Assessing the fragility of ecosystem has an important role to sustainable ecosystem management. Karst environments, unique from other environments, is one kind of typical fragile ecosystem and key eco- region in China. Based on a critical review of current research about karst ecohydrological processes, soil fragility, vegetation characteristics, and the reciprocity of water, soil and plant in karst ecosystem, we developed an indicator system for assessing the fragility of degraded karst ecosystems, which including ecological structure fragility, ecological processes fragility, ecological function fragility and artificial menace fragility of karst ecosystem.. Therefore, the evaluation indicator should explain the change and diversity of ecological structure, ecological process and ecological function. According to this principle, some index such as structure stability, diversity of microhabitat type, energy utility and accumulation, direct use value, the degree and speed of karst rocky desertification was chosen. Furthermore, the fragility of degraded karst ecosystems was divided into four levels by this assessment system as follows: slight fragility, medium fragility, severe fragility and ecosystem collapse compared with the ecological baseline of undisturbed karst nature ecosystem.
Landscape ecological system is composed of ordered horizontal levels. The relationships of landscape structures and functions are distinct in different temporal and spatial scales, and it is useful to integrate hierarchy and components of landscape by regionalization concept. In this paper, the background and concept of the delineation of ecosystems were advanced. The principle of landscape heterogeneity on which the delineation is operated was also addressed. It was pointed out that the change from a framework based on a single natural indicator to another based on the integrated ecosystem approach reflects the progress in the understanding of human- nature reconciliation and the balance between biodiversity conversation and sustainable use of natural resources. On the basis of ecosystem integrity, a framework for the landscape ecological regionalization systems was recommitted, which followed the principles of hierarchy, multi- scale, origin- coherence, interdependence between landscape pattern and function, interaction among landscape functions and integrality of delineation units. Under these principles, the main scientific issues to be discussed were as follows: (1) the theory and system of comprehensive regionalization； (2) the changing processes, patterns and their interactions of the main elements in regional system； (3) the identification of the boundaries between the regional systems; and (4) the construction of the organizational levels of the system. Then, the differences and relationships among the landscape ecological regionalization and the natural regionalization, economical regionalization and the ecological regionalization were given. Finally, the paper assumed the application of landscape ecological regionalization theory in national, regional and watershed levels.
Flood risk assessment is the first step in the flood risk management. Flood risk regionalization, which can help understand the distribution patterns and internal rules of flood risk clearly, is developed based on the flood risk assessment. Firstly, the authors explain concepts of flood risk concerned in order to clarify and standardize them. Secondly, this paper reviews the methods of flood risk assessment and flood risk regionalization. The primary methods of flood risk assessment are geomorphological method, hydrological and hydrodynamic modeling method, system emulation modeling method, historical flood disaster data based method, palaeoflood and historical data method, remote sensing and geographical information system method, system analysis method based on the mechanism of flood, and etc. After a brief summary of the researches on flood risk assessment and flood risk regionalization, some perspectives on flood risk assessment and flood risk regionalization are put forward, such as the data base of flood risk research, temporal- spatial scale of assessment, theories and methods of regionalization, technical measures.
The understanding of hydroelectric construction is becoming comprehensive from eco-environmental and socio- economic perspectives. Positive influences occur on one hand and negative on the other hand. Hydroelectric development can cause great changes to valley landscape but landscape assessment on its impacts is weak in past studies. Many arguments have emerged concerning the planned 13 multilevel hydroelectric constructions in Nujiang River of China, called "the last natural big river in China without dams". These arguments have had impacts not only on the environment issues but also on the landscape ones, thus becoming extremely important. After briefly summarizing the significance and relative concepts of landscape impact assessment, this paper explores theories and methods at this point and designs a series of landscape impact assessment parameters such as the View Shed Loss, the Visual Disturbance Scope of dams, the Altitude Loss, the Sight Spots Loss and the Rush Flow Loss. Based on the concept of different levels of landscape impact of Nujiang River Valley, this paper classifies the landscape impacts into holistic and partial types, then utilizes GIS simulation and calculation of parameters to analyze alterations before and after the rising of water level for the whole valley and individual sites, and demonstrates the suitability of each dam site. Finally, this paper indicates that the hydroelectric power development in valley region such as Nujiang River should be especially circumspect, its decision- making should be based on comprehensive environmental impact assessment in which landscape assessment is included, and rigorous legislation also should be established gradually.
