Positioning China’s state entrepreneurialism in structural coherence and multiple logics

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on state entrepreneurialism. It clarifies the theoretical construction of state entrepreneurialism in the historical context and identifies the tension between the structural coherence for capital accumulation and the multiple logics by the state. This paper also compares state entrepreneurialism with other alternative studies on Chinese urban governance, thus revealing its structuralist roots of conceptualisation. Its distinctive ontological understanding of China’s urban governance emphasises structural coherence. We call for rethinking the evolving structural coherence underlying the strategic reconstruction in the recent decade in which the party-state plays a central role.