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Income inequality had been one of the important manifestations of social inequality, which can affect the health level by affecting savings, health care and living standards. Existing researches about the relationship between income inequality and health ignored the comprehensive characteristic of health concept, and did not consider the intrinsic relationship between health and income inequality. This paper attempts to re-shed light on the relationship. Firstly, this paper constructs a new health level evaluation system from three aspects: health basis, health environment and behavior, and health security. By means of the combination evaluation method, the health levels can be obtained. Then, considering the interaction between health and income inequality, a simultaneous equation group model is constructed to empirically test the relationship between income inequality and health levels in China. The results reveal that health level is negatively correlated with income inequality. Reducing income inequality plays an important role in improving health levels in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines inequality in household adoption of rooftop solar photovoltaics in rural China through a qualitative study of three villages. The Chinese government promotes distributed solar to drive low-carbon development. However, community management and China's institutional system influence unequal access. We identify three community-level adoption modes: welfare distribution, collective leasing, and household autonomy. Government-driven modes like welfare distribution increase structural opportunities for adoption but reduce resident decision-making power and process transparency, causing procedural unfairness. We find that structural opportunities provided by communities and households' own resource endowments have an additive effect on adoption. This highlights the need to consider both community-level support and household resources when evaluating photovoltaic adoption and energy justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Humanitas Taiwanica is the property of National Taiwan University, Humanitas Taiwanica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The global landscape of higher education is an uneven field where players like nation-states are placed in hierarchical and centre-periphery relations. This paper focuses on the global field of international student mobility (ISM) and investigates China's place in the field using an analytical framework consisting of three key categories of 'capital': economic, human, and symbolic. Drawing on existing scholarship and author's first-hand ethnographic research, the paper examines the case of China as both a source and a destination of ISM, and analyses the flows and accrual of these three forms of capital as consequences of outbound and inbound student mobilities. Analyses show that in a global ISM field characterised by asymmetries and inequalities, China's place is arguably semi-peripheral economically and symbolically. It is argued that this country-focused macro perspective complements existing ISM scholarship's emphasis on social reproduction at individual and private levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Issues of the aging population and disability of older persons have been rapidly developing in China over the past 20 years. Since 2016, the Chinese government has been exploring remedies to alleviate social and family burdens and ensure the dignity of the disabled old persons by implementing long-term care insurance systems in a few pilot cities across the country. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to present the current challenges faced by China's long-term care insurance system and put forth suggestions for the future, based on literature research and the feedback obtained from its implementation in pilot areas. Research Design: This paper conducts a theoretical study based on the principles of public health ethics. Study Sample: Since 2016, China has launched two batches of pilot cities for long-term care insurance. The analysis object of this study is the feedback on the policy implementation of the existing 29 pilot cities that participated. The relevant data involved in the analysis are from the authors' field research and published literature on the analysis of pilot cities. Analysis: The ethical value and importance of long-term care insurance policies in China are evaluated from the perspectives of policy philosophy and social individual interests. Results: The results of this evaluation show that the core ethical values were not met in the development of China's current long-term care insurance system. Moreover, distributive justice norms were neglected, and access to the system between different social groups and within the groups covered by it was unequal. Conclusions: This paper argues that long-term care insurance should not differentiate between urban and rural areas in allocating nursing resources. Additionally, it would be essential to build democratic supervision and manage public opinions by adopting open and transparent information-sharing policies. Standards of disability assessments and treatment payment should be at par to ensure a balance between the rights and obligations of policyholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the leading six generation directors, Lou Ye often captures the changing social and political atmospheres in China by portraying melodramatic relationships with jolted camerawork, convoluted time frames, and emotionally charged narratives. The intimate, damaging, and symbiotic ties among individuals in the private, domestic space in Lou's works are often symptomatic of the trenchant social inequality and the inherent violence in capitalist values. This paper studies Lou's 2018 crime drama, Feng zhong you duo yu zuo de yun (The Shadow Play) and analyzes the way the film unpacks the upward narrative of capitalism as inherently gendered and discriminative. As the diegesis unfolds in a disjointed temporal order and heterotopic spaces in which high-rise