Administrative adjustment is a hot topic in many sub-disciplines of Chinese human geography, such as administrative regional geography, historical geography and economic geography. However, with most of the research focusing on the summarization of types, processes, impacts and practices based on inductive methods and case studies, few have proposed a general theoretical framework to explain the co-evolution of administrative adjustment and power relations. This paper tries to narrow this gap by developing a heuristic theoretical model of administrative adjustment based on the perspective of "politics of scale" and proposing a typology of rescaling and the dialectics of politics of scale in administrative adjustment. Specifically, we argue that there are mainly three types of "rescaling" in administrative adjustment, i.e. the change of order in administrative hierarchy, the transformation of territorial border or size, and the emergence of new institutional arrangement based on various administrative divisions. The "politics of scale" in administrative adjustment mainly includes two supplementary processes, i.e. the political production of scale (administrative division) and the scalar fix of administrative power relations. In both processes, the strategies of up-scaling, down-scaling and rescaling are adopted by various agencies at different levels of administrative regions. We also point out that the rescaling and politics of scale in administrative adjustment are synthetical, dynamic and dialectical. First, a specific process of administrative adjustment is associated with transformations in different forms of scale. For example, establishing a municipal city usually includes both scaling-up process in terms of county becoming city and scaling-down process since the new city only incorporates part of the original region. Second, administrative division is dynamic both as the outcome of power struggling and as the foundation of future power relations. Some forms of administrative adjustment recurred in the history. Third, similar to the uncertainty principle in physics, there is a contradiction between the size of administrative region and the degree of control of that region. As a result, the political agents tend to adopt scalar strategies to run contrary to their relative position within the scalar hierarchy, i.e. the powerful agents at higher level of administration tend to adopt down-scaling strategies and the powerful agents at lower level of administration tend to adopt up-scaling strategies; however, the tendency of scalar strategies would be to the opposite for the weak agents. This paper may not only advance the research on administrative division, but also enrich the theories of "politics of scale" which are mainly proposed based on Western practices and cases.

By the methods of historical temporal section and modern spatial analysis, this paper analyzes the change of population distribution in China since the past 2000 years ago, such as the Western Han Dynasty (the representative year A.D. 2), the Western Jin Dynasty (A.D. 280), the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 742), the Northern Song Dynasty (A.D. 1102), the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1460), the Qing Dynasty (A.D. 1820), and the present (A.D. 2010). It is found that China demographic borderlines dividing sparsely and densely populated areas are the borderlines which divide farming and pastoral areas, and the pattern of China's population distribution depends on the spatial differentiation of China's farming and pastoral areas. Therefore, theoretically the fitting curve of sparse-dense borderlines of China's population distribution in various times can be seen as the fitting curve of the farming-pastoral ecotone. The history has proved that China's farming-pastoral ecotone is an arc-shaped belt, so it can not be fitted by straight line but by arc-curve. Shenyang-Tianshui-Dali Arc is a function fitting line of the ecotone; Shanhaiguan-Lanzhou-Fangchenggang Arc is a fitting of the inner edge curve of the ecotone, which is a farming-pastoral borderline when the empire's rule was not so strong; Shenyang-Lanzhou-Xishuangbanna Arc is a fitting of the outer edge curve of the ecotone, which is another farming-pastoral borderline when the empire’s rule was very strong. As for Aihui-Tengchong Line, theoretically, it cannot fit the arc-shaped farming-pastoral ecotone, but coincidentally, because of being the tangent of Shenyang-Tianshui-Dali Arc, it can also depict the macro pattern of China's population distribution. China's demographic borderline dividing sparsely and densely populated areas is of geographical significance: first, the line is an farming-pastoral borderline of historical China; second, it, along with the coastline, encircles the "National Core Area" of China, in term of political geography; third, it, to the greatest extent, distinguishes the natural and human geographical differences existing in the northwestern and southeastern China.

Based on the Sixth National Census and annual China Statistical Yearbook, the paper characterizes the spatial patterns and variation features of the "quantity" and "quality" of China's aging and its mechanism over the past 30 years or more by using spatial autocorrelation, Sullivan healthy life expectancy measurement model, and geographical weighted regression. The results are shown as follows: (1) Overall, the development of "quantity" of aging is not coordinated with that of "quality", and there are spatial differences between them. (2) In terms of "quantity", the figure of aging in the southeast half of "Hu Huanyong Line" is higher than that in the northwest half, but the change of growth rate has a phased feature. There are high and low value agglomeration areas at the aging level. The high-value agglomeration area expands from the coastal area to the inland area, while the low-value agglomeration area located in the northwest of China is gradually shrinking. (3) In terms of "quality", the figure of the southeast half of "Hu Huanyong Line" is better than that of the northwest half, and the eastern coastal provinces enjoy far higher figures than other regions. (4) In terms of "quality" characteristics represented by life expectancy, the figure of the life expectancy and the healthy life expectancy are not synchronized, and there are gender differences and morbidity expansion effect. Compared with the central and western regions, the eastern region has higher life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. (5) From the perspective of formation mechanism, the formation of the "quantity" pattern of aging is affected by the interaction between natural and migrating population variations, with the birth rate being the major element. As for "quality", differences in natural environment and uncoordinated development of social environment are significant factors affecting life expectancy, and economic development and the health and medical services progress are the main driving forces for greater longevity.

Along with the growing public awareness of the impossibility of separating nature from society and the difficulty of dividing the world neatly into spaces of 'human' and 'non-human', more-than-human geographies become increasingly popular in exploring the human-nonhuman assemblages in Western countries. However, existing literature demonstrates that the investigation of more-than-human geographies has received insufficient attention from non-Western countries, including China. Based on a systematic analysis of journal papers published in the Core Collection of Web of Science over the last 15 years, this article is dedicated to introduce the more-than-human geographical thoughts and approaches into China. The software Citespace has been used to analyze a total of 298 journal papers published from 2002 to 2017 in the Core Collection of Web of Science, among which the main themes can be generalized into five categories: new animal geographies and natural conservation, urban culture and political ecology, materiality and commodity economy, body and life health, climate change and environmental issues. New animal geographies have usually been understood as comprising the mainstream of more-than-human geographies, while the last two topics have been regarded as new fields. This article first investigates the core views of three philosophical and theoretical ideas which inspired the development of more-than-human geographies and explained how these insights influence the associated thoughts and approaches. Moreover, to show more details about what kinds of assemblages more-than-human geographies are interested in, this article introduces the content of each category with classical case studies. Finally, the primary contributions and critiques of more-than-human geographies are also presented. China's rich natural products and multiple social cultures, as well as the rapid development of science and technology mean that there is a potential for Chinese geographers to provide more interesting and vivid investigations for more-than-human geographies in the Chinese context.