Contemporary Authors

• Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2016

1.  Blue skies over Beijing : economic growth and the environment in China LCCN 2015045023 Type of material Book Personal name Kahn, Matthew E., 1966- author. Main title Blue skies over Beijing : economic growth and the environment in China / Matthew E. Kahn and Siqi Zheng. Published/Produced Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2016] Description 271 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm ISBN 9780691169361 (hardback) CALL NUMBER HC430.E5 K34 2016 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• International Growth Centre Website - http://www.theigc.org/person/siqi-zheng/

  Siqi Zheng
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  Siqi Zheng is a Professor and the Director at the Hang Lung Center for Real Estate and the deputy head of the Department of Construction Management, both at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She specializes in urban economics and China’s housing market, particularly urban spatial structure, green cities, housing supply and demand, housing price dynamics, and low-income housing policies. Her innovative and diverse research projects have been supported by international research institutions including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the International Growth Center at London School of Economics, and various departments of the Chinese government including the National Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the National Statistics Bureau of China. Dr. Zheng received her Ph.D. in urban economics and real estate economics from Tsinghua University, and she pursued post-doctoral research in urban economics at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. She is a research fellow at both the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy and the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance at Tsinghua University. Dr. Zheng is also the vice secretary-general of the Global Chinese Real Estate Congress. She has won awards such as the Homer Hoyt Post-Doctoral Honoree (2010) and the Best Paper Award from the Asian Real Estate Society (2014). She is also the Associate Editor of Journal of Economic Surveys, and on the editorial boards of Journal of Housing Economics and International Real Estate Review.

• Department of Construction Management, Tsinghua University Website - http://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/cmen/3768/2010/20101226134735256788792/20101226134735256788792_.html

  Dr. ZHENG Siqi
  Associate Professor, Institute of Real Estate Studies
  Deputy Head, Department of Construction Management
  He Shanheng Building, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China
  Phone: (8610) 62772734
  E-mail: zhengsiqi@tsinghua.edu.cn
  Experience
  Deputy Head, Department of Construction Management (Oct. 2010 to present)
  Associate Professor, Institute of Real Estate Studies, Department of Construction Management, Tsinghua University (Dec. 2007 to present)
  Assistant Professor, Institute of Real Estate Studies, Department of Construction Management, Tsinghua University (Mar. 2005 to Dec. 2007)
  Concurrent Academic
  Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Real Estate, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York
  Research Fellow, Peking University – Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy
  Research Fellow, Center for Industry Development and Environmental Governance (CIDEG), School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University
  Research Affiliate, Real Estate Academic Initiative, Harvard University
  Social service
  Vice Secretary, Global Chinese Real Estate Congress (GCREC)
  Vice Secretary, Chinese Association of Real Estate Education and Research
  Examination Committee Member, China’s National Examination of Registered Real Estate Appraiser
  Editorial Board Member, Journal of Housing Economics
  Associate Editor, International Real Estate Review
  Areas of Research Interests/ Research Projects
  Research Interests:
  (1) Dr. Siqi Zheng’s field of specialization is urban economics and housing market. Her research interests include urban spatial structure, urban growth and sustainable development; housing supply, housing choices, low-income housing policies.
  (2) She is also interested in real estate economics and finance, including real estate price index, price dynamics and public housing finance.
  Recent Research Projects:
  (1) “Spatial Integrated Modeling of Land-Use-Transportation-Environment in Chinese Cities”, sponsored by the National Nature Science Fund (70973065), 2010~2012, Principle Investigator.
  (2) “Land Supply Strategies for Low-Income Housing Projects”, sponsored by the National Social Science Fund (Major Project), 2010~2012, Co-Investigator.
  (3) “The Impacts of Local Government Behaviors on Land and Housing Markets”, sponsored by Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, 2010~2011, Principle Investigator.
  (4) “The Statistic System of Real Estate Market in China”, sponsored by National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2010~2011, Principle Investigator.
  (5) “Housing Affordability and Sustainability in Chinese Cities”, sponsored by Peking University - Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy, 2010~2011, Principle Investigator.
  (6) “Land Use and Transportation Integrated Modeling in Beijing”, sponsored by Beijing Municipal Institute of City Planning & Design, 2009~2010, Principle Investigator.
  (7) “Forecasting Models in Chinese Real Estate Market”, sponsored by Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, 2008~2010, Principle Investigator.
  (8) “Spatial Analysis of Real Estate Market in Chengdu”, sponsored by Chengdu Urban-Rural Real Estate Bureau, 2010, Principle Investigator.
  (9) “The Greenness of Cities: Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Urban Development in China”, sponsored by Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2008~2010, Principle Investigator.
   
