Influences of labor migration on rural household land transfer: A case study of Sichuan Province,China

The influence of labor migration on rural household land transfer has been hotly debated in academic circles, which focuses on whether part-time employment leads to land transfer. Using survey data on rural households in the Sichuan Province, and applying the theoretical framework of new economics of labor migration, this study explores the influences of labor migration on the direction and scale of land transfer from the perspective of rural household structure. The results indicate that: 1) the quantity of laborers has significant influence on the direction and scale of land transfer. The larger the on-farm labor variable (Labor), the lesser the possibility that land will be rented-out and the amount of land rented out will also be smaller. In addition, there is a greater probability that land will be rented-in and the amount of land rented-in will be greater. 2) The greater the ratio of off-farm laborers to rural household laborers (Off-farm) the greater the possibility that land will be rented-out. In addition the higher the ratio of on-farm laborers to the total household laborers (On-farm), the larger the possibility that land will be rented-in. Meanwhile, if the household has individuals at the age of 64 or older (Old) who are engaged in agriculture, there is a smaller possibility that land will be rented-out. 3) the ratio of part-time laborers to rural household laborers (Pluriactivity) have significant inverse U-shaped influences on the rent-in of land as well as the amount of land rented-in. The inflection points are 33.27% and 14.10%, respectively. Such findings confirm the significance of this study in better understanding the influence of labor migration on rural household land transfer.     

The developmental characteristics and strategic ideas of urbanization in China

Since cities and towns are places where those nonagricultural industries are centralized, urbanization is greatly interrelated with industrialization and de-agriculturalization. By means of this kind of interrelationship, Chinese urbanization level may be estimated with the formulas: P1=I1/I0/u0, Pr = N1/N0/u0. The urbanization after the founding of the People's Republic of China can be divided into the following 5 stages: the stage at the out set of industrialization (1949-1957); the high-speed urbanization stage (1958-1960); the first counter-urbanization stage (1961-1965); the second counter-urbanization stage (1966-1976); and the high-speed urbanization stage (1978-now). The characteristics of Chinese urbanization are: the industrialization launched by the government; the simultaneous development of urbanization of cities and urbanization of rural areas; the quite low capability of urbanization to absorb nonagricultural labor force; the incoordinate development of cities, etc. Before establishing a     

Spatio-Temporal Impact of Rural Livelihood Capital on Labor Migration in Panxi,Southwestern Mountainous Region of China

Labor migration to urban centers is a common phenomenon in the Panxi region of the southwestern mountainous region of China, mainly owing to inadequate livelihood capital in rural areas. Numerous studies have been conducted to explore the relationship between labor migration and its causes, such as individual and family characteristics, but few studies have focused on livelihood capital. This paper examines the impact factors on labor migration employment location selection and duration from a household livelihood capital perspective. A case study of 279 households from 10 villages in the area was carried out in February 2016. We used both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the data. On the basis of the 279 questionnaires, the proportion of households with non-labor migration is 48.4%, whereas households with labor migration within a local city and migration across regions account for 28.7% and 22.9%, respectively. Social, financial, and human capitals are the primary factors that influence migrants’ employment location choice positively. Among them, social capital has a significant impact on both migration within a local city and across regions; each of the regression coefficients is 1.111 and 1.183. Social, human, and financial capitals also have a positive impact on the duration of labor migration, and similarly, social capital is the highest coefficient with 2.489. However, physical capital only partly impacts labor migration across regions, whereas the impact of labor migration within a local city, and the duration, are not significant. Furthermore, the impact of household natural capital on migration space and time are all negative relationships, especially for labor migration across the regions and duration, with coefficient scores of 4.836 and 3.450, respectively. That is to say, a laborer is inclined to migrate within a local city for a short term, or not migrate at all, if natural capital is abundant. Our analysis results show that household livelihood capital has a strong spatio-temporal impact on labor migration.     

