Recent News

• UCRN co-director Zai Liang and steering committee member Steven Messner, Cheng Chen, and Youqin Huang edited book "Confronting the Challenges of Urbanization in China: Insights from Social Science Perspectives"
  

  Since the late 1970s, China has experienced an unprecedented pace of urbanization. In 1978, only 17.8% of the population resided in urban areas, but by 2013 the level of urbanization had reached 53.8%. During the same period, China also enjoyed spectacular economic growth. China had become the second largest economy in the world by 2012, just behind the United States. Despite China’s highly acclaimed achievements in urbanization and its economic miracle, urban China confronts a set of significant challenges.
  This book provides theoretically informed and empirically rich analyses of some of the key challenges facing China’s urbanization. The first part deals with new patterns of urbanization, focusing on comprehensive measures and environmental dimensions of urbanization. The second part of the book focuses on several aspects related to migrants in cities: migrant entrepreneurship, return migration, and local people’s attitudes toward migrants. The final section examines two key issues important for migrants, urban local residents, and policy-makers that have become quite contentious in China today: housing and urban health care.
  This collection presents original, cutting-edge research on some of the most pressing challenges confronting contemporary urban China, conducted by researchers from multiple social science disciplines. It will appeal to scholars and advanced students of urban studies and China studies, as well as those in sociology, anthropology, geography, and political science.

Click here to see the publicher's website
Click here to see the book at the Amazon website

Past News

• Professor John Logan from the Department of Sociology at Brown University, and Lu Hou, President of the America-China City Alliance, were invited to discuss the impacts of China's urban planning and reforms in the post-Mao economy. The panel discussion was moderated by Professor Chua Beng Huat, Provost Chair Professor of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, National University of Singapore. Click here to see some detail. Click here to see video clip.

   





• Professor Li Hou from Jilin University gave a presentation on Urbanization in China in May 2013
• UCRN co-director Zai Liang and steering committee member Steven Messner, Cheng Chen, and Youqin Huang edited book "The Emergence of a new urban China: insiders' perspectives" has been awarded “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2012 from Choice.
  

  The Emergence of a new urban China: insiders' perspectives, ed. by Zai Liang et al. Lexington Books, 2012. 212p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780739170120 e-book, contact publisher for price; ISBN 9780739170113, $60.00. Outstanding Title! Reviewed in 2012aug CHOICE
  
  Nine essays in this unique volume--each essay a joint endeavor of a doctoral student inside China and a senior scholar in North America--not only update a variety of key urban issues, but also showcase the scholarship and positions of a generation of young Chinese sociologists who are living through the complicated postsocialist, urban transformation. Social surveys and interviews, most of which were conducted by these young scholars in Guangdong province from 2005 to 2010, make the essays rich in both quantitative dimensions and graphic details of human agency. Causes, consequences, and discursive strategies of the contest and negotiation between old and new urban dwellers over cultural identity, legal status, and economic entitlement are exceptionally well-captured and probed in many of the essays. The contributors impartially treat various interest groups, such as native urban residents, migrant workers, ethnic minorities, laid-off workers, and African merchants. An accessible guide for urban issues in China, this book would be good complementary material for advanced undergraduate or graduate seminars. And everybody interested in contemporary China will find it illuminating. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. -- L. Ma, State University of New York at Buffalo

  http://www.cro2.org/default.aspx?page=reviewdisplay&pid=3760457

  About Choice
  Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries is the premier source for reviews of academic books, electronic media, and Internet resources of interest to those in higher education. More than 35,000 librarians, faculty, and key decision makers rely on Choice magazine and Choice Reviews Online for collection development and scholarly research. Choice reaches almost every undergraduate college and university library in the United States.