High air pollutant emissions in China have become serious environmental issues threatening public health. While spatial heterogeneity plays an important role in environmental regulation in China, it is necessary to analyze the spatial heterogeneity influences of air pollution control policies and informal environmental regulation on air pollutant emissions in China. Based on the quantification of air pollution control policies, this paper incorporates the central government’s policy formulation and local government’s policy implementation into the intensity of air pollution control policy. This paper uses the panel data of China’s 30 provinces to examine the spatial impact of air pollution control policy and informal environmental regulation on air pollutant emissions. The results show that (a) air pollutant emissions represented by soot and dust emission intensity has a significant positive spatial spillover effect; (b) air pollution control policy and informal environmental regulation play significant inhibitory roles in air pollutant emissions; (c) informal environmental regulation has a negative moderating effect on the negative relationship between air pollution control policy and air pollutant emissions. Other implications for environmental management have also been discussed.

Using a newly developed integrated indicator system with entropy weighting, we analyzed the panel data of 577 recorded disasters in 30 provinces of China from 1985–2011 to identify their links with the subsequent economic growth. Meteorological disasters promote economic growth through human capital instead of physical capital. Geological disasters did not trigger local economic growth from 1999–2011. Generally, natural disasters overall had no significant impact on economic growth from 1985–1998. Thus, human capital reinvestment should be the aim in managing recoveries, and it should be used to regenerate the local economy based on long-term sustainable development.

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China’s urban development policies have experienced dramatic changes, from anti-urbanisation before 1978, to anti-large-city-development during 1978–1999 and coordinated urbanisation in 2000–2012. Using city-level data from 1949 to 2012, this paper examines China’s development policies and city size distribution. Evidenced by the Zipf coefficient, we found that China’s city sizes became more evenly distributed before 2000, and this pattern was reversed after 2000. These findings suggest that China’s urban system is strongly affected by its shifting urban development strategies.

Online shopping has becomes more and more popular in China largely due to the convenience and competitive prices of online products and services. This paper discusses fours issues related to online shopping. Using data from the Chinese Household Financial Survey 2013 and 2015, we find that online shopping is a more common practice for higher income earners, youngsters, women, married couples, better educated citizens, urban residents, and smartphone users. Online consumption is affected by similar factors. We observe the concavity of income on household total consumption and money savings due to online shopping. We conclude that online shopping improves the income efficiency on household total consumption. Using smartphones does not promote total consumption, although it increases online consumption.

Since the housing reform in 1998, real housing prices in China’s urban areas have increased 60 percent, much faster than the growth rate of disposable income. Consequently, the price-income ratio rose from 7.11 in 1998 to 15.37 in 2012, indicating a dramatic decrease in housing affordability. This article first describes the skyrocketing of China’s urban housing prices. It then discusses factors that led to the soaring housing prices, including institutional, cultural, and economic factors. Finally, the article examines recent government housing policies and their effectiveness. The article argues that removing the local government’s double monopoly powers and replacing taxes and fees at transactions with property taxes during possession could better control China’s fast growing housing price.