Pub Date : 2024-01-07DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2301396
Markus Sattler
{"title":"Rethinking peripheral geographies of innovation: towards an ordinary periphery approach","authors":"Markus Sattler","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2301396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2301396","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":"24 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2024-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139448672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-30DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2300070
Zhe Zhang, Zhiding Hu, Joe Williams
{"title":"International rivers as national borders: the functional complexity of border river governance with a case study of the Khorgos river","authors":"Zhe Zhang, Zhiding Hu, Joe Williams","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2300070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2300070","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":" 93","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139139659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-07DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2292222
Alexander L. Q. Chen, Federico Jensen
{"title":"Logistical fixes and China’s spatial division of logistics integration - in search of economic rebalancing?","authors":"Alexander L. Q. Chen, Federico Jensen","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2292222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2292222","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138590076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-28DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2282701
Cheng Chen, Ryan Rylee, C. C. Fan
{"title":"Living together or apart? International migrants and family coresidence in Yiwu, China","authors":"Cheng Chen, Ryan Rylee, C. C. Fan","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2282701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2282701","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":"69 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139215479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-17DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2266816
Juliet Lu, Michael B. Dwyer
ABSTRACT China’s Opium Replacement Policy (ORP) is one of the country’s earliest cross-border development interventions in the upper Mekong region. A massive state subsidy program for “alternative” development in the northern parts of Myanmar and Laos, the ORP helped finance a wave of Chinese agribusiness investments abroad since the mid-2000s, causing significant social and ecological transformation. Yet key details about the program remain opaque. In this article, we contribute to a growing literature on the rising economic power of China’s “peripheral centers,” borderland prefectures whose role in foreign affairs has increased significantly as the country’s borders become more porous. We review state motives for establishing the ORP and use public records about the program’s activities in Myanmar and Laos to interrogate the vertical politics that structure and complicate the ORP’s implementation. The program’s public records are characterized by a mix of transparency and opacity which we analyse to show that the ORP’s increasing transparency since around 2010 has moved away from regulating impacts abroad and instead toward securing and distributing benefits for borderland business (and their interlinked political) interests in China. As borderland authorities play a growing role in China’s foreign trade, we show that the vertical politics that increasingly shape the regulatory environment have allowed the ORP to proliferate in size and influence as state oversight of its activities abroad has waned.
{"title":"Peripheral centers: vertical politics and the geography of Chinese cross-border opium replacement in Southeast Asia’s “New Golden Triangle”","authors":"Juliet Lu, Michael B. Dwyer","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2266816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2266816","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT China’s Opium Replacement Policy (ORP) is one of the country’s earliest cross-border development interventions in the upper Mekong region. A massive state subsidy program for “alternative” development in the northern parts of Myanmar and Laos, the ORP helped finance a wave of Chinese agribusiness investments abroad since the mid-2000s, causing significant social and ecological transformation. Yet key details about the program remain opaque. In this article, we contribute to a growing literature on the rising economic power of China’s “peripheral centers,” borderland prefectures whose role in foreign affairs has increased significantly as the country’s borders become more porous. We review state motives for establishing the ORP and use public records about the program’s activities in Myanmar and Laos to interrogate the vertical politics that structure and complicate the ORP’s implementation. The program’s public records are characterized by a mix of transparency and opacity which we analyse to show that the ORP’s increasing transparency since around 2010 has moved away from regulating impacts abroad and instead toward securing and distributing benefits for borderland business (and their interlinked political) interests in China. As borderland authorities play a growing role in China’s foreign trade, we show that the vertical politics that increasingly shape the regulatory environment have allowed the ORP to proliferate in size and influence as state oversight of its activities abroad has waned.","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":"39 1","pages":"811 - 841"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-14DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2282028
Xiaodong Huang, Godfrey Yeung, Tingzhu Li, Debin Du
