Examining Business Perceptions of a Pollutant Release and Transfer Register in China: A Case Study in Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area

Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs) have been adopted in developed countries since 1970s to help stimulate public participation, facilitate environmental regulation and promote industrial transformation, but have not been widely established in developing countries. In China, environmental pollution is increasing rapidly and has reached severe levels as a result of economic development in the absence of effective environmental regulation and adequate public pressure. During the current exploratory period for establishing a PRTR, China needs support and knowledge when it concerns PRTR schemes and the mechanisms of improving business behaviour. Aiming to examine the Chinese context and facilitate the implementation of PRTR, the author took a three months’ field research with survey, interviews and symposiums in Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA) for the research. With how the business perceive a PRTR in China and how implementation need to be adjusted as the main research questions, the thesis author took a corporate angle and identified the main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) for companies to implement a PRTR scheme in China. Based on this, the thesis author also suggests a governmental action model, formed of setting the platform, making preparation and providing incentives for businesses, to facilitate the implementation of PRTRs in China, which has the potential to inform policy makers and to be transferred into other parts of China

SHANGHAI – FROM DEVELOPMENT TO KNOWLEDGE CITY

This report provides insights on the expansive development in Shanghai of human resources in higher education and the creation of a huge web of incubators, university science parks, district industrial parks, and various specialized development zones. With a total population of some 17 million and a GDP per capita of around US$3,000 the city planners expects that 2.5 per cent of its GDP will in 2005 be used for research and development. FDI in high technology and returning scientists in microelectronics illustrate the ambitions of Shanghai to become a knowledge city. More than 140 foreign-controlled R&D laboratories have already been established in Shanghai. Their number and sizes will increase and also involve more basic research as the IPR regime improves. Shanghai will emerge as innovative knowledge region on the world stage that before 2020 will be competing with other global knowledge regions such as the Oxford-London-Cambridge triangle by attracting talent and creating new knowledge. This report highlights a rapid and continued expansion of higher education in Shanghai that now has 59 colleges and universities with a total enrolment in 2004 of 600,000 students. The City has 10 universities which are included in the national list of Top-100 Universities which have been selected by the Ministry of Education to receive special treatment and extra resources. Three of a dozen Chinese universities with expectation to become recognized as world-famous research universities are located in Shanghai – Fudan University, Tongji University and Shanghai Jiaotong University. Fudan University Science Park and the School of Microelectronics at Fudan University provide examples of the changing character of the university system in Shanghai Linked to the development of human resources is a web of technological infrastructure of which Zhangjiang High-Technology Development Zone provides an illustration of ongoing efforts to integrate industrial production, research and university education. Shanghai is attracting overseas entrepreneurs in its advancing semiconductor industry, exemplified by SMIC with one of its bases in Zhangjiang High-Technology Development Zone, Shanghai is also attracting returning scientists to expand its IC knowledge base as exemplified by the School of Microelectronics at Fudan University, which has 600 graduate students.Human factors; Universities; Fudan University; Regional innovation System (RIS) Semiconductors; High Technology Parks; Overview of Science and Technology

Ordinary Chinese Smart Cities: The Case of Wuhan

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Routledge via the link in this recordCommentaries on future-oriented Chinese urban development tend to focus on showcase projects underway in wealthy coastal cities. This chapter instead sheds light on the way that the smart has been integrated into more ‘ordinary’ Chinese urban life, using the case of Wuhan, a ‘Tier II’ city in Central China. It explores the conditions of the emergence of Wuhan’s smart city activities from three perspectives. First, it outlines a series of ‘vertical’ enabling factors, whereby an international body of discourse and practice has been ‘translated’ into national Chinese urban policies. Second, it considers the simultaneous significance of ‘horizontal’ links between Wuhan’s local government, city governments abroad, local private enterprises, and foreign firms. Third, it relates Wuhan’s smart credentials to a broader process of digitalisation of everyday life in the city. It concludes by reflecting on the distinctive characteristics of Chinese smart urbanism, as exemplified by Wuhan, and finally draws out some implications for future research into smart cities elsewhere. Specifically, it proposes that the smart city is most usefully approached as a shifting and locally inflected concept which not only channels multiple policy agendas, but also reflects broader changes to urban space and governance in particular contexts.This chapter draws on a research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/L015978/1) ‘Smart eco-cities for a green economy: a comparative study of Europe and China’

The discourse, governance and configurations of polycentricity in transitional China: a case study of Tianjin

Polycentricity has been identified as a prominent feature of modern landscapes as well as a buzzword in spatial planning at a range of scales worldwide. Since the Reform and Opening-up Policy in 1978, major cities in China have experienced significant polycentric transition manifested by their new spatial policy framework and reshaped spatial structure. The polycentric transformation has provoked academics’ interests on structural and performance analysis in quantitative ways recently. However, little research investigates the nature of (re)formation and implementation of polycentric development policies in Chinese cities from a processual and critical perspective. This research interprets the underlying meanings and rationality of polycentric development strategy in planning discourse and explains how concrete centres within the polycentric system are created, governed and materialized to facilitate the implementation of polycentric policies in the special context of political system, spatial planning system and socio-economic conditions in China. Referring to existing literature of polycentricity and theories of urban space, this research develops a novel theoretical framework, which holds that polycentricity is produced by the articulation of state power, planning profession and produced space. The research is founded on an embedded case study of Tianjin based on empirical data derived from interviews with stakeholders and secondary data. Through a discourse analysis of four Tianjin City Master Plans, discourses of ‘polycentric urban settlements’, ‘functional polycentricity’, ‘polycentric growth nodes’ and ‘nested polycentricity’ are identified, which are deployed in different ways with variegated composition of spatial elements. Moreover, rather than being mere technocratic practice, the production and legitimation of distinct discourses is essentially an articulation of multi-scalar power involving various stakeholders, which is disguised and justified by the planning profession. The findings demonstrate that polycentricity is a malleable concept and its fluidity creates space to accommodate consensus or to allow the play of contested interests and policy experiments. Based on that, this research further selects centres in Tianjin Binhai New Area Core Zone, Wuqing District and Dongli District as embedded cases to explore how the polycentric development policy is implemented in practice. The empirical findings from local perspective show that these centres are created or formed according to different contexts and logics, and they are consolidated by employment of a portfolio of tools and instruments such as new planning and urban design, establishment of financial and development corporations, exclusive preferential policies, manipulation of public sector, land development and institutional innovation. Correspondingly, these centres have experienced distinct development trajectories and shown different spatial outcomes from the perspectives of urban form, functional composition, and spatial identity. It is suggested that significant gaps and contradictions exist between spatial visions and actual development, which poses challenges for sustainable development

Digital services of regional centers for scientific and technical information in China

The article aims to study the current level of digital services of the regional subsystem of the National System of Scientific and Technical Information of the People's Republic of China and to determine its optimization directions.A content analysis of 28 provincial institutes of scientific and technical information’s official sites was carried out; the most powerful of them were identified in terms of resource and service potential, the level of organization of corporate cooperation based on consolidated digital platforms of multifunctional user service. It is proved that the level of efficiency of digital services of regional scientific and technical information systems directly depends on the level of the province’s economic development and the ability of its government to finance and technologically equip information industry centers activities, and to establish sustainable interaction of all subjects of the information market. Summarizing the results of the content analysis made it possible to identify reserves for improving the service capabilities of the Chinese information industry’s regional clusters, to design vectors for diversifying consulting, expert-analytical, cognitive services of provincial institutes of scientific and technical information, the development of integrated innovation-oriented intelligent service platforms operating based on artificial intelligence technologies