From Village to Region At first glance, Houhai looks like a familiar story of regional development in China. A small fishing village on the southern coast of Hainan becomes a booming surf-tourism destination; the government steps in to restore order, and a state-owned company is created to regulate the industry and align it with wider […]
Zhe Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow at the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University. He is a political geographer with research interests in geo-setting—a situational approach to understanding geopolitical processes and practices—, China’s border geopolitical economy, and geographical thought. A key aspect of his current work is fostering dialogue between Chinese and Western […]
The two cities of Macau and Zhuhai, located on the south-east coastline of China, have long been entangled. Both were administered by Xiangshan County for centuries before Macau came under Portuguese administration. Even under segregated jurisdictions, interactions between the two governments continued to produce entangled places. The entanglements of places and territories between Macau and […]
Professor Yi Liu Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China RSA Journal Committee member Regional Studies, Regional Science Editor in Chief Prof. Liu graduated from the National University of Singapore and has been with the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University since 2013. He currently serves as Assistant Dean of the School and holds the […]
Professor Canfei He Peking University, Beijing, China RSA Research Committee member RSA China Division Chair
Professor Weidong Liu Institute of Geographic Sciences & Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Co-Editor in Chief Area Development & Policy RSA Board member RSA China Division Chair (2014- 2021)
The 2026 Annual Conference of the Regional Studies Association (RSA) China Division was successfully held at Wuhan Little Turtle Hill Financial and Cultural Park, Wuhan, on 21 March 2026. The conference was organised by the RSA China Division and hosted by the School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University. More than 200 scholars from leading […]
Dr Xiaofeng Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Urban Governance and Design Thrust, Society Hub at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). She obtained her PhD in Geography from the University of Hong Kong. Her research area include political geography, the Belt and Road Initiative, transboundary and local environmental politics and governance. Her […]
Yatu Mou is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at East China Normal University, Shanghai, specializing in Globalization and Geopolitics. She also completed a visiting research term at the Department of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. With an interdisciplinary background, her research interests lie at the intersection of infrastructure geopolitics, assemblage theory, and the production […]
Regional studies often treat the region as a sub‑national unit, and it spans from neighbourhoods to cross‑border macro‑regions. In Asia, this elasticity is intensified by language. Words that look equivalent on paper rarely carry identical histories, politics, or scales. This short piece reflects on the Chinese notion of quyu (区域) and how it travels between […]
The 2025 Annual Conference of the Regional Studies Association (RSA) China Division was successfully held at the College of Earth Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, between 19–21 September 2025. The conference brought together over 180 scholars from more than 80 leading universities and institutes worldwide, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Wuhan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, […]
The concept of Quyu (区域) in China Across policy and academic debates, regions are increasingly recognised as key arenas for addressing climate change, demographic shifts, and economic transitions. In Western contexts, they are often conceptualised as functional economic spaces shaped by inter-firm trade, labour mobility, supply-chain integration, or as outcomes of local agency where regional […]
Development History: A Multi-Dimensional Region Centred on Shanghai In the Chinese context, as urban spatial patterns and governance systems evolve, the concept of “region” increasingly exhibits multi-dimensional and dynamic characteristics, especially prominent in Shanghai and its surrounding areas. Shanghai is one of China’s four municipalities directly under the central government and a core city of […]
Prof. Liu graduated from the National University of Singapore and has been with the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University since 2013. He currently serves as Assistant Dean of the School and holds the title of Yat-sen Pioneer Scholar. His research spans regional studies, globalization, industrial upgrading, and AI/big data applications, across the […]
Prof. Liu graduated from the National University of Singapore and has been with the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University since 2013. He currently serves as Assistant Dean of the School and holds the title of Yat-sen Pioneer Scholar. His research spans regional studies, globalization, industrial upgrading, and AI/big data applications, across the […]
The recent RSA China Division Annual Conference was a great success, with over 240 scholars from more than 80 prestigious Chinese universities participating. The conference featured 19 parallel sessions and six keynote speeches delivered by renowned scholars, including Fulong Wu and Canfei He. Zhouying Song gave a presentation introducing RSA and played a video message […]
We would like to welcome Mengdi Wang as the new Secretary of the RSA China Division. Dr. Mengdi Wang graduated with a BSc in Geographical Science from Wuhan University and earned her PhD in Human Geography from the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses […]
In the last two decades, there has been a considerable shift in the patterns of global growth in terms of trade and investment from the “Global North” towards the “Global South” economies particularly Brazil, China and India. However, as a flip side, these upsurged developments and growth are imposing the environmental cost across the globe […]
To better serve the strategic goals and demands of the high-quality regional development and promote innovative development in the area of regional research, the Regional Studies Association China Division and Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University will hold the 2023 RSA China Division Annual Conference from December 1st to December 3rd 2023, at the […]
Michael Dunford is a Visiting Professor, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Emeritus Professor, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, and Managing Editor of Area Development and Policy. He graduated with B.Sc in Geography and M.Sc in Quantitative Economics from the University of Bristol. His interests are […]
Earlier this month, the IPCC released the Working Group III contribution of its 6th Assessment Report, Mitigation of Climate Change. This report concludes, in unambiguous terms, that far-reaching climate action is needed now: “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach.” The scientific community agrees that […]
When thinking of China’s primary economic prowess, the country is often thought of as ‘the factory of the world’ – global products such as clothes and electronics have labels of ‘made in China’. What is perhaps much less known is that China has produced numerous world-leading infrastructure projects, including the world’s fastest passenger trains, longest […]
Elisabeth Kaufmann, BSc, (top left) is a postgraduate student of Spatial Planning at the Technical University of Dortmund. She has been student assistant at the Chair of International Planning Studies between April 2019 and March 2020, and currently is undertaking an internship at the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in the project “Sino-German Cooperation on […]