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This paper examines the patterns of entry into self-employment in urban and rural China and across different reform stages, focusing on how communist cadres have responded to new market opportunities. Analysis of data from a national representative survey shows that both education and cadre status deter people from entry into self-employment in urban areas but not in rural areas. However, urban cadres have become increasingly more likely to be self-employed over time, and only those who became self-employed in the late reform stage have enjoyed higher income returns. The paper concludes that the labor mobility process should be taken into account in studying changes in advantages/disadvantages associated with different social groups in post-socialist transition economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crowdfunding model is to quickly gather petty cash funds from the mass and to organize and develop construction projects spontaneously, and it might help the housing buyers to reduce the expense that originally paid to real estate developers in general develop models and probably cut down the housing price. This paper aims to estimate the building costs of individual cooperative housing with crowdfunding model. A reference cost model of commercial building is firstly constructed and estimated, according to which the costs of housing projects can be estimated and the sales price can also be decomposed into different parts. And then the reference cost of eight typical housing construction projects in major districts of Beijing in China, is calculated using the constructed model and compared with the corresponding sales prices. The results indicate that the proportion of total construction cost is 10-15 % of sales prices and building housing with crowdfunding model can save about 20-30 % of expense. And the spread of the individual cooperative hosing with crowdfunding model is expected to impose downwards pressure on housing price and help to solve the housing problems of medium-income and low-income families in major cities in China. Therefore, it is considerable to support the development of individual cooperative housing with crowdfunding model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective and timely quantification of the spatiotemporal pattern of urban expansion in China is important for the assessment of its environmental effects. However, the dynamics of the most recent urban expansions in China since 2012 have not yet been adequately explained due to a lack of current information. In this paper, our objective was to quantify spatiotemporal patterns of urban expansion in China between 1992 and 2015. First, we extracted information on urban expansion in China between 1992 and 2015 by integrating nighttime light data, vegetation index data, and land surface temperature data. Then we analyzed the spatiotemporal patterns of urban expansion at the national and regional scales, as well as at that of urban agglomerations. We found that China experienced a rapid and large-scale process of urban expansion between 1992 and 2015, with urban land increasing from 1.22 × 104 km2 to 7.29 × 104 km2, increasing in size nearly fivefold and with an average annual growth rate of 8.10%, almost 2.5 times as rapid as the global average. We also found that urban land in China expanded mainly by occupying 3.31 × 104 km2 of cropland, which comprised 54.67% of the total area of expanded urban land. Among the three modes of growth—infilling, edge expansion, and leapfrog—edge expansion was the main cause of cropland loss. Cropland loss resulting from edge expansion of urban land totalled 2.51 × 104 km2, accounting for over 75% of total cropland loss. We suggest that effective future management with respect to edge expansion of urban land is needed to protect cropland in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China’s coastal cities are experiencing rapid urbanization, which has resulted in many challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive index system for assessment of the level of urbanization based on four aspects: demographic urbanization, economic urbanization, social urbanization and spatial urbanization. The developed index system also characterizes the environment based on three factors: environmental pressure, environmental level and environmental control. Furthermore, a coupling coordination degree model (CCDM) focusing on the degree of coordination between urbanization and the environment was established using panel data collected from 2000 to 2008 for Lianyungang, China. The results showed that: (1) the dynamic of coordination between urbanization and the environment showed a U-shaped curve, and both sub-systems evolved into a superior balance during rapid urbanization; (2) social urbanization and environmental control make the greatest contribution to the coupling system, indicating that they are the critical factors to consider when adjusting coordination development during decision-making; and (3) the two parameters (α-urbanization, β-environment) that have been widely used in previous studies had less of an effect on the coupling coordinated system than the other factors considered herein. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Nowhere has the scale and scope of urbanization been larger than in China over the last few decades. We analyze Chinese city development between the years 1996 and 2014 using data for the urbanized components of prefecture-level cities. We show that, despite much variability and fast economic and demographic change, China is undergoing transformations similar to the historical trajectory of other urban systems. We also show that the distinguishing signs of urban economies—superlinear scaling of agglomeration effects in economic productivity and economies of scale in land use—also characterize Chinese cities. We then analyze the structure of economic change in Chinese cities using a variety of metrics, characterizing employment, firms and households. Population size estimates remain a major challenge for Chinese cities, as official numbers are often reported based on the Hukou registration system. We use the information in the residuals to scaling relations for economic quantities to predict actual resident population and show that these estimates agree well with data for a subset of cities for which counts of total resident population exist. We conclude with a list of issues that must be better understood and measured to make sense of present urban development trajectories in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's transition from a centrally planned to a market economy has substantially eroded governmental support for child care, raising the concern about how the change of child care provision may affect women's labor market participation. This article examines the impact of child care availability and affordability on the employment and child care choices of urban Chinese women with preschool children during the transition. The analysis shows that the presence of day care in the community is positively associated with a mother's labor force participation and labor hour supply and that the rising costs of hired caregivers reduce the mother's labor hour supply. The analysis also finds that both the costs of hired caregivers and family income have important effects on the use of out-of-home care services. Simulations indicate that the decline in day care presence would account for 46% of the decrease in mothers' labor force participation during the public-sector restructuring between 1997 and 2000. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]