  Academic Achievement
  SSCI:
  (1) Siqi Zheng, Rui Wang, Edward L. Glaeser and Matthew E. Kahn. The Greenness of China: Household Carbon Emissions and Urban Development. Journal of Economic Geography. 10(6), 2010:1-32.
  (2) Siqi Zheng, Matthew E. Kahn and Hongyu Liu. Towards a System of Open Cities in China: Home Prices, FDI flows and Air Quality in 35 Major Cities. 2009. Regional Science and Urban Economics. 40, 2010: 1-10.
  (3) Siqi Zheng, Fenjie Long, Cindy Fan and Yizhen Gu. Urban Villages in China: A 2008 Survey of Migrant Settlements in Beijing. Eurasian Geography and Economics. 50(4), 2009: 1-22.
  (4) Siqi Zheng, Richard B. Peiser and Wenzhong Zhang. The Rise of External Economies in Beijing: Evidence from Intra-urban Wage Variation. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 49, 2009: 449-459.
  (5) Siqi Zheng, Yuming Fu and Hongyu Liu. Demand for Urban Quality of Living in China: Evidence from Cross-City Land Rent Growth. Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 38, 2009: 194-213.
  (6) Siqi Zheng and Matthew E. Kahn. Land and Residential Property Markets in a Booming Economy: New Evidence from Beijing. Journal of Urban Economics, 63, 2008: 743-757.
  (7) Siqi Zheng, Yuming Fu and Hongyu Liu. Housing-Choice Hindrances and Urban Spatial Structure: Evidence from Matched Location and Location-Preference Data in Chinese Cities, Journal of Urban Economics, 60, 2006: 535-557.
  EI&CSSCI:
  (1) Ding Wenjie, Siqi Zheng, Guo Xiaoyang. Value of Access to Jobs and Amenities: Evidence for New Residential Properties in Beijing. Tsinghua Science and Technology, 2010, forthcoming.
  (2) Fenjie Long, Ming Guo, Siqi Zheng. Estimating the Willingness-to-Pay for Housing in Chinese Cities. Tsinghua Science and Technology, 14(3), 2009: 360-366.
  (3) Jing Wu and Siqi Zheng. Determinants of Housing Liquidity in Chinese Cities: Does Market Maturity Matter? Tsinghua Science and Technology, 13(5), 2008: 689-695.
  (4) Siqi Zheng, Hongyu Liu and Rebecca Lee. Buyer Search and the Role of Broker in an Emerging Housing Market: A Case Study of Guangzhou, Tsinghua Science and Technology, 11(6), 2006: 675-685.
  (5) Siqi Zheng and Hongyu Liu. Interaction among Construction Investment, Other Investment and GDP in China, Tsinghua Science and Technology, 9(2), 2004:160-167.
  (6) Fengjie Long, Siqi Zheng, Yijun Wang and Ming Guo. Value estimates of local public services using a spatial econometric model. 49(12), 2009: 2028-2031.
  (7) Jing Wu, Siqi Zheng and Hongyu Liu. The Representativeness of the Sample Error and its Correction in Housing price statistics. China Civil Engineering Journal. 2(3), 2009,4 : 140-144.
  (8) Rongrong Ren, Siqi Zheng and Yijun Wang. Non-parametric Estimation of the Land Use Spatial Model. Journal of Tsinghua University. 49(3), 2008: 325-328.
  (9) Xiqun Chen and Siqi Zheng. Average Duration of Return for Evaluation of Mutually Exclusive Projects. China Civil Engineering Journal, 40(11), 2007: 104-109.
  (10) Siqi Zheng and Hongyu Liu. Income Elasticity of Housing Demand in China: Model, Estimation and Forecast. 7, 2005: 320-324.
  (11) The Econometrical Model and Analysis on Relationship between Construction Investment and Economic Growth in China. Journal of Tsinghua University(Philosophy and Social Sciences),2, 2002: 87-92.
  (12) Siqi Zheng, Yuming Fu and Rongrong Ren. Who should Pay for Housing Security Programs:The Central Government or Local Governments? Journal of Public Administration, 6, 2009: 30-46.
  (13) Siqi Zheng and Yang Cao. Rural Migrants’ Housing Issues: A Study based on Economic Growth and Social Integration. Guangdong Social Science. 2009, 5: 34-41.
  (14) Siqi Zheng and Yang Cao. The Spatial Relationship between Jobs and Housing in Chinese cities: An Empirical Study Using Two Micro Datasets. Urban Studies. 2009. 6, 16(6): 29-35.
  Selected Books:
  (1) Siqi Zheng. A Microeconomic Study of Housing Demand in China. Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 2007.
  (2) Hongyu Liu and Siqi Zheng. Urban and Real Estate Economics. Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 2007.
  (3) Hongyu Liu and Siqi Zheng. Real Estate Broker Service: Theories and Practices. Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 2006.

• Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Website - https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/faculty-profile-41

  Faculty Profile
  Siqi Zheng

  July 2012
  English
  Appears in Land Lines, July 2012
  Siqi Zheng is an associate professor at the Hang Lung Center for Real Estate and the deputy head of the Department of Construction Management, both at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She specializes in urban economics and China's housing market, particularly urban spatial structure, green cities, housing supply and demand, housing price dynamics, and low-income housing policies.
  Her innovative and diverse research projects have been supported by international research institutions including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the International Growth Center at London School of Economics, and various departments of the Chinese government including the National Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the National Statistics Bureau of China.
  Dr. Zheng received her Ph.D. in urban economics and real estate economics from Tsinghua University, and she pursued post-doctoral research in urban economics at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. She is a research fellow at both the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy and the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance at Tsinghua University.
  Dr. Zheng is also the vice secretary-general of the Global Chinese Real Estate Congress. She has won awards such as the Homer Hoyt Post-Doctoral Honoree (2010) and the Best Paper Award from the American Real Estate Society (2005). She is also on the editorial boards of Journal of Housing Economics and International Real Estate Review.
  Land Lines: How did you become associated with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and its programs in China?
  Siqi Zheng: I first learned about the Lincoln Institute when I did my postdoctoral research at Harvard University in 2005-2006. I joined the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy (PLC) as a research fellow soon after it was established in 2007. From that time I became fully involved in PLC's research activities, such as conducting research projects, reviewing research proposals, and participating in conferences. I was awarded an international research fellowship by the Lincoln Institute in 2008-2009, with my colleagues Yuming Fu and Hongyu Liu, to study urban housing opportunities in various Chinese cities. I now lead the housing team at PLC in conducting policy-relevant research in the areas of housing market analysis and low-income housing policies.
  Land Lines: Why is the study of the urban economics and the housing market so important to China's future?
  Siqi Zheng: China is experiencing rapid urbanization at a rate of about 50 percent in 2011, but it is expected to reach 70 percent over the next 10 to 20 years. Up to 1.5 million new migrants already move to Chinese cities per year. Such rapid urban growth offers potentially large economic benefits, as cities offer much better opportunities to trade, to learn, and to specialize in an occupation that offers an individual the greatest opportunity to achieve life goals.
  However, rapid urbanization also imposes potentially large social costs, such as pollution and congestion, and urban quality of life suffers from a fundamental tragedy of the commons problem. Urban economics research addresses these issues and tries to figure out a way to maximize agglomeration economies and at the same time minimize congestion diseconomies. This is crucial for China's future, because urbanization is the engine for China's growth.
  The housing sector is a key determinant of both the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of urban growth. Along the quantitative dimension, everyone in the city needs some place to live. Housing supply has important influences on a city's overall size and its living cost, and thus the labor cost. Along the qualitative dimension, intensive social interactions happen in vibrant urban communities and neighborhoods. The spillover effect arising from such activities reduces the cost of learning and contributes to human capital improvement.
  Low-income housing is a major policy issue in China. Income inequality is rising and housing prices are very high in major Chinese cities, so low-income households face severe affordability problems. For years the Chinese government had overlooked the supply of affordable housing, but it has recently began to understand that well-designed policies for low-income housing are crucial for achieving more inclusive urban growth opportunities for all residents.
  Land Lines: How do you approach the study of urban economics and China's housing market?
  Siqi Zheng: I am doing cross-city and within-city studies on the intersection of urban and environmental economics. With increasing labor mobility across cities, China is moving toward a system of open cities. Under the compensating differentials framework, I use city-level real estate prices to recover households' willingness-to-pay for urban amenities, such as better air quality, more green space, and educational opportunities. My basic finding is that Chinese urban households do value quality of life. As China's urbanites grow richer over time, their desire to live in clean, low-risk cities is rising.
  Within a city, I examine the jobs-housing spatial interactions--where people live, where they work, and how they choose their commuting mode. I use household survey data and real estate transaction data to model these behaviors, since individual choices determine the basic pattern of urban form. Those individual behaviors ("snowballs") also have important implications for the interrelationships among land use, transportation, and the urban environment, because car ownership is rising and the increase in vehicle miles traveled has become a major contributor to pollution in Chinese cities.
