This paper outlines the development trajectory and genealogical features of political geography in contemporary China. It first maps the development of political geography in Western academia and summarizes the genealogical characteristics of Western political geography. Taking the Western political geography as a baseline, it then discusses the establishment and development of political geography in contemporary China and divides this process into three stages since the founding of new China: the germination period, the stagnant period, and the revival period. Based on the work of extant (typical) scholars, related studies and relevant genealogical developments in each stage, this paper explores the main genealogical characteristics of political geography in China. Five major branches are extracted, which are respectively represented by Zhang Qiyun, Bao Juemin, Li Xudan, Zhang Wenkui and Wang Enyong. On this basis, this paper studies the similarity and difference between Chinese and Western political geography by focusing on their developing trajectories and features. This paper argues that: the development of political geography in China has been long influenced by the exogenous theories and notions and for this reason there is an apparent binary division between exogenous and endogenous political geography theories in China; the methodology, concepts and systems of this sub-discipline are still insufficient, and establishment of a unified academic community and the construction of subject knowledge system is therefore urgently needed. Finally, this paper proposes an agenda for future Chinese political geographical studies and calls for a more balanced and locally rooted Chinese political geography.
Taiwan and the Chinese mainland face each other across the sea, and maritime transport is the most important means for the exchange of goods between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits. Affected by international politics and trade patterns, since the middle and late 19th century, the transportation links between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits have changed dramatically. Using the O-D data of vessels transiting between ports from the Lloyd's database between 1895 and 2008, we studied the changes in the transport links between ports on both sides of the Taiwan Straits at the national and global scales. The analysis concludes as follows: (1) Since before the beginning of modern times until Taiwan was ceded to Japan, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland had island-land relations, and Xiamen Port was the most important transit port to Taiwan. After the Japanese occupation, Taiwan became Japan's source of raw materials and a location in which to sell Japan's goods, and Taiwan, Japan, and the Chinese mainland were forming triangular transportation links. After the confrontation between the two sides of the strait, the United States intervened in the Taiwan Straits, and the transportation links between the ports on both sides of the Taiwan Straits were cut off. Taiwan, the United States, and Japan formed a triangular trade network. After 1979, Hong Kong Port became the most important transit port for cross-strait transport links. After direct flights across the Taiwan Straits were instituted, the port transportation links between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland continued to expand in breadth and depth. (2) Taiwan has obvious advantages in location, but because it is an island, the hinterland is narrow. Therefore, making full use of regional and geopolitical advantages, using the regional economic growth centre as its own foreland and forming a close sea transportation link is key to Taiwan's sustained economic development. Improving relations with the mainland, sharing in opportunities for the development of the mainland, and promoting the transport links between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits are opportunities for Taiwan.
The concept of megalopolis, since its original inception six decades ago, has inspired many new terms that mainly describe large-scale urbanized forms such as megaregions and polycentric urban regions. However, recent studies have increasingly focused on the two key functions that megalopolises act as an incubator of new ideas and trends and as a hub that articulates knowledge exchange at the megalopolitan, national, and global scales. While the recent studies have mainly analyzed the functional aspects of megalopolis based on China's Yangtze River Delta region, this paper investigates the evolving process and mechanisms of knowledge collaboration within and beyond Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) - one of the most promising and vibrant megalopolises in China. In addition, the GBA megalopolis is unique because it contains Hong Kong and Macao, which have a different political system from China's mainland. Drawing upon a dataset of publications that were indexed in Web of Science Core Collection during the 1990-2016 period, this paper uses the Gini coefficient to measure the degree of knowledge polycentricity of the GBA megalopolis. Here, knowledge polycentricity is further classified into attribute polycentricity of knowledge production and functional polycentricity of knowledge collaboration within and beyond the GBA megalopolis. Whereas the attribute polycentricity refers to the distribution inequality of the total publications of GBA cities, the functional polycentricity represents the distribution inequality of GBA cities' knowledge collaboration at different geographical scales. Our empirical results show: (1) knowledge production of the GBA megalopolis as a whole has experienced a robust and continuous growth. The degrees of both attribute polycentricity and functional polycentricity have also been on the increase in general, although there are some fluctuations in early years and some deviations in recent years. During the ten years after Hong Kong and Macao returned to China (the 2000-2010 period), the degree of knowledge polycentricity of the GBA megalopolis especially enjoyed the fastest rise; (2) The degree of functional polycentricity decreased with the expansion in the geographical scales at which it is measured, confirming the findings of previous studies that functional polycentricity is scale-dependent. Moreover, we find that the degree of functional polycentricity becomes more fluctuated at the global scale while it tends to increase continuously at the megalopolitan scale; (3) The evolving process of knowledge polycentricity of the GBA megalopolis is influenced by institutional proximity, geographical proximity and status proximity between cities. Specifically, the mobility of researchers, the collaboration of universities and research institutes, and the coordination of local governments are three major forces promoting the evolution of knowledge polycentricity of the GBA megalopolis. Overall, the increasing knowledge polycentricity would be of significance for the GBA megalopolis to form a knowledge-driven region of collective collaboration.
