Socioeconomic Development In China Research Articles

Smoothing the Phosphorus Resource Stress under the Socioeconomic Development in China.

Phosphorus (P) is the key in maintaining food security and ecosystem functions. Population growth and economic development have increased the demand for phosphate rocks. China has gradually developed from zero phosphate mining to the world's leading P miner, fertilizer, and agricultural producer since 1949. China released policies, such as designating phosphate rock as a strategic resource, promoting eco-agricultural policies, and encouraging the use of solid wastes produced in mining and the phosphorus chemical industry as construction materials. However, methodological and data gaps remain in the mapping of the long-term effects of policies on P resource efficiency. Here, P resource efficiency can be represented by the potential of the P cycle to concentrate or dilute P as assessed by substance flow analysis (SFA) complemented by statistical entropy analysis (SEA). P-flow quantification over the past 70 years in China revealed that both resource utilization and waste generation peaked around 2015, with 20 and 11 Mt of mined and wasted P, respectively. Additionally, rapidly increasing aquaculture wastewater has exacerbated pollution. The resource efficiency of the Chinese P cycle showed a U-shaped change with an overall improvement of 22.7%, except for a temporary trough in 1975. The driving force behind the efficiency decline was the roaring phosphate fertilizer industry, as confirmed by the sharp increase in P flows for both resource utilization and waste generation from the mid-1960s to 1975. The positive driving forces behind the 30.7% efficiency increase from 1975 to 2018 were the implementation of the resource conservation policy, downstream pollution control, and, especially, the circular agro-food system strategy. However, not all current management practices improve the P resource efficiency. Mixing P industry waste with construction materials and the development of aquaculture to complement offshore fisheries erode P resource efficiency by 2.12% and 9.19%, respectively. With the promotion of a zero-waste society in China, effective P-cycle management is expected.

A holistic analysis of China's consumption-based water footprint (2012–2017) from a multilevel perspective

As the world's second-largest economy, rapid socioeconomic development in China has exerted unprecedented pressure on water resources. However, there is still uncertainty regarding consumption-based water footprint (CWF) assessment across different spatiotemporal scales, especially those differentiated by green, blue, and grey water footprints. To address this knowledge gap, this study employed a multi-regional input–output (MRIO) model and structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to quantify the spatiotemporal dynamics and key drivers of consumption-based green (GCWF), blue (BCWF), and grey (HCWF) water footprints in mainland China during 2012–2017. The main findings of the study are as follows. (1) The HCWF is approximately 4.4 times greater than the sum of the GCWF and BCWF, with water consumption caused by pollution significantly exceeding direct consumption. However, there was a significant decrease in all three CWFs after 2015, particularly HCWF. (2) The spatial distribution pattern of the CWF shows high values in the east and south and low values in the west and north, while virtual water (VW) transfer through commodity trade occurs mainly from inland to coastal regions. (3) The three highest water-consuming sectors were agriculture, food and tobacco processing, and construction, accounting for over 70% of the total water consumption. (4) Water efficiency and consumption patterns are crucial factors in reducing CWF, while affluence levels have the greatest impact on increasing CWF, followed by changes in industrial structure after 2015. Overall, the results of this study contribute to a comprehensive understanding of China's regional and sectoral water consumption throughout the supply chain. In addition, our findings identified regions and sectors with high water consumption and their drivers, which can inform policy decisions and contribute to synergistic cross-regional regulation and sustainable water resources management.

The Impact of Low Fertility Rates on Labor Demand and Socioeconomic Development in China.

The Impact of Low Fertility Rates on Labor Demand and Socioeconomic Development in China.

