Over the past 40 years, the Chinese government has diligently promoted the market-oriented reform of the health insurance system. However, as it is affected by the urban-rural dual structure, most rural-to-urban migrants are excluded from local public health services and medical insurance schemes in the cities in which they live. Buying local commercial medical insurance (CMI) is an important way for migrants to obtain local medical services. Therefore, this study’s purposes were to explore the city factors that affect migrants’ purchase of CMI and to investigate the relationship between urbanisation and migrants’ purchase of CMI. This study used the 2013 National Floating Population (Migrants) Dynamic Monitoring Survey data, which covered 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China. The respondents were migrants (15–59 years; n = 164,752) who lived in the inflow areas for more than a month without obtaining a local household registration record. We used city factors, neighbourhood factors, and individual factors that affect residents’ purchase of CMI to construct a theoretical framework and examined the effect of urbanisation on migrants’ choice of CMI using multilevel logistic regression. The proportion of migrants who had local or hometown CMI was 5.70%; most migrants had no CMI (94.30%). Of these, 4.42% had CMI in the city in which they live (i.e. local CMI) and 1.64% had CMI in their hometown (i.e. hometown CMI). Migrants living in first-tier and third-tier cities were less likely to have CMI than those in second-tier cities (odds ratio [OR] = 0.454, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.395–0.521; OR = 0.588, 95% CI: 0.464–0.746). Furthermore, the regression results revealed a U-shaped relationship between the odds of migrants having CMI and the urbanisation rate of the prefecture-level cities. The findings also indicated that with higher socioeconomic status, there was a greater probability of purchasing CMI. The improvement of urbanisation has a positive effect on migrants’ purchase of CMI. However, China’s medical insurance market is still underdeveloped. It is necessary for the Chinese government to increase migrants’ participation rate in CMI to cover soaring medical expenses.

During the post-reform period since 1986, land-use systems in Vietnam have been reformed in terms of the regulation of land markets and the built environment. This study analyzes the changing role of urban planning and the policy of state intervention in land markets to manage spatial changes in Vietnamese cities. Theoretical and empirical approaches are used to analyze urban development and planning practices in Hanoi. The study further describes the constraints of planning systems in hybrid land markets that include both formal and informal land development. We argue that in Vietnam, where the role of the state in market construction has not been fully developed and land market institutions are incomplete, urban planning is used as a passive tool of state control and is no longer relevant to the process of spatial development, which is driven by the speculative activities of interest actors. This situation challenges state regulations for the effective management of spatial resources. The empirical results suggest the utility of further reforms to the land-use system and planning institutions in Vietnam, and of strengthening the capacity of the state in land administration.

Objective: This study investigated the effect of the number of close friends (within and outside of social housing neighbourhoods) on the emotional well-being of men and women in social housing neighbourhoods in China. Methods: Data (n = 535) were collected in 13 social housing neighbourhoods in Guangzhou from September to December 2013 using the random sample method. The t-test, chi-square test, and linear regression analysis were used to analyse the factors influencing residents’ emotional well-being. Results: Having a greater number of close friends living within the social housing neighbourhood had a significantly positive association with the respondents’ emotional well-being (regression coefficient = 0.473). The number of close friends living in nearby neighbourhoods was only positively related to women’s emotional well-being (coefficient = 0.433). Conclusions: These results highlight the importance of friendship for residents’ emotional well-being. Especially for women, friendship outside the social housing neighbourhood is essential for good mental health. This conclusion is based on analysis of cross-sectional data, and reflects the directionality of social associations. The mental health of the poor warrants greater attention in China.

As concentration of components in environmental gas is very low, and the available analytical instruments are not sufficiently sensitive, so that micro pre-concentrators developed for effectively concentrating components are very important and necessary. Therefore, in this work a micro pre-concentrator was fabricated for concentrating trace gas. The micro pre-concentrator with 4 parallel channels filled with Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs) as adsorbent materials was developed for concentrating volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This choice was done on the basis of the consideration: 4 parallel channels ensure that the pre-concentrator can be filled with a sufficient amount of adsorbent materials. Moreover, SWCNTs was acted as adsorbent material owing to their chemical and thermal stability, a high surface-to-volume ratio, and a large affinity to the non-polar compounds. The experimental results show that the micro pre-concentrator effectively concentrated benzene with a concentration factor of 15 and the chromatography peak broadening was also greatly compressed.