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The urbanization process has an impact on greenhouse gas emissions, but little research has linked specific processes of urbanization to CO2 emissions. Particularly, for China, the urban–rural dual system and unique fertility policy play an important role in its urbanization process. A large population base and a sharp urban–rural divide need to be taken into account in CO2 emission forecast. Based on three urbanization processes corresponding to Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) scenarios, this article combined the Population-Development-Environment (PDE) model and the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) to forecast energy consumption and CO2 emissions in China in this century. The results show as follows. 1. China’s CO2 emissions and energy consumption will experience an inverted U-shaped trend. In the rapid, moderate and slow urbanization scenarios, CO2 emissions peak in 2045, 2035 and 2030 at 11.55 billion tons, 10.88 billion tons and 10.65 billion tons, respectively. 2. The peak time of energy consumption is generally later than that of CO2 emissions. In the rapid, moderate and slow urbanization scenarios, the primary energy consumption peaks at 212.03 EJ in 2055, 190.65 EJ in 2055 and 171.80 EJ in 2045, respectively; the final energy consumption peaks at 192.34 EJ in 2055, 174.47 EJ in 2055 and 157.25 EJ in 2045, respectively. 3. More rapid urbanization corresponds to a later peak in CO2 emissions and energy consumption, but the decline is faster after the peak. In the future, China should vigorously implement intensive and sustainable policies to avoid excessive emissions in the urbanization process.

Urban and rural relations are important for the sustainable development of a nation or region. Urban and rural integration (URI), as a conceptual framework and strategic tool for managing urban–rural relations, is supposed to play a role in linking urban and rural socio-economic systems to promote the two-way flow of resources, facilitate spatial restructuring and functional transformation, enhance resource allocation efficiency, and shorten the gap between urban and rural areas. This article takes agriculture technological innovation in China as an example, and discuss whether and how URI can promote agricultural technological innovation (ATI). Based on a dataset of 288 prefecture-level cities spanning the years from 1999 to 2018, this article analyzes the mechanism and effect of URI on the development of ATI by using the negative binomial regression model and other models based on measuring the level of URI in the municipal area. The main conclusions are as follows. (1) URI positively promotes the development of ATI and exhibits significant heterogeneity across various dimensions, regions, and agricultural production areas. (2) The mechanism analysis shows that governance systems and mature markets positively moderate the impact of URI on promoting ATI, which also exhibits heterogeneous characteristics across various regions. (3) The impact of URI on the development of ATI exhibits a double threshold effect, and its marginal impact on the development of ATI increases with the deepening of URI. Moreover, the threshold effect of URI demonstrates significant heterogeneity. In central and urban areas, after surpassing the threshold value, the influence of URI on agricultural technological innovation becomes greater. Therefore, it is crucial to continuously deepen the development of URI, smooth the channels of factor flow, enhance resource sharing, break down the urban and rural barriers, and create a new engine for ATI development.

As potential ‘hidden champion’ companies originating from Germany, specialized and innovative ‘little giant’ enterprises (LGEs) have become role models for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China and have been considered important actors in the strategy of ‘strengthening and supplementing national supply chains’. Based on the exogenous growth theory of the firm, this article takes the perspective of the ‘dual circulation’ new development pattern of China and analyses the spatial patterns and their determinants of LGEs using the data of national-level LGEs from 2019 to 2021 and the geographical weighted regression method. The following results were obtained: (1) the national-level LGEs show the spatial distribution pattern of ‘east–central–west’ decline and are highly concentrated in the high administrative levels of the cities, especially in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Cross–Strait urban agglomeration. (2) The domestic and international circulations jointly affect the spatial distribution of LGEs. Local institutional thickness has the largest and widest impact, followed by local industrial synergy. The impact of global linkage is relatively stable. (3) The impacts of the main determinants have spatial heterogeneity. The positive impact of local government support shows a decreasing differentiation law from east to west, and local industrial synergy is mainly significant in the east area of Northeast China, Bohai Rim, Shandong Peninsula, and Huang-Huai-hai Plain. The spatial heterogeneity of the effect of international circulation comes from the difference in marginal effects among regions and the influence of the Belt and Road Initiative. The positive impact of FDI is mainly concentrated in the northeast and southwest regions. This article highlights the importance of the domestic value chain in the strategy of Innovative China, and proves that varying global-local nexus of cities creates ‘soils’ with varying fertility in which LGEs thrives as well.

