The digital divide has loomed as a sustainable development issue for over two decades and there has been much research in terms of efforts to measure the digital divide from different dimensions and scales. Drawing on spatial agglomeration analysis and multiple linear regression, this paper aims to reveal the spatiotemporal pattern of the prefectural digital divide in China and its determinants. The results show that there is a significant prefectural digital divide in China that is characterized by a decline of ICT development index (IDI) values from the east to the west as well as from core cities to more peripheral ones. Cities with high IDI values are mainly concentrated in large metropolitan areas in eastern China, whereas cities with low values tend to concentrate in poverty stricken regions in central and western China. However, the digital divide has been characterized by a reduction from 2001 to 2015. The results also show that both economic and educational factors have significant influences on the prefectural digital divide in China. During the early stages, the percentage of university students, urban residential income, and the urbanization rate were key factors. However, after 2010, the adult literacy rate and rural residential income determined the digital divide.

This article unpacks the function of the international cooperation zone in promoting the strategic coupling of regional development in global production networks. Compared with ‘coupling through market’, the case of the Thai–Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone (TCRIZ) shows a formation path of ‘coupling through territorial intermediary’ with the international cooperation zone acting as an intermediary agent with the function of attracting investment and promoting firm connections between the regional economy and global production networks. The coupling through territorial intermediary is particularly important for regions with weak competitive dynamics to articulate to global production networks.

The strictest water resources management policy plays a critical role in response to the challenge of water shortage, water security, and sustainable water development in China. Despite the varied analyses of the strictest water resources management policy, the relations between the strictest water resources management policy and water use efficiency remain under-researched. This study uses an interval event-analysis method to assess the strictest water resources management policy’s impact on water use efficiency in China based on data from 2007 to 2020. In addition, the study breaks down water use efficiency into eight indicators and divides the strictest water management policy into “pre-, middle, and post-” phases. The research results show the strictest water resources management policy has a significant positive effect on water use efficiency. Further research shows the total water consumption control system and water efficiency control system have the most significant effect. The strictest water resources management policy has a lasting impact on water use efficiency. This study contributes to the global knowledge body of water governance and provides a reference value for water policy decision-making and optimization in other countries.

This paper seeks to make a contribution to on-going debates about how to conceptualize the “China model” by emphasizing the top-down regional coordination strategies of China in the context of policy mobilities. The notion of policy mobilities is a hot issue through which to analyze how successful political ideas are often mobilized, imitated, adapted, and reused in new places by various actors through learning the global “best” experiences. However, policy mobilities should be employed as a frame within a specific political-economy context and the “institutional geometries”, especially in China which is characterized by centralization of state power and impressive economic growth recently. In this paper, we argue that the case of pairing aid policy in China, in which diffused policy ideas regarding advanced development initiatives are transferred and adopted in relatively underdeveloped areas, serves as a key part of the China model to balance regional development. Drawing on a case study of pairing aid policy in Xinjiang, the paper explores the ways in which the advanced industries, cadres, and investments from 19 developed coastal provinces or cities were mobilized by the state power network: (1) Transferring cadres and technicians from developed areas to directly work in Xinjiang temporally; (2) mobilizing the industrial policy package to attract labor-intensive and resource-oriented firms located in the industrial zones of Xinjiang; and (3) mobilizing a part of fiscal investments from donating areas to expand recipients’ direct investments. By doing this, we illustrate how higher-level authority can develop more state powers to transfer regional cadres, capital, and projects from developed areas to less developed ones, as well as how mobilized policies can be entrepreneurially adopted and flexibly mutated in the context of various local conditions.