The case of Zhejiang Zhoushan Islands new area as a laboratory for multilevel governance and knowledge-based urban development

Urban redevelopment processes create tensions between the interests of governance actors at different levels. Community, city, provincial/state, regional, and national authorities may furthermore possess divergent capacities to formulate and implement policy. This paper examines the case of Zhejiang Zhoushan Islands New Area, in which the national and provincial government have prioritised port development while the city government has prioritised knowledge-based urban development (KBUD). Drawing upon theories of multilevel governance and network governance, the paper asks whether locally oriented KBUD processes are capable of flourishing within China's highly centralised and noncompetitive political system and how tensions between the needs of stakeholders at different government levels may be negotiated. We find that the city government has sought to manage Zhoushan Archipelago's KBUD by drawing upon three characteristics of China's multilevel governance system: 1) policy coordination and adaptation; 2) evidence-based policymaking; and 3) clear overarching development objectives, framed by long time horizons.