mitigate their societal insecurities provoked by Chinese migration, 'assimilationist' policies and 'cultural imperialism'. However, Tibetan protests and riots heighten Chinese insecurities and harden Beijing's policies both inside Tibet and towards the Dalai Lama. This paper reveals the dynamic cycle of hard-line Chinese policies provoking Tibetan uprisings; the resulting hardening in Chinese policies feeds back into Tibetan insecurities and protests. The 2008 uprising was the most recent cycle in the long-running saga of the Sino-Tibetan insecurity dilemma. The article warns that unless the Tibetans and the Chinese find a way to break out of the insecurity dilemma, Tibet could explode into another frenzy of violence and counter-violence in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]