Mark Wang

Informal electronic waste recycling: A sector review with special focus on China

Informal recycling is a new and expanding low cost recycling practice in managing Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE or e-waste). It occurs in many developing countries, including China, where current gaps in environmental management, high demand for second-hand electronic appliances and the norm of selling e-waste to individual collectors encourage the growth of a strong informal recycling sector. This paper gathers information on informal e-waste management, takes a look at its particular manifestations in China and identifies some of the main difficulties of the current Chinese approach. Informal e-waste recycling is not only associated with serious environmental and health impacts, but also the supply deficiency of formal recyclers and the safety problems of remanufactured electronic products. Experiences already show that simply prohibiting or competing with the informal collectors and informal recyclers is not an effective solution. New formal e-waste recycling systems should take existing informal sectors into account, and more policies need to be made to improve recycling rates, working conditions and the efficiency of involved informal players. A key issue for Chinas e-waste management is how to set up incentives for informal recyclers so as to reduce improper recycling activities and to divert more e-waste flow into the formal recycling sector.

Sustainability: Transfer project cannot meet China's water needs.

Almost one year ago, Beijing began to receive water channelled by the South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) project. The biggest inter-basin transfer scheme in the world, the SNWD project has the capacity to deliver 25 billion cubic metres of fresh water per year from the Yangtze River in China’s south to the drier north by two routes — each of which covers a distance of more than 1,000 kilometres. The project connects four major river basins, three megacities, six provinces and hundreds of millions of water users and polluters. Its success is already in question. Reservoir and canal construction costs have reportedly reached US

The drivers of risk to water security in Shanghai

80 billion, and more than 300,000 people have been displaced. Pollution and environmental fallout, as well as high maintenance costs and water prices, make the project unsustainable both ecologically and socially. And the transfer of water does not address the underlying causes of water shortages in the north, namely pollution and inefficient agricultural, industrial and urban use — the effects of which we have been studying over the past decade. North China could be self-sufficient in water without the transfer of water from the south. But the necessary steps — among them, improving local pollution monitoring and building better irrigation infrastructure — are inadequately implemented. Increasing supply is viewed as the main solution to water scarcity because of the conflicting roles of the Chinese government as both entrepreneur and regulator. Incentives for economic growth in China still outweigh incentives for pollution control and limits on water extraction, despite ever stricter

Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on China's Migrant Workers: A Survey of 2,700 in 2009

Big cities are often said to have big water problems, and Shanghai is no exception. In this paper, we examine and compare the influence of the major factors that give rise to the risk of water insecurity in Shanghai. There is an extensive and diverse literature on these issues, dealt with in isolation, and here, we provide a synthesis of the literature, together with our own assessments and calculations, to assess what are the risks to Shanghai’s water supply and what is our degree of confidence in this assessment. We describe the systems that supply water to the city, and past and future changes in the systems, including changes in the glaciers that supply some water to the river, changes in climate, changes in land use, the construction of dams, and water diversions. We show how, at the same time as Shanghai is increasing its dependence on the Yangtze river, water diversions and sea level rise are increasing the risk that this water will be too saline to consume at certain times of the year. This analysis suggests that most of the major drivers of the risk to water security in Shanghai are within the power of environmental managers to control.

Voluntary and involuntary resettlement in China: a false dichotomy?

An Australian geographer examines the effects of the global financial crisis on Chinas migrant workers, based on a recent survey of over 2,700 such workers conducted during January-February 2009. The author focuses on the number of migrant workers returning to their home villages for the annual New Year holiday period, the types of workers that were laid off, options available to such workers upon losing employment, and the reasons underlying their subsequent moves. Implications of the findings for labor policy in China are briefly outlined and several directions for future research identified. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: E240, G010, J610, J690. 7 tables, 68 references.

Revisiting and rethinking regional urbanization in Changjiang River Delta, China

The success of involuntary resettlement is contingent on recasting the involuntary as voluntary. To explore this proposition, this article presents two projects in China – one “voluntary” (Poverty Alleviation Resettlement or PAR) and relatively “successful” and one “involuntary” (Three Gorges Project Resettlement or TGPR) and less so. The research finds the voluntary–involuntary dichotomy a false one. It is not volition that leads to better outcomes, but people-centred practices that are embedded in policy, planning, and implementation of PAR. Perhaps the most important lesson drawn is that all resettlements should be based on a commitment to settlement and not just resettlement.