ABSTRACTWe propose an analytical framework to examine how various dimensions of proximity between home and host countries could account for the trajectories and specificities of cross-border acquisitions of technology assets (CATAs) conducted by acquirer firms in latecomer economies. As Chinese firms have been increasingly using CATAs as a mean to catch up with their counterparts in advanced economies, we referred to their acquisition records to illustrate the applicability of the proposed framework. Based on a compiled dataset of the number of CATA transactions from 2001 to 2018, this paper examines the effects of various dimensions of proximity on the spatio-temporal patterns of Chinese CATAs using negative binomial regression models. Our findings demonstrate that the difference in governance between China and host countries (institutional proximity), the size of overseas Chinese population in host countries (social proximity), and the value of import from host countries (economic proximity) have significant effects on the propensity of Chinese firms to engage in CATAs. Physical distance and cultural gap between China and host countries, however, have no significant impact on CATAs. Further examination of the results reveals that Chinese firms tend to acquire target firms outright in culturally distant host countries to reduce the risk of their overseas acquisition in CATAs. In addition, we also found that there is a dynamic relationship between different dimensions of proximity and CATAs: from the relative importance of economic proximity between 2001 and 2012 to the rising influence of social and institutional proximity between 2013 and 2018 on CATAs.KEYWORDS: Technological acquisitionscross-border M&AproximityInnovationlatecomer economyChinese firm Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. The BVD-Zephyr M&A database defines a transaction as “expected to be completed” if it is in normal progression and has not updated its status in two years.2. We followed the convention by classifying enterprises based in Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions as host regions.Additional informationFundingThe first author was supported by the China Scholarship Council [202106140100]. This work was supported by the Major Projects of National Social Science Foundation of China [19ZDA087].
{"title":"Proximity and cross-border acquisitions of technology assets by firms in latecomer economies: a study of Chinese firms, 2001-2018","authors":"Xiaodong Huang, Godfrey Yeung, Tingzhu Li, Debin Du","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2282028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2282028","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTWe propose an analytical framework to examine how various dimensions of proximity between home and host countries could account for the trajectories and specificities of cross-border acquisitions of technology assets (CATAs) conducted by acquirer firms in latecomer economies. As Chinese firms have been increasingly using CATAs as a mean to catch up with their counterparts in advanced economies, we referred to their acquisition records to illustrate the applicability of the proposed framework. Based on a compiled dataset of the number of CATA transactions from 2001 to 2018, this paper examines the effects of various dimensions of proximity on the spatio-temporal patterns of Chinese CATAs using negative binomial regression models. Our findings demonstrate that the difference in governance between China and host countries (institutional proximity), the size of overseas Chinese population in host countries (social proximity), and the value of import from host countries (economic proximity) have significant effects on the propensity of Chinese firms to engage in CATAs. Physical distance and cultural gap between China and host countries, however, have no significant impact on CATAs. Further examination of the results reveals that Chinese firms tend to acquire target firms outright in culturally distant host countries to reduce the risk of their overseas acquisition in CATAs. In addition, we also found that there is a dynamic relationship between different dimensions of proximity and CATAs: from the relative importance of economic proximity between 2001 and 2012 to the rising influence of social and institutional proximity between 2013 and 2018 on CATAs.KEYWORDS: Technological acquisitionscross-border M&AproximityInnovationlatecomer economyChinese firm Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. The BVD-Zephyr M&A database defines a transaction as “expected to be completed” if it is in normal progression and has not updated its status in two years.2. We followed the convention by classifying enterprises based in Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions as host regions.Additional informationFundingThe first author was supported by the China Scholarship Council [202106140100]. This work was supported by the Major Projects of National Social Science Foundation of China [19ZDA087].","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":"13 8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134957589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-12DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2279545
Xiaxia Yang, Kam Wing Chan
Chinese institutional arrangements, particularly the hukou system, hinder long-term settlement of internal migrants by limiting their access to social benefits. This article proposes a new method for assessing migrant settlement: the use of age data to investigate the link between migrant “flow” and “stock”. We contend that migrants’ inability to settle mainly derives from two sources: the difficulties in maintaining migrant family togetherness, and the impediments to long-term residence of migrants themselves. Age-related indices were developed to compare China’s internal migration with other countries’ internal and international migration. The results indicate a “China difference” in migration age patterns – child and elderly dependents of migrant workers are discouraged from migrating, while migrants growing old tend to return to the origins than to remain in the destinations. Consequently, family togetherness and long-term residence in the destinations are often unachievable for migrants. Our analyses highlight China’s unique migrant labor regime, where temporary migrant workers are continuously “recycled” to keep destinations’ workforce “forever young”, reducing production costs of Chinese goods in global markets. Methodologically, our age-based “mobile-to-settled” transition framework and “settlement rate” of migrants in the transition are of value in examining migrant settlement chances more generally, applicable to internal and international migration beyond China.