Aiming at building a safe city, this study proposed a “Size-Density-Morphology” based three-dimensional urban resilience evaluation framework according to the theories and methods of geography and landscape ecology. By using the framework, the urban resilience of each county in Dalian city during 2000-2016 was evaluated. There are three kinds of urban resilience, namely size resilience, density resilience and morphology resilience. The size resilience could be measured by ecological infrastructure tools; the density resilience could be measured by ecological footprint and ecological carrying capacity; the morphology resilience could be measured by "Source-sink" landscape average distance index. In addition, this paper also analyzed the combining forms of the three types of resilience. This study demonstrates that the three-dimension evaluation framework has a unique capacity to identify the resilience characteristics of city, and it is a key bond which creates the connection of urban planning and urban resilience research. Findings are as follows: (1) The size safety is the primary constraint condition for urban spatial expansion. (2) Ecological carrying capacity is the safe threshold for urban density. (3) The spatial coupling of source and sink landscape is a basic feature of good urban morphology. (4) It is the combination of size-density-morphology resilience to determine the safety of the city rather than each single one. According to the analysis of combination characteristics of the "Size-Density-Morphology" resilience, four suggestions were put forward for the development of Dalian city in future. (1) Strictly limit the development intensity of central urban area and Jinzhou district to curb the urban sprawl trend; (2) Strictly control the development of the coastal zone and maintain the integrity of natural mountain and green vegetation patches; (3) Promote the balanced development on a whole city scale to improve the city's overall resilience; (4) Optimizing the development strategy of new urban area in order to form a good urban morphology.
In the unprecedented urbanization process in China, urbanized land has expanded quickly at the same pace or even faster than the growth of the urban population. Employing both the ordinary least square and geographical weighted regression, we analyzed the spatial patterns and factors influencing land urbanization at the county level in 2000 and 2015. This analysis was assisted by land-use data for China acquired from the resource and environment data cloud platform. The research reveals the following points: (1) The annual growth rate of land urbanization experienced 2.77 percentages on average from 2000 to 2015. About 40% of the counties witnessed an annual increase of 3% or above. Land urbanization was manifested in a pattern of diffusion, which differed from the continued spatial polarization of demographic urbanization in China. (2) Geographically, the north-south differentiation of land urbanization was clearer than the east-west differentiation. And the high-value regions tended to be located to the southeast of "Hu Line". Counties surrounding those metropolitan areas were detected as hotspots of land urbanization. In general, there was a convergent trend of land urbanization among regions in China. (3) The factors of population growth, economic development, industrial structure, city/county features, and geographical location have played significant roles in the spatial disparities of land urbanization at the county level. Besides, the spatio-temporal dependence of their influences were also explored. This study on land urbanization and its influencing factors at the county level advances our theoretical and practical understandings of the new-type urbanization, urban and rural integration, and rural revitalization strategies in contemporary China.