As one of the most widespread vegetation types worldwide, Grasslands cover nearly one - fifth of the world' s land surface area and play a significant role in the global climate change and biogeochemistry cycle. However, a large area of grasslands in the world has been faced a serious problem- degradation and desertification. One form of desertification is the conversion of homogeneous grasslands into shrub- dominated ecosystems and shrubs encroachment has become a widespread phenomenon in arid grasslands and savannas over the past century. The transition has greatly affected ecosystem structure and function in semiarid and arid ecosystems. Overgrazing, regional climate drought and natural fires are the critical factors controlling shrubs encroachment and development. During the process of shrubs encroachment, the wind erosion and water erosion of soil will be strengthened and the soil nutrients and other noessential elements distributed uniformly in grasslands will gradually develop horizontal and vertical patterns in soil dimensions and finally lead to the formation of "islands of fertility", which makes the spatial heterogeneity of soil resource more evident. In addition, the enhancement of wind erosion with the encroachment of shrubs also increased the loss of soil resource, such as C, N, P, S and further influenced the redistribution of these elements among soil, atmosphere and biosphere. The shrubs encroachment and accompanied changes of biogeochemistry cycles will be markedly contributed to the global climate change through increasing the content of aerosol, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere and there exists a sensitive feedback mechanism between them. China has an area of grasslands of about 4 ×106 km2 or about 40% of the nation's total land surface and most of these areas have been affected by desertification, but reports on the biogeochemical effects of grass- shrub transition are limited. Therefore, Reinforcing research on shrub encroachment of grassland ecosystem along with the accompanied transformation of plant and soil resource distribution pattern is crucial for accurately understanding the desertification process and predicting the potential changes of elements biogeochemical cycle the in semi- arid and arid grasslands.
There is an even poorer understanding of the characteristics of landscape in southwestern karst area, China, particularly in Chongqing. The objective of this paper was to measure the framework of landscape patterns in karst area of Chongqing, and to determine the factors to drive the changes in landscape patterns. The results showed that landscape types presented unevenness tendencies, and several dominated preferably. Landscape mosaic patches had complex geological shape, lower isolation, unobvious fragment, and fragmentation. And further their spatial heterogeneities were much lower. The value of landscape diversity all distributed at average position of maximum landscape diversity 2.81 in each karst subarea of Chongqing. Similarly, one or several landscape types controlled landscape patterns of each subarea. Disturbance index and relative richness were the increasing tendencies associating with the decrease of landform along the rank of I, II and III, while the reverse results occurred in heterogeneity, unevenness and dominance. There was significantly difference between fractal dimensions, and higher fluctuation between shape indexes in each subarea. Thus, the geological shape among different landscape mosaic patches was very complex, and the differences between them were very pronounced. The density and isolation of landscape mosaic patches increased along the rank of I, II and III, while the contrary results were detected in cropland, orchard land and residential and mining land. Except for water body with 63.03 edge density in III, the rest all ranged from 1.82 to 9.14. Similar landscape characteristics were observed between I and II, but the obvious differences were witnessed, when they compared with that of III. In karst area, internal geological function, under the big environmental background, controls the basic trends and processes of landscape patterns, while external dynamics, at short - term spatial - temporal scale, has become a major force in shaping the environment. This study will be useful to supply fine ground and knowledge for establishing appropriate landscape practices and evaluating ecological security in karst area.
