The urbanising dynamics of global China: speculation, articulation, and translation in global capitalism

The assembled papers in this special issue jointly explore the urban manifestation of “Global China” at different scales and involving diverse actors, discussing the ways in which the urban has been reconfigured by China’s global expansion and uncovering the differentiated modes of speculative and spectacular urban production at present. Observing from Ghana, India, Malaysia and China, these papers collectively make theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to recognise the dynamics of speculation, articulation and translation in global capitalism, where China plays an increasingly significant role. In this introduction, we first set out to explain our standing point with China as method, which is an attempt to situate China in our comparative studies endeavour and to make self-reflection on what it means to study China as both an optic and a process. We then introduce the three main themes that have guided our interrogation of what global China implies. These include: (a) transplanting models and urbanism; (b) multi-scalar construction of temporality; and (c) situating the urban China model in global capitalism. These aspects are at the core of our engagement with the contributing papers in this special issue that together extend the critique of our changing urban conditions at present.