{"title":"Forever young: China’s migration regime and age patterns","authors":"Xiaxia Yang, Kam Wing Chan","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2279545","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2279545","url":null,"abstract":"Chinese institutional arrangements, particularly the hukou system, hinder long-term settlement of internal migrants by limiting their access to social benefits. This article proposes a new method for assessing migrant settlement: the use of age data to investigate the link between migrant “flow” and “stock”. We contend that migrants’ inability to settle mainly derives from two sources: the difficulties in maintaining migrant family togetherness, and the impediments to long-term residence of migrants themselves. Age-related indices were developed to compare China’s internal migration with other countries’ internal and international migration. The results indicate a “China difference” in migration age patterns – child and elderly dependents of migrant workers are discouraged from migrating, while migrants growing old tend to return to the origins than to remain in the destinations. Consequently, family togetherness and long-term residence in the destinations are often unachievable for migrants. Our analyses highlight China’s unique migrant labor regime, where temporary migrant workers are continuously “recycled” to keep destinations’ workforce “forever young”, reducing production costs of Chinese goods in global markets. Methodologically, our age-based “mobile-to-settled” transition framework and “settlement rate” of migrants in the transition are of value in examining migrant settlement chances more generally, applicable to internal and international migration beyond China.","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":"1 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135037641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-09DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2279549
Xiaofeng Liu, Mia M. Bennett
ABSTRACTWhile the roles of actors such as the state and state-owned enterprises within “Global China” elicit significant scholarly attention, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are relatively less critiqued. These members of Chinese civil society are playing an increasingly important role in the environmental governance of the country’s overseas activities. By analyzing firsthand observations and interviews and secondhand materials produced by NGOs and the Chinese government, this article traces how and why Chinese NGOs seek to “green” China’s engagement beyond its borders. First, we identify four types of Chinese NGOs with a variety of state- and non-state founders. Then, we examine how NGOs’ objectives and state policies jointly shape the way they “go out.” As both knowledge and political actors, Chinese NGOs accumulate, produce, and disseminate knowledge related to Global China’s environmental issues, across domestic and international spaces. Though the specific strategies pursued by NGOs depend on their type, overall, their alignment with Chinese state policies and interests constitutes a crucial condition for their success. This research offers new insights into Chinese non-state actors’ expanding participation in international activities. As the country’s civil organizations endeavor to exert influence both within and beyond China’s borders, the effects of their interventions on global governance may grow.KEYWORDS: Global Chinanon-government organizations (NGO)non-state actorsenvironmental governanceknowledgepolitics Disclosure statementThe research received ethics approvals from the Human Research Ethics Committee, the University of Hong Kong (EA2006016 and EA210244).
