The chinese road: Cities in the transition to capitalism

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 46, 2007, Pages 39-66

  Walker, Richard ^a   Buck, Daniel ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34548162462     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (45)

1. Thanks to You-tien Hsing for sharing her knowledge of China, to Carolyn Cartier for reading an earlier draft, and to Robert Brenner for his close reading and recommendations.
2. Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle, New York 2005, pp. 31, 58; Robert Weil, Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of Market Socialism, New York 1996, p. 230.
3. Changping Li, 'The Crisis in the Countryside', in Chaohua Wang, ed., One China, Many Paths, London 2003, pp. 198-218; Guidi Chen and Chuntao Wu, Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of China's Peasants, New York 2006.
4. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism, New York 2005, p. 144; Ching Kwan Lee, Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women, Berkeley 1998, p. 68; 'Women Make up 45 Per Cent of China's Work Force', Women of China website, 20 April 2007.
5. Dorothy Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State and the Logic of the Market, Berkeley 1999; Ching Kwan Lee, Livelihood Struggles and Market Reform: (Un)making Chinese Labour After State Socialism, United Nations 2005.
6. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, China and Socialism, p. 33; 'A Survey of China', Economist, 25 March 2006; Shahid Yusuf, Kaoru Nabeshima and Dwight Perkins, Under New Ownership: Privatizing China's State-Owned Enterprises, Stanford 2006.
7. Jean Oi, 'Fiscal Reform and the Economic Foundations of Local State Corporatism in China', World Politics, vol. 45, no. 1 (1992), pp. 99-126. There is only piecemeal data on the fate of TVES, for example, Yusuf et al., Under New Ownership, p. 98. The number left unemployed is impossible to determine with any certainty. See also Daniel Buck, 'The subsumption of space and the spatiality of subsumption: city, country, and the transition to capitalism in Shanghai', Antipode, forthcoming.
8. On the condition of workers, see Anita Chan, China's Workers Under Assault: The Exploitation of Labour in a Globalizing Economy, New York 2001; Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, China and Socialism.
9. Peter Alexander and Anita Chan, 'Does China Have an Apartheid Pass System?' Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 30, no. 4 (2004), pp. 609-21; Fei-Ling Wang, 'Reformed Migration Control and New Targeted People: China's Hukou System in the 20003', China Quarterly, 177 (2004), pp. II5-32; 'Chongqing to Urbanize Rural Migrants', China Daily online, I6 June 2007.
10. Peter Ho, 'Who Owns China's Land? Policies, Property Rights and Deliberate Institutional Ambiguity', China Quarterly, 166 (2001), pp. 394-421; Samuel Ho and George Lin, 'Emerging Land Markets in Rural and Urban China', China Quarterly, 175 (2003), pp. 681-707; George Lin and Samuel Ho, 'The State, Land System, and Land Development Processes in Contemporary China', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 95, no. 2 (2005), pp. 411-36.
11. Fulong Wu, 'The New Structure of Building Provision and the Transformation of the Urban Landscape in Metropolitan Guangzhou, China', Urban Studies, vol. 35, no. 2 (1998), pp. 259-83, and 'The "Game" of Landed Property Production and Capital Circulation in China's Transitional Economy, with reference to Shanghai', Environment and Planning A, vol. 31, no. 10 (1999), pp. 1757-71.
12. You-tien Hsing, 'Brokering Power and Property in China's Townships', Pacific Review, vol. 19, no. 1 (2006), pp. 103-24, and 'Land and Territorial Politics in Urban China', China Quarterly, 187 (2006), pp. 575-91.
13. Yan Zhang and Ke Fang, 'Is History Repeating Itself? From Urban Renewal in the United States to Inner-City Redevelopment in China', Journal of Planning Education and Research, 23 (2004), pp. 286-98; Shenjing He and Fulong Wu, 'Property-Led Redevelopment in Post-Reform China: A Case Study of Xintiandi Redevelopment Project in Shanghai', Journal of Urban Affairs, vol. 27, no. 1 (2005), pp. 1-23.
14. Min Zhou and John Logan, 'Market Transition and Commodification of Housing in Urban China', in John Logan, ed., The New Chinese City, Oxford 2002, pp. 137-52; Youqin Huang, 'The Road to Homeownership: a Longitudinal Analysis of Tenure Transition in Urban China (1949-1994)', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 28, no. 4 (2004), p. 774.
15. Fulong Wu and Anthony Gar-On Yeh, 'Urban Spatial Structure in a Transitional Economy: The Case of Guangzhou, China', Journal of the American Planning Association, vol. 65, no. 4 (1999), pp. 377-94.
