Chinas Spatial Disintegration

Book Description :

This book is intended to provide the narratives and analytics of China’s spatial (dis)integration. Indeed, the Chinese nation is far too large and spatially complicated and diversified to be misinterpreted. The only feasible approach to analyzing it is, therefore, to divide it into smaller geographical elements through which one can have a better insight into the spatial mechanisms and regional characteristics. Provides a combination of narratives and analytical narratives Includes annexes which evaluate provincial and interprovincial panel data and information collected and compiled by the author Offers specialized mathematics and statistical techniques

Book Description :

This book pursues both narrative and analytic approaches to better understand China’s spatial economic development and its implications for Tibet. Accordingly, this book focuses on Tibet – an autonomous region in the far west of China – as the subject of an in-depth case study, highlighting its unique geopolitical and socioeconomic features and external and boundary conditions. China’s great diversity in terms of physical geography, resource endowment, political economy, and ethnicity and religion has posed challenges to the studies of spatial and interprovincial issues. Indeed, the Chinese nation is far too huge and spatially diverse to be easily interpreted. The only feasible approach to analyzing it is, therefore, to divide it into smaller geographical elements so as to arrive at better insights into the country’s spatial mechanisms and regional characteristics. In this context, the book combines analytic and narrative approaches.

Book Description :

This fully updated edition of the China Ethnic Statistic Yearbook, comprised of entirely original research, presents data on the socioeconomic situation of China’s 56 ethnic groups. Although the majority of China’s population is of the Han nationality (which accounts for more than 90% of China’s population), the non-Han ethnic groups have a population of more than 100 million. China has officially identified, except for other unknown ethnic groups and foreigners with Chinese citizenship, 55 ethnic minorities. In addition, ethnic minorities vary greatly in size. With a population of more than 15 million, the Zhuang are the largest ethnic minority, and the Lhoba, with a population of only about three thousand, the smallest. China’s ethnic diversity has resulted in a special socioeconomic landscape for China itself. How different have China’s ethnic groups been in every sphere of daily life and economic development during China’s fast transition period? In order to answer these questions, we have created a detailed and comparable set of data for each of China’s ethnic groups. This book presents, in an easy-to-use format, a broad collection of social and economic indicators on China’s 56 ethnic groups. This useful resource profiles the general social and economic situations for each of these ethnic groups. These indicators are compiled and estimated based on the regional and local data gathered from a variety of sources up to 2016 with up to date analysis. This Yearbook also includes a new chapter on China’s spatial (dis)integration as a multiethnic paradox.

Book Description :

This title investigates China’s network society, both its online cyber society and offline real world society, by analyzing the trends and social foundations of society as network and the social challenges it poses, as well as structural changes in social space and social interaction. The first part of the book examines how network society in China forms and develops, analyzing the challenges and structural changes it poses. The author studies network power and uncertainties that lies in the supply, flow, and reception of a massive amount of information, revealing how this influences the government's administrative power as well as governance measures to stabilize social cohesion. The second part first discusses the social restructuring and characteristics of network social space in China. Based on case studies of several momentous social events, the spatial change characterized by an integration of absence and presence space and its influence on social interaction and experience is elucidated, including active absence interaction, mediated experience, spatial representation, and social identities of network aggregation. The book will be a crucial reference for scholars and students studying sociology, network sociology, and contemporary Chinese society.

Book Description :

Militarily, use of spacebased assets, when integrated with operations, assumes importance as one of the many force multipliers. As on date, outer space is being extensively used by the armed forces for varied services which include navigation, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, environmental monitoring and advance warning. The command and control in today’s netcentric environment also depends on space resources. Thus, the use of outer space with spacebased assets in support of military operations leads to the deduction that space as a medium stands militarised. Of late, many of the dominant nations have developed, or are expanding, capabilities to attack the spacebased assets of potential adversaries to disrupt command and control structures. Countries like the US and China are contesting for space supremacy and working towards developing spacebased weapons capable of being delivered from spacebased platforms. These developments, in turn, are infusing a sense of insecurity amongst other international players, including India, and have raised concerns worldwide. Development of spacebased weapons by any state has the potential to ignite a new arms race in space as many countries now possess the wherewithal for launching spacebased assets capable of carrying the required payloads. Thus, from the present capability of ‘militarisation of space’, we seem to be graduating towards ‘weaponisation of space’. As outer space has been designated as one of the ‘global’ commons, any sort of deployment or employment of space weapons raises concerns and any use of spacebased weapons will have unpleasant cascading effects. In the absence of any international curb or law on space weaponisation, it continues to be a conceptual possibility as well as an empirical reality.