Extant literature concerns about industrial upgrading in developing countries, and stresses the importance of joining global production networks (GPN). Taking the perspective of the updating approach of GPN theory, this paper selects the case of China to combine local industrial upgrading with financial activities, and explores how going public triggers industrial upgrading in developing countries. In 2015, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 listed firms and their related partners in Jinjiang, a county-level city in China. The findings indicate that local lead firms in developing countries have been increasingly involved in the global financial market by going public, which in turn provides these countries with opportunities of industrial upgrading. However, it does not necessarily guarantee industrial upgrading. Whether or not going public can bring about industrial upgrading depends mainly on intrafirm coordination, reconfiguration of interfirm relationships, and extrafirm bargaining with local governments. This case study suggests that finance be integrated into GPN theory as some scholars suggest, and the impacts of local lead firms in developing countries on the dynamics or reconfiguration of GPN be taken consideration, especially in some specific sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research pays little attention to unorganized migrant workers' skill accumulation/upgrading from the perspective of the labor supply. This paper takes China as an example to explore the factors influencing the skill accumulation of rural–urban migrant workers (RUMWs), with the purpose of discovering how to sustain or reshape regional competitive advantages by improving RUMWs' skill accumulation. Structured questionnaire surveys were adopted for data collection in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province and Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province located in the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China. In total, 700 questionnaires were issued and 491 effective questionnaires were recovered. It takes the perspective of individual laborers, with special regard to the effects of localization on the laborers' skill accumulation within the context of globalization. It adopts a broad viewpoint including intra-firm skill-biased strategy (as a response to intense competition), inter-firm relationships, and the accessibility of local non-firm organizations. The findings indicate that firms' skill preference, which impacts employees' skills and innovation ability and stimulates them to learn with initiative, have a significant influence on RUMWs' skill accumulation. In terms of collective efficiency based on the co-competitive relationship between local firms, the more intensive interactions are, the more opportunities RUMWs are afforded for skill accumulation. The accessibility of local institutions and favorable policies also benefit RUMWs' skill accumulation. In addition, the place itself, as a synthesized space of a firm's internal labor-management relations and inter-organizational relations, also exerts an influence on and causes regional differences in RUMWs' skill accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge learning and diffusion have long been discussed in the literature on the dynamics of industrial clusters, but recent literature provides little evidence for how different actors serve as knowledge brokers in the upgrading process of apprentice-based clusters, and does not dynamically consider how to preserve the sustainability of these clusters. This paper uses empirical evidence from an antique furniture manufacturing cluster in Xianyou, Fujian Province, in southeastern China, to examine the growth trajectory of the knowledge learning system of an antique furniture manufacturing cluster. It appears that the apprentice-based learning system is crucial during early stages of the cluster evolution, but later becomes complemented and relatively substituted by the role of both local governments and focal outsiders. This finding addresses the context of economic transformation and provides empirical insights into knowledge acquisition in apprentice-based clusters to question the rationality based on European and North American cases, and to provide a broader perspective for policy makers to trigger and sustain the development of apprentice-based clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western industrial cluster literature pays little attention to specialized markets (SMs) and the geographical agglomeration of distributors or sale agencies (SAs). This paper takes Linyin, Shandong, a famous commodity city in Northeastern China, as an example, to discuss the determinants that make SAs in SMs of the toy industry move towards upstream manufacturing. A structured questionnaire survey and subsequent interviews were carried out during 2011 and 2012 to collect data, and a Binary Logistic Regression Model was used to process the data. This paper looks from the perspective of global production networks theory, establishes an analytical framework that combines individual motivations of intra-firm coordination, local inter-firm relationships and dynamic cross-regional level relationships. The findings indicate that the expansion of SAs towards manufacturing allows them to sustain competitiveness under changing circumstances. The local inter-firm relationships within SM-based clusters not only makes it easy to obtain material and human resources with lower manufacturing costs, but also facilitates the access to production knowledge and technologies for an expansion of production scale. Cross-regional relationships with suppliers provide an informal channel for SAs to obtain skills, which is fundamental for an expansion into manufacturing. In addition, it is a preference for strengthening competitiveness rather than the simple pursuit of economic profit that encourages SAs to invest in manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background of economic transformation and urban renewal, the protection and sustainable development of urban industrial landscapes has become an important practical issue, and how to maintain the unique local culture of these landscapes is key to solving the problem. By integrating the concept of "layer" and regarding the landscape as text, this paper will investigate the representation of industrial landscapes and the process of changes in power represented by different actors through different texts from the perspective of representation. The paper selected Beijing 798 as the research area to explore the shaping of changes in the industrial landscape of 798 from a weapon manufacturing area to an arts district, creative industry park and the "pan 798" by the factory owners, government, management committee, artists, media and tourists through different presentation forms, revealing the game process of representation of powers among the coalition between artists, management committee and the government. The paper points out that in fact, the representation of industrial landscape by different actors through different texts is a process that continues to explore and define the value of landscape. However, we need to look at this when the value of the industrial landscape is no longer given by localized life practices, but rather depends on different actors to produce and reproduce the value of landscape by representation, and thereby affecting the sustainable development of industrial landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, sparse coding based image super-resolution has attracted increasing interests. This paper proposes an improved image super-resolution method, by incorporating structural similarity (SSIM) index and nonlocal regularization into the framework of image super-resolution via sparse coding. Firstly, an algorithm of combining SSIM based sparse coding and K-SVD is proposed to train the high resolution (HR) and low resolution (LR) dictionary pairs. And then, the sparse representations of observed LR image are sought to reconstruct the HR image with the trained LR and HR dictionary pairs by exploiting nonlocal self-similarities. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, both in its visual effects and in quantitative terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]