Governing China’s urban development: state entrepreneurialism

Abstract: This talk introduces a forthcoming book on governing China’s urban development. The first chapter aims to depict an overall picture of China’s urban governance and introduces the concept of ‘state entrepreneurialism’ that captures the salient feature of Chinese urban governance. Related to this concept, it discusses relevant theoretical literature on neoliberalism, post-politics, and mega-urban projects, illustrating a new way of governing urban development in contemporary and late capitalism. The chapter also introduces the debate over neoliberal governance and its recent shift under austerity urbanism and financialised governance. Further to this temporal variation, the chapter explains geographical variegation by reviewing East Asia's developmental state and the ‘property state’. The chapter expands the scope of the varieties of urban entrepreneurialism, especially the recent municipal statecraft. The core of this chapter provides a historical account of changing governance in China and recent research on state entrepreneurialism. It illustrates state entrepreneurialism with examples of China’s large-scale development projects — new towns in the metropolitan peripheral areas. It discusses these examples with the notion of neoliberal suburbanism, and critically reflects on the state's role in urban and regional governance.

About the Speaker:

Prof. Fulong Wu is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London. He received BSc and MSc from Nanjing University, and PhD from the University of Hong Kong. He has taught previously in Southampton and Cardiff University. His research interests include urban development in China and its social and sustainable challenges. His latest book is Creating Chinese Urbanism: Urban Revolution and Governance Change (UCL Press, 2022, free downloadable from the publisher’s website, www.uclpress.co.uk/ChineseUrbanism). He is also a co-editor (with Roger Keil) of After Suburbia: Urbanization in the 21st Century (Toronto University Press, 2022). He currently works on a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant – Rethinking China’s Model of Governance.