As an emergent and rapidly propagating concept through which the hydrological sphere of the earth is identified as a new economic possibility, the Blue Economy is traveling globally and is being localized differently. Adding to Winder and Le Heron’s interrogation of the Blue Economy as an investment-institutional project that creates new biological–economic knowledge and relations, I argue that the Blue Economy is necessarily a complex governmental project that opens up new governable spaces and rationalizes particular ways of governing. By demonstrating how China’s marine economy is being assembled and practiced in ways that not only open up new space for accumulation but also create new spatial rationalities that rearrange people and resources, I urge geographers to be attentive to the questions of space, rationality, and power in specific geographic contexts where the Blue Economy is being localized.
Increasing demand for land resources at the coast has exerted immense pressure on vulnerable environments. Population and economic growth in coastal cities have combined to produce a scarcity of suitable space for development, the response to which has frequently been the reclamation of land from the sea, most prominently in China. Urbanization is a key driver of such changes and a detailed investigation of coastal land reclamation at the city scale is required. This study analyzed remote sensing imagery for the period 1990 to 2018 to explore the trajectories of coastal land reclamation in nine major urban agglomerations across the three largest deltas in China using the JRC Global Surface Water (Yearly Water Classification History, v1.1) (GSW) dataset on the Google Earth Engine platform. The results are considered in the context of major national policy reforms over the last three decades. The analysis reveals that total land reclaimed among nine selected cities had exceeded 2800 km2 since 1984, 82% of which occurred after 2000, a year following the enactment of China’s agricultural ‘red line’ policy. Shanghai exhibited the greatest overall area of land extension, followed by Ningbo and Tianjin, especially in the period following the privatization of property rights in 2004. In analyzing annual trends, we identified the developmental stages of a typical coastal reclamation project and how these vary between cities. Scrutiny of the results revealed voids in nighttime light satellite data (2014–2018) in some localities. Although these voids appeared to be characterized by construction, they were occupied by vacant buildings, and were therefore examples of so-called “ghost cities.” In China, as elsewhere, continual land reclamation needs to be considered in relation to, inter alia, sea level rise and land subsidence that pose significant challenges to the vision of sustainable urban development in these three deltaic megacities.
Tidal flats are a type of coastal space that flood at high tides and are exposed at low tides—not quite land or sea. Distinct from open waters or seabeds, tidal flats’ in-betweenness gives them particular materialities that constantly frustrate our efforts to know them. Inspired by the provocation of recent scholarship on “wet ontologies” while simultaneously recognizing the nuances within water worlds, I argue for the slippery ontologies of tidal flats and explore the implications of this approach. Specifically, this paper shows how tidal flats’ dynamic and ambiguous materialities resist attempts to place them into modern knowledge systems. Drawing upon the particular case of South Korea’s tidal flats, called getbol, I first interrogate the in-betweenness of tidal flats, a major source of their material and conceptual slipperiness. I then discuss the similarities and differences between tidal flats and other types of land–water spaces. Next, through several interviews with those who produce modern scientific knowledge of getbol, I examine how tidal flats’ unique compositions interfere with modernity’s efforts to measure their boundaries, matter, and verticality. I highlight how both non-humans and humans contribute to tidal flats’ slipperiness. Finally, I show how the slippery nature of tidal flats has threatened their survival. In South Korea alone, more than half the tidal flats were removed due to reclamation efforts in the past century. In this context, I contend that fully embracing tidal flats’ slippery ontologies may prevent them from further endangerment.
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