Livelihood strategy change and land use change —Case of Danzam Village in upper Dadu River watershed, Tibetan Plateau of China

Land use change in rural China since the 1980s, induced by institution reforms, urbanization, industrialization and population increase, has received more attention. However, case studies on how institution reforms affect farmers’ livelihood strategies and drive land use change are scarce. By means of cropland plots investigations and interviews with farmers, this study examines livelihood strategy change and land use change in Danzam Village of Jinchuan County in the upper Dadu River watershed, eastern Tibetan Plateau, China. The results show that, during the collective system period, as surplus labor forces could not be transferred to the secondary and tertiary industries, they had to choose agricultural involution as their livelihood strategy, then the farmers had to produce more grains by land reclamation, increasing multiple cropping index, improving input of labor, fertilizer, pesticide and adopting advanced agricultural techniques. During the household responsibility system period, as labors being transferred to the secondary and tertiary industries, farmers chose livelihood diversification strategy. Therefore, labor input to grain planting was greatly reduced, which drove the transformation of grain to horticulture, vegetable or wasteland and decrease of multiple cropping index. This study provides a new insight into understanding linkages among institution reforms, livelihood strategy of smallholders and land use change in rural China. Foundation item: Under the auspices of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 40601006, 40471009), National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2005CB422006)     

Spatial-temporal heterogeneity of industrial structure transformation and carbon emission effect in Xuzhou Metropolitan Area

Employing decoupling index and industrial structure characteristic bias index methods, this study analyzed the spatial-temporal characteristics of industrial structure transformations and their resulting carbon emissions in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area from 2000 to 2014, with a focus on their relationships and driving factors. Our research indicates that carbon emission intensity from industrial structures in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area at first showed an increasing trend, which then decreased. Furthermore, the relationship between emissions and industrial economic growth has been trending toward absolute decoupling. From the perspective of the center-periphery, the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area formed a concentric pattern, where both progress towards low emissions and the level of technological advancement gradually diminished from the center to the periphery. In terms of variation across provinces, the ISCB index in the eastern Henan has decreased the slowest, followed by the southern Shandong and the northern Anhui, with the northern Jiangsu ranking last. During this period, resource- and labor- intensive industries were the primary growth industries in the northern Anhui and the eastern Henan, while labor-intensive industries dominated the southern Shandong and capital-intensive industries dominated the northern Jiangsu. In terms of city types, the spatial pattern for industrial structure indicates that recession resource-based cities had higher carbon emission intensities than mature resource-based cities, followed by non-resource-based cities and regenerative resource-based cities. Generally, the industrial structure in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area has transformed from being resource-intensive to capital-intensive, and has been trending toward technology-intensive as resource availability has been exploited to exhaustion and then been regenerated. Industrial structure has been the leading factor causing heterogeneity of carbon emission intensities between metropolitan cities. Therefore, the key to optimizing the industrial structure and layout of metropolitan areas is to promote industrial structure transformation and improve the system controlling collaborative industrial development between cities.     

Spatial-temporal Heterogeneity of Industrial Structure Transformation and Carbon Emission Effects in Xuzhou Metropolitan Area

Employing decoupling index and industrial structure characteristic bias index methods, this study analyzed the spatial-temporal characteristics of industrial structure transformations and their resulting carbon emissions in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area from 2000 to 2014, with a focus on their relationships and driving factors. Our research indicates that carbon emission intensity from industrial structures in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area at first showed an increasing trend, which then decreased. Furthermore, the relationship between emissions and industrial economic growth has been trending toward absolute decoupling. From the perspective of the center-periphery, the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area formed a concentric pattern, where both progress towards low emissions and the level of technological advancement gradually diminished from the center to the periphery. In terms of variation across provinces, the ISCB index in the eastern Henan has decreased the slowest, followed by the southern Shandong and the northern Anhui, with the northern Jiangsu ranking last. During this period, resource-and labor-intensive industries were the primary growth industries in the northern Anhui and the eastern Henan, while labor-intensive industries dominated the southern Shandong and capital-intensive industries dominated the northern Jiangsu. In terms of city types, the spatial pattern for industrial structure indicates that recession resource-based cities had higher carbon emission intensities than mature resource-based cities, followed by non-resource-based cities and regenerative resource-based cities. Generally, the industrial structure in the Xuzhou Metropolitan Area has transformed from being resource-intensive to capital-intensive, and has been trending toward technology-intensive as resource availability has been exploited to exhaustion and then been regenerated. Industrial structure has been the leading factor causing heterogeneity of carbon emission intensities between metropolitan cities. Therefore, the key to optimizing the industrial structure and layout of metropolitan areas is to promote industrial structure transformation and improve the system controlling collaborative industrial development between cities.     