Book Description :

In the past three decades, China has experienced an unprecedented pace of economic and urban development. It’s economy is now transforming from one based on manufacturing industries towards the producer services, with the importance of these services in the national and regional economy being recognized by economists and policy makers alike. With growing demand and policy support, producer services are expected to expand rapidly, leading to a new wave of economic and urban development in China. This groundbreaking volume is one of the first to address questions related to the development of these services in China. The contributions explore a wide range of associated topics including the characteristics of the growth of producer services and how this is related to China’s economic and urban transition, the distribution of these services amongst Chinese cities, as well as drawing comparison between producer service development in China and Western counterparts. This volume also discusses the dynamics of the development of these services in China and how the political-economic embeddedness of China has shaped the development of producer services. Finally, the consequences of this growth and how the economy and urban space have change in response is explored, as well as the challenges Chinese cities face in moving towards a service economy, and how this can inform future public policies. This volume addresses the pressing need to understand the economic and urban changes in post-industrial China to allow appropriate strategies and policies to formulated to facilitate future development in China. The text is rich with statistical data and diagrams, providing original contributions and a cutting edge overview. This timely publication will be of interest to upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers interested in China, Urban Studies and Economic Development.

Book Description :

Presents an in-depth picture of China today in social, economic and political terms, examining the record of 50 years of Communist rule, its successes and failures.

Book Description :

Questioning Collapse challenges those scholars and popular writers who advance the thesis that societies - past and present - collapse because of behavior that destroyed their environments or because of overpopulation. In a series of highly accessible and closely argued essays, a team of internationally recognized scholars bring history and context to bear in their radically different analyses of iconic events, such as the deforestation of Easter Island, the cessation of the Norse colony in Greenland, the faltering of nineteenth-century China, the migration of ancestral peoples away from Chaco Canyon in the American southwest, the crisis and resilience of Lowland Maya kingship, and other societies that purportedly 'collapsed'. Collectively, these essays demonstrate that resilience in the face of societal crises, rather than collapse, is the leitmotif of the human story from the earliest civilizations to the present. Scrutinizing the notion that Euro-American colonial triumphs were an accident of geography, Questioning Collapse also critically examines the complex historical relationship between race and political labels of societal 'success' and 'failure'.

Book Description :

This comprehensive text examines Chinese foreign policy with a focus on the recent dramatic changes in China's place and role in the world. Covering both the economic and security dimensions of China's foreign policy-making as well as its key bilateral relationships, it offers students a clear and systematic introduction to the key challenges and prospects posed by China's rise. Using a wealth of sources, the book explores how the Chinese perceive their country's growing role and considers whether Chinese foreign policy is still conducted, as it has been traditionally, in line with what the Chinese regard as being core values and national interests, particularly a territorial and sovereign integrity, political independence and modernization, as well as a great power status. Written by an expert in Chinese politics and foreign policy, this accessible introduction offers a unique analysis of contemporary China and the economic and security aspects of foreign policy from the twentieth century onwards. It also includes the under-analysed relationships between China and other emerging powers. This text is an essential for those studying China within International Relations and Politics degrees, or who are interested in the development of China's foreign policy and its evolving place in the world order.

