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Urban transition in China: the
emergence of city-region
governance
Fulong Wu
School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University
Presented in Conference of Regional Economies in a Globalising World:
Enhancing Intellectual Capacity and Innovation. 21st November 2008, Cardiff,
Wales, UK
Urban transition at the regional
economy scale
The China story:
Demise of (socialist) redistributive regional policy
The rise of entrepreneurial cities
The crisis of urban entrepreneurialism
Rescaling towards city-region governance
In response to globalization
A Chinese model?
Export-oriented development following East Asian (the
flying goose model), but does not pay attention to
Chinese specificity
‘Neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics’ (Harvey 2005)
A world factory regime – turning the socialist legacy into
competition instruments: rural migrants + regional
economies + urban entrepreneurialism
Changing regional governance in China: a conceptual framework
Historical
formation
Form of state spatial
selectivity
Form of urban-regional
regulation
Major conflicts and
contradictions
State
socialism
1949-78
The national scale of
statehood as overarching
governance
Managerialism achieved
through hierarchical
planning coordination in the
planned economy
Urban-rural dualism
Early market
reformist
regime
1979-2001
Rising localities
Urban entrepreneurialism
Fierce inter-city
competition
Uncoordinated and
redundant
Post-WTO
market
society
2001 - present
Up-scaling towards the
city-region, but this scale
is only a layer of ‘soft
institution’ without
legislation or
administrative power
The dominance of large
cities
Devolution of planning
control
Spatial plans, especially the
centrally-initiated
coordination plan for larger
city-regions,
Building regional soft
institutions such as mayors
meeting, joint regional
forum / councils
The city-region as an
‘imagined community’ but
continues to see
conflicting and diverse
interests.
Entrepreneurial urban governance
Shift from ideological purity and class struggle to the
pragmatism of ‘growth first’ of Deng Xiaoping
Institutional foundation: hardening the ‘soft budget’
(Walder 1995), local corporatism in rural China (Oi
1997), and de facto federalism (Yinyi Qian’s work)
A proliferated literature on China’s central and local
relation, e.g. the fiscal relation (Wong 1991, Zhang
1999)
Pro-growth coalition (Zhu 1999; Zhang 2002), based on
landed revenue
A story beyond Shanghai: the emerging world
factor in the Yangtze River Delta
The case of Kunshan:
A county-level city under Suzhou municipality
The ‘little sixth’
Self-funded development zone, gained state
recognition
Rapid growth in IT industry
Now aspirating to become Shanghai’s “edge
city”
The location of Kunshan
1000
亿元
900
WTO, world factory
Opening of Shanghai’s pudong
800
改革开放
700
昆山开办工业区
开发浦东
中国入世
长江三角洲快速发展
世界工厂
600
500
400
300
200
100
Phenomenal growth of Kunshan, the county-level city at the margin of Shanghai’s
cit-region
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1985
1980
0
1978
100
million
1,100 ICT companies, invested 14 billion USD
Notebooks account for 40% of the world total production
Major ICT production base
Figure 4 layout of Huangqiao Business Park
中城集团总部
现代物流基地
建滔集团总部
延伸保税叠加
功能吸引展览
展示、国际采
购等高端部分
业务
苏豪国际广场
Construction of
headquarter economy
The entrepreneurial city in crisis
Fierce inter-city competition
Redundant construction
Pursuing similar economic sector => over-supply, low-value
added
Ecological crisis
The fight between Kunshan and Shanghai:
“173 Project”: releasing 173 km2 ‘free land’ to draw
investors back from Jiangsu province
Jiangsu province: fighting back with 1730 km2 of an
industrial belt surrounding Shanghai
The expansion of the built-up area in the Taihu area
Source: Qiu Baoxing presentation in 2007
Water pollution
Dian Lake in Kunmin
Pollution of the River Huai
City-region governance as the management
of the crisis of entrepreneurial cities
The need for regional governance
The return of ‘public policy’? (replaced with the notion of
‘sustainability’)
The subtle yet profound change of political ethos: from
Deng Xiaoping: “growth is hard truth”, to Hu Jintao:
the “scientific approach to growth”.