Escaping social–ecological traps through ecological restoration and socioeconomic development in China's Loess Plateau

Abstract The social–ecological trap is an emerging concept that describes situations in which self‐reinforcing social and ecological feedbacks maintain or push a social–ecological system towards an undesirable state and threaten the sustainability of human societies. Understanding a system's feedback loops and identifying the leading factors of such traps is essential to develop effective management strategies to warn, avoid and escape traps. To better understand the dynamics of social–ecological traps, we developed a quantitative diagnostic framework that combines the social–ecological network approach and composite system state index. We demonstrated the effectiveness of the framework by examining the rural social–ecological evolution in China's Loess Plateau (LP) from 1949 to 2020, an area once faced with severe social–ecological challenges such as soil erosion, land degradation and poverty. Our analysis identified three stages of trap dynamics in LP: locked in the trap (1949–1981), reacting to the trap (1981–2003) and escaping the trap (2003–2020). In the first stage, LP was locked into an undesirable trajectory where reinforcing feedback occurs between rapid population growth, limited livelihood opportunities, excessive reliance on agriculture and severe soil erosion. Our results also found that the LP has made significant progress in escaping this social–ecological trap during the 21st century through ecological restoration practices and socioeconomic development. Similar social–ecological traps are also observed in many other regions of the world, particularly in developing countries. Our analysis recommends three pathways for addressing social–ecological traps in the LP: (1) promoting urbanization and livelihood diversity, (2) implementing site‐specific engineering measures (e.g. terraces and check dams in the LP) and (3) investing in ecological restoration programs. Escaping the trap is not the end of the story, but could be an early stage of another trap. Policymakers and managers should keep assessing and monitoring the policy practices and outcomes to avoid entering new trap situations. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Socio-economic development shows positive links to the conservation efficiency of China's Protected Area network.

While the protected area covers >15% of the planet's terrestrial land area and continues to expand, factors determining its effectiveness in conserving endangered species are being debated. We investigated the links between direct anthropogenic pressures, socioeconomic settings and the coverage of vertebrate taxa by China's protected area network, and indicated that high socioeconomic status and low levels of human pressure correlate with high species coverage, with Threatened mammals more effectively conserved than reptiles or amphibians. Positive links between conservation outcomes and socioeconomic progress appear linked to local livelihood improvements triggering positive perceptions of local protected areas- aided further by ecological compensation and tourism schemes introduced in wealthy areas and reinforced by continued positive conservation outcomes. Socioeconomic development of China's less developed regions might assist regional protected area efficiency and achievement of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, while also addressing potential shortcomings from an insufficient past focus on socioeconomic impacts for biodiversity conservation.

Construction of Improved Semantic Segmentation Model and Application to Extraction of Anthropogenically Disturbed Parcels With Soil Erosion From Remote Sensing Images

With the rapid socioeconomic development in China, the increasing soil erosion caused by anthropogenic production and construction activities is taking place, which is characterized by short duration, high frequency, and great damage to its surrounding environment. Therefore, the regulation and control of soil erosion of anthropogenically disturbed parcels is an urgent task. This study proposes an improved model that combines the boundary constraint and jagged hybrid dilated convolution channel shuffling module (BCJHDC) and the polarized self-attention (PSA) module for extracting anthropogenically disturbed parcels with soil erosion (ADPSE) from high-resolution remote sensing images in Hubei Province. Firstly, the PSA module is added to the encoder to better extract the feature information of the target object. Secondly, BCJHDC module is used to extract multi-scale semantic information from images and improve the boundary segmentation quality. Precision, recall, intersection over union (IOU), and F1 score are calculated to evaluate the model accuracy. The results indicate that our improved model performs well on the human-perturbed parcel extraction task with an F1 of 87.92% and an IOU of 78.44%. Ablation experiments and application experiments suggest the validity the applicability, and the portability of our proposed improved model, respectively. Compared with the other 7 advanced semantic segmentation models, our improved model has significant advantages. Overall, this study provides valuable reference for policy formulation of water and soil conservation.

Peak water: future long-term changes driven by socio-economic development in China.