skyscrapers and demolished residential buildings coexist, the film documents the way China's thirty years of reform and opening up perpetuate heteronormative gender performance and subjugation of women. Illuminated by Lauren Berlant's notion of "cruel optimism" that characterizes modern individuals' futile yet tenacious struggles and negotiation in their everyday experience with capitalist mores under the false hope of prosperity and success, the paper investigates the way the female characters' conformity to norms and improvised coping mechanisms lead to their downfall and insinuate a yearning for an alternative form of human bonding to that prescribed by masculinist hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Social Stratification, Past, Present, and Future' celebrates the 50th anniversary of the annual Cambridge Social Stratification Seminar. This editorial presents a brief characterisation of the 'Cambridge school' approach that has featured prominently through the seminar's lifetime. Then it discusses the domains and topics explored in this issue – education; intergenerational transmission of inequality; family, work and employment; occupations; migration for work; housing, and political preferences. While most of the papers focus on Great Britain, several papers involve international comparisons, one focuses on stratification in India, and another on China. Collectively, researchers reveal how social hierarchy influences people's lives, and reproduces fairly stably over time. The papers also contribute to understanding the sometimes counter-intuitive outcomes that challenge those charged with policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on equality, diversity and inclusion in the Chinese context is insufficient. This paper fills part of the research gap by examining the role of the institutional actors in shaping the equality and inclusion discourse, policy and reality in contemporary China. In particular, it highlights the crucial role of the state, and the emergence and maintenance of privileged social groups. This is because the construction of public discourse on inequality and inclusion is necessarily a political and social process, with social policy implications. Public discourse not only reflects the political ideals and moral standards of the nation at a given time, but also impacts the vested interests of different social groups, and their acquisition and maintenance of power. This paper reveals the entrenched, disadvantaged positions of rural migrant workers and other lower social groups, and of women and persons of disability at workplaces, and calls for policy and management intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore how an intersectional frame offers new insights into the issue of social inequalities in relation to family migration. We bring research about family migration and intersectionality into conversation with one another by empirically examining the experiences of rural Christian family migrants in Shenzhen, China. We consider how neoliberal labour regimes and the Chinese state's project of building a secular and modernised state operates through an intersectional process of de‐familiarisation that turns rural migrants into gendered, class‐based, atomised labouring subjects. We argue that a more nuanced analysis of social inequalities in family migration could usefully focus on the intersectional processes within and among migrant families. We bring research about family, migration, and intersectionality into conversation with one another by empirically examining the experiences of rural Christian family migrants in Shenzhen, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author investigates rural Chinese citizens' encounters of structural and institutional inequalities and social (im)mobility. The author addresses social (im)mobility from a holistic perspective (i.e., in institutional, occupational, social, educational, cultural and political dimensions). In this regard, the author explores if a range of parental disadvantages serve as significant hindrances to the acquisition of social mobilising opportunities among the next generations in rural Chinese contexts. Here a holistic presentation helps understand the nuanced relationship between institutional barriers (i.e., rural hukou status) and alternative obstacles to social mobility; and explore, in part, how parental inheritance of rural hukou status would bar individuals' from socially mobilising and result in some forms of unsustainability. Previous research on China restrictively measures social (im)mobility from limited perspectives, failing to fully and accurately reflect the extent of social (im)mobility Chinese populations face. This paper is a comprehensive literature review where relevant Chinese literature, exclusively found in the e-library system of the University of Cambridge, is included and thoroughly discussed. Articles that include the keywords of "hukou", "China", "social mobility" and (a) "economic", (b) "social", (c) "cultural", (d) "linguistic" or (e) "political" are extensively studied, in a hope to understand the existing scholarship on multifaceted social (im)mobility in Chinese contexts. The author argues that, despite the 2014 hukou reform, further loosening the requirements for rural-to-urban hukou conversion should be prioritised by the Central Government of China in order to ensure the rural-urban divide and structural and institutional inequalities rural hukou holders face can curtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Asian Journal of Women's Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite extensive studies on ethical data use and algorithms, little is known about the ethical perspectives of tech workers – insiders of a profession that heavily relies on data and algorithms. Nor have there been sufficient cross-national comparisons of their perspectives. Relying on interviews with 98 tech workers in China and the US, this paper is guided by two questions: (1) What are tech workers' perceptions of big data ethics, and (2) what are the cross-national similarities and differences in China and the US? The