This paper explored land environmental issues in Three Gorges Resettlement Area, taking Wushan County as a case. Having summarized the major land environmental problems as well as their causes in the Wushan Resettlement, the paper set six river basins as its research units and chose eight representative factors of environmental risk from three aspects of ecosystem risk, social risk and environmental pollution risk. The paper made a risk evaluation of land environmental problems in the regions by employing Delphi method and Analytic hierarchical programming(AHP), and proposed a pattern of eco- friendly utilization in the regions for the sake of their sustainable development.
Forest ecosystem, the main terrene ecosystem, plays a key role in balancing the carbon budget and keeping the water and soil in global climate change. Nujiang basin, located in Yunnan Province in southwestern China, is the main passageway and refuge for migrating species in Eurasia and is famed for its rich biodiversity. The data used in this paper is 1∶100000 scale land use and land cover maps in 1985, 1995 and 2000, which are provided by Resource and Environment Database of Chinese Academy of Science. According to natural attributes, the forest was classified to four kinds, which are forestland, shrubbery, woodland, and orchard. By using spatial intersect analysis of ARCGIS 9.0, the index of relative change degree of forest land and transition matrix of forestland change type was calculated. The researches found out: the forestland landscapes of Nujiang basin have taken great changes. The rate of forest decrease during 1995 to 2000 was much more than the rate of forest increase during 1985 to 1995, and there were 35.6% forest land which had transferred into cultivated land, glass land and construction land. Further analysis shows that the forestland change in Nujiang basin is restricted by social economy factor.
Abstract: Urban air pollution has become a major threat to human health now, and it seems that this situation will be worsening in the future. In particular, NOx pollution, which often causes many severe diseases, by urban transportation has been becoming a worse environment problem with the urbanization and has come to focus in both developing countries and developed ones. GIS- based study on urban air quality simulation and heath risk assessment come to a case in point in the world. This paper adopts GIS raster and surface analysis tools to build a spatial health risk assessment model on the basis of the present popular health- risk- assessment basic framework, which includes concentration, exposure, dose and effect. The model have made great advance in two ways of quantitatively assessing health effect and assessing air quality on urban local scale. The dose- effect function of pollutant toxicology is applied to quantitatively analyze the health effect, which succeeds in solving uncertainty problem confronting health effect assessment. In order to simulating pollutant exposure on the local urban scales, micro- environment study method is adopted to build exposure model including urban population distribution simulation and population time- activity pattern analysis. The study brings an effectively approach to assessing urban air quality. Finally, this paper simulates the NOx exposure distribution, classifies health risk and calculates risk population in a south- eastern coastal city of Fuzhou, China. The result shows that the study has practicability in assessing urban health risk of urban air quality.
The research on marine economic area system is the most important part in manearth relationship area system in China. This paper discussed the characters of marine economic area system from the point of man- earth relationship area system. Firstly the paper analyzed the marine resources, marine industry and the development process of China. Then the author analyzed the developing condition of marine economy based on space and time changing. What's more, this paper evaluated comprehensive strength of marine economy over years by using some econometric methods such as principal component analysis, and drew the smooth curves between the total value of marine economy and marine industries, which gave the linear trend of the increase of marine industries. According to the development of marine industries, the author analyzed the character of marine industries and drew a tri- axial map to analyze the developing process of marine industry. At last, in order to reflect the differences between different area systems of Chinese marine economy, the author used the method of principal component analysis to give an evaluation and classification of comprehensive strength of coastal province and cities. Based on this result, some marine economic regions are classified according to the comprehensive strength.