  I also focus on housing market dynamics and low-income housing policies. Our Tsinghua team constructed the first quality-controlled hedonic price index based on transaction data in 40 Chinese cities. My coauthors and I estimate the income elasticity of housing demand and the price elasticity of housing supply, and examine the determinants of such elasticities. Using microdata, I investigate how land and housing supply and public investments affect price and quantity dynamics in the urban housing market. I pay close attention to the housing choices of low-income households and rural migrants. Based on my behavior-based empirical study using microdata, I explore the kinds of urban and housing policies that can improve the position of these disadvantaged groups in both housing and labor markets.
  Land Lines: What challenges do you think China will face in this field in the coming decade?
  Siqi Zheng: The major challenge is how to achieve a successful transition toward sustainability. China's rapid economic growth in recent years was largely export-based and benefited from low labor, land, and regulatory costs. The environmental disasters and social unrest that have occurred in many places in China indicate that the current approach is not sustainable for the long term.
  Policy makers should reshape urban policies in a variety of ways. Remaining institutional barriers on labor mobility should be removed. Negative externalities of urban production and consumption activities (such as pollution and congestion) should be priced correctly so that individuals' behaviors are consistent with the socially optimal solution. Income inequality and spatial inequality issues should be addressed. More investment in human capital is needed. Housing plays a pivot role because it is the largest asset a household owns, and it also affects accessibility to urban opportunities and the quality of social interactions.
  Land Lines: What are some potential policy implications of this research on the housing market?
  Siqi Zheng: Most of my work is empirical analysis with microdata, so I can focus on the incentives and choices made by individuals, firms, and governments. I also look at how these choices determine urban form, local quality of life, the labor market, and housing market outcomes. In this way I can provide key parameters for policy makers to support their policy design. For instance, I identify the cities with different housing supply and demand conditions, and suggest that officials should offer different low-income housing policy choices. Cities with an abundant housing stock can use demand-side instruments such as housing vouchers, but those without enough housing should use supply-side instruments such as building more public housing.
  Land Lines: Is China's experience with housing market development useful to share with other developing countries?
  Siqi Zheng: Yes, because many countries also face difficult situations in their housing sectors. Some of the common challenges are how to house the vast numbers of rural migrants in cities; how to provide more affordable housing for increasing numbers of low-income people; where and by what means to provide such housing; and, as cities expand spatially, what are the appropriate urban planning policies and infrastructure investment strategies that can achieve efficient and inclusive urban growth? Through the research conferences and publications produced by the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center, China's experiences are already providing lessons for other developing countries.
  Land Lines: Can you describe some examples of housing supply in the informal housing sector?
  Siqi Zheng: Nations such as Brazil, India, and China have many poor migrants living in squatter and informal areas. Local governments have little incentive to provide public services to such areas because the improvements, including clean water and sewerage facilities, will simply stimulate more urban migration.
  Chengzhongcun (urban village) is a typical type of informal housing in large Chinese cities. It represents a match between migrants' demand for low-cost housing and the supply of housing available in the villages being encroached upon by urban expansion. High crime rates, inadequate infrastructure and services, and poor living conditions are just some of the problems in urban villages that threaten public security and management. My research on Chengzhongcun shows that local governments at first liked this kind of low-cost informal housing because it can lower labor costs and thus contribute to higher GDP growth in their cities. However, the low quality of social interaction and the shortage of basic public services do not provide a sustainable way of life for the poor rural migrants.
  As the industrial sector moves toward a more skill-intensive economy, local governments should consider how to improve the quality of human capital rather than focus on the quantity of cheap labor. This may provide the incentive to upgrade informal housing and transform it to formal housing, or provide public housing to those migrants so they can access more urban opportunities and improve their skills. This transitional process is now occurring in China, and will soon happen in other developing countries that can benefit from China's experience.
  Another example is the role of housing supply in urban growth. Many studies already show that housing supply can support or constrain urban growth because the size and price of housing stock influence labor supply and living costs. In developing countries land and housing supply are influenced by government regulations and behaviors to a greater extent than in developed countries. The design of housing supply policies needs to accommodate future urban growth for all sectors of society.
  I have written many working papers on these topics and contributed to the 2011 Lincoln Institute book, China's Housing Reform and Outcomes, edited by Joyce Yanyun Man, director of the Peking-Lincoln Center at Peking University.

• Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Website - https://dusp.mit.edu/faculty/siqi-zheng

  Prof. Zheng’s field of specialization is urban and environmental economics, urban development and real estate market, with a special focus on China. She published in many peer reviewed English journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Economic Geography, European Economic Review, Journal of Urban Economics, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Transportation Research Part A, Environment and Planning A, Ecological Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. A book she has co-authored, Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China (Princeton University Press) was published in May 2016. She has also published more than 100 papers and two books in Chinese. She is the Associated Editor of Journal of Economic Surveys, and is on the editorial board of Journal of Housing Economics and International Real Estate Review. She is the Vice General Secretary of the Global Chinese Real Estate Congress and on the board of the Asian Real Estate Society. Dr. Zheng has completed or been undertaking research projects granted or entrusted by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the National Statistics Bureau of China, among others. She received her Ph.D. in urban development and real estate from Tsinghua University in 2005, and did her post-doc research at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Prior to coming to MIT, she was a professor and the director of Hang Lung Center for Real Estate at Tsinghua University, China.
  Areas of Interests:
  Urban Economics and Development, Real Estate Market and Policy, Environmental Quality of Urbanization

• MIT News - http://news.mit.edu/2017/3q-siqi-zheng-on-air-quality-and-urban-development-in-china-0519

  3Q: Siqi Zheng on air quality and urban development in China
  Author of “Blue Skies over Beijing” links Chinese air quality and urban development.
  Joanne Wong | School of Architecture and Planning
  May 19, 2017
  Press Inquiries
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  Comment