(A) Strategic spatial plans
(B) Soft regional institutions
(A) Spatial strategic plans
The emergence of ‘conceptual plans’, resulted from
entrepreneurial thrusts
These ‘conceptual plans’ are non-statutory plans
China’s planning system: two-tiers: urban master plan –
detailed construction plan
Using ‘consultants’ to justify the local vision
One of the earliest conceptual plans: Guangzhou conceptual plan
“City doctor”
Technocratic planner
CPLAN PhD student (foreign experience)
Self-made ‘neoliberal’ economist
Celebrity planning consultant
Municipal planning bureau director
How ‘entrepreneurial’ is the Chinese state?
Turning the ‘conceptual plan’ into ‘spatial
strategies’ and coordination plans
National urban system plan
The Jin-Jin-Ji regional plan (Beijing, Tianji and Hubei)
The Pearl River Delta Coordination Plan
The Urban System Plan of the Yangtze River Delta
The Yangtze River Delta Regional Plan
National urban system plan prepared by the Chinese Academy of Urban
Planning and Design
The Pearl River delta
1995
2002
2000
2000
“one core area, three belts and five axes” spatial structure
of the coordination plan of the Pearl River Delta
The Yangtze River Delta
Involvement of the national state level departments: The
Ministry of Construction, the National Development
and Reform Commission (NDRC)
NDRC rejuvenated the Five-Year Economic Plan into a
‘territorial strategic plan’
NDRC: “Main Functional Area Plan” (zhuti gongnengqu
guihua)
Authorized by the State Council, to cover 9600,000 km2
(national territory)
Four major types:
The prioritized development area
Optimization area
Restricted area
Forbidden area
The basic units for the first three types are counties (basic
administrative unit), and for the last type is natural
boundary or designated area
What is the “plan of main function area”?
Recognition of de facto devolution at the county / city level
An attempt to link governance and regulation with decision
making units
‘Recentralization’ to restore some sort of coordination by
assessing performance accordingly (not just GDPnism)
The central state’s effort to consolidate its governance over
entrepreneurial local agents
“The importance of urban and town clusters has transcended a pure
academic concept and becomes a real issue of government. The
national Eleventh Five-Year Plan uses urban and town clusters as
the key form to promote urbanization; the Seventeenth CCP
Congress adopts the concept of urban and town clusters”.
“Academic and business communities regard urban and town clusters
as the growth pole for enhancing competitiveness and regional
capacities; the central government recognizes the need to
intervene the development of urban and town clusters and set up
the necessary coordination mechanism” (Li 2008: 5).
Mr. Li Xiaojiang, the Director of Chinese Academy of Urban Planning
and Design
(B) Building soft regional institution
Fierce inter-city competition
Spontaneous bottom-up coordination
Pan-PRD
The regionalization of the Yangtze River Delta
The Pan-PRD boundary
Source: Yeh and Xu (2008)
Pan-PRD: known as 9+2 (Hong Kong and Macao)
Initiation under Mr. Zhang Dejiang, then Party Secretary of Guangdong
province
Coordination or expansion of hinterland?
“To understand and promote Pan-PRD cooperation, we need to adopt a
global perspective and strategic thinking, from the height of
promoting the national-scale region cooperation and regional
collaborative development; from the strategic consideration of
stabilizing and promoting the economies of Hong Kong and
Macao”
Regionalization of the Yangtze River Delta
Failure of Shanghai Economic Region in the 1980s
1996: the Coordination Association of Urban Economies
2000: the Forum of Economic Collaboration
Different “membership”: 15+1 model or 2+1 model
Since 2005, focused on comprehensive transport system, science and
technology, and environmental protection
No regional development agency to coordinate regional
development
Even the province cannot coordinate development within its
territory
Pearl River Delta: Guangdong province
Yangtze River Delta: Shanghai + Jiangsu + Zhejiang
Strong influence from the central government: Development
and Reform Commission system (‘planning commission’)
Adhere to soft institution
Conclusion
“the emergence of city-regions [is] as the product of a
particular set of economic, cultural, environmental and
political projects, each with their own logics” (Jonas
and Ward 2007: 176)
In the Chinese context, regional development in response
to globalization has seen two interrelated forces:
1) ‘regional competitiveness’: devolution, and then
regionalization by entrepreneurial thrust, the Yangtze
River Delta became the core of China’s world factory
production
2) ‘regional governance’: a reaction towards the crisis of
the entrepreneurial city,
a. Turning ‘entrepreneurial plan’ into regulatory device (‘spatial
plan’)
b. Building soft regional institution