Constructing Water Shortages on a Huge River: The Case of Shanghai

China is entering a critical and accelerating phase of urbanization. As one of the most urbanized regions in China, the Changjiang (Yangtze) River Delta has experienced dramatic urbanization and urban transformation. However, in the recent years, many changes have taken place in this region and there is limited attention to the regional urbanization path evolution, its problems and the way to solve these problems. Therefore, we should revisit the urbanization process in the Changjiang River Delta again. In this paper, we revisited urbanization paths of the Changjiang River Delta by data analysis, influence factors of urbanization by the Gray Relational Analysis, and major challenges to urbanization of the Changjiang River Delta by theoretical considerations. We found that the urbanization of the Changjiang River Delta had experienced several stages of large-scale spatial and urban system restructuring. Within the Changjiang River Delta, Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangshu had experienced different urbanization path with local characteristics. But with their development model gradually converging, their urbanization model is also converging. We also found that the major influence factors affecting the Changjiang River Delta urbanization were dynamic change and urbanization was driven by different key factors in different socio-economic development stages. Meanwhile, the Changjiang River Delta urbanization is facing many problems such as existing institutional arrangements, including the hukou (household registration) system and others which can not meet the needs of current socio-economic development and urbanization. Therefore, it is imperative to promote institutional innovation and adopt a new urbanization development strategy for the sake of the orderly and sustainable urbanization development in the Changjiang River Delta.

Urban growth and the transformation of rural China: the case of Southern Manchuria

Abstract Shanghai is located on the world’s third largest river (by volume).Yet it faces therisk of shortages of drinking water. Many decisions and environmental charac-teristics have contributed to this threat. First, Shanghai has become dependent onwater brought into the municipality by rivers. Second, it has become increasinglyreliant on water from the Changjiang (Yangzi River), principally in order tocontrol the levels of pollution in the water that enters its treatment plants. Third,for reasons associated with inter-provincial administrative arrangements, thecity’s water intakes are located within the municipality, within the estuary zoneand subject to tidal intrusions of salt water. Fourth, at high tide and when theChangjiang’s discharge is low, salt intrudes far into the estuary, beyond thecurrent water intakes. If sea levels rise, these intrusions will become more pro-nounced. Fifth, large-scale central government infrastructure projects (such asdams and the South-North Transfer) are altering the hydrological characteristicsof the river. Such projects raise the probability of salt water intrusions into thewater intake zone. The Shanghai and central governments have thus made a seriesof decisions that, taken together, have led the municipality to rely on a source ofdrinking water that is increasingly unreliable and subject to the risk of shortagesdue to salt water intrusions. Why these decisions have been made – independently– is an important problem for those who would understand the provision of waterfor cities and the practical efficacy of Chinese governance systems.KEY WORDS

China’s Puzzle Game: Four Spatial Shifts of Development

Since the economic reforms launched at the end of the 1970s, China has experienced dramatic socioeconomic change which has led to the emergence of new and distinctive regions of economic interaction characterised by an extensive and intensive mix of agricultural and non-agricultural activities. This paper illustrates the nature and characteristics of these evolving Extended Metropolitan Regions (EMRs) by drawing on the experience of the Shenyang-Dalian urban corridor in Northeast China (Manchuria). The increased level of economic interaction between the cities and the countryside is characterised by accelerated labour and capital flows, rapidly expanding rural-urban commodity trade and subcontracting between urban and rural enterprises. The result is a rapid erosion of differences in the standard of living, economic function and life style between the city and the countryside.

Managed Openness: Opening China’s Door

The Chinese policy makers should be perhaps the best chess players for they have been entitled to set up regional development priorities for different regions at different times. Mao Zedong and the founders of the PRC could directly move any chessman without much hesitation under the centrally planned economy of 1949-76. Deng Xiaoping made every move of his chessmen using two hands. His visible hand, like Mao’s, was the central control mechanism; the other was his invisible hand — the market mechanism. Deng gradually introduced a market economic system into China but his visible hand guaranteed that every move of the chessmen was accomplished, because of his seniority and reputation in the CCP and powerful personality. This may be the beauty of a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. Deng’s successor, Jiang Zemin, has a weak visible hand and a strong invisible hand. After over 20 years of economic reform and political change, local governments have tasted the benefits of freedom and autonomy and frequently bargain with the central government. The current political system does not allow Jiang directly to intervene in too many economic development issues. He has to use market forces to fulfil his regional development goals. However, for these three generations of Chinese leaders, it matters less whether the hand is visible or invisible, than that it translates their ideas about strategic regional development into action.