study found that there are cross-national similarities in tech workers' cautious enthusiasm about the applications of big data in their work, as well as in their complex and ambivalent ethical perspectives on the use of big data in government digital surveillance. The main cross-national differences occur in tech workers' perceptions of whether big data may reinforce social inequalities. US-based tech workers are concerned about the reinforcement of race and gender-based inequalities through the use of big data, whereas their colleagues in China are optimistic that the use of big data may reduce income-based inequalities across geographical regions. The study's findings have implications for how to leverage tech workers' influence and promote the ethical use of data and algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I shall focus here on the emerging new poverty in China, social inequality under China's rapid economic development, the dynamics of urban poverty generation, intergenerational mobility in urban China, and the importance of growth in agricultural incomes for poverty reduction. The objective of this paper is to emphasize the importance of sociospatial mobility in urban China, the transition to a market driven system, the emergence of social differentiation in Chinese cities, the mechanisms of urban poverty generation, and China's ability to sustain the pace of poverty reduction. This paper seeks to fill a gap in the current literature by examining the patterns of urban poverty in China, the spatiality of new urban poverty, the formation of impoverished neighbourhoods, the rate of growth in China's domestic demand, and the level of mobility in urban China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the relationship between city size and rural intergenerational mobility using prefecture‐level data in China. We find that intergenerational mobility in rural areas is positively related to urban population of the affiliated cities. This correlation is partially driven by better coverage of secondary and university education for the rural young who reside close to large cities. Moreover, our further investigation shows that the return to high school education is less dependent on parent incomes around larger cities for rural young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terms 'mistress' or 'second wife', translated as qingfu, ernai, xiaosan, have become widely used in Chinese media in recent years. This study employs critical discourse analysis to examine how the mistress/second wife is represented in Chinese corruption news coverage. In particular, this paper analyses thirtyseven articles focusing on cadre-mistress relationships that were published on mainstream commercial websites (Ifeng, NetEase, Sina, and Sohu) between 2013 and 2017. The findings of this analysis show that the framing of the mistresses/second wives in these articles follows media censorship and selectively appeals to the public's negative perception of them. Specifically, the findings reveal that mistresses of corrupt male cadres are afforded no respect in corruption news coverage, and are instead portrayed as 'toys' of the cadres who are 'partners' in their corruption. Furthermore, this paper's analysis of the sociocultural context that gives rise to such discourses demonstrates the key role played by social inequalities and gender inequalities in the post-reform era. This study contributes to the literature by illustrating how mistress-cadre relationships are governed by gender inequalities in job opportunities, career development, and income levels, social inequalities in the distribution of wealth and resources, and cultural norms relating to discrimination against concubines. Thus, such relationships cannot be eliminated via public censure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on methodological and empirical issues in analyzing regional poverty and inequality trends in China. It provides a time profile of China's regional inequality, outlines the latest development in inequality decomposition techniques, introduces six papers in this special issue of the Review, and finally offers suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a spatial equilibrium model to quantify welfare losses from land market distortions in China. In the model, heterogeneous firms in a variety of sectors choose their locations across regions with costly trade, frictional labor migration, and land market distortions. We match land transaction and firm-level survey data to estimate land market distortions for firms. Misallocation arises when similar firms are faced with land prices that effectively prevent productive firms from establishing in large cities where they can benefit from agglomeration forces and access to higher productivity. Our framework incorporating land market distortions also helps clarify the mystery of China's undersized cities, a phenomenon noted by Au and Henderson (2006) and Chauvin et al. (2017). Our estimates suggest large negative effects of land policies on the economic welfare in China. We end with a counterfactual exercise that suggests that a coordinated land and labor migration reform would generate welfare gains and reduce regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the effect of digital finance inclusion (DFI) on household consumption inequality in China. Based on the biennial panel data of China Household Finance Survey from 2015 to 2017 and the county-level DFI index, we empirically analyze the impact of DFI on consumption inequality by using fixed effect model. We find that the development of DFI can significantly reduce the consumption inequality among residents. This is partly because DFI can reduce the income inequality among residents. And the development of DFI has different marginal impact on consumption expenditure for different residents, thus leading to the reduction of the residents consumption gap. We also find that, compared to the extensive usage and the degree of digitization, the intensive usage of DFI has larger effects on lowering consumption inequality. In addition, the effects of DFI on consumption inequality have