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China's Emergent City‐Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State‐orchestrated Rescaling
Author(s) -
Wu Fulong
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international journal of urban and regional research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.456
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1468-2427
pISSN - 0309-1317
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2427.12437
Subject(s) - annexation , decentralization , china , corporate governance , urbanization , state (computer science) , economic geography , economic system , globalization , scale (ratio) , regional science , political science , economic growth , economics , geography , politics , market economy , cartography , finance , algorithm , computer science , law
This article examines the emergence of city‐region governance as a specific state spatial selectivity in post‐reform China. The process has been driven by the state in response to the crisis of economic decentralization, and to vicious inter‐city competition and uncoordinated development. As part of the recentralization of state power, the development of urban clusters ( chengshiqun ) as interconnected city‐regions is now a salient feature of ‘new urbanization' policy. I argue in this article that the Chinese city‐region corresponds to specific logics of scale production. Economic globalization has led to the development of local economies and further created the need to foster ‘regional competitiveness'. To cope with regulatory deficit at the regional level, three mechanisms have been orchestrated by the state: administrative annexation, spatial plan preparation and regional institution building, which reflect recent upscaling in post‐reform governance.