Population and economic growth cause an increase in water demand leading to ever-increasing water shortage and water crisis. The paper presents China’s future long-term changes in water demand driven by socio-economic development based on the construction of a water demand model. At the national and state or provincial level, the water demand model was calibrated and validated with historical data involving developed countries and developing countries, respectively, which exemplifies the feasibility and applicability of the model. Through analyzing the historical data and predicting the future water demand, the following conclusions are obtained. First, total water use in 2013 is not peak water. Second, total water demand is projected to continue increasing to an extent, which would not surge for the next few decades. Third, peak water of around 630 billion m3 may appear in 2026 or 2027. Fourth, the peak water will not be beyond 700 billion m3 issued by the National Comprehensive Water Resources Plan from China, even at the possible peak of population. In general, the water demand model can inform early intervention to prepare for times of scarcity and help track the effectiveness of water policy and management activities.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-022-21472-8.

Building China’s National Carbon Market That Serves Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality Goals

This paper summarizes the new progress in building China’s national carbon market since 2020, and analyzes the connotation of China’s carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals (“dual carbon” goals) and its significance to socio-economic development in China. Through case analysis, this paper expounds the role of China’s recent carbon trading activities in promoting the transition toward green and low-carbon socio-economic development. On that basis, this paper conceives a top-level design for building the national carbon market that serves the “dual carbon” goals: building and improving the national carbon market that fundamentally serves as an emission reduction tool, developing the institutions and systems of the national carbon market with a focus on emission cap, creating a multilevel and diversified carbon trading scheme centered on the national carbon market, exploring a mechanism that takes carbon emission reduction as the core and promotes the synergistic effect of the carbon market with other environmental rights trading markets, and pursuing the healthy and orderly development of carbon finance that aims to serve carbon emission reduction.

Measuring sustainability: Development and application of the Inclusive Wealth Index in China

It is increasingly common to use the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) to evaluate national sustainability; however, IWI's highly aggregated components and limited regional cases restrict its further application in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study extends the traditional three-component IWI framework into six disaggregated components, namely male/female human capital, advanced/ordinary produced capital, and renewable/non-renewable natural capital. We apply the modified framework to China and evaluate the sustainability performance at the provincial level. The results show that China continues to develop with an annual IWI per capita increase rate of 2.3%. Gender inequality is found to hinder the growth of IWI, whereas advanced product features benefit the growth of IWI. The results also suggest significant heterogeneity in provincial IWI primarily due to differences in economic development stages, geographic locations, and uneven IWI growth. IWI growth is largely driven by wealth accumulation resulting from human capital and advanced produced capital. In contrast, insufficient IWI growth is caused by a substantial amount of ordinary produced capital or a continued decline in natural capital. The study provides a basis for tracking progress toward the SDGs and measuring the heterogeneity of regional socio-economic development in China.

Dynamic simulation patterns and spatiotemporal analysis of land-use/land-cover changes in the Wuhan metropolitan area, China

With the rapid socioeconomic development in China, the competition for space in land-use conversion is getting fierce. The Wuhan metropolitan area, as one of the main areas of modern agriculture and manufacturing, has been significantly affected by urbanization, industrialization, and national development policies, resulting in regional man-land contradiction. In this complex region, scientifically measuring the land-use/land-cover (LULC) dynamics and exploring the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of the LULC changes are important tasks for local officials and decision makers in the management of urban expansion and land-use planning. In this study, an integrated logistic multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) cellular automata (CA) Markov (logistic-MCE-CA-Markov) model and a geographic information system (GIS) were used to evaluate and predict the LULC changes. The analysis was based on six LULC maps at equal temporal intervals derived from land-use data for 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, along with topographic spatial layers (elevation and slope) derived from an ASTER digital elevation model. In addition, other spatial variables (points of interest, gross domestic product(GDP), population density, proximity to urban center, and proximity to transportation line) were incorporated in the simulation process. The simulated results obtained by the integrated logistic-MCE-CA-Markov model had a kappa coefficient of 88.582% and a figure of merit value of 27.935%. The results indicated that, under the influence of the various factors, the future land-use pattern of the Wuhan metropolitan area will be clearly transformed. From 2015 to 2025, it is predicted that the area of arable land and woodland will decrease by 1506.152 km2 and 1743.945 km2, respectively, and urban land expansion will mainly come from arable land, woodland, and other construction land. With the enhancement of the human disturbance intensity, the natural landscape patches will become segmented, and the number of individual patches will increase gradually, enhancing the spatial heterogeneity. The simulation results could not only be used to monitor future LULC trends, but could also help local decision makers to provide policy support for land-use planning and management.

