Is global inequality getting better or worse? A critique of the World Bank’s convergence narrative
The dominant narrative of global income inequality is one of convergence. Recent high-profile publications by Branko Milanovic and the World Bank claim that the global Gini coefficient has declined since … Continue reading
Smart-Eco Cities in China: Trends and Profiles 2016
The ‘smart-eco city’ concept captures the recent trend for future-oriented urban development schemes that display both ‘green’ and ‘smart’ ambitions. More precisely, the smart-eco city is defined as “an experimental … Continue reading
Transport Infrastructure, City Productivity Growth and Sectoral Reallocation: Evidence from China
This paper examines the effects of economic integration resulting from highway construction on aggregate productivity and the spatial distribution of industries. To do so, it constructs a unique dataset of … Continue reading
Media Development with Chinese Characteristics
Iginio Gagliardone – China’s concessionary loans and support to development projects have tended to shift balances of power by favouring certain actors over others and have challenged existing development paradigms, … Continue reading
How Chinese Urbanism Is Transforming African Cities
The factory of the world has a new export: urbanism. More and more Chinese-made buildings, infrastructure, and urban districts are sprouting up across Africa, and this development is changing the … Continue reading
Contesting speculative urbanisation and strategising discontents
Hyun Bang Shin – I have argued in this essay that China’s speculative urbanisation is both an ideological and a political project that disrupts and destroys the lives of the … Continue reading
Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive, and Sustainable Urbanization
The joint report by the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council, Urban China: Toward Efficient, Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanization, includes six priority areas for a … Continue reading
The End of Cheap Labor
Mitali Das and Papa N’Diaye – China is on the eve of a demographic shift that will have profound consequences on its economic and social landscape. Within a few years … Continue reading
Development and dissent in China’s ‘urban age’
Hyun Bang Shin – As China enters an ‘urban age’ for the first time in its entire history, a new set of urban conflicts over identity, development and inclusion are emerging … Continue reading
