Julie Tian Miao

Optical Illusion? The Growth and Development of the Optics Valley of China

The ‘cultivated’ nature of the Chinese science parks, against the background of a transitional economy, differentiates them from spontaneous and cooperative Western models, and is a phenomenon deserving close examination. We study the dynamics and features of the so-called Optics Valley of China (OVC) in Hubei, aiming to explore the characteristics of an embryonic local innovation system constructed in a less-favoured region. The results show that institutional factors are the leading forces in a cultivated science park like the OVC. However, along with the shifting focus of the local government, the OVCs industrial scale has remained small and its industrial chain has remained incomplete. Moreover, the lack of trust and interactions between various components in this innovation system has been highly noticeable. All these features may be seen as warnings to the OVC that a revision of this innovation system is needed in order to avoid the fate of becoming an ‘optical illusion’.

Exploring the ‘middle ground’ between state and market: the example of China

Abstract Studies of housing systems lying in the ‘middle ground’ between state and market are subject to three important shortcomings. First, the widely used Esping-Andersen (EA) approach assesses only a subset of the key housing outcomes and may be less helpful for describing changes in housing policy regimes. Second, there is too much emphasis on tenure transitions, and an assumed close correspondence between tenure labels and effective system functioning may not be valid. Third, due attention has not been given to the spatial dimensions in which housing systems operate, in particular when housing policies have a significant devolved or localised emphasis. Updating EA’s framework, we suggest a preliminary list of housing system indicators in order to capture the nature of the housing systems being developed and devolved. We verified the applicability of this indicator system with the case of China. This illustrates clearly the need for a more nuanced and systematic basis for categorising differences and changes in welfare and housing policies.

Parallelism and evolution in transnational policy transfer networks: the case of Sino-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP)

ABSTRACT This paper examines the policy transfer process and outcomes outside the occidental context. It extends the voluntary transnational policy transfer framework with an evolutionary perspective and a scalar understanding of space and power at the subnational level. When the Sino-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), a government-to-government collaboration in promoting industrial development, was studied, it was revealed that two parallel policy transfer networks were developed in the early days of the SIP, which were embedded in different scales of governance and pursuing divergent targets. Their relationship affected the policy transfer outcomes for the SIP, and reveals the important governance and temporal dimensions in transnational policy transfers.

Housing the knowledge economy in China: An examination of housing provision in support of science parks

Little attention is paid in the extant academic literature to the question of housing knowledge workers despite the potential mismatches between housing supply and demand. This paper provides an initial examination of housing the knowledge economy in China, focusing on three science parks (SPs): Zhongguancun (Z-Park, Beijing), Zhangjiang (Z-SHIP, Shanghai) and Optics Valley of China (OVC, Wuhan). It discusses to what extent, and how these three SPs have factored in the housing dimension in connection with the knowledge economy, paying particular attention to housing affordability, location (inside the SPs or outside in the wider city-region) and the mode of provision (market or state). Insights were drawn from documentary analysis and in-depth interviews in the three chosen case studies. Initial evaluation of policies geared towards housing supply in China suggests that the housing question needs to come to the fore in discussions of structural transformation towards the knowledge economy.

The intrapreneurial state: Singapore's emergence in the smart and sustainable urban solutions field

ABSTRACT The East Asian developmental state model and the Anglo-American entrepreneurial state model profile varied ways in which the state continues to intervene in economic development. These models are developed by different disciplines and against diverse contexts to capture extrasocietal state responses to neoliberalism and globalization but leave the intrasocietal preconditions for state evolution little explored. We elaborate the concept of state intrapreneurialism as one way of understanding the interrelationship between economic and state transformation – one ingredient of the intrasocietal preconditions underpinning the responses to extrasocietal changes emphasized in the post-developmental state literature. Drawing on the case of Singapores emergence in the field of smart/sustainable urban solutions, the subsidiary contributions of this paper are to suggest intrapreneurship as a specific and enduring advantage within the developmental state model, especially when set against its limitations signalled in the post-developmental state literature.