significant heterogeneity, and they are relatively larger for residents in eastern regions, and for households with low debt-to-income ratios and for individuals with compulsory education. Therefore, it is necessary to attach importance to supporting construction in the western region when coordinating the development of digital inclusive finance. It is important to strengthen policy preference for residents with lower education levels in terms of school compulsory education and community public welfare education. Meanwhile, when developing the digital financial inclusion, we should focus on controlling the household debt-to-income ratio to prevent excessive debt growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various papers presented during the Symposium on Poverty and Inequality in China which are published within the issue, including one on rural income volatility and inequality in China, another on the role of power in inequality in the country, as well as a paper on the factors behind the rising wage inequalities in China.

In the last several years, marriage and family patterns among the Kucong Lahu of Jinping County, Yunnan, have changed significantly due to rapid economic and social changes all over China. Based on ethnographic research in Lu Village, this article explores the current "escape" migration behavior of married Lahu women. They used migration as a strategy to escape patriarchal husbands, families, and local society. This paper describes a paradox between the autonomy of women's individual actions and the inability to escape the system even when on "escapes." This sort of "escape" strategy cannot ultimately change the gender inequality and social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an evaluation experiment conducted in China between 2013 and 2016 to use evaluative thinking and evaluation approaches to help build the salience of health equity as a performance measure for health systems. This project was informed by a realist evaluation approach that sought to understand the context, mechanisms, and outcomes underlying health inequities. This chapter describes a theory of change that includes descriptions of the key actors involved in the project, the mechanisms of impact, and short- and long-term outcomes. Key questions that could help assess the impact of this project are also discussed. This paper contributes to the literature on building evaluation capacity for health inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic story of global inequality in the last three decades has been an overall decline, but one which is composed of quite intricate patterns. There has been a decline in between-country inequality as China and India have grown relative to the US and other rich countries. This has been accompanied by an increase in within-country inequality, but this is itself composed of rising inequality in some countries such as China, India, and the US, and declining inequality in other countries, including large economies in Latin America. Section II of the paper reviews these patterns, highlighting country diversity to make the central point that policy matters. Section III addresses a normative question—what relative weight should be given to within-country and between-country inequality in making an overall global assessment? This section brings on board recent philosophical discourse, including on inequality of opportunity in a global frame. Section IV returns to the 'policy matters' theme and takes up global constraints on national redistribution policy in a globalized world: for example, a race to the bottom on taxation to attract and keep capital and talent, and possible global institutional responses to alleviate these constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land expropriation and peasant resistance in China have been widely noted, but the many cases in which peasants consent to give up land have drawn less attention. This paper conceptualizes and examines an alternative development practice: accumulation without dispossession (AWD), a concept first developed by Gillian Hart and Giovanni Arrighi. AWD may arise if accumulation takes place without (completely) depriving rural producers of the right to assets and benefits. The paper examines multiple forms of AWD and makes two main arguments. First, land expropriation does not necessarily lead to dispossession if peasants are compensated with valuable flats, commercial venues, and/or secure jobs. Due to its positive effects on social equality and livelihood security, AWD may offer an alternative vision in the era of neoliberal dispossession. Second, the outcome of land expropriation in China has varied substantially across space and time. In general, there has been a shift away from AWD in the 1980s following the neoliberal reform in the 1990s, but in the recent decade, there has been some movement back towards AWD due to peasant protests, though only to a limited degree. Nevertheless, the majority of peasants losing land have not received compensation sufficient to sustain a secure livelihood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents new evidence on how enrollment expansion affects higher education access and production with a focus on social inequality and institutional stratification. From 1999 to 2012, the world's largest higher education expansion happened in China that annual college enrollment dramatically increased from 1,083,600 to 6,888,300. We evaluate this exogenous, unprecedented policy using nationally representative student-level survey data and newly available confidential institution-level data. Enrollment expansion, which reduced per-student resources, negatively impacted college quality as measured by value-added on graduates' employment and earnings. The inequality in access between high- and low-SES students and the stratified production between college institutional tiers persisted during expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Achieving equality in water usage is part of the sixth goal of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A comprehensive understanding evolution of inequality in water