Wei Shen

1. While both scholars and policy practitioners increasingly recognise the importance of place-based approaches in transformative innovation policy (Schwaag-Serger et al., 2023), the conceptual and...

Renewable energy activities have increasingly become the central component of China’s proposed green Belt and Road Initiative. Yet, scaling up these activities requires significant institutional changes of the current Chinese state and financial-industrial complex. Informed by a conceptual framework that builds on multi-level institutional analysis, we assess the institutional challenges constraining the scalability of Chinese renewable energy projects in South Africa and Ethiopia. Our study reveals that the institutional fragmentation and vacuum in China have led to the lack of a clear engagement strategy with African markets. In addition, the development of wind and solar energy projects in Africa is often taking place amid the ongoing and fast-changing energy sector governance, which is not yet appreciated by the key Chinese actors. We argue that promoting Chinese-backed renewable energy projects in Africa requires new institutional arrangements that can adapt to competitive and divergent local market conditions and regulatory changes.

Although world regions continue to be a key feature of the geographical imagination, there has been relatively little innovative research on world regionalization through the lens of city connections. Against the backdrop of an increasingly urban and interconnected world, in this paper, we evaluate the connections between European and Asian world cities. Based on a model conjecturing intercity connections through office locations of globalized producer services firms, we analyze the networks of both regions’ major cities. To this end, we establish frameworks that allow (1) comparison of the level of connectivity of cities and (2) analysis of the strength and orientation of the interactions between cities. We find that both Europe and Asia have a larger number of well-connected cities than any other world region. Both regions are roughly comparable in terms of the distribution of their urban connectivities, but there are some notable differences (e.g., Asia’s system being more top-heavy) and evolutions (e.g., Asian cities gaining more connectivity over the last decade). There are also two geographical dimensions to the interpretations of these patterns of urban connectivity: (1) the variegated importance of state-spaces (e.g., national gateways) and (2) the uneven regional focus of intercity connections (e.g., Luxembourg and Singapore being less dependent on regional connections). We use our findings to argue that the time is ripe for a more nuanced and contextualized answer to the question of how cities (can) act politically on the global scale in general and Asia–Europe relations in particular.

The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system is such a means to an end of further economic development and wider social political goals. With major protective provisions of expropriation against compensation, fair and equitable treatment, national treatment, most-favored-nation treatment, full protection and security and umbrella clause, it helps establish a predictable, transparent, and enforceable legal regime to protect foreign investors’ legitimate expectations and lawful investment. As China intends to attract foreign investments by offering a stable business operation environment, its signing a large number of BITs and FTAs may help reduce political and socio-economic risks, which give states, businesses, and individuals the confidence to work in a coordinated manner. The economic development goal, rule of law strategy, tense US-China relations, ideology of multilateralism and community of common destiny, all add up to China’s inclination to incremental but effective ISDS reform.

This paper measures the cultural consumption patterns of expatriates in Shanghai by applying a geo-information approach to data derived from social media. In order to reveal the geographical characteristics, the paper zooms in on the level of city districts and presents a typology based on the degree of spatial and functional aggregation of cultural venues. Three major contextual parameters underlying the typology are discerned: the geographies of the Shanghai space-economy, the imprint of Shanghai’s spatio-political strategies, and the overall policy approach toward this community. We discuss how this study can be used as the starting point for further comparative studies on cultural patterns of expatriates in other geographical contexts.