Urban%20transition%20in%20China:%20the%20emergence%20of%20city-region%20governance

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Urban transition in China the emergence of
city-region governance

• Fulong Wu
• School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff
  University

Presented in Conference of Regional Economies in
a Globalising World Enhancing Intellectual
Capacity and Innovation. 21st November 2008,
Cardiff, Wales, UK
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Urban transition at the regional economy scale

• The China story
• Demise of (socialist) redistributive regional
  policy
• The rise of entrepreneurial cities
• The crisis of urban entrepreneurialism
• Rescaling towards city-region governance

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In response to globalization

• A Chinese model?
• Export-oriented development following East Asian
  (the flying goose model), but does not pay
  attention to Chinese specificity
• Neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics
  (Harvey 2005)
• A world factory regime turning the socialist
  legacy into competition instruments rural
  migrants regional economies urban
  entrepreneurialism

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Changing regional governance in China a
conceptual framework
Historical formation Form of state spatial selectivity Form of urban-regional regulation Major conflicts and contradictions
State socialism 1949-78 The national scale of statehood as overarching governance Managerialism achieved through hierarchical planning coordination in the planned economy Urban-rural dualism
Early market reformist regime 1979-2001 Rising localities The dominance of large cities Urban entrepreneurialism Devolution of planning control Fierce inter-city competition Uncoordinated and redundant
Post-WTO market society 2001 - present Up-scaling towards the city-region, but this scale is only a layer of soft institution without legislation or administrative power Spatial plans, especially the centrally-initiated coordination plan for larger city-regions, Building regional soft institutions such as mayors meeting, joint regional forum / councils The city-region as an imagined community but continues to see conflicting and diverse interests.
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Entrepreneurial urban governance

• Shift from ideological purity and class struggle
  to the pragmatism of growth first of Deng
  Xiaoping
• Institutional foundation hardening the soft
  budget (Walder 1995), local corporatism in rural
  China (Oi 1997), and de facto federalism (Yinyi
  Qians work)
• A proliferated literature on Chinas central and
  local relation, e.g. the fiscal relation (Wong
  1991, Zhang 1999)
• Pro-growth coalition (Zhu 1999 Zhang 2002),
  based on landed revenue

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A story beyond Shanghai the emerging world
factor in the Yangtze River Delta
The case of Kunshan A county-level city under
Suzhou municipality The little
sixth Self-funded development zone, gained
state recognition Rapid growth in IT industry
Now aspirating to become Shanghais edge city
The location of Kunshan
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WTO, world factory
Opening of Shanghais pudong
100 million
Phenomenal growth of Kunshan, the county-level
city at the margin of Shanghais cit-region
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1,100 ICT companies, invested 14 billion
USD Notebooks account for 40 of the world total
production Major ICT production base
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Figure 4 layout of Huangqiao Business Park
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Construction of headquarter economy
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The entrepreneurial city in crisis

• Fierce inter-city competition
• Redundant construction
• Pursuing similar economic sector gt over-supply,
  low-value added
• Ecological crisis

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• The fight between Kunshan and Shanghai
• 173 Project releasing 173 km2 free land to
  draw investors back from Jiangsu province
• Jiangsu province fighting back with 1730 km2 of
  an industrial belt surrounding Shanghai

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The expansion of the built-up area in the Taihu
area
Source Qiu Baoxing presentation in 2007
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Water pollution
Dian Lake in Kunmin
Pollution of the River Huai
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City-region governance as the management of the
crisis of entrepreneurial cities

• The need for regional governance
• The return of public policy? (replaced with the
  notion of sustainability)
• The subtle yet profound change of political
  ethos from Deng Xiaoping growth is hard
  truth, to Hu Jintao the scientific approach to
  growth.
• (A) Strategic spatial plans
• (B) Soft regional institutions

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(A) Spatial strategic plans

• The emergence of conceptual plans, resulted
  from entrepreneurial thrusts
• These conceptual plans are non-statutory plans
• Chinas planning system two-tiers urban master
  plan detailed construction plan
• Using consultants to justify the local vision