use and the driving factors behind the inequality can facilitate to implement equality in water consumption. In this work, the inequality index was used to measure China's water consumption inequality from 2004 to 2018 and the decomposition technique was used to decompose the status of inequality and the evolution of inequality. The results show the inequality in its water consumption was not reduced obviously despite China's rapid economic growth. There were 38.71% of provinces in China whose per capita water consumption was greater than the national average, mainly in the western region. For the three regions of China, the intraregional inequality was much greater than the interregional inequality. The western index was the largest and the eastern was the smallest. Among the factors that cause the inequality in water consumption, no one factor has been dominant at all times. Moreover, the effects of different factors changed over time. It is almost impossible to reduce inequality in water consumption through policy adjustment to several factors. China's example show that economic development cannot reduce the inequality in water consumption. More targeted policies and more efforts are required to reduce the inequality in water consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the expansion of the higher education system in China since the late 1990s, questions on the distribution of higher education opportunities and resources have attracted increasing attention from academics, policymakers, and the general public. While there have been an increasing studies on the development of higher education opportunity equality in China, quantitative, systematic research on the distribution of higher education resources across China is still rather limited. This paper aims at filling this gap. It provides quantitative and comprehensive evidence on the development of the distribution of higher education resources across Chinese provinces. The analysis is based on a provincial panel dataset and uses a generalized Theil index to measure inequality. Results show that higher education resources have been far from equally provided in relation to the size of provincial student populations in China. The unequal distribution has become even more pronounced over the past decade. In other words, even if high school students have an increasingly equal access to higher education in China (Bickenbach & Liu, 2013b), the increasingly unequal distribution of higher education resources makes it difficult for university students to equally benefit from higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that assumes widespread shirking and inefficiency in agricultural production under the collective system in Maoist China, and attributes these problems to egalitarianism in labour remuneration and difficulties in labour supervision. Drawing on interviews with 131 former production team members from 16 provinces, this paper re-examines the issue of work incentives by placing it in a historical and social context in which formal institutions, such as the different forms of collective organization, income distribution and state extraction, as well as informal institutions, such as indigenous social networks, communal norms and collective sanction, interacted with non-institutional factors, especially local geographical, demographic and ecological conditions, to constrain and motivate Chinese villagers participating in collective production. The complexity and fluidity of this context gave rise to a multiplicity of patterns of peasant behaviour in team farming, which accounts for the contrasting performances of rural collectives in different areas and periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the position of the Chinese elite in both national and international contexts. I show that the Chinese elite has converged with the global elite in terms of their incomes, and that many senior Chinese executives are at least as well paid as their counterparts in rich countries. Their insertion into the global elite is further demonstrated by their increasing participation in the World Economic Forum. But this international convergence has been mirrored by national divergence: economic inequality has risen within China, extending the distance between elites and the rest of the population. I show that for top income groups, the relative cost of employing a median wage worker for their personal service has plummeted, increasing their entitlements over labor and thus their capacity to dominate their compatriots. This has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in the reliance of the elite on domestic workers, a traditional symbol of social inequality. Thus the convergence of Chinese elites with their international counterparts has gone hand in hand with both rising economic inequality and rising social inequality within China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I explain the nature of the education and engagement of young Chinese minorities in north China under Japanese occupation during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Second, I examine what influence the occupation policy of Japanese puppet government had on forming Hui identity. During the Republic of China, the minority Hui were facing social inequality. Japan focused on the affairs of the Hui people and implemented a policy that gave them preferential treatment to advance the division and control of China. In 1938 the General Federation of Islam in China was founded under the Provincial Government of the Republic of China to advance the "Muslim campaign" of the Japanese Army. Its objectives were to support the regime, oppose communism, and the Young Muslim Association of China was established, training of young Muslims for military service. But young Hui trained in such association often rebelled against the Japanese occupation, and the Hui people who received modern education used education as a tool to fulfill their own goals instead. Therefore, the Hui established a dual identity of being Muslim and Chinese, and they chose to side with China rather than Japan. This study explores the complex