16. Ya Ping Wang and Alan Murie, 'Commercial Housing Development in Urban China', Urban Studies, vol. 36, no. 9 (1999), pp. 1475-94; Bo-Sin Tang and Sing Cheong Liu, 'Property Developers and Speculative Development', in Chengri Ding and Yan Song, eds, Emerging Land and Housing Markets in China, Cambridge, MA 2005, pp. 199-231; Hsing, 'Brokering Power'; He and Wu, 'Property-Led Redevelopment'.
17. For Shanghai, see He and Wu, 'Property-Led Redevelopment', p. 7; People's Daily online, 28 October 2002. For Beijing, People's Daily online, 7 February 2001; Colliers International report on Beijing office market, 2nd quarter 2006; William Mellor and Alien Cheng, 'Chinese Chasing the Wealth', San Francisco Chronicle, 24 May 2006. All China figures from Haiyan Chen, S. Ganesan and Beisi Jia, 'Environmental Challenges of Post-Reform Housing Development in Beijing', Habitat International, vol. 29, no. 4 (2005), p. 572, and John Fernández, 'Resource Consumption of New Urban Construction in China', Journal of Industnal Ecology, vol. 11, no. 2 (2007), pp. 99-115.
18. Li Tu, 'Central Bank Warns Shanghai Real Estate Jeopardizes Banks', Epoch Times online, 15 February 2005; 'Looting the Aged', Economist, 9 September 2006.
19. Ready for Warfare in the Aisles', Economist, 5 August 2006, pp. 59-61; Andrew Glyn, 'Imbalances of the Global Economy', NLR 34, July-August 2005; Mellor and Cheng, 'Chinese Chasing the Wealth'.
20. Ruei Suei Sun, 'Creative Deconstruction, or Deconstructive Creation? The Case of Xintiandi at Shanghai', paper presented at 4th East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography, Taipei, June 2006, pp. 24-30; Jianfa Shen, 'Space, Scale and the State: Reorganizing Urban Space in China', in Laurence Ma and Fulong Wu, eds, Restructuring the Chinese City, London 2005, p. 47.
21. Fulong Wu, 'Rediscovering the "Gate" Under Market Transition: From Work-Unit Compounds to Community Housing Enclaves', Housing Studies, vol. 20, no. 2 (2005), pp. 235-54.
22. Yun-Wing Sung, The Emergence of Greater China: The Economic Integration of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, New York 2005, p. 36; 'Can Pigs Fly?', Economist, 24 February 2007.
23. The Problem with Made in China', Economist, 13 January 2007; 'Slow! Government Obstacles Ahead', Economist, 17 June 2006; see also 'Survey of China'.
24. Sung, Emergence of Greater China, pp. 12, 27; furthermore, a significant share of Hong Kong investment represents 'round tripping', whereby mainland SOEs, enterprises owned by the People's Liberation Army and other entities invest through subsidiaries in Hong Kong.
25. Sung, Emergence of Greater China, p. 38; Glyn, 'Imbalances of the Global Economy', p. 15.
26. Mellor and Cheng, 'Chinese Chasing the Wealth'.
27. Wang Hui, China's New Order: Society, Politics and Economy in Transition, Cambridge, MA 2003; Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, China and Socialism. Because corruption is rife, primitive accumulation in China is accompanied by theft pure and simple; some of the richest, such as Yang Bin and Zhou Zengyi, have been jailed for fraud. As one investment banker puts it, 'This is like the robber baron age in the US in the 19th century; everything is up for grabs': quoted in Mellor and Cheng, 'Chinese Chasing the Wealth'.
28. Good data is lacking on the degree of privatization, but see Samuel Ho, Paul Bowles and Xiaoyuan Dong, '"Letting Go of the Small": An Analysis of the Privatization of Rural Enterprises in Jiangsu and Shandong', Journal of Development Studies, vol. 39, no. 4 (2003), pp. 1-26; Yusuf et al., Under New Ownership, p. 98; Russell Smyth, 'Asset-Stripping the Chinese State-Owned Enterprises', Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 30, no. 1 (2000), pp. 3-16.
29. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, China and Socialism, p. 45; Harvey, A Brief History, p. 128.
30. Li Zhang, Strangers in the City, Stanford 2001. She confuses things, however, by failing to distinguish, among urban migrants, the new bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie from the workers. 31 Economist, 'Survey of China'.
