Evolution characteristics and policy implications of new urbanization in provincial capital cities in Western China

Municipal amalgamations and the quality of public services: A study based on city-county mergers in China

Municipal amalgamation is one of the core policy tools for Chinese government intervention in urbanization. The city-county merger policy provides a valuable research object for examining whether government-led urban expansion improves the quality of public services. By using city panel data from 2003 to 2019, this paper examines the policy effects of city-county mergers on the quality of public services using the Propensity Score Matching-Difference-in-Differences (PSM-DID) model. The results indicate that, after controlling for other factors, city-county mergers have increased the quality of public services by 1.2%. A placebo test has validated the robustness of this positive effect. Through further tests, the paper finds that the policy has positively affected all three aspects of the quality of public services in China: education, health care, and transport infrastructure, with the greatest impact being on education. Using a case study of a city-county merger in the Fenghua District of Ningbo, this paper depicts the transmission mechanism and argues that the policy affects the quality of public services by providing institutional security (financial and administrative power) and promoting regional integration in the new city area.

Regional fauna-flora biodiversity and conservation strategy in China

Evolutionary and historical development and current profiles are essential to generating a tangible conservation strategy. It is also critical to distinguish the regions with vigorous potential growth from those meeting evolutionary development bottlenecks and those whose development has been severely devastated. We used two sizeable national data repositories of terrestrial fauna and flora of China to approach the issues. The results indicate that the Southwest and Coastal regions have the most significant terrestrial faunal-floral biodiversity (TFFB). Thus, they should be prioritized in conservation for great potential promotions. Although there has been remarkable evolutionary development, the Central region has been severely devastated. A solution is to uphold a balanced association between social-economic development and TFFB sustainability. As for the Northeast and the western Northwest, there is no need to invest heavily in conservation measures. This study sheds light on exploring more practical conservation strategies regionally, nationally, and globally to achieve pragmatic goals.

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Terrestrial faunal-floral biodiversity (TFFB) in China

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Regional variation assessment of TFFB in China

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China’s regional disparity in human impact and evolutionary development

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Regionalized conservation strategies in China