Optimum plastic mulching application to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without compromising on crop yield and farmers' income

With the rapid socio-economic development in China, poverty alleviation and the reduction of the environmental footprint in the plastic film mulching (PM) planting system have become key to sustainable agricultural production. Although many studies have evaluated the maize yield, agricultural economic benefits, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with PM through small-scale field experiments, identifying suitable PM regions in combination with their demographic characteristics and the future development of such systems has received little attention. This study combines a Denitrification-Decomposition (DNDC) model and demographic characteristics to determine the optimum PM region in rainfed areas of the Loess Plateau in northwest China. The results demonstrated that PM produced a higher maize yield, agricultural net profit (ANP), and cost-benefit ratio compared to a control treatment (CK) without PM. An agricultural income far above the poverty level would assist in meeting the goals of alleviating poverty and building a prosperous society. In addition, the PM system produced more GHG emissions, but had a lower greenhouse gas intensity (GHGI) than CK under both low (200 kg N ha−1) and high (300 kg N ha−1) nitrogen (N) fertilizer rates. This study developed a framework to evaluate maize yield alongside economic and environmental indicators. We concluded that PM should be adopted in areas with precipitation less than 500 mm, and concentrated in the region with rainfall of 200–400 mm. The results provide a theoretical basis for the sustainable development of the PM maize planting system, and will contribute to the desired goal of environmentally sustainable agricultural production.

A historical record of trace metal deposition in northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau for the last two centuries.

Owing to rapid socio-economic development in China, trace metal emissions have increased and lakes even in remote areas have experienced marked changes in the last century. However, there are limited studies revealing long-term trends, anthropogenic fluxes, and spatial characteristics of trace metals in lakes. In this study, we present a geochemical record from Lake Qinghai in the northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and reconstruct trace metal pollution history during the last two centuries. The lacustrine sediment core was dated by 137Cs and 210Pb, and sediments deposited prior to the 1850s were selected as the pre-industrial background. Factor analysis and enrichment factor indicated Cr, Cu, and Ni generally originated from natural sources, while Cd, Pb, and Zn have been influenced by human contamination since the mid-1980s. The anthropogenic Cd mainly derived from non-ferrous metal smelting in Gansu Province, and fluxes to Lake Qinghai sharply increased after the mid-1980s. The metal reconstruction is similar to other lake sediment records from China and corresponds well with rapid economic development in China. The spatial pattern of anthropogenic Cd fluxes to lakes is primarily attributed to regional industrial emission, phosphate fertilizers, and manure applied in agriculture.

Asymmetric response of short- and long-duration dry spells to warming during the warm-rain season over Eastern monsoon China

Changes in dry spell duration have been analyzed over China and worldwide. However, the asymmetric response (i.e. skewed distribution) of short- and long-duration dry spells to warming temperature and possible mechanisms remain unknown. Here, we investigate this response based on daily weather observations during the warm-rain season (May-September) over 1961–2019 from 1540 quality-controlled stations across Eastern Monsoon China (EMC). Our results show a 1℃ warming in surface air temperature (SAT) and a considerable elongation of dry spells. Specifically, the regional average, maximum, and total dry spell duration over EMC increased by +7.06%, +6.17%, and +5.16%, respectively over 1961–2019. The areas in EMC with long dry spells and high SAT are also the areas that have experienced faster increases in the duration of dry spells per degree of warming. We find increases in the frequency of long-duration dry spells, but significant decreases in the frequency of short-duration dry spells. The increasing frequency of long-duration dry-spells can be explained by the slight increase in land evaporation (+1.6%/℃) over EMC and the decrease in integrated moisture vapor transport (-3.8%/℃) with warming, such that atmospheric moisture sources cannot meet the warming-induced demand, resulting in significant decreases in relative humidity (−2.4%/℃) and precipitation (−7.0%/℃). In contrast, the decreasing frequency of short-duration dry spells during hotter warm-rain seasons occurs when the saturation vapor pressure deficit is enhanced, leading to prolonged periods where the atmosphere is replenished to necessary saturation levels for local precipitation. Relative to cold warm-rain seasons, hot warm-rain seasons with higher SAT witness cold-dry air advection in the upper level, lower convective available potential energy, and stronger vapor divergence over EMC, which tends to suppress precipitation occurrence. With future warming, the increasing frequency and duration of dry spells in the warm-rain season is likely to be conducive to the occurrence of severe droughts and heatwaves in EMC, with negative impacts on socio-economic development in China.

