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4/09/2012 The Urban China Initiative (UCI) had its biggest event of the year on September 7th in Tsinghua Science Park - the 2012 Annual Forum, inspiring enlightening discussions among participants from public, private and academic sectors to develop policy thinking that will help address China's urbanization challenges. Themed "China's New Urban Era" as China's urban population surpassed that of rural areas for the first time in 2011, the event brought together about 50 urban leaders and more than 400 professionals from the urban field. The Forum consists of keynote speech, three plenary panels and three breakout panels. Keynote speakers include: Yang Weimin, Vice Minister of office of Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs; Gu Shengzu, Deputy Director of Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee at National People's Congress and Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the China National Democratic Construction Association; Li Xiaojiang, President of China Academy of Urban Planning and Design; Li Dongming, General Manager, Urban Fund of China Development Bank Capital. The plenaries showcased three UCI flagship projects: urban citizenship of Chinese migrants; research on mega regions and the China urban indicators system. The three breakouts showcased UCI's five latest grant projects. The forum brought together leaders from UCI partners including the National Development and Reform Commission, local DRC, China Society of Urban Studies, Development and Research Center of the State Council, China Center for Urban Development, China Development and Reform Foundation, Chinese Academy of Urban Planning and Design, Chinese Academy of Urban Development, Fung Global Institute, New Cities Foundation, Rio Tinto, BMW, CDBC, Tsinghua, Columbia Global Centers and CITIC Property. To find more about the Forum: Highlights of the keynotes and forum news Research and speeches of the plenary and breakout panels Media report on UCI 2012 Ann

K. Sophia Woodman Ph.D. THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2011 This study uses the China case to revisit some of the central assumptions of the literature on citizenship, showing how citizens and states are formed in and through the local places where citizenship is practiced. It suggests that the location of the political and of citizens have been an understudied aspect of citizenship orders, not just in relation to the growing impact of global and transnational forces, but also in sub-state entities. Through fine-grained examination of the daily interactions between citizens and state agents, this study shows how citizenship in China is embedded in local relationships of belonging, participation and entitlement anchored in institutions that organize people in workplaces, urban neighborhoods and rural villages. Based on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork in four communities in Tianjin, China, the study examines how two such institutions, the villager and residents committees, act as a nexus for participation and formal rights, while also providing social welfare to the needy. The practices of these institutions bind citizens to the state through a face-to-face politics that acts both as a mechanism of control and a channel for claims-making and pressure from below, a mode of rule I call "socialized governance." Both enabling and constraining, this exists in tension with bureaucratic-rational forms of governance, such as the current Chinese leadership's objective of "ruling in accordance with law." While the frameworks for citizenship are set at the national level, its local, cellular character means great variation among places in both form and practice. My model of local citizenship helps explain patterns of economic and social inequality and of contentious politics in contemporary China. While the unsettling of the congruence between the national and citizenship has been widely noted, this study points to