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Case Study: China

The Chinese government introduced the ‘One Child Policy’ in 1979. The aim of this policy was to attempt to control population growth. The policy limited couples to one child. Under this policy couples have to gain permission from family planning officials for each birth.

If families followed this policy they received free education, health care, pensions and family benefits. These are taken away if the couple have more than one child.

The benefits of this policy are that the growth rate of China’s population has declined. Without the policy it is estimated that there would be an extra 320 million more people in a country whose population is estimated to be 1.3 billion.

The scheme has caused a number of problems in China. This is particularly the case for hundreds of thousands of young females. Many thousands of young girls have been abandoned by their parents as the result of the one child policy. Many parents in China prefer to have a boy to carry on the family name. As a result large numbers of girls have either ended up in orphanages, homeless or in some cases killed. Also, 90% of foetuses aborted in China are female.

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GeographyCaseStudy.Com

Detailed resources for pre-university Geography students

Case study: Leisure in China

By Matt Burdett, 1 November 2017

On this page, we look at the recent growth in the income and leisure time for people in China, and assess the impact this has had on participation in sport and tourism in the world’s most populous country.

• Chongqing, China: Internet based gaming and other online activities are now more popular than physical sports in China.

Introducing leisure in China

China is experiencing an increase in leisure time and participation in sport and tourism. This is partly the result of a growing economy, which gives individuals and the government more disposable income to spend on sports and tourism. The income per capita is shown in the graph below (Gapminder, 2017).

• Source: Gapminder, 2017. Income Per Person in China 1945-2015. http://www.gapminder.org/tools

At the same time as increasing income, Chinese people are also having more leisure time than before. In 1995, the two-day weekend was introduced for many people and in 1999 the Chinese government introduced a policy of giving all workers three weeks off per year at set times (May Day, Spring Festival and National Day). This policy was updated in 2008 to give two full-week holidays and five three-day holidays per year (Tu, 2010).

This resulted in the so-called “Golden Week”, such as around National Day on 1st October, with virtually the entire country taking the week off and many of China’s migrant workers returning to their family homes in the central and western provinces. There are problems associated with this growth, including transport chaos and very high prices for hotels and travel. However, destinations such as Hong Kong experience an increase in tourism and commercial activity as Chinese people spend their hard earned money.

What do Chinese people do with all this free time? The most popular activity is to travel to nearby destinations, followed by spending time on the internet, and finally go to the movies. 39% of Chinese people report movie-going as a favourite pastime, with a very fast rate of growth for cinema tickets of 40% from 2015 to 2016 (Daxue Consulting, 2016).

China has been gaining ground in its sporting achievements as shown by summer Olympic medals won, in the graph below (Laurent, 2017).

• Source: Laurent, J, 2017. Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20652617 Accessed 1st November 2017.

Despite a strong focus on national pride in elite sporting competitions, historically China has not been considered a sporting nation. This has begun to change; recent growth is not just amongst elite athletes. For example, visits to ski regions were 5.5 million in 2009, but by 2016 had reached 15.1 million, and Beijing is the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics which is anticipated to be a major spectator event (Klingelhöfer, 2017). Similar growth is happening in many sporting sectors, such as football. The infographic below shows the variety of sports that interest people in China (State Council, 2015).

• Source: State Council [of the People’s Republic of China], 2015. Sports participation soars in China http://english.gov.cn/policies/infographics/2015/12/31/content_281475263806063.htm Accessed 1st November 2017.

This is partly the result of the government’s policy on fitness. After the Beijing summer Olympics in 2008, the State Council made ‘Sports for All Day’ annually on 8th August. In 2016 it was announced the National Fitness Plan to 2020 would follow from the 12th National Plan for 2011-2015, which resulted in an increase in medium intensity exercise participation from 28.2% of the population in 2007 to 33.9% by 2014 (Xiaochen, 2015).

The 2016-2020 Five Year Plan includes 1.8 square meters per person to be allocated for sports within 15 minutes of people’s homes (Liddle, 2016). The government also invested in sports directly in 2015 by providing around US$130 million to over 1200 sports venues to reduce or eliminate fees (Xiaochen, 2015). The Ministry of Education also planned in 2015 to encourage the growth of football by identifying 20000 schools for promotional activities, rising to 50,000 by 2025 (Xua, Gaob, and Zhao, 2016).

This increase in participation is worth money to the country. The value of sports is aimed to be around US$772 billion by 2025. This is around 1% of GDP compared to 0.63% in 2013 (Xiaochen, 2015).

Chinese tourism has similarly grown. The table below shows the spending in US dollars on international tourism by citizens of selected countries, showing China has increased consistently and is now the top spender in the world (Jian-jun and Nas, 2014).