China has undergone a rapid urbanization since the beginning of the 21st century. Urban expansion monitoring has become a hotspot in the field of geographical science. However, methods of urban boundary extraction were inconsistent, and the precision of previous urban boundary products is relatively low due to the coarse image resolution. In this paper, a method of high-precision and unified urban expansion monitoring and analysis of China's 31 provincial capitals was carried out based on high-resolution remote sensing images. First, the urban boundaries of 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015 were extracted with a series of unified rules by urban landscape characteristics and geographical knowledge based on high-resolution images. Then, urban boundary result was compared with other urban boundary products based on low and mid-resolution images to assess the accuracy. Finally, urban size distribution and urban expansion were analyzed based on urban area and urban boundary results. Results showed that the proposed method of urban boundary extraction was superior to other researches. From 2000 to 2015, China's provincial capitals witnessed a rapid growth trend, and the total urban area increased by 90.15%; the provincial capitals system approximated size distribution of the rank-size law. Urban expansion had a significant regional difference. Urban expansion rate in the eastern region gradually slowed down, while that in the western and northeastern regions had an accelerating mode, and that in the central region expanded steadily. Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing, which were designated as the national central cities in 2010, ranked the top five of urban area size in 2015. The five cities increased by 82.45% during the 15 years, and the average annual urban expansion area was 30.66 km2. Urban area of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing increased by about 30%, 100%, 100%, 60% and 200%, respectively. This research provides unified and high-precision spatial urban boundaries data and urban expansion results for local governments and the public, which are useful for scientific urban development and planning of China's urban system.
Based on the 1991, 2000 and 2010 panel data at county level in China, this paper analyzes the coupling characteristics and spatio-temporal pattern of agricultural economic development and agricultural labor changes under rapid urbanization by using the quantitative and GIS spatial analysis methods. The results showed that: (1) During 1991-2010, China's agricultural labor at county level showed a decreasing trend, down 4.91% and 15.50%, respectively, from 1991 to 2000 and 2000 to 2010; from the perspective of spatial distribution, the quantity of agricultural labor in China is characterized by the spatial evolution of "decreasing eastward and increasing westward". (2) During 1991-2010, China's agricultural economy at county level showed a sustained growth trend, with a total increase of 140.13%, but the regional differences were obvious. The proportion of agricultural output in the regional GDP gradually decreased and showed the characteristics of decreasing in the eastern region and increasing in the western region. (3) The coupling types of economic-labor elasticity coefficient are mainly the increasing type and intensive type, representing the growth of agricultural economy and labor, respectively; the growth of agricultural economy and the reduction of agricultural labor were observed in the northwest and southeast of China, respectively. The coupling types of "retarded", "fading" and "declining" regions are more in line with the high incidence of poverty in China; from 1991 to 2010, the coupling types presented a positive trend. Finally, based on the coupling types and spatial distribution of economic-labor elasticity coefficient, some policy suggestions are put forward to promote the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries and the revitalization of rural economy.
Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which is the most densely populated area and plays an important role in China's regional development strategy, has aroused great concern from scholars. Influenced by the national macro policies, the research hotspots are in continuous evolution. In order to sort out the research hotspots in different periods and the network links between research hotspots, and have a deeper understanding of the research fields, research directions, and research status of scholars in various disciplines, bibliometrics and knowledge map visualized technology are used to examine the quantitative characteristics of literatures, the characteristics of journal and discipline distribution, the co-occurrence network structure map of research institutes, and the research hotspots in different periods and their evolution are summarized as well. In addition, we take the research papers of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei in the collection of core journals, CSSCI, EI source journals and SCI source journals in CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) as the object of study. The research suggests that: (1) The number of publications of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei study is increasing, mainly in the four majors of economics, geography, sociology, and environmental studies, with geography ranking in the forefront of the volume of papers and journal impact factors; (2) Universities and research institutes located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region are the main forces of the research, and the co-occurrence network density is 0.0063, indicating that a cooperative network has initially been formed among universities and research institutes, but the degree of contact and cooperation is relatively low, and the research in various fields is relatively independent; (3) The study of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei has gone through three stages, and the research hotspots at different stages have distinctive characteristics of the times, explaining that the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei study is closely linked to the national macro policies. Since 2006, three major research directions have been formed: Beijing- Tianjin-Hebei integration and industrial restructuring, regional spatial structure and coordinated development strategies, as well as PM2.5 and atmospheric environment. Xiong'an new district, urban agglomeration, new urbanization, and carbon emissions have become new research hotspots.
