China＇s Urban Employment and Urbanization Rate： A Re-estimation

The present paper argues that China＇s existing population and employment statistics are misleading, and have failed to include many of the migrant and labor force flows between urban and rural areas. The paper reconciles the differences between official census data and other survey statistics and attempts to recalculate China＇s urban population and employment figures. Our analyses indicate that official statistics of 2012 underestimate China ＇s urban employment by approximately 47 million while overestimating rural employment by 31 million. The adjusted urbanization rate exceeded 55 percent in 2012, almost 3 percentage points higher than the official statistics. Nevertheless, there remains much potential for rural-to-urban migration. More specifically, if the current bottlenecks in household registration, social security and public welfare systems can be removed or relaxed, China＇s urbanization rate could rise by another l O percentage points or even more over the next decade.     

Determinants of Competitiveness： Observations in China＇s Textile and Apparel Industries

This paper attempts to explore key determinants of competitiveness in the textile and apparel industries, with special reference to Chinese Mainland. The authors conduct a survey that is designed to use productivity, supply-side and demand-side determinants to measure enterprises＇ competitiveness. The collected survey data is then analyzed using factor analysis to capture the related determining factors indicative of competitiveness at the enterprise level. The findings demonstrate that government policies and related industry infrastructure are the most important determinants of competitiveness in the textile and apparel industries, followed by domestic demand. This suggests that the improvement of industry infrastructure can foster industry performance, and that more resources should be endowed to enhance the domestic business competitiveness of local enterprises. The development of domestic demand will foster the competitiveness of the textile and apparel industries on a more sustainable basis.     

Different Roles of Land in Rural-Urban Migration： Evidence from China＇s Household Survey

This paper explores the influence of land holding on rural–urban migration using China's 2008 household survey data. It shows that the contradictory findings of existing published literature can be explained by introducing a migration distance variable. The empirical studies show that land holding plays a different role in short‐distance and long‐distance migration. Land holding has a U‐shaped curve association with the probability of short‐distance migration and has an inverted‐U‐shaped association with the probability of long‐distance migration. Therefore, the government needs to provide more job information and migration subsidies to farmers who have little land to overcome difficulties in the process of migration so as to reduce rural–urban inequality.     

Size and Characteristic of Housing Bubbles in China＇s Major Cities： 1999-2010

There is some disagreement in the published literature regarding the definition and the measurement of housing bubbles in China. Extending the analytical framework of Black et al. (2006), the present paper measures the housing bubbles of China's 35 major cities from the second quarter of 1999 to the second quarter of 2010. The results indicate that the housing bubbles in China's 35 major cities were relatively small in the sample interval, but the bubbles in eastern metropolises, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Ningbo, have been relatively big since 2005. The changing tendency of housing bubbles in most cities highly corresponds with the changes in real estate policies. This paper decomposes the housing bubbles of the 35 cities, and finds a great proportion of irrational bubbles rather than rational intrinsic bubbles generated by price speculation. Based on empirical analysis, this paper proposes policy recommendations for preventing the generation and expansion of housing bubbles.