• Source: Jian-jun, M. and Nas, R.F., 2014. Profile of Chinese Outbound Tourists: Characteristics and Expenditures. American Journal of Tourism Management, 3(1), pp.17-31. http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.tourism.20140301.03.html#Sec2.1 Accessed 1st November 2017.

It is not just that Chinese people are becoming wealthier and spending more; the number of people travelling abroad is also increasing, as shown in the table below (Jian-jun and Nas, 2014).

The graph below shows more up-to-date figures (World Travel Online, 2017). (The % figure is the increase on the previous year.)

• Source: World Online Travel, 2017. Chinese Outbound Tourism Statistics in 2016: 122 Million Chinese Tourists Make Outbound Trips, Spend $109.8 Billion. http://news.travel168.net/20170203/43145.html Accessed 1st November 2017.

However, this is only part of the story. In all of these years, over half of the visits ended in Greater China – including Hong Kong and Macau which have their own immigration status under the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ approach, with the rest of the country being termed ‘Mainland China’. In 2016, for the first time, 51.2% of all trips by mainlanders went outside of Greater China (Arlt, 2017). All regions registered an increasing in tourism, but the greater numbers heading to Europe and North America rather than Asia suggests that people are more adventurous and, through media coverage, are more aware of less traditional destinations. Iceland, Poland and Georgia increased by more than 40% while Nepal increased by 56%.

Arlt, W. G., 2017. Chinese Tourists Look For New Destinations In 2016 https://www.forbes.com/sites/profdrwolfganggarlt/2017/02/07/chinese-tourists-look-for-new-destinations-in-2016past-the-mainland-in-2016/#11d8c1fa5b3a Accessed 1st November 2017.

Daxue Consulting, 2016. Chinese Leisure Activities: Three New Market trends http://daxueconsulting.com/chinese-leisure-activities/ Accessed 3rd November 2017.

Gapminder, 2017. Income Per Person in China 1945-2015. http://www.gapminder.org/tools

Jian-jun, M. and Nas, R.F., 2014. Profile of Chinese Outbound Tourists: Characteristics and Expenditures. American Journal of Tourism Management, 3(1), pp.17-31. http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.tourism.20140301.03.html#Sec2.1 Accessed 1st November 2017.

Klingelhöfer, C. 2017. These are the Most Popular Sports in China. https://www.ispo.com/en/markets/id_79708806/these-are-the-most-popular-sports-in-china.html Accessed 1st November 2017.

Laurent, J, 2017. Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20652617 Accessed 1st November 2017.

Liddle, J. 2016. China’s New National Fitness Plan and Opportunities in the Sports Industry. http://www.china-briefing.com/news/2016/09/01/china-new-national-fitness-plan-opportunities-sports-fitness-industry.html Accessed 1st November 2017.

State Council [of the People’s Republic of China], 2015. Sports participation soars in China http://english.gov.cn/policies/infographics/2015/12/31/content_281475263806063.htm Accessed 1st November 2017.

Tu, Y. 2010. Chinese Leisure Life: the two-day weekend revolution. http://confuciusmag.com/chinese-leisure-life Accessed 3rd November 2017.

World Online Travel, 2017. Chinese Outbound Tourism Statistics in 2016: 122 Million Chinese Tourists Make Outbound Trips, Spend $109.8 Billion. http://news.travel168.net/20170203/43145.html Accessed 1st November 2017.

Xiaochen, S. 2015. Chinese embrace exercise as lifestyle choice. http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2015-12/31/content_22885583.htm Accessed 1st November 2017.

Xu, Gao, Zhao, 2016. National football promotion in China: Opportunities and challenges in public health[J]. Journal of Sport and Health Science, 2016, 5(2): 250-251. http://www.jshs.org.cn/EN/abstract/abstract359.shtml Accessed 1st November 2017.

Case study: China and Leisure: Learning activities

• Describe the changes taking place in the leisure preferences of people in China. [3]
• Suggest why sports are being taken up in record numbers. [4]
• Suggest why tourism is increasing. [4]
• Use the sources to identify the range of countries that people travel to from China. Suggest why these countries are the most popular. [4]

Other tasks

Using the table below, create a graph comparing the growth in tourism expenditure for China and two other selected countries. Annotate the graph to suggest why China’s increase in expenditure has been so much larger than that of other countries.

© Matthew Burdett, 2018. All rights reserved.

All secondary material on this site is clearly referenced and may be subject to copyright restrictions by the original authors. All original material on this page is subject to copyright.

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Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes: Studies from India, China, and the United States (2001)

Chapter: chinese case studies: an introduction, chinese case studies: an introduction.