"One belt – one road": historical aspects development and regulation of trade

The article is devoted to a topic that has been significantly updated in the last 5 years – the study of the ancient Great Silk Road as the historical predecessor of the Chinese initiative "One Belt – One Road". This initiative has involved dozens of countries on all continents of the Earth in its sphere. Many of them continue to wonder about the effectiveness of this project for China, other countries, the world economy and trade in general. The purpose of the article is to study the deep historical roots and significance for the socio-economic evolution in the past – with an emphasis on foreign trade aspects-and their role in general economic and humanitarian processes. The historical objectivity and validity of both the ancient Silk Road and the modern "One Belt, One Road" initiative are shown. The author comes to the conclusion that the ancient Great Silk Road played an extremely important role in the socio-economic development of China and other countries along the way, and at the same time provided the opportunity for intercivilizational communication, which together is extremely important in the conditions of the modern unstable world. The following research methods were used in the article: historical and economic analysis, induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis.

Variational pragmatics in Chinese social media requests: The influence of age and social status

Among the macro-social factors investigated in variational pragmatics (VP), region has received the most attention. To date, age-based differences have not been examined much in VP studies. Social status is frequently observed as a crucial factor affecting the pragmatic production of requests, but few studies have explored the interaction between social status and macro-social factors such as age. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of age and social status on social media requests between two groups of Chinese people across different ages (a younger group and an older group). Thirty-eight Chinese participants (18 younger adults and 20 older adults) were recruited in this study, contributing a total of 236 requests made via WeChat. The results indicated that both groups preferred direct strategies when making requests on WeChat. Social status affected the preferences for external and internal modification of the requests in each group. The similarities and differences in the two groups’ social media requests with respect to age, as well as due to societal and ideological changes as a consequence of socio-economic development in China, are discussed.

ICT and socio-economic development: Evidence from a spatial panel data analysis in China

Over recent decades, information and communication technology (ICT) has had a profound impact on the economy and on society more broadly. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of ICT on socio-economic development in China by considering spatial effects. To understand the overall influence of ICT on socio-economic development, the study used principal component analysis (PCA) to establish composite ICT and socio-economic development indexes based on data collected from 31 provinces in the period 2009–2018. In applying the spatial panel data analysis, this article argues that a spatial Durbin model (SDM) with spatial fixed effects is the most suitable model for the purpose of making estimations. The results of the SDM suggest the socio-economic development of provinces contains strong spatial correlations. More specifically, although ICT plays an essential role in improving socio-economic development, the spatial spillover effects of ICT negatively affect the socio-economic development in adjacent areas, implying that a digital divide exists among China's provinces and that this digital gap can lead to unbalanced socio-economic development. The article concludes by outlining some practical policy recommendations for the advancement of ICT going forward to help alleviate the adverse effects of the digital divide and enhance the benefits of ICT-based socio-economic development.

Application of COEMD-S-SVR model in tourism demand forecasting and economic behavior analysis: The case of Sanya City

Tourism industry played an increasingly prominent role in the socio-economic development in China. Therefore, it is of great significance to forecast the tourism demand, to analyze the development tendency of tourism, to explore the mode of economic linkage, and eventually to reveal the development regulation of tourism industry. In this paper, the empirical mode decomposition, the support vector regression, and the error factor adjustment were combined to forecast the tourism demand of Sanya City. The results demonstrate that the proposed model is more accurate than other models. Meanwhile, this paper also provides the insight analyses of the economic behavior through the tourism demand’s rectangular-ambulatory matrix. The analyses reveal the regulation of tourism industry and the future benefits of Sanya’s tourism.

