In 1994, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report noted excessive disparities in levels of regional development in China.¹ Consequently, in 2000, Chinese leaders launched the Western Region Development Strategy (XiBu Da Kaifa), to focus on the northwest and southwest.² The strategy was initiated to accelerate growth in those regions, thereby facilitating social and political stability, and increasing national unity. The first stage, 2000-2010, is to be accomplished through massive infrastructure investments and environmental protection. This was supported by a series of preferential policies and investments in infrastructure projects. The grand strategy became an important component of national...

The word “ethnic” derives from the Greek expressionethnikòsand from the Latin termethnicus, both used to define “people” and “nation”. The former Christians applied the term to identify “pagans” or more extensively “people belonging to the nation of the non-believers”. In the 17th century, the term ‘ethnic minority’ did not exist; in manuscripts we rather find words such as ‘population’, ‘nation’ and ‘people’, without any specific reference to ‘ethnic minority’. The ethnic groups that the Florentine merchant Francesco Carletti met in Southeast Asia and described in hisCodex1331 were the Bisaya (or Visayan) people, the Chinese, the...

China has experienced astonishingly rapid economic growth over the past 30 years of reforms. This sustained and steady economic development has led to an exceptional increase in real living standards and to an extraordinary decline in poverty. However, the impact of the reforms has also included widespread income disparity, and a markedly smaller increase in income for rural residents as compared to urban residents. This disparity in rural-urban income has been the biggest contributor to the larger problem of equity in China, followed by inter-regional disparity. Of the 48 million people living under the official poverty line in China, the...

The understanding of health care accessibility issues, such as the choice of a health care facility, is essential for informing public decision- and policy-making aimed at improving living conditions. Equity in social welfare has long played a major role in shaping China’s national policies (Liu et al. 2002); however, continued pursuit of the market-oriented reforms introduced in China in the 1970s has resulted in increasing urban- rural and intra- and inter-regional socio-economic disparities (Zhao 2006). This has raised multiple concerns about differences in the availability of health services in urban and rural areas and particularly about the equity of access...

According to China’s 2000 census, there are 5,416,021 Tibetan people in China, most of whom live in the Tibetan plateau region (which includes a large portion of Qinghai Province, the geographic focus of this chapter). The Tibetan plateau region covers 25 per cent of China’s total land area, i.e. around 2.5 million square kilometres. Approximately 45 per cent of the Tibetan population subsists on farming, while a further 40 per cent are nomadic or semi-nomadic (practicing animal husbandry). Only 15 per cent of the population reside in urban areas (Zhang and Zhu 2002). The harsh climate, an average altitude over...

The management of urban ethnic differences has become a topical and passionate subject, with the Canadian and Chinese experiences being no exception. Since the inception of Canada’s multicultural policies in the early 1970s, there has been much written, domestically and abroad, about the nation’s changing social dynamics as a result of the growing ethnic minority population, and the practice of multiculturalism as social policy.¹ In many respects, Canada has become a prominent leader in promoting multiculturalism in a programmatic manner, by designing specific, constitutionally protected policies to manage ethnic differences.

With almost half of its current 4,638,615 population (Statistics Canada...

Since the end of the 1970s, the open door policy and economic reforms in China have revamped the country’s urban economy, which brought about considerable growth in urbanisation (Cao et al. 2000; Perkins 2002). At present, about 40 per cent of the population in China lives in urban areas, compared to only nine per cent at the beginning of the 1980s. Three decades of an accelerated urbanisation pace has profoundly transformed the social and economic context of China. Since the 1990s, a growing body of literature has attempted to describe and explain China’s urbanisation phenomenon from different angles (Goldstein 1990;...

The root causes of displacement and their impact on a society may vary from place to place and community to community according to their socio-economic, political, cultural and environmental identity. But generally, as a result of, or in order to avoid the effect of one or more of these causes, such as political conflicts, natural or human-made disasters and development projects, people have been forced to leave their habitual residence and preferred life, as well as their customs and norms. People who are subjected to displacement experience physical dislocation, separation from habitual environments, social disruption and material dispossession. When this...

The issue of water is expected to acquire vital significance in the years to come. With the increasing pressure of population growth, water is becoming a scarce commodity. Environmentalists warn that future conflicts between regions are going to be based on water. Management and distribution of water resources are becoming matters of great concern for governments. This has led several governments to undertake massive river valley projects that aim to properly distribute water between water deficient and surplus regions. India, although endowed with an enormous quantity of water resources, suffers from both spatial and temporal disparities in water availability. Even...

In March 2006, a symposium was jointly held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Organization for Migration on ‘How should Japan respond to the issue of foreigners?’ (Gaikokujin mondai ni do taisho subeki ka?). At the symposium, the Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Shiozaki Yasuhisa, stressed that the continued march of globalisation, in concert with Japan’s greying population, low birth rates and the continued influx of both illegal and legal foreigners has compelled Japan to seriously consider the manner in which they deal with foreign residents. His statements reified that as of 2005, Japan’s population began to...

While the effects of the 1997 economic crisis wore down all of Asia, most countries on the continent are once again experiencing economic growth. This growth does not come without a cost, however, especially an environmental cost, which is the subject of numerous studies. There is also a huge social cost, which has caused many imbalances, particularly an increase in poverty. Even in a country like the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, where economic development has been much less spectacular than in neighbouring Vietnam or Thaïland (Laos ranked 130th on the Human Development Index in 2005 (HDR 2007/2008)), unbalanced development remains...

Only later did I realise the symbolic enactment I was watching through the basketball game. It was a game between the local government and the tourism company newly established in the village. The government team was obviously at a disadvantage against the company’s team of young athletic players. Government officials played courageously, running after every ball yet never scoring a point. This friendly game, taking place in a primary school playground, could be seen as a representation of the position of power the company had taken up in the village. Their presence and role in the local development of tourism...

The growth of tourism, especially ethnic and cultural tourism, which has provided strong contact between local communities and tourists, has come to impart on the hosts – particularly those belonging to the communities inhabiting remote or peripheral areas – a much stronger awareness of self-conscience, thus raising their confidence in relation to their immediate surroundings and the world beyond.

On the other hand, however, the development of tourism has caused culture to be evaluated mainly in terms of its exchange value, in a commercial context, therefore transforming it into a commodity. The leisure, domestic and religious spaces have in part...