Measurement and spatial distribution of urban agglomeration industrial compactness in China

Urban agglomeration （UA） compactness means spatial concentration degree of physical entities, such as cities （towns）, industries, resources, funds, traffic and technologies, whose concentration is formed according to specified economic and technologic association in the process of UA formation and development. The UA industrial compactness means the concentration degree of industry and industry clusters with reference to the industrial, technological and economic relations among the cities in the UA in the process of rational industrial division and with the extension of industrial chain. After analyzing the researches on compactness, this paper finds that the relevant measurement coefficient and methods reflecting industrial geographical concentration fail to link industries spatial concentration with urban spatial concentration. Taking 23 UAs as samples and classifying them by development degree, this paper probes into UA compactness and spatial distribution characteristics from the perspective of industry by adopting UA index systems of industry and measurement models. The research finds out： 1） there is obvious positive correlation between UA industrial compactness and UA development degree; 2） the spatial distribution difference of UA industrial compactness is relatively great; and 3） UA industrial compactness shows a gradually decreasing tendency from the eastern part, the middle part to the western part of China. From the research thoughts and approaches, this article suggests that studies on the UA integrated compactness measurement should be enhanced from a multidimensional per- spective involving space, traffic, population density and so on.     

Effects of Industrial Relocation on Chinese Regional Economic Growth Disparities: Based on System Dynamics Modeling

The economic growth of China has led to increasing growth disparities between regions. Such disparities are uncontrolled and are severely negative symptoms in the process of economic development. On the basis of system dynamics （SD） modeling and the rela- tionship between industrial relocation and regional economic growth, we construct a model of the interrelationship between the two aforementioned phenomena. The model is an effective and creative exploration for examining effects of industrial relocation on Chinese regional economic growth disparities. The SD model is employed in this study to build an inter-regional labor migration SD model, an inter-regional capital migration SD model, an intra-industry SD model, an intra-regional population SD model, and an intra-regional SD model which are based on realities in labor and capital flow from the view of industrial relocation. VENSIM software is utilized to per- form a system simulation based on the data of the eastern, middle, and western regions from 2000 to 2010. Results show that indus- trial relocation gradually narrows the relative disparity in GDP among the three regions. Moreover, the absolute one is enlarged con- tinuously. The absolute and relative disparities in per capita GDP among eastern, middle, and western regions generally exhibit de- creasing trends.     

Land-use change and socio-economic driving forces of rural settlement in China from 1996 to 2005

While urbanization has accelerated, the rural population in China has started decreasing in recent years. However, the expan- sion of rural settlement has not been sufficiently curbed. The questions of why this has happened and who has driven the land-use change （LUC） of rural settlement in China have aroused great interests among researchers. In this paper, it is suggested that population is not always a positive driving force for the LUC of rural settlement in China. Furthermore, socio-economic driving forces other than urbanization, population and industrialization are analyzed. On a national scale, the major driving forces are the per-capita rural housing area and the cultivated land area. On a regional scale, the main driving forces in the eastern China are the house-building capacity of rural households and the per-capita rural housing area; while in the central China, the main driving forces are rural housing investment, the proportion of primary industry employees in the rural working population, and the cultivated land area. For the western China, the main driving forces are rural register population and cultivated land area.     