Sahel is similar to agro~pastoral zone in Northern China in some aspects concerning environmental characteristics and environmental change, and there are some obvious linkages between them. The comparison analysis between them in precipitation, vegetation, drought events and dust storms can help better understand the variability of environment and climate in semiarid/arid regions in China and Sahel. Their interdecadal changes of precipitation have the similar trends. For Sahel, the interannual variability in precipitation is dominant before 1950s, while the interdecadal changes are outstanding from the mid of 1960s. A large portion of Sahel shows an increasing trend in NDVI. The interdecadal change of precipitation may be an important factor for the occurrence of drought, and temperature may also play roles in the formation of drought. The dust storm frequency has some evident relationship with precipitation on the interannual and interdecadal timescales, and the annual mean temperature and synoptic variability also have some influence on it. In agro- pastoral zone in Northern China, the interannual change is an outstanding characteristic in annual precipitation. In the north and east part of the zone vegetation experiences the increasing trend, and the south part shows a decreasing trend. The interdacadal change of precipitation played a role in the forming of drought events, but the same amount precipitation reduction may cause different drought in intensity. The spring dust storm frequency has tight relationship with previous winter temperature and synoptic variability, and also has some link with spring precipitation.
As one of the largest energy consumers and producers in the world, China has faced great challenge in energy security on the way of modernizing itself. Energy security mainly includes reliable energy provision and safe energy use. Reliable energy provision cares about whether a country's energy supply could meet its demand for population and economic development. Safe energy use tells us that we should reject the pattern of energy use at the cost of polluting environment. The paper analyzes the situation of China's energy security based on the analysis of energy resource base, balance between energy production and consumption, energy transportation and side effect of energy consumption. Owing to the pressure of economic development, China has placed much more emphasis on the security of energy provision than safe energy use, though it realized the importance of the latter in the past years. While it built its energy provision system, it polluted the environment greatly at the same time in such ways as lots of CO2 emissions, which contribute to the global warming, and the sinking of the earth's surface caused by coal mining. So it is time to rethink the goal of energy security. Energy security, as a determinant factor to the modern society, will become an increasingly sensitive issue in China when the country makes great strides in modernizing itself； and it could become even more sensitive in the next twenty to thirty years when China's population growth and economic development imposes more pressure on the national energy supply system continuingly. Based on the basic situation of China's energy security, this paper suggests that a new energy policy, including reliable energy provision and safe energy use, be needed for China's sustainable development in the future.
In arid areas, vegetation can reflect the status of environment directly as a sensitive element of environment; and the vegetation cover changes can represent evolvement and variance of the environment. So, the study of vegetation cover changes becomes an important instrument to open out the changes of environment and their laws in arid area. This paper is aimed at a special region of the lower reaches of Heihe River and the problems with its ecosystem of vegetation, discussing synthetically the vegetation cover changes and the elements related, such as the groundwater, the balance of soil water - salt, global climatic changes and human activities. The aim is to analyze the mechanism of vegetation cover changes exactly by analyzing correlative factors with vegetation cover changes extensively, and to provide supports for the study of environmental evolvement of the lower reaches of Heihe River. Finally, this paper summarizes existent questions in the study of vegetation cover changes, and puts forward relevant strategy to resolve them, providing references for the study of vegetation cover changes in the lower reaches of Heihe River.
Land use transition is a new integrated approach of land- use and land- cover change (LUCC) study. Land use transition is also one of the major research contents of Global Land Project (GLP), a joint research agenda of the International Geosphere- Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) to improve the understanding of land system dynamics. This paper develops a research frame for cultivated- land transition and land consolidation and reclamation in China, after reviewing the research on land use transition, the theories and models of land- change science, cultivated- land change and land consolidation and reclamation. The frame may include: (1) analyzing the spatial pattern of cultivated- land change in China； (2) understanding the influential factors of cultivated- land transition trajectory; (3) putting forward the theoretical hypothesis on cultivated- land transition； (4) modeling the spatio- temporal changes of cultivated land in China and defining the regional types of cultivated- land transition and the phases where they are in； and (5) providing theoretical and scientific basis for land consolidation and reclamation, an important way to conserve cultivated land in China.