Book Description :

After the 1911 fall of the Manchus came the most hideous breakdown in Chinese history. Sheridan, a Northwestern University scholar, concentrates on the Kuomintang movement of Chiang Kai-shek, insisting that we judge a political force by whether it solves the problems posed to it, not, as Chiang's partisans prefer, by means of what-if's. Sheridan's focus on the KMT brings more to light than do many surveys of Mao's revolutionaries. The KMT failed either to create an effective dictatorship or to mobilize fascist passions which could ensure willingness to "sacrifice." Thus the difficulty in squeezing enough wealth out of the peasantry to meet a foreign debt which totaled half the national revenue. The KMT did ensure that forced opium production took up at least a fifth of Chinese cropland by the 1929-1933 period, and they consolidated a soldier recruitment system that approximated Nazi roundups. However, the book underlines Chiang's failure to give the masses a ""Strength through Joy"" spirit; and, as wartime inflation of 300% gave way to postwar collapse, the anti-Communist pitch became emptier and emptier. The Kuomintang turned into a mere holding operation and faded into chaos. Sheridan gives a strong sense of the rapine of the warlords who were Chiang's off-and-on allies, and of the feeble heritage of Sun Yat-sen's patriotic platitudes. He leaves out explicit investigation of the international context while underlining, more than most writers, Chiang's commitment to repay external debt at the expense of the Chinese people. A sound and striking approach to these decades of desperation in the lives of a quarter of the human population—if not bypassed in the glut of "China books," it may encourage students and academics to go further. —Kirkus Reviews

Book Description :

Shows how the emerging Chinese empire purposely reconceived but was also constrained by basic spatial units such as the body, the household, the region, and the world.

Book Description :

Regarding revolution as a spatial practice, this book explores modes of spatial construction in modern China through a panoramic overview of major Chinese revolutionary events and nuanced analysis of cultural representations. Examining the relationship between revolution, space, and culture in modern China the author takes five spatially significant revolutionary events as case studies - the territorial dispute between Russia and the Qing dynasty in 1892, the Land Reform in the 1920s, the Long March (1934-36), the mainland-Taiwan split in 1949, and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) - and analyses how revolution constructs, conceives, and transforms space. Using materials associated with these events, including primarily literature, as well as maps, political treatises, historiography, plays, film, and art, the book argues that in addition to redirecting the flow of Chinese history, revolutionary movements operate in and on space in three main ways: maintaining territorial sovereignty, redefining social relations, and governing an imaginary realm. Arguing for reconsideration of revolution as a reorganization of space as much as time, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese culture, society, history and literature.

Book Description :

The spatial patterns of China's rapid economic transformation fundamentally challenge conventional geographies of urban and regional development. This book provides a theoretically informed case study of the local character of regional change in China's lower Yangzi Delta, as well as a new analytical framework for understanding China's unique form of economic modernization.

Book Description :

Drawing on a wealth of primary materials detailing the city's history, customs, and urban construction as well as on recent work in Chinese history, culture, and religion, Yinong Xu examines characteristics of building and transformation in pre-modern Suzhou, characteristics that, while particular to the city's own historical development, reflect or were determined by factors representative of China's urban history in general.".

Book Description :

Diploma Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Geography / Earth Science - Economic Geography, grade: 1,1, University of Marburg, language: English, abstract: Context: China's rapid economic development during the last decades and recent signs of a far reaching structural shift from an industrialized export oriented economy to an economy driven by innovation, domestic consumption and services is reflected by German investment patterns inside mainland China. While the bulk of German investments were traditionally focused on industrial production, a diverse set of market drivers led to an increased investment of German Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) as well. As a sector that has been rarely researched before, German KIBS in China are an integral part of the German business community, shaping their environment in various ways. Content: This thesis aims to fill a research gap by providing a baseline study and qualitative survey on the presence, business activity and structure of German KIBS in China, as well as the function of German KIBS in Beijing as "knowledge intermediaries". Theoretical considerations for this work are based on recent KIBS-research, outlining KIBS-functions and knowledge processing mechanisms, interaction patterns with partners and the relevance proximity. Furthermore, legal and economic framework conditions for foreign service companies in China are outlined, introducing Chinese government policies, regulations and current problems which affect the work of foreign companies in China. The subsequent empirical analysis consists of two parts: A qualitative baseline study with a focus on the overall situation of German KIBS in the context of Chinese service sector development and an empirical micro analysis based on interviews, which aims to provide more detailed insights on German KIBS operations with respect to: - Market entry - China specific regulations and challenges - External network relationships - Innovation, mediation and interaction patterns within a project As a conclusion, hypothesis are formulated based on the survey findings and possible areas of further research are outlined.