{"title":"Going out and going green: NGOs in the environmental governance of Global China","authors":"Xiaofeng Liu, Mia M. Bennett","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2279549","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2279549","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTWhile the roles of actors such as the state and state-owned enterprises within “Global China” elicit significant scholarly attention, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are relatively less critiqued. These members of Chinese civil society are playing an increasingly important role in the environmental governance of the country’s overseas activities. By analyzing firsthand observations and interviews and secondhand materials produced by NGOs and the Chinese government, this article traces how and why Chinese NGOs seek to “green” China’s engagement beyond its borders. First, we identify four types of Chinese NGOs with a variety of state- and non-state founders. Then, we examine how NGOs’ objectives and state policies jointly shape the way they “go out.” As both knowledge and political actors, Chinese NGOs accumulate, produce, and disseminate knowledge related to Global China’s environmental issues, across domestic and international spaces. Though the specific strategies pursued by NGOs depend on their type, overall, their alignment with Chinese state policies and interests constitutes a crucial condition for their success. This research offers new insights into Chinese non-state actors’ expanding participation in international activities. As the country’s civil organizations endeavor to exert influence both within and beyond China’s borders, the effects of their interventions on global governance may grow.KEYWORDS: Global Chinanon-government organizations (NGO)non-state actorsenvironmental governanceknowledgepolitics Disclosure statementThe research received ethics approvals from the Human Research Ethics Committee, the University of Hong Kong (EA2006016 and EA210244).","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":" 33","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135291511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-19DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2267093
Jakhongir Babadjanov, Martin Petrick
In 2018, Uzbekistan initiated a clustering policy in the national cotton sector. Based on case studies, this paper investigates the recent changes in cotton production under the emerging clusters. Our findings show a mismatch between the meaning of clusters in the industrial policy literature and practice in Uzbekistan. The supervision of cotton growing passed from the state to private enterprises (clusters). This transformation has perpetuated monopsony conditions under which farmers have no alternative marketing channels. The input markets have been disconnected from state agencies, however farms lack access to private input markets, since clusters supervise the input use. Our analyses show that forced and child labor has receded. In general, the cluster reform hardly took into account the principles of industrial policy. For example, the establishment of clusters among farmers widely lacked transparency. Instead of a hastened establishment of clusters in large scales, an institutional environment that enables bottom-up initiatives should be promoted. Overall, from the farmers’ perspective, recent reform steps led to moderate changes at best, while clusters started to play a dominant role in the cotton sector.
{"title":"Uzbekistan’s cotton clusters in the context of the industrial policy debate","authors":"Jakhongir Babadjanov, Martin Petrick","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2267093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2267093","url":null,"abstract":"In 2018, Uzbekistan initiated a clustering policy in the national cotton sector. Based on case studies, this paper investigates the recent changes in cotton production under the emerging clusters. Our findings show a mismatch between the meaning of clusters in the industrial policy literature and practice in Uzbekistan. The supervision of cotton growing passed from the state to private enterprises (clusters). This transformation has perpetuated monopsony conditions under which farmers have no alternative marketing channels. The input markets have been disconnected from state agencies, however farms lack access to private input markets, since clusters supervise the input use. Our analyses show that forced and child labor has receded. In general, the cluster reform hardly took into account the principles of industrial policy. For example, the establishment of clusters among farmers widely lacked transparency. Instead of a hastened establishment of clusters in large scales, an institutional environment that enables bottom-up initiatives should be promoted. Overall, from the farmers’ perspective, recent reform steps led to moderate changes at best, while clusters started to play a dominant role in the cotton sector.","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135728951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-11DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2023.2267064
Zifeng Chen, Anthony Gar-On Yeh