31. Harvey, A Brief History, p. 133; 'India: Safe and Sorry', Economist, 3 June 2006.
32. Lin and Ho, 'The State and Land Development', p. 703; Economist, 'Survey of China'; 'The People's Republic in the Grip of Popular Capitalism', Economist, 28 April 2007.
33. The government has been able to prop up shaky banks by injecting foreign-exchange reserves and siphoning off bad loans into asset-management companies backed by the Central Bank; but non-performing loans are still 20 to 30 per cent of bank portfolios: Economist, 'Survey of China', p. 13; Harvey, A Brief History.
34. John Lewis, ed., The City in Communist China, Stanford 1971; Piper Gaubatz, 'Urban Transformation in Post-Mao China: Impacts of the Reform Era on China's Urban Form', in Deborah Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton and Elizabeth Perry, eds, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, New York 1995, pp. 28-60.
35. George Lin, 'The Growth and Structural Change of Chinese Cities', Cities, vol. 19, no. 5 (2002), pp. 299-316.
36. George Lin, 'Towards a Post-Socialist City? Economic Tertiarization and Urban Reformation in the Guangzhou Metropolis, China', Eurasian Geography and Economics, vol. 45, no. 1 (2004), pp. 18-44.
37. Piper Gaubatz, 'Globalization and the Development of New Central Business Districts in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou', in Ma and Wu, Restructuring the Chinese City, pp. 98-116; Fulong Wu, 'Polycentric Urban Development and Land-Use Change in a Transitional Economy: the Case of Guangzhou', Environment and Planning A, vol. 30, no. 6 (1998), pp. 1077-1100; Lin, 'Towards a Post-Socialist City?'; Wu and Yeh, 'Transition of Urban Spatial Structure'. Although there has been a great deal of planning by city governments, Chinese cities have become more subject to uncontrolled, chaotic development, much like that in the us.
38. Fulong Wu, 'Transplanting Cityscapes: The Use of Imagined Globalization in Housing Commodification in Beijing', Area, vol. 36, no. 3 (2004), pp. 227-34; Youqin Huang, 'From Work-Unit Compounds to Gated Communities: Housing Inequality and Residential Segregation in Transitional Beijing', in Ma and Wu, Restructuring the Chinese City, pp. 192-221; Zhang, Strangers.
39. Vivienne Shue, 'State Sprawl: The Regulatory State and Social Life in a Small Chinese City', in Deborah Davis et al, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, pp. 90-113; Laurence Ma, 'Urban Administrative Restructuring, Changing Scale Relations and Local Economic Development in China', Political Geography, vol. 24, no. 4 (2005), pp. 477-97; Shen, 'Space, Scale and the State'.
40. Ma, 'Urban Administrative Restructuring'; Carolyn Cartier, 'City-Space: Scale Relations and China's Spatial Administrative Hierarchy', in Ma and Wu, eds, Restructuring the Chinese City, pp. 21-38.
41. Wild annexations mean that administrative boundaries do not strictly correspond to the economic territory or built-up area of cities. Many towns and counties won city designation on flimsy grounds before the central government tightened up the rules in the 2000s and put some provinces back above cities in the hierarchy: Jae Ho Chung and Tao-Chiu Lam, 'China's "City System" in Flux: Explaining Post-Mao Administrative Changes', China Quarterly, 180 (2004), pp. 945-64.
42. Fulong Wu, 'Globalization, Place Promotion, and Urban Development in Shanghai', Journal of Urban Affairs, vol. 25, no. 1 (2003), pp. 55-78; Lan-Chih Po, Strategies of Urban Development in China's Reforms: Nanjing 1984-2000, doctoral dissertation, Berkeley 2001; Hsing, 'Territorial Polities'; Wang, China's New Order.
43. Oi, 'Fiscal Reform'; Shen, 'Space, Scale and the State'. There is an ongoing struggle among levels of government over who controls territory, revenues and land. While the national government took a larger slice of local revenues in the 19905, it has effectively given municipalities more control over land development since 2000.
44. Ho and Lin, 'Emerging Land Markets'; Hsing, 'Brokering Power'. 46 For example, Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, China and Socialism, p. 56. See also Gabriella Montinola, Yingyi Qian and Barry Weingast, 'Federalism, Chinese Style: The Political Basis for Economic Success in China', World Politics, vol. 48, no. 1 (1995), pp. 50-81.
45. Bruce Dickson, Red Capitalists in China: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs and Prospects for Political Change, Cambridge, MA 2003; Wang, China's New Order, also Hsing, 'Territorial Polities'.