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4. Funded Research Projects

migration histories will be studied. The adoption of a life-course approach helps

shed light on such issues as: how people brought up in different periods of China’s
recent history of unprecedented political, economic and social changes progress
along the housing career; the validity of the thesis of residential mobility as a

spatial adjustment process for individuals and households of different

socioeconomic background, especially hukou status, and age cohorts, and how
China’s persistent socialist legacies affect residential relocation; the extent to
which specific events particularly those related to housing and financial reforms

trigger or inhibit residential mobility.

4.6 From Villagers to Urban Citizen: A Workshop on Rural

Urbanization in China’s Lagging Inland and Frontier
Regions (on-going project)

Principal Investigator: Prof. Li Si-ming
Director of LEWI, Convenor of Urbanization and

Mobility Working Group of LEWI and
Chair Professor of Geography

Source of Funding: Institute of Creativity, HKBU
Amount Awarded: HKD100,000

Brief Introduction:

Much of urban China research has focused on the eastern coastal region and

leading metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai. Relatively little is known
about urbanization and urban land development in the interior and western

frontier regions. While the market-oriented reforms have further marginalized
these regions, they have benefited from massive injections of funds under the Go
West policy instituted since 2000. This conference aims to exemplify inter-

disciplinary, inter-institutional and international academic collaboration, to
explore and examine the many facets of urbanization and urban land

development in China’s lagging inland and frontier regions.

The workshop is particularly timely, given China’s current pledge to develop “a
new type of urbanization” which purports to be more socially inclusive and

environmentally sustainable, and to rebuild the Silk Road, the millennia-old trade

HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY | David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies 30