  MIT Professor Siqi Zheng is the Samuel Tak Lee Associate Professor of Real Estate Development and Entrepreneurship within MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning and Center for Real Estate. She is also faculty director of the MIT Samuel Tak Lee Real Estate Entrepreneurship Lab and author, with Matthew E. Kahn, of "Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China" (Princeton University Press, 2016). The book takes a microeconomic perspective on how pollution affects Chinese cities, and it recently won an honorable mention in the category of environmental science at the 2017 PROSE Awards, sponsored by the Association of American Publishers.
  Zheng holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Tsinghua University, where she also earned a PhD in urban economics and real estate and taught for 10 years after doing postdoctoral work at Harvard University. On her approach to research, she says, “I realized that just studying the housing market is a bit narrow, and we need to understand housing from the urban perspective. People come to the city for good jobs, or amenities like schools, health care, museums, and other public services. In cities with cleaner air or in areas with big parks, housing prices tend to be higher, all else being equal. That was my starting point to look at environmental topics.” Zheng spoke with the School of Architecture and Planning about "Blue Skies" and today's environmental and economic realities in China.
  Q: Your book uses stories about individuals to demonstrate the impact of pollution on the urban population in China. Why did you and your coauthor use this as a technique to understand advances in sustainable development and environmental planning?
  A: My coauthor and I have written many papers together, published in academic journals. When we decided to write a book, we wanted to generate impact not only for academics but also for policy makers and the general public. That’s why we chose to use individual stories. The basic logic of the book builds on our papers, but we don’t have regression tables in there. We want Chinese policy makers to read this and change their minds. I also rewrote this book in Chinese and it generated some impact.
  We also considered the readers here in the United States. Many Americans only hear about carbon emissions from China and how that will have negative impact for the United States, but they don’t care about local pollution in China because it has nothing to do with them. We want to change that thinking. We can’t only care about global-scale climate change; we also need to consider the local quality of life because these two things are closely related. If you want to know more about China’s future, you need to understand its local life.
  Q: The debate between economic growth and sustainable development is a contested one here in the United States and in China as well. What do you think is a good way for us to think about these seemingly incompatible priorities and how to reconcile them?
  A: There are two ways to think of this. One way is spatial. There is a huge variation in economic growth among Chinese cities, with rich ones on the coast and poor ones inland. Richer cities now have reached a stage where they care more about the environment because they are transitioning from the old manufacturing-dominated model to new, human-capital-driven economic growth. They need to improve quality of life in the whole city to attract highly skilled workers.
  Cleaning the air is not throwing money away; it’s actually an investment to generate a return through the arrival of new human capital and its contribution to the economy. Poor cities, however, have no choice. They still need those dirty factories for tax revenue and GDP growth. They have to receive the incoming dirty factories that may be driven out of rich cities. That is the spatial perspective, and it may be one cause of inequality.
  The other perspective is temporal. When China has high economic growth and everything is booming, the central government really wants to push local governments to go green and regulate the dirty industries. But when there is a downturn in the macro economy, they become hesitant because they still need those heavy industries to generate jobs. It’s like a policy cycle. Now that we are in economic decline, the central and local governments are once again investing a lot in the manufacturing sector, and you will observe that air quality in some cities has started to worsen again.
  Q: The rising Chinese middle class wants a lifestyle similar to that of the middle class in other developed countries, but they are being told that they cannot have the material things that others may take for granted, because of environmental concerns. Does that makes it difficult for the environmental cause?
  A: We need to acknowledge the reality that China is very big, and major Chinese cities have extremely high density. And with rising income, private car ownership has experienced a sharp increase in China, so in Beijing and Shanghai there are driving restrictions and license auctions.
  Urban planners need to consider how to reconcile people’s demand for better quality of life with  other constraints. Environmental constraints are one, land constraints are another. We cannot convert all farm land to urban use. That’s a special challenge for urban planners in China. We need to make more trade-offs between people’s private demand and ways to mitigate the negative externalities they create.
  Let me give you three examples from the transportation sector. If we build enough public transit—especially a subway system—that would encourage people to use the subway instead of driving. In my research, I found that when a subway station opens, nearby households do increase their subway rideshare, at the expense of driving. Our suggestion for planners is to change the zoning in areas close to subway stops to increase residential density, so that those areas can accommodate more housing units.
  Another of my papers demonstrates that high-income and low-income people actually have a similar willingness to pay for a square meter of housing in those good locations around subway stations. But because the size of those houses is large, low-income households cannot afford to live there. But if you build small units in high density in those places, it will help lower-income people afford those units and have a convenient commute.
  The third example is about traffic management. Current urban traffic management in China is inadequate, meaning that given the same number of cars, Chinese cities experience more congestion than, for example, Tokyo. If we have more efficient traffic management, we can effectively reduce congestion and other negative externalities, with the same number of cars on the road. We cannot just restrict cars without considering our management skills and people’s driving habits. 