Zhao Shidong Institute of Geographic Science and Natural Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences

With the rapid development of China's economy over the last decades, its land use patterns have changed significantly, especially since the central government's adoption of socioeconomic reform policies, beginning in the late 1970s. Across China, the speed and scale of land use change have varied because of the country's diverse natural and socioeconomic conditions. In order to understand the process and the mechanism of land use change, and then provide a solid basis for the future sustainable planning of land use in China's many different regions, the Chinese research team chose the Jitai Basin, a typical rural area, and the Pearl River Delta, characterized by rapid urbanization, as its study sites (see map , p. 178).

JITAI BASIN

The Jitai Basin, located in Jiangxi Province in south-central China, is made up of four counties that contain two cities. At the end of 1995, the Jitai Basin was home to 2.47 million people; its population density was 198 persons per square kilometer.

Historically, the Jitai Basin was a relatively developed area for agricultural production and handcraft industries such as shipbuilding and textiles, because the Ganjiang (Gan River) served as a main transportation artery between north and south. But with the development of modern industry and communications, the opening of foreign trade ports (Guangzhou, Shanghai, Fuzhou, Xiamen, and Ningbo) in the late nineteenth century, and the building of the Guangzhou–Wuhan and Wuhan–Beijing

railways, the direction of the flow of goods changed rapidly, weakening the transportation function of the Ganjiang River. From then on, China saw its economy grow rapidly in coastal areas, and the Jitai Basin gradually lost its dominant position in communications and the economy and slipped into a declining state.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the central government began to promote the development of the more rural regions of the country. As a result, in the 1950s and 1960s the Jitai Basin was the beneficiary of significant investment in an industrial program, technological assistance, and an influx of trained migrants from the more developed regions. Development of the country as a whole, however, was at a very low level, and cultural, political, and economic restrictions hampered the assistance efforts. In the end, then, no significant socioeconomic development occurred in the Jitai Basin from 1949 to 1978, and, indeed, population pressure and extreme economic policies resulted in serious damage to the region's natural resources. For example, overcutting of forests to provide fuel for steel smelters caused deforestation and soil erosion. And the expansion of agriculture to marginal hilly and mountainous areas in order to meet the subsistence demands of the rapidly growing population for food and fuel further accentuated the serious problems of environmental degradation.

Since the introduction of government reforms in 1978, the Jitai Basin has achieved relatively remarkable economic development in absolute terms. With implementation of the “household responsibility” system in 1982, agricultural productivity increased and the transition from cereal production to cash crop production (such as fruits and vegetables) accelerated. Meanwhile, the local government, aware of the damage to the ecosystem generated by deforestation and soil erosion, successfully implemented a series of policies to reforest the hills and mountains. Despite these achievements, the Jitai Basin still lags behind the coastal regions in economic development and urbanization. In fact, the gap between its socioeconomic development and that of developed regions (for example, the Pearl River Delta) is widening. One important reason is that the central government's economic development strategy tends to favor coastal areas. Other reasons are the Jitai Basin's location in China's hinterlands and its limited access to investment, technology, and the markets in metropolitan areas. In addition, because the region had a surplus of agricultural laborers stemming from the significant lack of development of the nonagricultural sectors, the massive out-migration of young laborers from the Jitai Basin to developed regions such as the Pearl River Delta increased. This development relieved the pressure on local employment, but also weakened agricultural production.

PEARL RIVER DELTA

Formed by the alluvium delivered by the West, North, and East Rivers, the Pearl River Delta is located in southern China's Guangdong Province. The study region, which lies in the central part of Pearl River Delta, consists of 13 counties or cities, which belong to six municipalities and are distributed on either side of the Pearl River estuary. The Pearl River Delta is one of the most heavily populated regions of China. In 1995 its permanent population density was 743 persons per square kilometer, compared with 378 for all of Guangdong Province and 126 for China as a whole.

Historically, the Pearl River Delta was known nationally for its production of grain, sugar, silk, freshwater fish, and fruits. Indeed, the region was referred to as the “Fish and Rice County.” The Delta also was one of the places in China where modern industry first appeared. However, from 1866, when industry first arrived, to 1949, when the new China was founded, the region's economy developed very slowly, and many residents of the Delta left to earn a living abroad. One factor in its slow growth was its location; because the Delta is situated at the frontier of the national defense, very few of the important industries were allowed to set up operations in the region.

After implementation of socioeconomic reforms in 1978, the Delta quickened its pace of development and now is one of the richest areas in China. But rapid industrialization and urbanization also have produced dramatic changes in the Pearl River Delta's landscape, as well as environmental pollution. Overall, within less than 20 years the Delta area was transformed from a rural agricultural area into a highly developed region through rapid industrialization and urbanization. Within this process, the interactions between population growth, land use change, and the relevant economic and environmental problems are complex and unique.