In the context of the new era, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to promote urban-rural integrated development and rural revitalization by exploring the evolution paths and the driving mechanism of the urban-rural scale system. In this paper, we examined the evolution paths and the driving mechanism of this system at the county level based on both the land change survey data and remote sensing data in 1995 and 2015, when taking three counties of Jiangsu province as an example, namely developed Zhangjiagang, moderately-developed Taixing, and less-developed Lianshui at different levels of economic development. Based on the empirical study, in this paper, three typical evolution paths of the urban-rural scale system at the county level in Jiangsu province were summarized, and they fell into three types: Developed County, Moderately Developed County, and Less Developed County. In this case, some conclusions can be drawn as follows: (1) the number of settlements in the county decreased, but the total size increased; (2) the total size of rural settlements decreased, and the size of cities and towns increased at different speeds, when the town size gradually exceeded the urban size; (3) the number and the built-up area of high grade settlements increased, while those of low grade settlements decreased; (4) the polarization feature of the county's development became increasingly significant before gradually becoming weak; (5) the characteristics of the spatial cluster concerning the urban-rural scale system became increasingly significant, and the number of hot-points increased in the county area; (6) urban and rural construction land constantly expanded, when Chengguan town and key towns experienced the main change; (7) the spatial pattern of the urban-rural scale system evolved from the single center to double centers, and then to multi-centers. Furthermore, there were two common characteristics, namely urban-dominant effect and clumped-distributive effect, in the developing process of the urban-rural scale system in different counties. Then, based on the analysis of the key influencing factors, in this paper, the driving mechanism of the urban-rural scale system at the county level was put forward. In this study, economic growth, urbanization, transport network, and institutional management stand for four ways to propel progress. They are like the four wheels of a car, reinforcing and depending on one another and forming an integrated whole, in which the urban-rural settlement system constantly evolves.
The reduction of regional disparities and the national co-ordination of basic endowment insurance funds will help to improve well-being, promote social equity and enhance happiness. This study engages with panel data obtained from 31 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) that was extracted during the period 2007-2016. Regional disparities and the influence mechanisms of China's urban employees' basic endowment insurance funds will be studied by using the Theil index, exploratory spatial data analysis and geographic detectors. The research shows that: (1) the total expenditure of urban employees' basic endowment insurance funds and the between-region Theil index steadily decrease while the within-region Terre index increases on a yearly basis; (2) the accumulated balances of urban employees' basic endowment insurance funds follow significantly different spatial distributions. High-value and sub-high-value areas are mainly located in the eastern region, while second-low-value and low-value areas are mainly located in the western and northeastern regions; (3) seven factors are also identified, including Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the number of subscriptions and institutional support rate that can greatly affect regional disparities in basic endowment insurance funds. In addition, the imposition of various factors are reflected as nonlinear increase or double factor enhancement. We should therefore adhere to coordinated regional socio-economic development, reinforce the contribution base, provide guarantees to those who have qualified and promote the incremental emergence of a national co-ordination of basic endowment insurance funds.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the relationship between built environment factors within station pedestrian catchment areas and urban rail transit (URT) commuting ridership. In this paper, the rational pedestrian catchment areas was studied from the perspective of potential commuters. Based on a case-study of 44 URT stations in Beijing, big data method was adopted to collect point data of population from 'Yichuxing', an internet application. In addition, relative values of relative riding rate were obtained by combining point data and rail transit one-card pass data during peak time within 10 working days in September 2017. In view of the abnormal distribution of data, a GARCH model was established to analyze the interactions between station relative riding rate and built environment factors within rational pedestrian catchment areas. The study results showed that (1) there is a notable positive correlation between URT relative riding rate and initial station, and negative interaction between station relative riding rate and transfer probability of station; (2) there is a strong positive relationship between relative riding rate and exit numbers of station; (3) there are no explicit relationships between conditions of station relative riding rate and walkable factors such as residential-station footpath turn times and cross numbers within rational catchment areas, whereas positive relationship was observed between station relative riding rate and bus stop density within rational pedestrian catchment areas; (4) significant negative correlation can be found between relative riding rate and land use mixture; (5) there are positive correlations among station relative riding rate and density of road network, congested road proportion in morning peak hours in varying degree; (6) there is an ambiguous and intricate relationship between bike-sharing order quantities and URT relative riding rate; (7) compared to cellular signaling data, "Yichuxing" point data showed higher accuracy and applicability in terms of the analysis of demographic distribution and micro-scale changes.
