IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v46y2014i8p1814-1835.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

China's Landed Urbanization: Neoliberalizing Politics, Land Commodification, and Municipal Finance in the Growth of Metropolises

Author

Listed:
  • George C S Lin

    (Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong)

Abstract

Prevailing theories of uneven development see the growth of cities and regions as the spatial outcome of either the functioning of intrinsic agglomeration economies or the intrusion of global neoliberal market forces. Emphasis is placed on human resources and technology with land and capital usually taken for granted. This study of the growth of two leading Chinese metropolises—Beijing and Guangzhou—identifies a distinct strategy of urbanization financed by land commodification and actively pursued by Chinese municipal governments to contest with state power reshuffling in the era of neoliberalization. Contrary to popular notions, land commodification, rather than human capital or advanced technology, has played a role instrumental to the growth and transformation of China's metropolises. The popular practice of landed urbanization owes its political origins more to domestic state power reshuffling than to the intrusion of the global neoliberal agenda. State and market do not function as two diametrically opposing and self-contained entities but are characterized by their diverse and conflictual internal dynamics. Local states are found to have embraced and manipulated market forces for their political agenda. Theorization of global urbanism needs to go beyond the Euro-American comfort zone and to take seriously alternative practices and struggles found in the Global South.

Suggested Citation

  • George C S Lin, 2014. "China's Landed Urbanization: Neoliberalizing Politics, Land Commodification, and Municipal Finance in the Growth of Metropolises," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(8), pages 1814-1835, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:8:p:1814-1835
    DOI: 10.1068/a130016p
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a130016p
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a130016p?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hsing, You-tien, 2010. "The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199568048.
    2. Scott, Allen J. (ed.), 2001. "Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198297994.
    3. Jiang Xu & Anthony Yeh & Fulong Wu, 2009. "Land Commodification: New Land Development and Politics in China since the Late 1990s," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 890-913, December.
    4. Mike Raco & Katherine Gilliam, 2012. "Geographies of Abstraction, Urban Entrepreneurialism, and the Production of New Cultural Spaces: The West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(6), pages 1425-1442, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fox ZY Hu, 2015. "Industrial capitalisation and spatial transformation in Chinese cities: Strategic repositioning, state-owned enterprise capitalisation, and the reproduction of urban space in Beijing," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(15), pages 2799-2821, November.
    2. Fulong Wu, 2016. "China's Emergent City-Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State-orchestrated Rescaling," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1134-1151, November.
    3. Ran Liu & Tai-Chee Wong & Shenghe Liu, 2012. "Peasants' Counterplots against the State Monopoly of the Rural Urbanization Process: Urban Villages and ‘Small Property Housing’ in Beijing, China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(5), pages 1219-1240, May.
    4. Jiejing Wang, 2020. "Urban government capacity and economic performance: An analysis of Chinese cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(5), pages 981-1004, August.
    5. Gavin Shatkin, 2014. "Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 1-13, January.
    6. Loraine Kennedy, 2017. "State restructuring and emerging patterns of subnational policy-making and governance in China and India," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(1), pages 6-24, February.
    7. Jiang, Ronghao & Lin, George C.S., 2021. "Placing China’s land marketization: The state, market, and the changing geography of land use in Chinese cities," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    8. George CS Lin & Xun Li & Fiona F Yang & Fox ZY Hu, 2015. "Strategizing urbanism in the era of neoliberalization: State power reshuffling, land development and municipal finance in urbanizing China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(11), pages 1962-1982, August.
    9. Zhigang Li & Jiang Xu & Anthony G O Yeh, 2014. "State Rescaling and the Making of City-Regions in the Pearl River Delta, China," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 32(1), pages 129-143, February.
    10. Zhou, Changchang & Chan, Roger C.K., 2022. "State-scalar politics of rural land reform in China: The case of Wujin district," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    11. Li, L. & Bao, Helen X.H. & Robinson, Guy M., 2020. "The return of state control and its impact on land market efficiency in urban China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    12. Yong Liu & Wenze Yue & Peilei Fan & Yi Peng & Zhengtao Zhang, 2016. "Financing China's Suburbanization: Capital Accumulation through Suburban Land Development in Hangzhou," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1112-1133, November.
    13. Constance Carr & Markus Hesse, 2020. "When Alphabet Inc. Plans Toronto’s Waterfront: New Post-Political Modes of Urban Governance," Urban Planning, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(1), pages 69-83.
    14. Mace, Alan & Holman, Nancy & Paccoud, Antoine & Sundaresan, Jayaraj, 2015. "Coordinating density; working through conviction, suspicion and pragmatism," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 56768, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Riccardo Crescenzi, 2008. "Mountains in a flat world: why proximity still matters for the location of economic activity," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 1(3), pages 371-388.
    16. Graeme Lang & Bo Miao, 2013. "Food Security for China's Cities," International Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 5-20, February.
    17. Jennifer Robinson, 2011. "Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 1-23, January.
    18. Siu Wai Wong & Bo-sin Tang & Jinlong Liu & Ming Liang & Winky K.O. Ho, 2021. "From “decentralization of governance†to “governance of decentralization†: Reassessing income inequality in periurban China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(6), pages 1473-1489, September.
    19. Bo Liu & Desheng Xue & Yiming Tan, 2019. "Deciphering the Manufacturing Production Space in Global City-Regions of Developing Countries—a Case of Pearl River Delta, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-26, December.
    20. Alain Thierstein & Stefan Lüthi, 2012. "Interlocking Firm Networks in the German Knowledge Economy: The Case of the Emerging Mega-city Region of Munich," Chapters, in: Marina van Geenhuizen & Peter Nijkamp (ed.), Creative Knowledge Cities, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:46:y:2014:i:8:p:1814-1835. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.