新型城镇化水平区域差异与驱动因素分析

基于新型城镇化内涵的深刻理解及城镇化发展历程的梳理,尝试性利用等权重方法,对2000~2015年中国31个省市新型城镇化发展水平进行测度和时空维度及集聚特征展示。在此基础上建立多元回归模型,对中国进行分区域新型城镇化发展驱动力进行分析。结果表明,中国东、中、西部新型城镇化发展主导驱动因素分别为外向力、市场力和行政力。政府应在充分认识新型城镇化内涵基础上,对东、中、西部实行不同发展策略,缩小区域差异。     

Spatial pattern and influencing factor of county-level industrial development in Liaoning Province of China

County-level industrial development and structure upgrade is one of the most important issues of revitalizing old industrial base of China. After the cluster analysis on GDP per capita and GDP per area of each county in Liaoning Province, this paper finds the similarity of population size, land use intensity, and economic development of each county. Location quotient reflects the specialization intensity of industries in each county, and it also reflects the spatial differences of county-level industrial development. Economic development level is higher in the southeast than in the northwest of Liaoning, and the industry driving effect on county-level economy is apparent. The main influencing factors include location, industrial foundation and economic system reform, capital input level, knowledge and technology dissemination, conditions of domestic and overseas markets, population and labor force transfer. Industrialization is an important approach to urbanization for the counties in Liaoning Province. The proportion of agriculture is much higher in the northwest than in the southeast of Liaoning, so it will be take longer time for counties in the northwest of Liaoning to make industrialization, urbanization and modernization.     

Characteristics and mechanism of agricultural transformation in typical rural areas of eastern China: A case study of Yucheng City,Shandong Province

Rural off-farm employment, rapid loss of agricultural land, and advanced technology popularization had led agricultural production in Chinese typical rural areas come at a critical transformation and upgrade stage. Based on sample survey data gathered from 401 households in Yucheng City, Shandong Province, this paper focuses on the characteristics and mechanism of agricultural transformation in typical rural areas of the eastern China. It was found that 74.3% of households surveyed kept at least one member engaging in off-farm employment, and 57.1% looked forward to expanding the operational scale of arable land, while just 13.7% had actually transferred their agricultural land. Since growing off-farm employment does not result in the collapse of traditional subsistence agriculture, therefore, agricultural production in Yucheng City is at an incomplete transformation phase from traditional small-holder farming to modern scale economy. It is caused by both macro environments and family characteristics, while urban-rural dual structure, imperfect rural development policy and agricultural technology popularization make peasant economy strengthen upon maintenance, and small-holder farming becomes peasant’s natural response owing to pluriactivity, local off-farm employment, reverse elimination, etc. In order to achieve smooth agricultural transformation of typical rural areas in the eastern China, it needs to promote professional differentiation among peasants, under clear policies adopted by central government. Providing comprehensive services for agricultural production and improving production skills and knowledge of farmers who are still living in the countryside will effectively stimulate the process of agricultural transformation.     

City Networks of Online Commodity Services in China: Empirical Analysis of Tmall Clothing and Electronic Retailers

City networks have been a critical topic in the fields of urban geography and regional economics. Numerous studies have explored city networks, focusing mainly on infrastructure and industrial networks. Unlike traditional urban network of which the major measuring indexes are population sizes and entity industries, online commodity service networks could reflect well the influencing of emerging economies, especially the Internet economy, on city networks. This study analyzes and reveals structural features of China’s city networks through online commodity services, providing the internet economic approach on city networks. Results indicate that the core cities of online commodity service networks are mainly concentrated in eastern coastal areas. In addition, spatial polarization and layer structure of network connections are obvious, descending from the centers in eastern China to peripheral cities in central and western China. Online commodity services of different cities show apparent differences and uncertainties in terms of specialization rates of international connection, which presents a tendency toward diversification. Online commodity service networks are not only associated with goods production, supply, and consumption in physical space but also reflect virtual information, capital, and technology flows, thus providing a new empirical approach for understanding city networks in information and internet economic age.     

