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This book analyses how decentralized policy making and conflicting rules and incentives have encouraged local level policy experimentation across Chinäs cities and villages. Most often out of necessity or expediency in the face of governance challenges associated with rapid economic reform and slow political reform, this pattern has remained relatively constant since 1978. The contributors to this book examine how local-level institutions solve governance challenges, such as rural development, enterprise reform, providing social services, and grappling with a lack of transparency.

In recent decades, Chinese cities have experienced profound social, economic and spatial transformations. In particular, Chinese cities have witnessed the largest housing boom in history and unprecedented housing privatization. This book shows how Chinäs spectacular housing success is not shared by all social groups, with rapidly rising housing inequality, and residential segregation increasingly prevalent in previously homogeneous Chinese cities.

This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the worldΓÇÖs most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on ChinaΓÇÖs physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.

Conflict and Cooperation in Sino-US Relations offers a timely and current look at one of the world¿s weightiest bilateral relationships. It goes beyond detailing the conflict and cooperation that have been an integral facet of China-US interactions since 1972, to gauging its evolution and future trends, examining its nuances in regards to diverse issues such as the Asia Pacific leadership structure, the South China Sea, and the Korean peninsula.

This book provides an accessible entry point into the political and social cleavages that underpinned, and were expressed through, the Umbrella Movement.

This book marks a new attempt at understanding the activities of various interest groups in their quest for democratic participation, governmental responsiveness and openness.

This book investigates Sinophone films and art projects that express the desire for archiving and reconfiguring the past. Comprising ten chapters, it brings together contributors from an array of disciplines - artists, filmmakers, curators, and literary scholars - to grapple with the creative ambiguities of Sinophone cinemas and image culture.

This book examines the ways in which Hong Kong's changing position within global capitalism was the catalyst for the Umbrella Movement, stressing the role of economic and social factors, as opposed to political and constitutional issues. It will appeal to students of Hong Kong's political and social landscape as well Chinese politics.

This book explores how far existing networks of overseas Chinese and new flows of migrants act as drivers of economic relations between China and the host countries. It considers migration, trade, the flow of capital, and foreign direct investment, includes both skilled and unskilled migrants, and outlines the complex different waves of migration flows. It includes detailed case studies, based on extensive original research, on the position in a range of European countries, and concludes with policy-oriented analysis and with an overall assessment of how far the Chinese diaspora matters in stimulating increased bilateral economic activity and stronger bilateral economic relationships.

A secure supply of energy is essential for all nations, to sustain their economy, and indeed their very survival. This subject is especially important in the case of China, as ChinaΓÇÖs booming economy and consequent demand for energy is affecting the whole world, and in turn potentially driving realignments in international relations. Moreover, as this book argues, energy security should be considered more broadly, to include issues of sustainability, environmental protection and the domestic organisation of energy policy and energy supply. This book presents a comprehensive picture of ChinaΓÇÖs energy security. It covers all energy sectors ΓÇô coal, oil, gas, renewables; international relations with all major sources of energy supply ΓÇô the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa; and key areas of domestic policy making and supply.

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is ChinaΓÇÖs largest province, shares borders with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and Mongolia, and possesses a variety of natural resources, including oil. The tensions between ethnic Muslim Uyghurs and the growing number of Han Chinese in Xinjiang have recently increased, occasionally breaking out into violence. At the same time as being a potential troublespot for China, the province is of increasing strategic significance as ChinaΓÇÖs gateway to Central Asia whose natural resources are of increasing importance to China. This book focuses in particular on what life is like in Xinjiang for the diverse population that lives there. It offers important insights into the social, economic and political terrains of Xinjiang, concentrating especially on how current trends in Xinjiang are likely to develop in the future. In doing so it provides a broader understanding of the region and its peoples.

This book presents an illuminating and comprehensive summary record of contrasting and competing expert forecasts and judgements about the major issues confronting China within four principal domains - political, economic, environmental and international. Considering the principal forecasting methods available to experts, Roger Irvine comments critically on the degree of success achieved in using those methods and emphasises the confusion created by the polarisation of opinion and by the failure of many experts to accept the high degree of uncertainty that characterises most of the key issues.

Bringing together two areas of study that tend to be marginalised within their home disciplines Queer Sinophone Cultures innovatively advances both Sinophone studies and queer studies. It not only examines film and literature from Mainland China but expands its scope to encompass the underrepresented 'Sinophone' world at large (in this case Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and beyond). Further, where queer studies in the U.S., Europe, and Australia often ignore non-Western cultural phenomena, this book focuses squarely on Sinophone queerness, providing fresh critical analyses of a range of topics from works by the famous director Tsai Ming-Liang to the history of same-sex soft-core pornography made by the renowned Shaw Brothers Studios.

This book addresses environmental issues by distinctively suggesting that an aesthetic approach inspired from ancient Chinese tradition could help us overcome the many problems that human beings have created at local and global levels. Although its main focus is the traditional and current contexts of the People¿s Republic of China, the book transcends national borders. A typical example is the ancient Chinese thought system and cultural practice of Feng Shui (¿¿) that sought to negotiate how the natural environment and human constructions can cohabit without destructing each other. The author evokes that sought-after harmony through the powerful image of gardens of life whose environmental beauty can be found in traditional Chinese gardens and palaces as well as historically and culturally preserved cities.

This book examines the economic, social and ecological costs associated with Chinäs energy policy. Analysing the increase in carbon emissions, it assesses how these costs are domestically and internationally allocated. It presents studies on specific policies in China and on its resource exporting countries, such as Indonesia and Australia.

Providing insight from a fresh and rarely heard point of view, this book will be of great interest to China scholars from around the world, as well as to specialists on the Philippines. It has been written as part of Chih-yu Shih¿s pioneering transnational project on comparative China Studies.

This book surveys the Rare Earths mining industry, discusses the extent to which Rare Earths really are scarce elsewhere in the world and assesses the economics of production, considering arguments for the rationing of supply, for higher pricing and for a total export embargo.