Kahn, Matthew E. & Siqi Zheng. Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China

Casey Watters
141.10 (June 1, 2016): p103.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Kahn, Matthew E. & Siqi Zheng. Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China. Princeton Univ. Jun. 2016.288p. illus. maps, notes, index. ISBN 9780691169361. $32.95; ebk. ISBN 9781400882816. ECON
China's unprecedented growth has made the country both the envy of the developing world and infamous for pollution. Kahn (economics, Univ. of Southern California; Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment) and Zheng (deputy head, Dept, of Construction Management, Tsinghua Univ., China) provide an overview of pollution and environmental policy in China over the last several decades. The authors postulate that although past growth "relied on the smokestack model, an approach that yielded economic growth but also led to very high levels of local and global pollution," poor air quality will decrease, as has been seen in some cities, and that ultimately "economic growth is positively associated with improvements to the environment." The authors use this theme to frame a variety of environmental issues. The book provides substantial data but covers a wide breadth of topics including industry-specific pollution data, activism, litigation, and government policies. VERDICT Easily understandable regardless of a reader's familiarity with China or environmental policy, this excellent resource will interest readers of the environmental situation in China and its impact on the global community.--Casey Watters, Singapore Management Univ.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Watters, Casey. "Kahn, Matthew E. & Siqi Zheng. Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China." Library Journal, 1 June 2016, p. 103. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA453919940&it=r&asid=1470bcde3ce02c052859cf55ec0d6a11. Accessed 11 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A453919940

Watters, Casey. "Kahn, Matthew E. & Siqi Zheng. Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China." Library Journal, 1 June 2016, p. 103. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA453919940&asid=1470bcde3ce02c052859cf55ec0d6a11. Accessed 11 Aug. 2017.

• Waterwired
  http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/2017/04/g-tracy-mehan-iii-book-review-blue-skies-over-beijing-or-a-journey-up-and-down-the-kuznets-curve.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FFdoQ+%28WaterWired%29
  Word count: 340

  Wednesday, 19 April 2017
  G. Tracy Mehan III Book Review: 'Blue Skies Over Beijing' or 'A Journey Up and Down the Kuznets Curve'
   G. Tracy Mehan III, a frequent contributor to WaterWired, is the former Assistant Administrator for Water at US EPA in the administration of President George W. Bush and now executive director for government affairs at

  the American Water Works Association, the world’s oldest and largest water association with 50,000 members. He writes great reviews (and other things) so when he sends me something I put it up.
  In this review of Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China, he escorts us up and down the (environmental) Kuznets curve, which posits an inverted U-curve relationship between environmental quality and economic growth as shown in this graphic from Wikipedia. But his review is so much more than that. Give it a read.
  Download Blue_Skies_over_Beijing
  The first few paragraphs of the review:

  China, like the former Soviet Union, is plagued by environmental challenges experienced only by a country or society where the government technically and practically owns everything, fails to respect rights of private property, subsidizes industrial production, obliterates the distinction between regulated and regulator, and sup- presses free and open elections and anything like a consistent rule of law, while harboring a brutalist view of natural resources and the environment. In such places government failure rivals market failure as the cause of many, if not most, environmental problems.
  However, since its move toward economic, not political, liberalization of the economy in the 1980s, China has succeeded at least in producing wealth for its population. As described in Matthew E. Kahn and Siqi Zheng’s impressive new book Blue Skies over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China, over the last 30 years, the nation’s economy grew at an amazing rate of 10 percent per year, and the share of people living below the poverty line fell from 84 percent to 13 percent.
  Enjoy!

• Asian Review of Books
  http://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/archived-article/?articleID=2620
  Word count: 1034

  Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China by Matthew by E. Kahn and Siqi Zheng
  W
  hen Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg travelled to Beijing in March 2016, he raised eyebrows with a photo-op in Tiananmen Square. In a week of thick smog, Zuckerberg dressed in workout gear and went jogging—without a facemask. Chinese viewers were shocked, and argued that Zuckerberg’s stunt was not just uncomfortable, but positively dangerous.

