Looking back and ahead: lessons from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Hyun Bang Shin looks back at the Beijing Olympics to derive some indication of the what the legacy of the London Games might be. He warns that diversion of national resources may pose additional development opportunities for host cities, but constraints for others in the country in terms of resource redistribution

‘Entrepreneurial’ local state: the implications of Beijing’s shifting emphasis on urban redevelopment policies

The entrepreneurial nature of local government activities has significantly influenced socio-economic and spatial changes in urban China. It was against this backdrop that property-led redevelopment projects were implemented in Beijing since 1990 by a programme whose very success depended on the participation of developers and prospective homebuyers as major financial contributors. By the end of 1999, roughly onefifth of Beijing’s inner city households were directly hit by this programme. In 2000, however, a new redevelopment policy was introduced in Beijing, and has received an increasing policy emphasis since then. This new policy aims at supplying affordable housing on government-provided land so that it increases existing residents’ re-housing rate. In this context, this paper aims at analysing the implications of this shifting emphasis on Beijing’s urban redevelopment policy to examine if the local government has become less entrepreneurial, thus giving more weight to promoting a more socially inclusive approach. Through a detailed examination of two case studies of inner city redevelopment projects, the paper argues that the entrepreneurial nature of the local state has remained consistent and characterises the revised redevelopment strategy, and that the entrepreneurial state activities are largely supported by the local state power to dispose of urban land use rights, which effectively makes the local state as part of urban rentiers as de facto landlords

Right to the city and critical reflections on property rights activism in China’s urban renewal contexts

The rapid transformation of urban socio-spatial landscape in China has resulted in an increasing degree of frustration and discontent among local residents who face threats of demolition and eviction. This has given rise to sporadic protests by local residents who are often known as 'nail households', that is, persistent protesters who are fixed to the land and hold onto their dwellings in protest against unwilling eviction and demolition of their dwellings. The presence of these protesters provides an effective example of local residents' out cry in China. This paper is an attempt to critically re-visit the existing debates on local residents' property rights activism in urban redevelopment processes, and to discuss the extent to which it can be an effective strategy. The paper refers to the right-to-the-city debate to examine whose right counts in China's urban renewal contexts. It also makes use of empirical findings, both quantitative and qualitative, to examine how nail houses are received among local residents and migrants, and discusses the extent to which migrants can fit into local residents' struggle against the top-down imposition of neighbourhood transformation. The paper ultimately calls for the need to form a place-based alliance that enables urbanites including migrants to come together to launch an effective claim on their right to the city.right to the city, property rights, urban renewal, nail houses, displacement, China

Covariant Description of D-branes in IIA Plane-Wave Background

We work out boundary conditions for the covariant open string in the type IIA plane wave background, which corresponds to the D-branes in the type IIA theory. We use the kappa symmetric string action and see what kind of boundary conditions should be imposed to retain kappa symmetry. We find half BPS as well as quarter BPS branes and the analysis agrees with the previous work in the light cone gauge if the result is available. Finally we find that D0-brane is non-supersymmetric.Comment: 13 pages, v3: one more reference added, version to appear in Physics Letter

Coordination Risk and the Price of Debt

Creditors of a distressed borrower face a coordination problem. Even if the fundamentals are sound, fear of premature foreclosure by others may lead to pre-emptive action, undermining the project. Recognition of this problem lies behind corporate bankruptcy provisions across the world, and it has been identified as a culprit in international financial crises, but has received scant attention from the literature on debt pricing. Without common knowledge of fundamentals, the incidence of failure is uniquely determined provided that private information is precise enough. This affords a way to price the coordination failure. Comparative statics on the unique equilibrium provides several insights on the role of information and the incidence of inefficient liquidation.Common knowledge, debt pricing, credit risk, default