"Floating children" are an essential part of Chinese migrants but have long been ignored in research. In this paper, focusing on the floating children in Guangzhou, we attempt to examine the roles of the floating children in the construction of home by conducting interview, drawing, writing and etc. The findings are: (1) "Floating children" are experiencing complex family separation and reorganization, which leads to the uncertainty and instability of the space of home. Meanwhile, mobility has become the most important characteristic of the construction of home under the background of China's urbanization; (2) the perception of home for floating children who moved between rural and urban areas is a mosaic constructed by the overlapped experiences of growth process of their variables. The rural-urban dualism has become an important way to understand the space of home under the background of new-type urbanization; (3) floating children have the ability and means to help create their homes. They play an active role in this process in a variety of ways such as sharing their parents' responsibilities. They have their own means to help hold their homes together during the course of the rural-to-urban migration even though their family members are always on the go. This study aims to enrich the research on migration and children issues from the perspective of human geography, and to provide the public with practical empirical experiences and possible policy recommendations to understand the current floating children issues.
The imbalance between hotel supply and demand caused by anti-corruption policy has not attracted enough attention in academia. By introducing the concept of 'spatio-temporal fix' and the role of tourism within it, this paper proposes a general analytical framework to interpret the strategies adopted by the hotels and the local government to cope with the changes of tourists' consumption behavior. The framework of 'spatio-temporal fix' can be divided into economic dimension and non-economic dimension in the Chinese context. The economic dimension encompasses spatial fix and temporal fix. In Haitang Bay, spatial fix mainly includes geographical expansion and geographical restructuring, and temporal fix refers to 'switching' from the secondary circuit of capital accumulation towards the tertiary circuits. As for the non-economic dimension, the local government usually plays a key role within the development of spatio-temporal ?xes to capital. The government has pursued spatio-temporal ?xes to capital through up-scaling and down-scaling strategies: (1) by transforming the class interest of hotels and the local government into a general interest through the ideological machine of the state; (2) through urban strategies that have shaped and legitimatized the territorial manifestation production of tourism places of this capital ?xation; and (3) by promoting a set of regulations and devolution that have encouraged the moments of 'switching' and 'expansion' through tourism. Yet, some of the government's actions have disturbed the market order, which even have caused the deeper underlying troubles. In addition, there is a close relationship between the concepts of spatio-temporal fix and rescaling. Changes of tourism consumption lead to capital overaccumulation crises. The government's rescaling categories exert an important impact on the switch and expansion of capital. This paper improves the framework of spatio-temporal fix and illustrates how political and economic changes have reshaped the coastal landscape.
The size of China's outbound tourism has expanded rapidly since the mid-1990s, and has presented a remarkably imbalanced distribution between different destinations. This study built a database on China's outbound tourism and destination's inbound tourism between 2001 and 2015, and validated that China's outbound tourists flow is in compliance with the hypothesis of law similar to the rank-size distribution theory. The coupling rank-size relationship between Chinese inbound tourists and the total number of inbound tourists received by the destinations has been divided into 5 types. The results show that the relation of the rank-size distribution of China's outbound tourism is consistent with the law of power function, and gathering to the high-ordered destinations. From 2001 to 2015, both the absolute leading and absolute lagging types exceed 45% of the total number of destinations. The Asian-Pacific countries receiving Chinese tourists are generally in the leading type, with destinations in Europe, America and Middle East lagging behind. Destinations with more tourists are more likely in the absolute lagging type than in the leading type, while those with fewer tourists are more likely in the absolute leading type than in the lagging. This study provides a new perspective for the analysis of outbound travel flow, and could serve as theoretical references for decision-making on market policy formulation and internationalized tourism industry layout.
