Spatial Poetics Under Authoritarianism: Graffiti and the Contestation of Urban Redevelopment in Contemporary China

Abstract

This article investigates the expression of resistance to urban redevelopment in the authoritarian context of contemporary China. Where conventional channels of public expression are closed, the very space of urban transformation becomes an important medium of contestation. Through the practice of "spatial poetics", residents manipulate the taken-for-granted meanings attached to urban space, challenging the spatial codes that authorise redevelopment. Working across four spatial dimensions-territory, place, scale, and network-these poetic manipulations allow residents to de-naturalise existing power structures, escape their effects, and re-code space with alternative meanings. The article illustrates the practice of spatial poetics through an analysis of Ciqikou, a historic district of Chongqing undergoing redevelopment. Residents expressed their resistance to redevelopment by writing slogans on buildings slated for demolition. By emphasising relationships of scale, network, and place, residents' graffiti challenged the territorial basis of the Chinese party-state's redevelopment project and revalorised the neighbourhood as worthy of preservation.

Participatory governance in China: ‘Informal public participation’ through neighbourhood mobilisation

“…For example, not only in China, but also Vietnam, another socialist country shares high similarities with China, have examples that illustrated how protests, either in overt or covert forms, made them sustain their living and helped them claim their benefits. For example, graffiti, slogans and scrawls are considered by Smith (2020) as a way of ‘spatial poetics’ in Chongqing, arguing it is a successful expression that prevented relocation and increased displacees’ compensation, highlighting their houses are part of cultural heritage rather than demolition and dilapidation; Zhai and Ng (2013) detail how a Muslim ethnic group with a high level of social capital in Xi’an protested for their rights to stay during the urban regeneration process. Similarly, in Hanoi, shows that street vendors’ covert resistance challenged dominant discourses at play (Turner and Schoenberger, 2012).…”

“…Though following government instructions is a deep rooted traditional Chinese culture of deference to authority (Zhang, 2002), Chinese citizens are highly adaptive to strategise and manipulate their conditions of living, to get involved within power relations for their own benefits (Logan, 2018; Su, 2015). Expressions such as graffiti, slogans and scrawls are common to see in neighbourhoods that are undergoing demolition and redevelopment, as a way of China’s own repertoire of public expression (Smith, 2020). Usually, these ‘spatial poetics’ echoed government slogans, such as ‘protect heritage is everyone’s duty’, by satirising the inconsistency of government’s claims between policy and reality (Smith, 2020).…”

“…Expressions such as graffiti, slogans and scrawls are common to see in neighbourhoods that are undergoing demolition and redevelopment, as a way of China’s own repertoire of public expression (Smith, 2020). Usually, these ‘spatial poetics’ echoed government slogans, such as ‘protect heritage is everyone’s duty’, by satirising the inconsistency of government’s claims between policy and reality (Smith, 2020). These messages reveal the inconsistency between different levels of government, a ‘loophole’ of these formal governmental participatory approaches as residents used the unmistakable government policies to reflect to the upper-level government, questioning the mismatch of policy and its delivery in practice, calling the upper-level government to discipline the lower-level officials, by gaining public support and shaming these local government officials into action (O’brien and Li, 2006; Smith, 2020).…”

“…However, what Smith (2020) failed to elaborate in his work is how these protests, sarcasms of government can exist in an ‘authoritarian’ state, preserved their dilapidated houses as a worthy place to live, and more importantly, why local residents wanted upper-level governments to discipline lower-level governments into action. What we can know from these studies is that China has a multi-scalar and hierarchical party-state (Wu and Zhang, 2021), may explain why local residents seek help and support from the upper-level governments.…”

“…Therefore, social resistance, which is regarded as the ‘right to the city’ in China’s urban redevelopment contexts (Shin, 2013b; Qian and He, 2012), has attracted tremendous attention in unravelling the complex relationships between the government and local residents (e.g. Smith, 2020; Shin, 2013b; Qian and He, 2019). In short, the right to the city emphasises the political right of marginalised social groups to alternative institutional arrangements which can alter unequal mechanisms of distribution (Purcell, 2002; Harvey, 2003).…”