AGGLOMERATION AND RADIATION EFFECT OF THE PULL OF URBANIZATION

In order to explore the train of thought for China‘s urbanizing development and coordinated rural eco-nomic development, and to find good ways of solving rural problems through urbanization, this paper absorbs the push-and-pull forces theory and the systematic dynamic theory in the traditional population migration theories, views urbanization as a dynamic system, makes research on the push-and-pull mechanism of urbanization. The pulling power of urbanization is analyzed according to two aspects, the agglomeration effect and the radiation effect of cities. The agglomeration effect provides continuous propelling force for urbanization, and the radiation effect further accelerates the urbanization process by pushing forward the development of rural economy. Of course, the slow de-velopment of urbanization can result in the hindrance to rural economic development.     

山东省绿色发展效率时空演化及影响因素分析

运用基于非期望产出的SBM模型,对2007—2017年山东省17地市绿色发展效率进行测度,分析其时空演化特征,进一步构建Tobit模型探究其影响因素。研究表明:2007—2017年山东省各地市间绿色发展效率变化趋势呈现地域差异,东部地区效率提升快于中西部地区,且存在个别地市绿色发展效率下降与个别地市绿色发展效率上升并存的趋势特征。山东省绿色发展效率存在明显的空间分异性,且存在高效率区向东发展,低效率区转向中西部的演化特征。山东省绿色发展效率与经济发展水平之间存在U型曲线关系,且现阶段经济发展水平及城镇化水平对绿色发展具有显著的负向影响,产业结构、对外开放程度及科技创新对绿色发展效率具有显著的正向驱动作用。推动产业结构优化升级,以创新驱动发展,推动更高层次的对外开放是山东省绿色发展提升的重要途径。     

Industrial agglomeration externalities,city size,and regional economic development: Empirical research based on dynamic panel data of 283 cities and GMM method

Local governments have long been ardently pursuing the industrial specialization effect (MAR externalities) and industrial diversification effect (Jacobs externalities). Such a pursuit has resulted in severe distortion of resource allocation and negative effect on sustainability of local economic development. Regarding the effect from both MAR and Jacobs externalities on local economic development existing literature records notable disputes. Therefore, for local economic development, one important issue is which externality (MAR or Jacobs) can better bring the effect into play. By studying a panel data of 283 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2012 and applying dynamic plane data GMM method, this paper conducted a regression analysis of the relationship among industrial agglomeration externalities, city size, and regional economic development. The result indicates that with regard to the whole nation, MAR externalities are conducive to regional economy development whereas Jacobs externalities will, to an extent, restrain regional economic development. As regards eastern, middle, and western regions, MAR externalities are conducive only to the economic development of the eastern region; their effects on middle and western regions are insignificant. Moreover, the interaction item between MAR externalities and city size has a significant negative synergistic effect on national economic development and a certain acceleration effect on eastern region as well as a strong negative synergistic effect on the middle region and an insignificant effect on the western region. The interaction item between Jacobs externalities and city size has a positive synergistic effect on only the middle region and has an insignificant synergistic effect on both eastern and western regions. Capital stock and labor input have significant accelerating effects on GDP growth per capita of Chinese cities, whereas material capital and labor input remain primary driving forces for Chinese local economic development. Furthermore, human capital contributes to accelerating urban economic development, whereas government intervention restrains urban economic development.     

Current situation and influencing factors of pluriactivity in mountainous and hilly rural areas of Sichuan province, China

In this study,the current situation of pluriactivity in mountainous and hilly rural areas of Sichuan province was analyzed using representative sample survey data and natural factor data calculated based on 30 m-resolution DEM and GIS.Moreover,using logistic regression model,a quantitative analysis was conducted on factors influencing pluriactivity in terms of individuals,households,communities and natural environmental conditions.The results showed that,(1) only 17.77% of rural laborers in mountainous and hilly areas of Sichuan province were engaged in pluriactivity.Geographically,pluriactivity was mainly chosen according to the "proximity principle",and was concentrated in construction and service industries;(2) the following factors have a significant influence on whether rural laborers in hilly areas engage in pluriactivity:gender,number of years of education,marriage,number of laborers and time to towns.Those with little influence include:age,health,family size,arable land per capita and per capita income,whether there are elderly people over 75 years and children less than 3 years.According to the main factors affecting pluriactivity,the government should enhance vocational skills training for rural laborers in mountainous and hilly areas,especially for female laborers,further improve transport accessibility and encourage rural laborers,especially female laborers to move into pluriactivity to increase the income of farm households.     