process by which the minority Hui formed their double identity. This study is based primarily on literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the links between infrastructure‐led development, urban transformation and inequality in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). I theorise the BRI as a spatial fix to the overaccumulation problems of Chinese capitalism and I pay particular attention to the role of urbanisation. By drawing on postcolonial geographies, my goal is to offer a relational analysis of divergent trajectories of socio‐spatial urban change driven by BRI projects in Athens, Colombo and London. My key argument is that urban transformation driven by the BRI signals the emergence of a new form of infrastructure‐led, authoritarian neoliberal urbanism. This engenders both new urban formations and new urban politics that, despite variegated expressions across different contexts, are reconfiguring urban space and are transforming the social geography of each city by creating, facilitating or exacerbating spatial fragmentation and social segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have different views on the nature and pace of capitalist transformation of the Chinese agriculture. In this paper, we have, for the first time, estimated the approximate size of agricultural proletariat in China as well as the prevalence of wage labor in agricultural work. We argue that by comparing with typical capitalist agricultures in the world, China’s agriculture is increasingly capitalist rather than petty producer/populist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring and reporting an individual's view and practice on the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) of social equality, economic development and environmental protection for sustainable development remains complete. This paper aims to investigate famers' perceptions of TBL on water use. Zhangye City, a very arid region and the first experimental site for the national initiative of Building the Water-saving Society in China, was selected as the case study area. A questionnaire-based interview approach was adopted to collect farmers' rating of the importance of water for social security, economic development and ecological sustainability from 900 randomly selected farm households in 18 irrigation districts. The results show that 43% of the total respondents rated economic development as the most important, 27.6% chose social security, while 29.4% rated ecological sustainability as the first. It is found that personal characteristics of farmers among a myriad of factors showed most statistically significant correlation with farmers' perception of water use. Some variables, such as age and occupation, influence the farmers' perceptions of all three dimensions or at least two dimensions of water use but in different directions. The findings are of important implications for designing water policies for sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although sociological insights into the relationship between consumption and class are mostly borne out by current research in the Chinese context, it is important to consider the implications of applying such an analytic framework-which arose within American and European social contexts-to contemporary China. This paper examines the relationship between consumption and class relations. Drawing on ethnographic research and interviews with young urban professionals in Beijing and Nanjing and young rural migrants in Shenzhen, it asks how individuals from these two socioeconomic cohorts participate in the ritual of romantic consumption. In particular, the paper asks how individuals from these groups think about and rationalise their decisions surrounding two wedding-related consumer items: bridal photography and diamond engagement rings. The discussion reveals some distinct features in class formation in contemporary China, where class structures are fluid, unstable and still in the process of being defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2000s, housing problems have been one of the pressing concerns for many Hong Kong people. The continuously escalating housing costs further spur the rise of squeezing middle-class (middle-class members who fail to keep up with entitled living standard). For long, a middle-class is an engine of our prosperity, and a stable sheltering place which closely relates to the notion of "home" has long been regarded as the first rung on the middle-class ladder. As an investigation on major obstacles faced by the middle-class is hardly complete without discussing the housing issue, the present study attempts to cover the latest dilemma of the middle-class and examine the housing crisis in the Hong Kong context concerning problems relevant to the relationship between property and middle-class identity. By reviewing the latest issues, this paper hopes to present readers a complete picture of these rearguards which, in turn, will not only provide policy makers insights to revise their blueprints but also let frontline workers have an opportunity to understand their new roles and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a nationwide county-level panel dataset for the years 1995-2009, this paper conducts the first analysis in the literature to examine the impacts of fiscal decentralization and fiscal equalization, both measured at the sub-provincial level, on intra-provincial inequality in China. While fiscal decentralization offers significant advantages regarding public expenditure efficiency, a potentially large disadvantage is that it may lead to increased regional inequality. In this paper, in line with our theoretical hypotheses, we find that while fiscal decentralization at the sub-provincial level in China leads to larger intra-provincial inequality, fiscal equalization efforts performed by provincial governments tend to mitigate the detrimental effect of fiscal decentralization on intra-provincial inequality. Our results also indicate that the quantitative effects of fiscal decentralization on regional inequality tend to be larger when they are measured from the expenditure