Group items tagged

Abstract This paper investigates the process of tourism-driven urbanization as a local strategy of town development in China. Existing literature has highlighted the role of industrialization in the urbanization process of China's small towns, but here it is suggested that tourism - a development initiative based on the creation of space for consumption, rather than production - can also foster significant expansion of urbanized built environment and remarkable transformation of local socio-economic structures. The case study suggests that, in contrast to the recent process of industrialization-based urbanization in China's small towns, tourism urbanization in Zhapo Town, Guangdong Province has been a highly localized development initiative characterized by the absence of foreign capital investment. Tourism-driven urbanization in Zhapo has involved several processes whose joint effect has reproduced the local socio-spatial organization: the rapid of expansion of urbanized built environment; a unique pattern of land use and land development; the booming of tertiary economic sectors; and the emergence of a flexible regime of labor force. In the meantime, the research also contests Mullins' (1991) classical theorization of tourism urbanization, and suggests that recent tourism-driven urbanization process in Zhapo Town is not the product of the post-modernization of urban cultural manifestations, but is situated within the context-specific space of China's modernity and is based on relatively standardized provision of tourism-related service and the mass consumption of nature. Highlights ► The research investigates town development in China with the perspective of tourism urbanization. ► Tourism in Zhapo town has triggered significant changes in urbanized built environment. ► Tourism urbanization is accompanied with local socio-economic restructuring. ► Tourism urbanization in Zhapo is situated within the space of China's modernization.

[ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Adolf K.Y. Ng, James J. Wang Paru dans : Research in Transportation Economics, Volume 35, Issue 1, Pages 1-66 (May 2012) Editorial 1. Introduction Globalization has brought China ever close to the rest of the world not only through its trade and transport networks, but also many transport-related issues that seem to be in common among other countries, while simultaneously with special causes deep-rooted from its unique pathway of development especially in the past several decades. The major fundamental difference of China's development from other countries lies in its economy in general, while the transport sector, in particular, lies in the role of the government. Indeed, since the global financial crisis in 2008, advanced economies, such as the US and several EU countries, have intensified on how to redefine and strengthen the role of the state within respective economies. On the contrary, the Chinese situation is exactly the other way round: the debate is about how to reduce interferences from the very strong hands of the government towards a real regulated market. In this respect, the transport sector typifies this ongoing marketization process. On one extreme, the mode of highway transportation is fully marketized: private investors may construct toll expressways in almost any provinces, either as joint ventures partnering with state-owned firms or just as fully private developers. On the other side of the continuum, after more than three decades of 'reforms', railway infrastructures, as well as their operation, are still fully and tightly controlled by the Ministry of Railways (MOR) through its subsidiary's monopoly. In-between the highways and railways are air and maritime transportation, both of which being characterized by oligopolies with two to three state-owned listed companies taking up more than 80% of the market share. Given such situation, there is a clear interest for further understanding and re

[ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Feng Hu [et al.] Paru dans : China Economic Review, Volume 22, Issue 1, March 2011, Pages 64-74 Abstract Although there is a rich literature on internal temporary migration in China, few existing studies deal with the permanent migration decision of China's rural labor. This paper will fill this gap and deal with the permanent migration choice made by rural migrants with the China General Social Survey (CGSS) data. Our results show that compared with their circular counterparts, permanent migrants tend to stay within the home provinces and are more likely to have stable jobs and earn high incomes and thus are more adapted to urban lives. We also find that more educated and more experienced migrants tend to be permanent urban residents, while the relationship of age and the probability of permanent migration is inverse U-shaped. Due to the restrictions of the current hukou system and the lack of rural land rental market, those people with more children and more land at home are more likely to migrate circularly rather than permanently. Research Highlights ► It's the first to examine the permanent migration choice by China's rural migrants. ► We employ a unique nationally representative dataset. ► Our findings are robust to different definitions of "permanent migrant". ► Our findings provide a new insight and have important policy implications.

Changes in sexual attitudes and behaviors and resurgence of the sex industry in China have increased concerns about HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STI) epidemics. Little attention has been paid to the significant and growing sex industry in rural China. Promotion of barrier protection in this context is most effective to prevent STIs and pregnancy. The female condom (FC) is a barrier method that gives women more autonomy in its application, and has other advantages, but has been little promoted and tested in high risk contexts in China. The China/US Women's Health Project was designed to promote FC use in addition to male condoms (MC) through outreach intervention conducted in sex work establishments in rural and small urban towns in southern China, using the original prototype FC1. The study used quantitative and qualitative methods to document the pre-intervention context, intervention delivery process, and post-intervention outcomes of FC use. In this paper we compare post-intervention FC users and non-users in the first study sites, two rural towns in a single county in Hainan Province. Examination of cross-sectional six-month and 12-month surveys indicated that, despite relatively high MC use, about one-third of the women in sex work establishments in these rural towns had adopted FC at each post-intervention survey. Compared with non-users, FC users were more likely to be freelance women in boarding houses, more sexually experienced, married with children, more sexually active in the prior month, and more exposed to the intervention. The rural context hampered intervention implementation, particularly the significant limits in health and human resources available to manage prevention of HIV/STIs among women in the sex industry. These challenges highlight the need to better understand the context of the rural sex industry and capacity of local resources for better prevention efforts and the benefits that new prevention technologies like FC can of