Use of mile by Chinese scholar

Comments on Cai Fang “A tale of two cities: Chinese labor market performance in 2009 and reform priority in 2010”, 25/12/2009, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2009/12/25/a-tale-of-two-cities-chinese-labor-market-performance-in-2009-and-reform-priority-in-2010/

This is an interesting paper, although it is falling far too short in detail about how the hukou system was in play to have so drastically and categorically different effects on in the two cities mentioned.

Why did the same system, in the same country, faced with the same externally generated crisis faired so differently?

Was that because of the hukou system, or was that because of other reasons, like different stages of development, different structure of the economy?

A minor point: why was the author using "mile" as the unit of distance in China?

Was it because China has learned so much from either the America or British that it has abandoned what was once labelled as the international, scientific unit of measurement?

Or was it because that occurred in the economically more advanced southern region?

Or was it because the Academy of Social Science leading the country in making another revolution?

The huge American influence it seems to have on some Chinese people!

Or maybe it is a result of globalisation, although ironically this is in the wake of such a crisis in many decades!

Strange Chinese!