Research on the Planning and Design of Leisure Agriculture Industrial Park under the Background of Rural Revitalization

With the increasing level of socio-economic development in China, the development of the rural economy has touched the hearts of the Central Party and the whole country, and for this reason, the strategy of rural revitalization was born. With the continuous efforts of rural management services and people in various parts of China, we have gradually explored a road of rural specialty industries that integrate agricultural cultivation, product processing, tourism and leisure experience. The paper takes the planning and design of leisure agriculture industrial park as the research object, and explains the corresponding planning and design principles. The current problems in the planning and design of some rural leisure agriculture industrial park projects in China are discussed, and the specific ideas and methods of planning and design are explored based on the research of these problems, hoping to make some contributions to the development of rural revitalization in China.

Practices and roles of bamboo industry development for alleviating poverty in China

Socio-economic development in China is not balanced. After the absolute poverty (in accordance with the current criteria) has been eliminated, helping the poor and alleviating poverty has always been the pressing assignment. Bamboo is an important forest resource, widely distributed in China and many other countries. It not only provides raw materials for economic development, but also provides kinds of nutritious foods. Moreover, bamboo is widely used in the construction industry, in transportation, agriculture, fisheries, paper-making, and in household products. Thus, developing bamboo industry is helpful to alleviate rural poverty in mountainous regions and to push up local socio-economic progress. Based on field survey, actual social investigation and literature review, by aid of SWOT and PEST(EL) analysis, this article concludes several bamboo industries practiced in the country that help to increase farmers’ incomes and promote economic development. Generally, bamboo industry can be divided into five catalogs: food, manufacturing industry, eco-tourism, energy and construction. Besides, eco-efficiency, carbon footprint and water footprint also discussed during its development process. Furthermore, the application prospects of bamboo and actual examples to create benefits are analyzed. It is expected that this paper could provide practicable experience and available pathway to improve economy and combat poverty for impoverished areas in the world.

The roles of IGF2 and DNMT methylation and elongase6 related fatty acids in metabolic syndrome.

Background: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) has increased along with rapid socio-economic development in China in recent decades, aggravating the burden of the health care system. Both plasma levels of fatty acids (FAs) and aberrant DNA methylation profiles are associated with MetS risk. However, studies exploring the role of DNA methylation and FAs simultaneously in MetS etiology are sparse. Objective: We aimed to explore the association between the gene methylation levels of insulin-like growth factor II (IGF2), H19, DNA methyltransferases 1 (DNMT1), DNA methyltransferases 3a (DNMT3a), and DNA methyltransferases 3b (DNMT3b) and MetS risk, and the etiological role of elongation of very-long-chain fatty acid elongase 6 (ELOVL6) related fatty acids. Method: Plasma levels of FAs were measured using a Gas Chromatography-Flame Ionization Detector (GC-FID) after organic extraction, and gene methylation was quantified using a real-time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (Q-PCR) detecting system after bisulfite treatment. The C18/C16 ratio was used as the indicator of ELOVL6 activity. Odds Ratio (OR) and 95% Confidence Interval (CI) were estimated with logistic regression. Results: Methylation levels in IGF2 and DNMT3a were not significantly associated with MetS risk. However, when stratified by C18/C16 ratio (high vs. low), positive associations were observed between the risk of MetS and methylation levels (>median) of IGF2a3 (OR = 3.1, 95% CI = 1.3-7.5) and DNMT3a (OR = 2.5, 95% CI = 1.1-5.8) genes, in individuals with lower C18/C16 ratios, while no significant associations were observed in subjects with high C18/C16 ratios. Conclusion: Methylation levels in IGF2 and DNMT3a genes may affect the risk of MetS in an ELOVL6 activity-dependent way among Chinese adults. Further studies in other populations are needed to validate this finding.