Disaster Citizenship and Solidarity of Informal Groups: A Case Study in Disaster-Affected Villages in Eastern China

When China's leaders launched rural reforms in the late 1970s, they acknowledged the nation's need to modify its commitment to egalitarianism.1 Slogans such as Tt is glorious to be rich!' and 'Some areas will lead; others will follow!' signalled this fundamental shift in ideology. Leaders backed up these exhortations with a series of concrete policy actions ? establishing the Special Economic Zones and implementing the East Coast-first policy, introducing financial reforms, and initiating the rural industrialization movement. In China's version of the 'trickle down' theory, certain core areas were to take the lead in the modernization process and provide models for other areas to later emulate. Adopting strategies that had been employed

In this study, I investigate how state-dominated rural household water governance affects local responses to water-related risks during extreme weather events and environmental changes in rural China. This form of governance is centralized and standardized, manifested in its material and moral dimensions: (1) modern technology and infrastructure, involving facilities for centralized and standardized water access, quality management, and household water use; and (2) morality, represented by the norms of centralized and standardized water purification in managing water quality and in the installation of standardized modern flush toilets which increases household water use as opposed to traditional practices. Based upon ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the water-related risks associated with such governance during droughts, cold snaps, and changes in land use around water sources, and how villagers did not demand state intervention but instead turned to alternative practices when possible, thus disengaging from different aspects of the state-dominated water governance. In their responses, villagers enhanced their resilience by increasing physical capacities to cope with tap water-related risks. Realizing that the state-dominated governance was inadequate, they cultivated their resilience to regain control in addressing risks. I thus term villagers’ responses as ‘resilient disengagement’, located between resignation and activism.

This study analyzes the spatiotemporal evolution and effects of regional functions in rural China and summarizes the spatiotemporal characteristics of rural Chinese regional functions from 2005 to 2015. The results of this study are as follows. (a) The values of the regional functions of rural China generally exhibit a “V‐shaped” distribution such that these values are high in eastern and western China and low in central China, and are high in northern China and low in southern China. (b) The overall functions of rural Chinese regions vary distinctly by region across northeastern China, eastern China, central China, and western China. (c) The spatial variation of regional production function values in rural China also exhibits a gradually declining trend, with the highest values in eastern China, followed by northeastern, central, and western China. This pattern exhibits a relatively strong coupling relationship with the spatial variation principles governing China's natural environment, resource carrying capacity, and economic development level. Overall, regional ecological function values do not exhibit any significant variation, but they do exhibit a gradually declining trend, starting from western and northern China and moving to eastern and southern China. (d) The degree of spatial spillover received by a given region from a neighboring region's production, living, or ecological function is stronger than the effect of the error shock from the corresponding function of the neighboring region. The effects of influencing factors on different regions exhibit significant variation.

China's rural economic reforms radically altered land tenure in rural China. With the granting of land use rights and residual income rights to farming households between 1979 and 1983, agriculture shifted from a collective-based to a familybased system. Land was not privatized, however. Ownership remained "collective", with local officials, typically at the village level, exercising a major influence over the allocation of land and the way households could use land. The initial land allocations to families were typically based on household size, household labour supply, or both. The central government's policy was that these allocations were supposed to be for 15 years. In some villages, land use contracts have been respected; in other villages, however, local leaders have periodically redistributed land among households and have intervened throughout the reform period to determine how farmers are able to use the land. The initial reforms triggered an unprecedented acceleration of agricultural growth in China. From 1979 to 1984, the gross value of agricultural output increased in real terms at an annual rate of 7.6 per cent, and grain production rose by 4.9 per cent annually.' Empirical studies attribute a significant part of this increase to enhanced incentives, as farmers were able to keep the output and

Even though it is widely recognized that giving farmers more secure land rights may increase agricultural investment, scholars contend that, in the case of China, such a policy might undermine the function of land as a social safety net and, as a consequence, not be sustainable or command broad support. Data from three provinces, one of which had adopted a policy to increase security of tenure in advance of the others, suggest that greater tenure security, especially if combined with transferability of land, had a positive impact on agricultural investment and, within the time frame considered, led neither to an increase in inequality of land distribution nor a reduction in households' ability to cope with exogenous shocks. Household support for more secure property rights is increased by their access to other insurance mechanisms, suggesting some role of land as a safety net. At the same time, past exposure to this type of land right has a much larger impact quantitatively, suggesting that a large part of the resistance to changed property rights arrangements disappears as household familiarity with such rights increases.

