Urban Transformation in China and Reorganization of the State in an Era of Globalization

A working group of the Urban China Research Network

Contact information: Carolyn Cartier, Department of Geography, University of Southern California, cartier@usc.edu.  Si-ming Li, Department of Geography, Hong Kong Baptist University, lisiming@hkbu.edu.hk

Overview

Questions about population and migration, industrial and housing reforms, and general changes in the urban space economy are related through a common set of under-examined issues in China's transformation under reform: the dynamic organization of China's urban administrative hierarchy. This working group will bring to bear recent theoretical literature on scale relations and globalization to the Chinese case, combined with empirical analysis on several key subjects. It will analyze new and complex negotiations among different scales of the administrative hierarchy, as opposed to the more simplistic prevailing analyses of state decentralization. It will also incorporate globalizing processes, with investigation of the way those processes interact with and affect the nation-state and the local state at each level in the urban hierarchy. Overall, it is the objective of this working group to make a major contribution to the analysis of urban and regional transformation in China through three related research themes: to theorize urban restructuring and state reorganization in China through the globalization debates and scale relations; to empirically analyze how the intersections between domestic economic restructuring and globalizing process have affected the development of the urban hierarchy and agglomerations in China; and to examine local conditions of urban transformations as they are impacted by economic restructuring and the forces of political and cultural globalization.

Working group objectives

The working group will undertake the research agenda based on three spheres of organization.  The first theme represents the major theoretical portion of the project, and encompasses the other two research areas.  The second sphere of research will focus on the urban and regional scale, and the articulation of urban transformations with globalizing processes.  Through the third theme, researchers will examine local scale urban issues, and in conjunction with research on themes one and two, will relate local level events to larger scale processes taking place at municipal, regional, national, and global scales.

Research Theme I To theorize urban restructuring and state reorganization in China through the globalization debates and scale relations.

How should we understand China's dynamic administrative hierarchy from the perspective of recent theoretical treatments of scale, and as a basis for analyzing the reconfiguration of the state and economic restructuring in cities and urbanizing regions?  Our research will focus on how spatial scale and knowledge are employed in state governance, and how the state intersects with changes wrought by globalizing processes. China's increasing integration into the world economy is likely to be accompanied by a further redefinition, contestation and restructuring of the administrative hierarchy and scaled political and economic practices. It is the objective of this research to understand more thoroughly how spatial scales and knowledge interweave globalization and urban restructuring in the new millennium.

Research Theme II. To empirically analyze how the intersections between domestic economic restructuring and globalizing processes have affected China's urban hierarchy and urban agglomerations, and to what extent this has led to global city-region formation in the Chinese context.

This theme of the project will likely commence with an analysis of industrial restructuring in urban economies, agglomerations, and the shift to 'new economy' industries of producer services.  The working group will address the following questions: What are the processes by which cities acquire competitive advantage and promote agglomeration economies? What are the emerging clusters and how are they formed at the regional level? What is the balance of activity between transnational and domestic investors, and how is this distribution influenced by globalizing investment and production? What are the key linkages between the foreign and domestic sectors? To what extent have cities shifted to an industrial basis in producer services industries?  To what extent are new as well as old economic sectors benefiting from the spread of information technology (IT)?  What are some of the significant changes brought by IT? What are the regulatory experiences and challenges of cities in promoting the new economy and IT, in minimizing labor market segmentation, and encouraging domestic linkages to the foreign sector?  How will accession to the WTO affect the relative performance of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong as China's financial centers?  How will impacts of the WTO influence the spatial conditions of uneven regional development?

Research Theme III. To examine local conditions of urban transformations brought by economic restructuring and political and cultural globalization.

Research on this theme will bring distinctive attention to the local scales of urban societal transformation, in districts, subdistricts, neighborhoods, and the work unit. As the state distances itself from the provision of urban services, how are people negotiating the transitions at the local level? Is the growing consumer economy increasingly reflecting income disparity?  How are urban dwellers accessing health services in times when the prevalence rates of social problems and certain diseases are increasing rapidly, including the spread of HIV/AIDS, which is thought to be related to circular patterns of rural-to-urban migration? What do we know about the social and health problems faced by migrants in China's rapidly growing urban areas? How will the emerging housing market function and affect housing allocation? How are new residential enclaves, primarily among recent immigrants, forming, and what sorts of problems have they been experiencing? How are people maintaining social networks amidst the gradual dissolution of work unit compounds and increased residential mobility? How are people resisting state policies and reacting to the onslaught of global economic forces?

Founding members of the working group (core members, with several others involved in the initial group activities)

Carolyn Cartier, University of Southern California.  Co-coordinator.

Si-ming Li, Hong Kong Baptist University.  Co-coordinator.

Jennifer Rudolph, University at Albany. Liaison with Steering Committee.

Chris Smith, University at Albany.  Liaison with Steering Committee.

Jianmin Cai, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Gounghao Cui, Nanjing University

George Lin, Hong Kong University

Larry Ma, University of Akron

Wing-shing Tang, Hong Kong Baptist University

Weiping Wu, Virginia Commonwealth University

Simon Zhao, Hong Kong Baptist University