Due to huge food need, arable land quality is very important in China, and how to evaluate its quality has been studied by many researchers. However, different regions of China are at different stages of development with different land use objectives. The first is yield maximization stage, and the household land use objective is to meet family food consumption need. The second is yield and profit optimization stage, and the house land use objective is to make more profits on the basis of meeting basic family needs. The third is profit maximization stage, and profit is the only land use objective for the household. Based on the theory of different development stages and land use objectives, a “Pressure- State - Effect - Reaction”model was developed in this paper to evaluate arable land quality at household level. The Pressure indictors include land scale, land quantity, society, economy and household family. The State indictors include land use type and pattern, input intensity and land use efficiency. The Effect indictors include soil quality, productivity and soil pollution. The Reaction indicators include governmental policies and economic measures. This model can be used to evaluate arable land qualities at different development stages, and the results can help the government make suitable policies to protect arable land for sustainable development.
Ecological security is critical to sustainable development of human society, which includes resource security, biological security, environmental security and etc. And land resource ecological security is an important aspect of resources security. However, the ecological problems of land resource are increasingly serious in such terms as soil erosion, land pollution and desertification, which are threatening regional eco- security and sustainable development. Therefore, the research of land resource ecological security has become the forefront topic in the field of sustainable utilization of land resource. This article interpreted the concept of land resource ecological security firstly, and then summarized the main progress and achievements in land ecological security research, which include the relationship between land resource ecological security and land use/land cover changes, assessment of land resource eco- security and design of land resource eco- security. Finally this article put forward that special attention should be paid to following aspects in the future study of land resource eco- security. Firstly, there is an tendency to integration of the research on mechanism of land resource eco- security, land ecological security assessment and land resource eco- security design. Secondly, study of land eco- security assessment method as well as determination of the threshold of land resource eco- security index should be further discussed. And finally, construction of land use security pattern is still an exploratory work.
Yulin city is an important national base of heavy- chemical engineering, and an extremely vulnerable area as well. Based on the analysis of annual and seasonal climatic change in Yulin city by using climatic data during 1974~2004 years, the author finds that the climate in Yulin city is becoming more warm and droughty, the annual temperature increased at 0.0438℃/ a, and annual precipitation decreased at 0.678mm/a. Climatic drying changes intimidate the industrial development badly. Thus how to realize the sustainable resources exploration, and to ensure sustainable development in this base of heavy- chemical engineering around the leading factor- - water resource, is critical for the development in this base and national energy safety. Hereby, the author puts forward some harmonious countermeasures doing well to agricultural development and resources exploration based on the analysis of the regional climatic change and the various problems with regional industrial sustainable development. The main countermeasures are as the following: (1) to transform the agricultural polices of government should enhance the level of regional labor force by generalizing all kinds of agricultural technologies, carrying out new strategy such as self- support in foodstuff, preferential stock raising development; (2) the commercial base of regional agriculture must be offer food safeguard , consolidating the basic status of agriculture, and developing the second and third industry in county level, forcing the capacity of agriculture to resist climatic change; (3) for energy industry, the critical factor--water resource should be reasonably utilized and protected in order to realize the harmonious development of regional eco- economy by neatening small factory and reducing the water consumption of production in the future.
Urban internal spatial structure in China is becoming more and more complex during the transition period when population, economic activities and social elements experienced a fast process of restructuring. Suburbanization of population accelerated in China in the 1990s compared with that in the 1980s. Great difference exists between the spatial restructuring of permanently registered population and that of external population. Generally speaking, the similarities of the spatial restructuring of population increased while the differences of it decrease. Analysis of the restructuring of urban industry and commerce shows that suburbanization and the centrifugal forces exert great influence on the evolution of urban internal spatial structure in the transition period. The factors of urban social space are closely related to the development of society. The types of social areas tend to vary and the components of each social area change from singleness to multiplicity. As a product of the planned economy, the model of urban internal spatial structure in the early 1980s exhibited more similarities than differences, with the feature of homogeneity, while that in the late 1990s was a product of market economy, exhibiting more differences than similarities, showing an obvious feature of heterogeneity and polycentric structure.
