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This article adopts a "pathways to sustainability" approach to study lead mining in rural China. Through an in-depth case study, it reveals how shifting mining practices are tied to institutional and political economic contexts, cost-benefit distribution, and changes in livelihood resources and strategies. It weaves together an analysis of livelihood practices with a study of attitudes to livelihood and environment, which are usually researched separately. In turn, it demonstrates that a longitudinal analysis may resolve the contradictory accounts of whether mining aids or hinders development, and whether local communities are victims or beneficiaries of such development.

Early literature turn out that the patterns of social supports of the elderly in western nations are quite different from those of Chinese elderly, which indicates that more social supports for Chinese elderly depend mainly on their children and relatives. However, accompanied with process of the modernization and industrialization, the traditional patterns of social supports of Chinese elderly have changed. This study employed the CLASS data to identify the ­current patterns of social support and its determinants by using Logistic model. Our results show that factors such as schoolings, occupation before retirement, residence, social pension, etc., could affect the choice of social support of Chinese elderly, which urges both central and local governments to provide more social service and care for Chinese elderly in the rapid process of population ageing in China.

This paper examines factors that shape people's perceptions of government corruption in China. We are particularly interested in how people acquire information on local corruption, given the general lack of pertinent first-hand experience. We combine the data from a national survey in Mainland China with a self-compiled dataset on the number of corruption cases reported in Chinese provincial newspapers. The results of Probit and Heckman Selection models show that indirect formal and indirect informal information sources have diverging effects. While coverage of corruption by newspapers controlled by the authoritarian regime reduces people's perceptions of corruption, exposure to grapevine news significantly increases perceived corruption. Moreover, access to media controlled by the government can significantly dilute the negative impact of grapevine news on perceptions of corruption. ; postprint

Poor protection of private property has limited the access to bank loans by private enterprises in developing and transition economies. Under those circumstances, private entrepreneurs have resorted to various ways of enhancing the de facto protection of private property. Using a dataset of 3,073 private enterprises in China, this paper empirically investigates the impact of political participation and philanthropic activities - informal substitutes for the lack of formal protection of private property - on the access to bank loans. © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. ; published_or_final_version

Despite increasing research on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) by firms from emerging economies, our understanding of the relationship between domestic operations and international diversification of these firms is still limited. Using a unique dataset of Chinese listed firms, we examine the impact of domestic diversification on their international diversification. We find that international diversification is positively affected by firms' domestic industrial and domestic regional diversification. We also find that top management team (TMT)'s previous international experience strengthens the impact of domestic diversification on firms' international diversification, whereas TMT's prior political connections weakens the impact of domestic diversification on international diversification.