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One of the earliest conceptual plans Guangzhou
conceptual plan
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City doctor
Technocratic planner CPLAN PhD student (foreign
experience) Self-made neoliberal
economist Celebrity planning consultant Municipal
planning bureau director How entrepreneurial
is the Chinese state?
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• Turning the conceptual plan into spatial
  strategies and coordination plans
• National urban system plan
• The Jin-Jin-Ji regional plan (Beijing, Tianji and
  Hubei)
• The Pearl River Delta Coordination Plan
• The Urban System Plan of the Yangtze River Delta
• The Yangtze River Delta Regional Plan

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National urban system plan prepared by the
Chinese Academy of Urban Planning and Design
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The Pearl River delta
1995
2000
2002
2000
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• one core area, three belts and five axes
  spatial structure of the coordination plan of the
  Pearl River Delta

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The Yangtze River Delta
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• Involvement of the national state level
  departments The Ministry of Construction, the
  National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC)
• NDRC rejuvenated the Five-Year Economic Plan into
  a territorial strategic plan

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• NDRC Main Functional Area Plan (zhuti
  gongnengqu guihua)
• Authorized by the State Council, to cover
  9600,000 km2 (national territory)
• Four major types
• The prioritized development area
• Optimization area
• Restricted area
• Forbidden area
• The basic units for the first three types are
  counties (basic administrative unit), and for the
  last type is natural boundary or designated area

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• What is the plan of main function area?
• Recognition of de facto devolution at the county
  / city level
• An attempt to link governance and regulation with
  decision making units
• Recentralization to restore some sort of
  coordination by assessing performance accordingly
  (not just GDPnism)
• The central states effort to consolidate its
  governance over entrepreneurial local agents

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• The importance of urban and town clusters has
  transcended a pure academic concept and becomes a
  real issue of government. The national Eleventh
  Five-Year Plan uses urban and town clusters as
  the key form to promote urbanization the
  Seventeenth CCP Congress adopts the concept of
  urban and town clusters.
• Academic and business communities regard urban
  and town clusters as the growth pole for
  enhancing competitiveness and regional
  capacities the central government recognizes the
  need to intervene the development of urban and
  town clusters and set up the necessary
  coordination mechanism (Li 2008 5).
• Mr. Li Xiaojiang, the Director of Chinese Academy
  of Urban Planning and Design

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(B) Building soft regional institution

• Fierce inter-city competition
• Spontaneous bottom-up coordination
• Pan-PRD
• The regionalization of the Yangtze River Delta

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The Pan-PRD boundary Source Yeh and Xu (2008)
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• Pan-PRD known as 92 (Hong Kong and Macao)
• Initiation under Mr. Zhang Dejiang, then Party
  Secretary of Guangdong province
• Coordination or expansion of hinterland?
• To understand and promote Pan-PRD cooperation,
  we need to adopt a global perspective and
  strategic thinking, from the height of promoting
  the national-scale region cooperation and
  regional collaborative development from the
  strategic consideration of stabilizing and
  promoting the economies of Hong Kong and Macao

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• Regionalization of the Yangtze River Delta
• Failure of Shanghai Economic Region in the 1980s
• 1996 the Coordination Association of Urban
  Economies
• 2000 the Forum of Economic Collaboration
• Different membership 151 model or 21 model
• Since 2005, focused on comprehensive transport
  system, science and technology, and environmental
  protection

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• No regional development agency to coordinate
  regional development
• Even the province cannot coordinate development
  within its territory
• Pearl River Delta Guangdong province
• Yangtze River Delta Shanghai Jiangsu
  Zhejiang
• Strong influence from the central government
  Development and Reform Commission system
  (planning commission)
• Adhere to soft institution

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Conclusion

• the emergence of city-regions is as the
  product of a particular set of economic,
  cultural, environmental and political projects,
  each with their own logics (Jonas and Ward 2007
  176)
• In the Chinese context, regional development in
  response to globalization has seen two
  interrelated forces
• 1) regional competitiveness devolution, and
  then regionalization by entrepreneurial thrust,
  the Yangtze River Delta became the core of
  Chinas world factory production

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• 2) regional governance a reaction towards the
  crisis of the entrepreneurial city,
• a. Turning entrepreneurial plan into regulatory
  device (spatial plan)
• b. Building soft regional institution