Book Description :

Originally published in1984. Regional development planning has grown rapidly in recent years, as both an academic specialism and a focus of policy and practice. Books and articles on the subject have proliferated, and all across the Third World governments have become commited to it, setting up large new departments and even ministries. Charles Gore argues that this growing popularity of regional planning in developing countries is profoundly paradoxical.

Book Description :

Spatial Literary Studies in China explores the range of vibrant and innovative research being done in China today. Chinese scholars have been exploring spatially oriented literary criticism in two different and mutually reinforcing directions: the first has focused on the study of Western literature, especially U.S. and European texts and theory, and the second has examined Chinese cultures, texts, and spaces. This collection of essays demonstrates Chinese scholars’ insightful interpretation, evaluation, and innovative application of international spatial analyses, theories, and methodologies, as well as their inspiring exploration and reconstruction of distinctively Chinese critical and theoretical discourses. For the first time in English, the essays in this volume demonstrate the vitality of literary geography, geocriticism, and the spatial humanities in China in the twenty-first century.

Book Description :

The last several decades have witnessed major restructurings--economic, political, and cultural--in the international arena. The depth and scope of these changes have prompted anthropologists to rethink many of their most basic assumptions, to problematize issues that have long gone unexamined, and to grapple with new and unique problems. Doing so has left the discipline profoundly unsettled. Existing standards of scholarship and research methodologies have come under attack, key conceptual categories have been called into question, and truths once considered secure have been subjected to severe scrutiny and even ridicule. Seizing upon the opportunity afforded by the contemporary conjuncture of disciplinary crisis and redefinition, this book raises questions about two interrelated aspects of historical process and academic production. The volume contributes to ongoing debates about the degree to which the developments of recent decades represent the advent of a new historical era, a rupture with the past that requires new conceptualizations and logics in order to be understood. In confronting this question, the contributors to this volume have assembled a range of materials that place the present period of reconstruction in the context of a broader history and geography of other, related restructurings. Locating Capitalism in Time and Space also raises questions about the degree to which the scholarship of recent decades represents a qualitative break with that of the past. At issue here is whether one understands the history of academic production as a linear process of intellectual growth punctuated by major breakthroughs in understanding, or as a political process structured by the same kinds of inequalities and struggles that characterize the social worlds that are the object of anthropological analysis.

Book Description :

The aim of this book is to examine the transformation of the geography of China in the years since the start of China's policy of reform and opening-up in 1978, as seen through the eyes of Chinese geographers. Throughout that period, Chinese geographers have studied these environmental, economic, political and cultural processes closely, drawing on sources that are far from easy to access, and have published their results in Chinese. Much of this research has underpinned the Chinese government's assessment of policies and the policy choices at different levels, yet it is not well known outside of China. This volume deals with aspects of the socio-economic geography of China's transformation including its changing relations with the rest of the world, although it also deals with the impact of China's development path on the country's ecological systems. Each chapter deals with aggregate trends and specific cases to show the ways in which the particular characteristics of China's economic and social order (economic organization, political system and cultural model and values) have shaped and are shaped by its geography.

Book Description :

This book offers the first detailed account of the complex geographical dynamics currently restructuring China’s export-oriented industries. The topics covered are relevant to post-socialist geography, development studies, economics, economic sociology and international studies. It offers academics, international researchers, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students in these fields an accessible, grounded, yet theoretically sophisticated account of the geographies of global production networks, value chains, and regional development in developing countries and emerging economies. It is of particular interest to economic geographers and economic sociologists involved in the growing debates over local clusters, embeddedness, global sourcing and global production, and over the global value chain/global production network. It also appeals to national policymakers, since it directly addresses economic and industrial policy issues, such as industrial competitiveness, regional and national development, industrial and employment restructuring and trade regulation.