ABSTRACTThe definition and boundaries of cities often determine how research is undertaken due to the areal units used to provide geo-located data and thus affect the research findings. Prefecture-level cities are popular city-equivalent statistical units in China, particularly in studies of inter-city mobility. Most prefecture-level cities in China have been delineated as meso-scale administrative divisions for territorial governance through various approaches of administrative annexation. This study takes a critical look at the city definition in China and summarizes two critical challenges that emerge when prefecture-level cities are adopted as city-equivalent statistical units. The first challenge is that the population and other socioeconomic statistics of different prefecture-level cities are incomparable since a large amount of land administered by such cities is functionally rural. The second challenge is that, because prefecture-level cities cannot represent the real functional areas that are based on a daily labor-shed concept, the estimation of inter-city mobility could be largely erroneous by conflating the real inter-city travel with the de facto intra-metropolitan travel such as daily commuting. While the first challenge has long been addressed by scholars and eventually by the national government of China in 2008, the second challenge remains to be solved. These two challenges demand rigorous attempts to delineate cities in China considering integrated economic and social units. This study sheds light on how delineation of administrative boundaries affects our understanding of city hierarchy and spatial interactions. Its implications are not limited to China but applicable to other countries and regions.KEYWORDS: City definitionprefecture-level cityinter-city mobilityfunctional areaurban China Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. As for county-level cities, they were once important city-equivalent administrative units in China before the city-administer-county system was implemented in a nationwide manner in the early 1980s. Since then, many county-level cities have been annexed into their affiliated prefecture-level (or above) cities as urban districts. As a result, not all the prefecture-level cities contain county-level cities. Only a limited number of urban settlements are located in county-level cities. This is the reason why county-level cities are much less widely used as city-equivalent administrative units in China than the prefecture-level cities.2. Since the early 1990s, local governments of Chinese cities have planned and built many development zones and parks (e.g. “industrial parks”) in suburban areas to attract investments. These developments led to considerably rapid employment growth in the manufacturing sector in suburban areas. Such growth resulted in numerous self-contained industrial new towns within the prefecture-level cities, with workers residing in wor
{"title":"Is prefecture-level city a “city” in China: a critical review","authors":"Zifeng Chen, Anthony Gar-On Yeh","doi":"10.1080/15387216.2023.2267064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2023.2267064","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThe definition and boundaries of cities often determine how research is undertaken due to the areal units used to provide geo-located data and thus affect the research findings. Prefecture-level cities are popular city-equivalent statistical units in China, particularly in studies of inter-city mobility. Most prefecture-level cities in China have been delineated as meso-scale administrative divisions for territorial governance through various approaches of administrative annexation. This study takes a critical look at the city definition in China and summarizes two critical challenges that emerge when prefecture-level cities are adopted as city-equivalent statistical units. The first challenge is that the population and other socioeconomic statistics of different prefecture-level cities are incomparable since a large amount of land administered by such cities is functionally rural. The second challenge is that, because prefecture-level cities cannot represent the real functional areas that are based on a daily labor-shed concept, the estimation of inter-city mobility could be largely erroneous by conflating the real inter-city travel with the de facto intra-metropolitan travel such as daily commuting. While the first challenge has long been addressed by scholars and eventually by the national government of China in 2008, the second challenge remains to be solved. These two challenges demand rigorous attempts to delineate cities in China considering integrated economic and social units. This study sheds light on how delineation of administrative boundaries affects our understanding of city hierarchy and spatial interactions. Its implications are not limited to China but applicable to other countries and regions.KEYWORDS: City definitionprefecture-level cityinter-city mobilityfunctional areaurban China Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. As for county-level cities, they were once important city-equivalent administrative units in China before the city-administer-county system was implemented in a nationwide manner in the early 1980s. Since then, many county-level cities have been annexed into their affiliated prefecture-level (or above) cities as urban districts. As a result, not all the prefecture-level cities contain county-level cities. Only a limited number of urban settlements are located in county-level cities. This is the reason why county-level cities are much less widely used as city-equivalent administrative units in China than the prefecture-level cities.2. Since the early 1990s, local governments of Chinese cities have planned and built many development zones and parks (e.g. “industrial parks”) in suburban areas to attract investments. These developments led to considerably rapid employment growth in the manufacturing sector in suburban areas. Such growth resulted in numerous self-contained industrial new towns within the prefecture-level cities, with workers residing in wor","PeriodicalId":47508,"journal":{"name":"Eurasian Geography and Economics","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136097278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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