For the aim of responding to the climate change, countries around the world have successively unveiled policies to reduce carbon emissions, such as the Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality Goals in China and restarting of nuclear power plants in France. As a kind of clean energy, nuclear energy plays a key role in the process of carbon neutrality. However, due to the particularity and the limited communication channels for the public to access nuclear power fields, the group is often influenced by negative feedback during the promotion of nuclear power projects, which obstructs the development of projects. Hereon, keeping abreast of public opinion information and making correct guidance in communications has become an important link in promoting a virtuous circle of the nuclear industry. This paper studies the framing principle of the nuclear power public opinion prevention and control system, the construction strategy of each module and the application of new technologies, which could realize wide-range collection of public opinions, real-time monitoring, simulation sorting out context of events based on hot words, correcting simulation deviations by the system based on machine learning results, also, providing early warning of in-time monitoring results. The findings of this research organically integrate the new public opinion prevention and control technology with public communication, which is an exploration of the application of new information technology in the field of public communication.

With over 90% of mushroom producers having opted to participate in the industry through informal farmer groups, this paper sought to identify the key factors that unify members of informal collective initiatives. In contrast to formal organisations, which are regulated by law, informal groups are fully autonomous and not regulated by any legal instrument in Swaziland. Based on a conceptual framework that uses social capital dimensions to study collective action, trust, cooperation and communication were identified as the key elements responsible for ensuring cohesion in informal groups engaged in mushroom production. Further analysis indicated that trust is positively influenced by gender, age and religion, while cooperation was found to be influenced by members’ dependence on mushrooms for food. Communication, on the other hand, was found to be positively influenced by the level of trust and member cooperation. The empirical evidence indicates that members from communities characterized by positive cognitive social capital are most likely to engage in voluntary collective action in an attempt to improve their livelihoods. The study, therefore, recommends that informal groups developed voluntarily by community members should be encouraged and embraced as an important element of Swaziland’s development agenda.

Population-based investigation of fluoroquinolones resistant tuberculosis in rural eastern China

The increasing concerns of the geographical maldistribution of medical resources have sparked worldwide interests in exploring the potential of telemedicine in the rural health system. This study aimed to investigate the application and effect of telemedicine as well as their regional heterogeneity in the primary care centres in rural China. Based on the stratified multistage cluster sampling, a cross-sectional study was conducted among 358 township health centres (THCs) from eastern, central and western China. A self-administered questionnaire was used and the data of the Health Statistical Annual Reports in 2017 were collected to investigate the implication of telemedicine as well as the performance and other characteristics of each THCs. Propensity score matching was used to estimate the effect of telemedicine application on the bed occupancy rate and the number of annual outpatient visits of the THCs, with comparison among the regions. The overall prevalence of telemedicine application was 58.66% in 2017, and it was found to increase the bed occupancy rate of the THCs in the national range (p < 0.1). When divided into different regions, telemedicine was found to improve the number of annual outpatient visits in western China (p < 0.05) and the bed occupancy rate in eastern China (p < 0.1). Disparities in the degree of remoteness and the capability of THCs among the regions were also found in this study, which may be the reasons for the regional heterogeneous effects of telemedicine. These findings suggested the potential of telemedicine in improving the utilization of primary care centres in rural areas. Further studies were needed to investigate the underlying reasons for its regional heterogeneous effects.

