Interjurisdictional Cooperation through Bargaining: The Case of the Guangzhou–Zhuhai Railway in the Pearl River Delta, China

Abstract

Interjurisdictional cooperation has emerged as a major recent trend in China in response to challenges from market reforms and globalization. However, given that cities are in fierce competition with one another, interjurisdictional cooperation presents many difficulties for policy making. This paper attempts to examine how cooperative partnerships can be developed, sustained, or even resisted. It uses the Guangzhou-Zhuhai Railway as a case study to explore the institutional configuration of such a practice and to understand how the historical contingencies and path-dependencies in a transitional society interact with intensive bargaining to influence partnership building. It argues that the lack of a formal institutional framework to facilitate horizontal networking forces actors to opt for ad hoc collaborative arrangements. With the objective of making joint projects workable, commitments for cooperation have to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis through extensive bargaining. Although this creates much flexibility in consensus building, it does not guarantee success: success depends on the interplay of inter-ministry politics, interscalar relations, intercity politics and state-market relations. To a certain extent, the Chinese state can go beyond economic logic and shore up its legitimacy by prioritizing development. The post-reform path-dependencies can provide current political leaders with more rather than fewer instruments with which to negotiate interjurisdictional projects, and thus have greater influence over urban and regional economic governance.

Unequal cities of spectacle and mega-events in China

“…These mega-city regions are the key areas for implementing China's latest regional development strategies organised by the Chinese central government. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as centres of these mega-city regions, are the sites of capital accumulation and the commanding centre of their respective regions, though the formation and development of these mega-city regions may accompany continuous negotiations and territorial conflicts (Ma, 2005;Xu and Yeh, forthcoming). Under these circumstances, the three mega-events could be regarded as having presented host cities with an opportunity to consolidate their economic and politcial achievements at both regional and natioal scales, while facilitating their pursuit to become 'world-class' cities in particular.…”

Place Making in Shanghai Hongqiao Business District: An Institutional Capacity Perspective

“…As a result MOR revised its decision on the location of the HSR-station in favour of the airport location. Contrary to many other cases in China (Li et al 2011;Xu and Yeh 2013) in this case, interaction between key-actors led to the integration of transportation modes-and subsequent development opportunities around the airport terminal and railway station. The negotiations were facilitated by different factors.…”

“…These plans often lack the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, and do not allow for an urban environment where layers of time are put on top of each other. Third, there is no formal institutional framework that facilitates horizontal networking, which implies that coordination between different municipalities has to be established through ad hoc collaborative arrangements (Xu and Yeh 2013). This is often non-committal, and leads to competition between municipalities.…”

“…MoR and local governments negotiate about their respective shares in this project company. This informal process that largely takes place behind the scenes (Xu and Yeh 2013) is important because the division of shares has immediate impacts on outcomes of the planning and realisation process. Third, the relations between government and private actors are characterised by a dominance of the public sector, as private actors in general only are given a role in the last stages of development.…”

City-region integration policies and their incongruous outcomes: The case of Shantou-Chaozhou-Jieyang city-region in east Guangdong Province, China

“…In recent years, there has been a renaissance of regional policies and planning across China (Li & Wu, 2012Luo, Shen, & Chen, 2010;Wong, Qian, & Zhou, 2008;Xu & Yeh, 2011). Different from past redistributive and allocative regional policies, recent approaches place emphasis on interjurisdictional co-operation and integration (Xu & Yeh, 2013). To some extent, these practices are indicative of a transition in regional governance from territorial competition to regional coordination, where adjacent municipalities are encouraged to transcend jurisdictional boundaries and function in co-ordinated ways as unitary metropolitan areas.…”