As the world’s population exceeds an incredible 6 billion people, governments—and scientists—everywhere are concerned about the prospects for sustainable development.

The science academies of the three most populous countries have joined forces in an unprecedented effort to understand the linkage between population growth and land-use change, and its implications for the future. By examining six sites ranging from agricultural to intensely urban to areas in transition, the multinational study panel asks how population growth and consumption directly cause land-use change, and explore the general nature of the forces driving the transformations.

Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes explains how disparate government policies with unintended consequences and globalization effects that link local land-use changes to consumption patterns and labor policies in distant countries can be far more influential than simple numerical population increases. Recognizing the importance of these linkages can be a significant step toward more effective environmental management.

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Case Study: The Three Gorges Dam

The 3 Gorges Dam project - China

• This is an example of a large scale development project designed to:
• Create more jobs
•  Allow large ships to navigate the river and reach Chungong Create thousands of jobs Develop new towns and farms
• Provide 10% of China’s electricity through HEP Increase tourism along the river
• Protect precious farmland from flooding
• However it also has a number of disadvantages:
• Over 150 towns and 4500 thousand villages will be flooded displacing people from their homes
• 1.3 million people will be forced to move
• The river landscape will be forever changed
•  The lake which will be created could become very polluted from industrial waste

This video showcases the Chinese Three Gorges Dam Project

Population geography in China since the 1980s: Forging the links between population studies and human geography

• Published: 09 July 2016
• Volume 26 , pages 1133–1158, ( 2016 )

Cite this article

• Yu Zhu 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Jinhong Ding 4 ,
• Guixin Wang 5 ,
• Jianfa Shen 6 ,
• Liyue Lin 1 , 2 &
• Wenqian Ke 1 , 2  

519 Accesses

12 Citations

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This paper reviews the progress of population geography in China since the 1980s. The review results suggest that contrary to the common perception of its invisibility and marginalized status in the field, tremendous progress has been made in population geography in China since the 1980s. Population geographers have made significant contribution to the understanding of a wide range of population issues from geographical perspectives, including migration, urbanization, population distribution, the relationships between population, environment and resources, aging, marriage patterns, and migrants’ crimes, although such contribution often did not appear in the geographical circle. Furthermore, population geographers have played an indispensable role in revitalizing population studies in China and forging its links to human geography, occupying an important position in this multi-disciplinary field. Population geographers’ contribution to the areas of migration and urbanization research has been particularly significant, reflected in their leading roles in these areas’ research. The paper demonstrates that as latecomers in the field after more than 20 years of isolation, population geographers in China have gone through a process of catching up and increasing engagement with developments in social sciences and increasing interaction with social scientists since the 1980s, and have benefited greatly from it; however, there is a tendency for population geography to be increasingly alienated from the main stream human geography, a phenomenon similar to but not exactly the same as Anglo-American geography in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The paper argues that population geography is only half way in the course to forge the links between population studies and human geography, and it needs to return to geographical sciences to strike a healthy balance between the field of population studies and that of human geography, and promote its further development in a multi-disciplinary field.

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Institute of Geography, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350007, China

Yu Zhu, Liyue Lin & Wenqian Ke

Key Laboratory of Humid Subtropical Eco-geographical Process (Fujian Normal University), Ministry of Education, Fuzhou, 350007, China

Asian Demographic Research Institute, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

Population Research Institute, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China

Jinhong Ding

Institute of Population Research, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

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Zhu Yu (1961–), PhD and Professor, specialized in migration, urbanization and regional development.

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Zhu, Y., Ding, J., Wang, G. et al. Population geography in China since the 1980s: Forging the links between population studies and human geography. J. Geogr. Sci. 26 , 1133–1158 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-016-1319-7

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-016-1319-7

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Water transfer - Case study: China south-north water transfer project

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3.7 River management

5.1 world population.

• This is a 50 year project to transfer water from the south of China to the north
• The project uses 3 canal systems to divert water from the Yangtze river in the south to the more arid & industrial north
• It ultimately aims to transfer 44.8 billion m 3 of water per year
• It had an initial budget of $62 billion but costs have now risen to $80 billion
• The north contains 40% of the population but only 4% of the country’s water
• The north gets a mean annual precipitation of less than 100 mm, facing droughts, whereas the south gets over 1000 mm, causing floods
• Water shortages cost $39 billion a year in lost crops and reduced industrial output
• Increasing food and water shortages threatens falling living standards, industrial decline and growing poverty
• The north has rich mineral & land resources with growing industrial cities, and the shortage of water is becoming a restrictive factor
• Over 350 thousand people have been displaced
• This could cause the water to be polluted: for example, fishers on the Yangtze river have complained that pollution was killing the fish
• Water conservation and agricultural improvements may have been better
• It is intensifying, if not causing an economic drought