As economies and ecological support system become more interdependent, new disciplines are needed to "bridge the gap"of understanding between societies and nature. It is now clear that neither ecology nor economics alone can address the problems of our global commons. New measures of wealth, of value, of contributions and production are needed that acknowledge the "natural capital" and "ecosystem services" provided from healthy environments. In order to study and view eco- economic system from a new visual angle, new tools are being invested to measure wealth, services and production fairly and equitably. Systems analysis approach is powerful to study the combined eco- economic systems of many scales. Diagramming is done with energy system symbols. The symbols each have rigorous energetic and mathematical meanings. We use an alternative measure of value, based on real contributions to system performance, termed "emergy". It is a concept which quantifies "energy memory"in products and processes. It is a new accounting unit of total contributions, direct and indirect, used in generation of a product or service. This broader approach could help us to investigate resource utilization and potentionalities and exchange in eco- conomic systems. Emergy analysis allows comparison and incorporation of environmental costs and benefits to provide a more comprehensive perspective for public policy directives. An emergy analysis of Miyun system of economy and nature was performed in order to study its sustainability and emergy use. Indices of thermodynamic and economic vitality of Miyun were evaluated and a comparison with indices of other developed and developing areas was performed. The results show that in Miyun County the total emergy use in 2003 was 2.49 ×1021sej, which was worth of 6.55 ×108US$ , and the emergy- dollar ratio was 2.99×1012sej /$, lower than the average emergy- dollar ratio of China. The emergy use per capita is 5.885.88×1015 sej/person/a, much lower than that of Beijing (17.89×1015sej/person/a). The developed carrying capacity of population is about 51 ×104 persons. At present, the population reaches 42 ×104, so it is important to make right policies to control population. The emergybased sustainability index was 0.52, which means the economic increase is based on large resource consumption, so enhancing the resource utilization efficiency and establishing rational industry structures are very important for sustainable development in future.
Zhang Wei River Basin lies on the south of Hai River Basin, and it is one of the typical areas in north china that experiencing water shortage and water environment deterioration. Based on SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool), Zhang Wei River Basin distributed hydrological model is established. Based on DEM(100m×100m) , considering location of hydrologic stations and four Large reservoirs, Zhang Wei River Basin was delineated into 74 sub basins and 940 Hydrological Response Unit (HRU). Topographic characteristics of each sub basin including slop and river networks are extracted automatically from DEM. The basic data including DEM, soil data, rainfall, weather data, land use and reservoir out flow data of Zhang Wei River Basin are collected and processed for the model. The soil and land use data are reclassified for the model and the soil physical properties database is created. The distributed hydro- process is simulated by using the hydro meteorological data from 2000 to 2004. SWAT model is calibrated with observed data from six principal hydrologic stations in Zhang Wei River Basin and the important parameters sensitivity is analyzed and the laws that changing some important parameters how to affect model results are discovered. The reliability of the SWAT model is validated by comparing the model outputs with Water Resource Reports. The mean relative error is less than 10%. The study results in this paper make a good demonstration for applying SWAT model in China, and lay a good foundation for establishment of whole Hai River basin distributed hydrological model.
Since 1990's, the regionalization of economic growth becomes the general trend of global economic. Regional governance is the new topic of regional science studies, and it' s also the focal point of regional studies that democratization society is the background, since it emphasizes transverse management and public participation. Good building- up of regional governance system has a macroscopical effect of guide, guarantee and promotion. The misorder and turbulence of regional economy has been the problem which is made by the long- time ignorance of practice and the slow start of regional planning. General administrative economy has reduced working efficiency of market economy, therefore exploring new order of regional development becomes the hot point of regional development. Retrospection and conclusion for the relevant research of regional governance at home and abroad does favor to the enhancement of cognition to the concept, theory and practice of regional governance. After summing up the research history and identifying some concepts, the authors carried out synthetical commentary of these researches and analyzed prime issues of civil researches. The authors also pointed out the focus of difficulties and problems helming the direction of regional governance studies.