Relationship between social economic agglomeration and labor productivity of core cities in Northeast China

Dalian, Shenyang, Changchun and Harbin are the four core cities which play an essential role in terms of promoting the economic development in Northeast China. In this paper, the impact of urban agglomeration on labor productivity is explored by making comparisons among these four cities. The model used for analysis is a classical model derived from previous studies. Some indicators, such as population density and economic density, were selected to examine the impact of urban agglomeration on the labor productivity based on the time-series data for the four cities from 1990 to 2007. The four main conclusions are: 1) The promotion from the growth rate of population density on the growth rate of labor productivity is limited. 2) The negative relationship exists between the growth rate of employment density and the growth rate of labor productivity. 3) Agglomeration effect exists in the four cities, the highest one is Dalian, Shenyang takes the second place, followed by Changchun and Harbin, and the predominant promotion exerted on the labor productivity is the output density.     

区域人口迁移时空溢出效应与动力机制分析

区域人口迁移流的规模不仅取决于迁出地与目的地的“双边”要素,也与前期迁移流和周边迁移流息息相关。传统重力模型揭示了区域人口迁移过程的“推-拉”机制,但受制于对时空维度的忽视,无法有效表达迁移流之间的时空依赖关系,因而难以度量区域要素变化对迁移流产生的时空溢出效应。本文引入多种形式的时空依赖结构,构建迁移流时空重力模型,并采用贝叶斯马尔可夫链蒙特卡洛（MCMC）方法进行估计。在此基础上,结合时空效应框架量化区域要素对迁移流的影响,定量分析人口迁移过程的时空溢出效应与动力机制。本文以1985-2015年中国省际人口迁移为例,通过与非空间的动态重力模型估计结果比较,初步表明时间依赖、空间依赖以及时空扩散依赖在区域人口迁移过程中不容忽视;时空维度上,区域要素变化在初期对迁移网络的溢出效应超过对该区域迁移流的直接影响;逐渐衰减的时空溢出效应维持了区域人口迁移规模发展的相对稳定,与动态重力模型估计结果形成了鲜明对比。区域人口规模、人均GDP水平及其时空溢出效应共同驱动中国省际人口迁移系统的发展。耦合时空维度依赖关系的时空重力模型能更好地理解区域人口迁移过程的演化特征,为促进区域人口均衡发展提供科学的决策依据。     

Changing spatial and structural patterns of non-agricultural activities in outward-moving Beijing urban fringe

As responses to metropolitan suburbanization and rural urbanization,the formation and evolution of urban fringes should be understood against the background of overall economic development and spatial reconstruction of entire metropolises.At the same time,however,endogenous interactions between industrial structure and spatial patterns of non-agricultural activities are also worthy of scholarly attention.Since the 1980s,studies on urban fringes in China have been restricted by the lack of micro-level data.This paper investigates the spatial expansion and structural evolution of the urban fringe by taking the case of Beijing and uses systematic firm-level data in 1996 and 2001 from the National Census of Basic Units.The diversity of distribution patterns across industrial sectors brings about two interrelated results.On the one hand,structural adjustment of non-agricultural industries promotes the expansion and spatial evolution of the urban fringe.On the other hand,the stability and dynamics of industrial structure coexist in the moving urban fringe.This study also reveals that the outward-moving urban fringe is the optimal location for manufacturing,especially heavy manufacturing,as well as traditional producer and consumer services.However,industries with spatial stickiness such as tourism and sports have not moved with the fringe.Most advanced services remain concentrated in the city center.The authors argue that it is essential for understanding and managing urban fringes to take into account spatial evolution and industrial structural adjustment together with their interaction with each other.