Parental satisfaction with early childhood education services in rural China: A national survey

Since the reform and opening up, the Chinese economy has achieved sustained high-speed growth. However, the widening gaps in income, especially for rural China, seem to be a dark lining to these extraordinary achievements. Taking the duration of poverty into the consideration, this article analyzes the income inequality of rural per capita net income (RPCNI) based on income mobility in rural China. Analysis results showed that Gini coefficient of RPCNI declined, but that income mobility was mainly limited in the interior for low- and high-income groups. Income inequalities rose sharply within eastern and western China from 1990 to 2010. Benefiting from the developed economy, the upward mobility was universal in eastern China. The spillover effect on neighboring poor counties was feeble in western China, which directly caused long-term rich and poor. The Gini coefficient of RPCNI in central China was always at a low level, corresponding to the phenomenon of short-term rich and long-term poor. In northeastern China, the Gini coefficient sharply decreased and the large body of income mobility between non-neighboring groups was quite remarkable. The spatial pattern of intra-provincial Gini coefficient and income mobility of RPCNI has been divided by the “HU line”, which is a “geo-demographic demarcation line” discovered by Chinese population geographer HU Huanyong in 1935. In southeastern China, the characteristics of income mobility of each county depended on the distance between the county and the capital city. The spatial pattern of income mobility of RPCNI in agricultural provinces was different from that in non-agricultural provinces. According to the income inequality and income mobility, appropriate welfare and development policies was proposed to combat rural poverty at both regional and provincial scales.

Social Embeddedness, Power Balance, and Local Governance in China

Improstructure - an improvisational perspective on smart infrastructure governance

The acquisition of basic citizenship rights like legal identity, education, and food security often goes unfulfilled among urban poor communities in Indonesian secondary cities, as they tend to remain invisible to state welfare-delivery systems. Along the Lemahputro riverbank in Sidoarjo, East Java, this exclusion is magnified by residents’ lack of formal documentation, unstable incomes and limited political leverage. This article asks: How do government actors and informal community groups co‑produce solutions to close that citizenship gap? This research conducted a descriptive qualitative case study guided by the concepts of Brokers and Citizenship, Collaborative Governance, and the idea of vernacular citizenship. Data were gathered through participant observation, 17 semi‑structured interviews and document analysis between August and October 2023. Findings reveal a multilevel synergy in which neighborhood and village officials broker legal‑identity access, faith‑based and women’s organizations supply social‑welfare services, and a donor‑initiated hub Griya Sinau functions as an intermediary platform that binds state and community initiatives. This hybrid governance arrangement reduces bureaucratic distance, legitimizes informal actors as policy implementers and expands residents’ repertoires for claiming rights beyond clientelist channels. The study contributes empirically to Indonesian urban‑governance scholarship and conceptually by showing how collaborative governance can be vernacularized through everyday brokerage practices. Policy recommendations include formalizing community brokers as “citizenship facilitators” and deploying mobile civil‑registration units to informal settlements.

IntroductionIn late 2022, a rapid transmission of Omicron variants of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) occurred throughout China. The purpose of this study was to provide the latest data and evaluate trends of SARS-CoV-2 infection in rural China among the community population.MethodsData on SARS-CoV-2 infection among approximately 90,000 participants in rural China were collected by the National Sentinel Community-Based Surveillance (NSCS) system. Participants were tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection (defined as positive for SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid or antigen) twice weekly from December 16, 2022 to January 12, 2023. The daily average of newly positive rate and its estimated daily percentage change were calculated to describe the national and regional trends of SARS-CoV-2 infection in rural China.ResultsIn rural China, the daily average new positive rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection peaked at 4.79% between December 20–22, 2022 and then decreased to 0.57% between January 10–12, 2023, with an average decrease of 29.95% per round. The peak of new SARS-CoV-2 infection was slightly earlier and lower in North China (5.28% between December 20–22, 2022) than in South China (5.63% between December 23–26, 2022), and then converged from December 30, 2022 to January 2, 2023. The peak of 6.09% occurred between December 20–22, 2022 in eastern China, while the peak of 5.99% occurred later, between December 27–29, 2022, in central China.ConclusionsOverall, the epidemic wave in rural China peaked between December 20–22, 2022, and passed quickly following the optimization of prevention and control measures. Currently, SARS-CoV-2 infection in community populations in rural China is sporadic.