  Blue Skies Over Beijing: Economic Growth and the Environment in China, Matthew by E Kahn, Siqi Zheng (Princeton University Press, May 2016)
  The media often portrays China—with some justification—as an environmental hellhole, created by a development program that prioritizes economic growth over everything else. Almost all of China’s major cities have severe air pollution problems. Heavy industry has contaminated large portions of China’s land: a recent government report estimated that over 80% of China’s sources of groundwater are now unfit for human consumption. China has been blamed for worsened air pollution in South Korea, Japan and even California. Finally, China is now the world’s largest carbon emitter in absolute terms.
  Blue Skies Over Beijing is a more optimistic look at China’s environmental future. Professors Matthew Kahn of Princeton and Siqi Zheng of Tsinghua University argue that China’s continued economic development will eventually improve China’s environmental performance, rather than worsen it further. They argue that China’s growth has created an urban middle class that cares deeply about air pollution, water contamination, food safety and other environmental concerns and who is more willing to “sacrifice” greater income for a better quality of living.
   
  This is not a new idea: Kahn and Zheng refer to the “environmental Kuznets curve”, which models the relationship between per capita income and environmental damage as a bell curve. Poor economies do not have enough consumers or producers to do any significant damage. As countries develop, expanding industry and increasing consumption uses up greater amounts of resources: the positive impact of greater income and consumption on people’s quality of life is greater than the negative impact of environmental degradation. However, at some level of per capita income, this is no longer true—the costs of air pollution and other environmental problems to the individual are no longer smaller than the benefits of increased development.
  It has been argued that the United States went through a similar process in the 1970s. America’s growing middle class began to support more comprehensive environmental regulation, such as the passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
  One could plausibly argue that the United States’s experience would not be repeated in China. For one, China is not a democracy—Beijing does not necessarily have to listen to the middle class’s concerns about pollution. If one believes China to be both corrupt and authoritarian, then any conflict between the middle class and vested interests would be resolved in support of the latter.
  Kahn and Zheng  show that China’s middle class are beginning to value quality of life over development, and that China’s government is reacting to this by instituting stricter pollution controls in the major cities. Kahn and Zheng estimate that over half of China’s cities have passed the “top” of the environmental Kuznets Curve, and that virtually all of China’s cities will have passed this point by 2030.
  A subject of interest would be how the Chinese public have communicated their wish for greater environmental protection, and why the government has chosen to respond. Kahn and Zheng do not dive very deeply into this question, but Blue Skies implies that China’s government is capable of recognizing and reacting to the public mood on a given issue—despite the fact that it is not a democracy.

  Blue Skies Over Beijing is thus a shot of good news when talking about China’s environmental issues. Economic development, rather than hurting China’s environmental performance, may in fact improve it.
  However, the book does not completely alleviate these fears. The book focuses on the urban coastal middle class—the poor, especially inland, are less discussed. Kahn and Zheng argue that stricter coastal regulations may push polluting factories inland. They argue that this improves public health, as pollution then affects smaller inland populations as opposed to larger coastal ones. This conclusion seems technically true, yet still seems uncomfortable.
  In addition, China’s large geographical inequality means that it will always have more fragmented policies. This is not true in other developed economies: the difference in the level of development between Massachusetts and Mississippi is much smaller than the difference between Guangdong and Gansu. Thus, whereas the United States could pass national environmental legislation, China must pick and choose which areas get environmental regulation and which areas must still suffer through a polluting program of development.
  Finally, Blue Skies is optimistic about the middle class’s ability to resolve visible and obvious environmental problems. Pollution is one such problem, as its costs are clear to anyone who looks outside of the window. Food safety is another such issue, as an issue that has obvious effects on how people live their day-to-day lives.
  But other environmental issues have costs that are more difficult to recognize. There is little evidence to suggest that economic development has directly encouraged regulations on carbon emissions, for example—otherwise, the United States would be leading the world in carbon reduction.
  The same is probably true in China: Blue Skies Over Beijing does not provide much illumination, as Kahn and Zheng relegate greenhouse gases to a few pages in their conclusion. Moves towards carbon reduction—in both the United States and China—have largely been ahead of public feelings over carbon emissions and climate change, rather than reacting to them.
  Blue Skies Over Beijing implies that both democracies and authoritarian states are similarly capable of passing significant environmental regulation if their people demand it. However, it may be that they are similarly incapable of passing what is now needed.

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