This study reviews the related researches about the international trade flow and globalization. With the main merchandise trade data of one hundred and three countries in year 2002, the paper researches on global and regional patterns of international trade flow and clusters with principal components analysis and primary export destiny analysis. In addition, the hierarchy of multi- layers, including core nations and trade clusters, is specially pointed out. The first - class cores are United States and Europe Union； the second - class cores are China and Japan； and the third - class cores include Russian, Korea, India, Brazil, Singapore and Saudi Arabia. The compositions of trade clusters represent the effects of several factors, such as geography, culture, economy and politics. The trade system of China Bloc is a classical system of double stars with two cores: China mainland and China Hongkong. China Hongkong plays a quite important transfer role in the trade network of China. China Taiwan area doesn't have a corresponding important status with its competitive economic capability. And a few predictions are also given on the trend of world merchandise trade system.
The substantial growth in tourism during the past few decades and projected growth in future decades have been widely documented. The tourist destination changed greatly with the development of tourism and the transformation of society, which can be found in every aspect of the social life in the destination. Since the 1970s, the socio- cultural impacts of tourism have appeared in more and more studies. And being a hot topic, it is still being discussed in recently years. Integrating the views of anthropology in this field, this paper summarized the domestic and international research progress in theories, perspectives, methods, practices and models of the socio- cultural impacts of tourism, in which tourism is perceived to contribute to changes in value systems, individual behavior, resident attitude and perceive, collective lifestyles, moral conduct, traditional ceremonies, and community organizations. Finally, the author pointed out the weak sides of the current studies, and the main research directions in the future are given. Studies show that the main problems include: the scholars generally paid much more attention to case study than theory building； the study emphasized quality over quantity; some studies focused too much on the negative impact of tourism, neglecting the positive side; and there was shortage of a normative index system, resulting in weak comparability within studies. The future main directions are as follows: to tightly combine the needs of actual tourism development and management with academic studies; to complete the theory building and technical method improving; to merge multiple disciplinaries; and so on.
It is now widely recognized that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been changing the way in which firms do their businesses. As such, application of new ICTs will affect the development of industrial clusters, especially those of small and medium- size enterprises (SMEs). Electronic channels based on new ICTs are becoming a major platform of inter- firm relationships within clusters, which is critical to our understanding of cluster evolution and upgrading. In particular, new ICTs can enable small and medium- size enterprises to develop links across far distance and reduce both time and financial costs in establishing those links, and thus facilitate the internationalization of SMEs. This paper firstly reviews the development and major forms of ICTs application by enterprises in China, then discusses major factors affecting the application of new ICTs by SMEs in clusters based on field investigation of five clusters in Zhejaing and Guangdong provinces, and lastly, by using a case of shoes- making cluster in Wenling of Zhejiang province, analyzes the concrete affect of those factors. The majors discussed by this paper include industry- specific factors, enterprise factors, local social and cultural factors and regional information infrastructures.
Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China) Abstr act: Industrial cluster is a very important economic phenomenon in China, but it bothers both the academe and the government to identify the industrial cluster, for there is no consistent and widely accepted criteria. Zhejiang province has a large number of manufacturing industrial cluster which cover various industrial categories. Using data from Census of Basic Units 2001, we apply the Location Quotient Method to identify industrial clusters. We consider that there is an industrial cluster in the district when the location quotient of a special industry comes up to 3 and the number of firms of the same industry comes up to 100 in a postal district. According to this standard, this article identifies 116 industrial clusters in four- digitindustry. The Location Quotient Method can tell us where the indusrtrial cluster is and which specific industry the cluster belongs to. In the following part, the spatial distribution and internal scale structure of the typical industrial clusters are analyzed.