side, which is consistent with the fact that expenditure decentralization is a much more meaningful measure of decentralization in China. Overall, we provide evidence on the potential inequality costs of using fiscal decentralization as a development strategy. At the same time, we emphasize the importance of implementing a fiscal equalization program to ensure the overall success of decentralization policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is approaching towards a new phase of economic development which is frequently termed as the “new normal”. The paper aims to interpret China’s “new normal” from the New Institutional Economics and Marxian viewpoints. The former school is primarily concerned with the “supply-side” driver of increasing economic output and efficiency. It advocates for free and open markets for ideas to sustain China’s economic growth or advance itself into a global centre of technological innovation or scientific discovery. The Marxian view, on the other hand, shares the concern of “demand-side” driver of increasing economic output. Also, it calls for the shift from consumption-led to investment-led strategy while maintaining an egalitarian pattern of income distribution for successful transition. The paper argues that China is gradually advancing its capacity for innovation facilitated by in-house and foreign investments. However, the growing income inequality may pose a threat to its soft landing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The estimation of Sub-national purchasing power parities (PPPs) for countries where the regions and provinces have different level of development is fundamental for income, consumption, standard of living real term comparisons, as well as for measuring cross-region welfare inequality. This is even truer for large countries like China, where the above aggregates exhibit great variability among provinces. The aim of this paper is to compute the price level differences, measured by the PPPs, for 31 Chinese Provinces and Municipal Cities, based on a sample of 62 goods and services for the year 2014. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to do it since many years. After a short review of previous studies on China cross-province and municipal cities price level differences measurement and the illustration of methodology and data used, the results of our elaborations are presented and discussed. Taking Beijing as the base area, there is evidence that the PPP max/min ratio is 1.74, confirming the common belief that China cross-province and municipal cities price levels are significantly different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a simultaneous equations approach, this paper empirically investigates the impact of two types of public infrastructure, transportation infrastructure and knowledge infrastructure, on industrial geography, regional income disparities, and growth across 286 cities in China. It is found that an improvement in transportation infrastructure that reduces trade costs on goods increases growth and decreases income gap at the expense of increasing industrial agglomeration between cities. Therefore, this paper confirms the existence of a trade-off between spatial equity (more even spatial distribution of economic activities) and spatial efficiency (higher growth rate). However, for knowledge infrastructure that reduces trade costs on ideas, it is found that it increases growth but also decreases income gap and industrial agglomeration simultaneously. Moreover, the impact of knowledge infrastructure is found to be larger in the case of high labor mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a historical overview of China's telecom development since market reform. Using Sichuan and Guangdong Provinces for comparison, the paper delineates two stages of telecom reform and explores how telecom networks foster domestic regional and social inequalities within the general process of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the evolution of urban China's gender earnings gap from 1988 to 2016. We first document that an upward trend in gender inequality started to reverse after 2007 at the median and in the upper part of the earnings distribution but only for workers in the state–owned enterprises (SOEs). Women in the private sector at the top of the earnings distribution did not start to catch up with their male counterparts until 2012. The gender earnings gap at the low end of the distribution, meanwhile, was stuck at a high level after the mid–1990s. Polarization emerges both within the earnings distribution and across ownership types. Following Bayer and Charles (2018), we decompose the change in the gender earnings gap across the whole earnings' distribution and find that a change in the wage structure dominantly drives the trend in gender inequality. Gender–specific factors, such as discrimination, play a minor role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This article aims to analyze inter-provincial disparities of rural education and the convergence rate, and to discuss the effects of compulsory education reform after 2001. Design/methodology/approach – The article estimates the rural average education years and education Gini coefficients of China's 31 provinces (municipalities) beside Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan from 2001 to 2008, and applies the method of "economic convergence". Findings – The results show that after the reform of rural compulsory education, inter-provincial rural education disparities and educational equality have been significantly improved and trend to convergence; nevertheless the convergence rate on inter-provincial disparities of education equality declines. The defects of the education input system – "county as principle" – has been a factor that restricts the coordinated development of rural education. Practical limitations – This paper suggests that it is necessary for China's provincial and central government to afford the expense of compulsory education. China's present investment system would also worsen inter-provincial inequities of education. Social implications – Education equality is one of the basic social priorities. In China education equality has been improved; however it could be better if China's provincial and central government afforded the expenses of compulsory education. Originality/value – This paper applies the method of "economic convergence" to analyze China's rural education disparities among its regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationships between inequality, trade, and capital flows into China since the early 1990s and particularly in the first years of the present decade. We show that the rise in economic inequality in China has more to do directly with the activities associated with China's financial and building boom, notably in Beijing, than with the massive growth in manufacturing employment and in Chinese exports since China joined the WTO in 2001. Nevertheless, it is likely that a flow of profits from the export boom did feed the speculative fires in the capital and elsewhere, and therefore it should be no surprise that the fall of one should be linked to the fall of the other, in a particularly painful reduction of economic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1980s there has been a renewed interest in regional inequality, fuelled by the concern over the effects of globalisation and liberalisation, and facilitated by theoretical and methodological developments in geography and economics. In essence, the new convergence theory, like the old convergence theory, is another theory devoid of space and time. Research on China has unfolded a complex landscape of regional development, the existence of distinct models of regional development, and the significant role of institutions. This paper examines regional inequality in China, especially Zhejiang Province, and attempts to uncover the trend and driving forces of regional inequality. It adopts a top-down and bottom-up strategy and employs recent developments in exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and geographically weighted regression (GWR). We have found that regional inequality is sensitive to geographic scales and spatial organisation, and that conventional approaches mask spatial agglomeration and the significance of regions in shaping trends of regional inequality. Overall, regional inequality in Zhejiang rose during the reform period and a division between coastal and interior Zhejiang formed, additionally sustained by weak linkages between the two regions and the significance of location and nonstate enterprises in development. This paper further reveals the emergence of Wenzhou, and discusses its effect on regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the largest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter, China exists obvious regional inequality in per capita CO2 emissions. However, such inequality and its dynamic change for recent years have not been systematically studied. In this paper, we evaluate China's regional inequality in per capita CO2 emissions during 1997–2016 using the Theil index and decompose it into within-region and between-region components based on eight regions. Furthermore, we apply the decomposition analysis to explore the contribution of different factors to such inequality, including the carbonization index, energy intensity, energy structure, labor productivity, and employment rate. The results show that China's overall inequality in per capita CO2 emissions reduced first and increased thereafter during 1997–2016. Within-region inequality was the main source of overall inequality in 1997–2004, while between-region inequality contributed more during 2005–2016. Labor productivity and energy intensity were the two main drivers of overall inequality, but their contributions to the inequality between regions and within regions were quite different. Moreover, the impact of energy structure and carbonization index on regional inequality in per capita CO2 emissions significantly increased during 2012–2016, which was related to the efforts made by local governments to improve the energy mix. Policy implications were given according to the above conclusions to improve regional inequality in per capita CO2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon emissions in the transportation sector are of great concern, since they are the third leading contributor to China's carbon emissions. This research examines the decoupling relationship between economic outputs and carbon emissions of 11 provinces in 2000–2016 by focusing on Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), which is the densest traffic and economic corridor in China. Although many studies have focused on the decoupling state and its driving forces between economic outputs and carbon emissions, few studies further addressed the microscale analysis for decoupling drivers. This paper reveals the characteristic, inequality contribution ratio, and dynamic evolution of the drivers by integrating Dagum's Gini ratio with kernel density estimation in YREB. Results are as follows: (1) The decoupling states presented weak decoupling state at the whole belt in the majority of the latter observed sub-periods. The decoupling states at the provincial level turned more satisfactory during the four observed sub-periods, especially for Shanghai and Zhejiang. (2) The energy intensity (EI) effect is the predominant driver for promoting the decoupling state in the vast majority of provinces, whereas value added per capita effect is the major role for inhibiting the decoupling state. (3) During the four observed sub-periods, the Gini inequality and transvariation intensity of the EI effect between sub-regions are the main sources of the provincial differences in YREB. The driving force of EI effect is increasing, but the provincial differences are expanding in the upstream and downstream regions by analyzing its dynamic evolution. Understanding the temporal and spatial microscale inequality of the decoupling drivers provides governments with differentiated and forward-looking suggestions towards coordinating regional economic growth and carbon emissions reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]