Strategizing urbanism in the era of neoliberalization: State power reshuffling, land development and municipal finance in urbanizing China

Abstract

This paper examines the new dynamism of China’s urbanization in which urbanism has been actively pursued by municipal governments as a strategy to negotiate and contest with the new power relations established by the post-reform regime in the era of neoliberalization. The research identifies the salient features of urbanization and urban land development since the 1990s, probes into their social and political origins, and evaluates the effects of Chinese urban revolutions from above on economic growth, regional inequality and social volatility. The data analysed include those gathered from the national level and from the Guangzhou metropolis in southern China. The interwoven processes of state power reshuffling, urban land development and municipal finance in contemporary China are believed to have constituted a significant and controversial case for critical evaluation of the political origins of urban revolutions in the age of global urbanism and their uneven socioeconomic consequences.

A Green Leap Forward? Eco-State Restructuring and the Tianjin–Binhai Eco-City Model

“…Yet the central state continued to appropriate the bulk of local revenues (TSUI and WANG, 2004). After the 1994 national fiscal reform introducing 'tax sharing' (fēn shuì zhì) and mandating central state appropriation of local taxes, central government's share of China's total revenues increased from 22% to 56% (LIN, 2012). Yet, there was one exception to this centralization: income from land development was declared not a budgetary item, thus belonging to local governments (WU, 2010a).…”

“…Yet, there was one exception to this centralization: income from land development was declared not a budgetary item, thus belonging to local governments (WU, 2010a). This exception triggered a massive boom in local government appropriation of rural land on the urban fringe for conversion and sale for urban development, also creating a powerful potential source of personal wealth for local officials (HSING, 2006(HSING, , 2010: the 'tripolar relation between state power reshuffling, urban land commodification, and municipal finance ' (LIN et al, 2015' (LIN et al, , p. 1975. WU (2010a) argues that the 2008 financial crisis catalyzed a further strategic shift in China's political economy.…”

“…This intensified once the 1994 fiscal reform forced local governments to shoulder funding for their development projects (WU, 2010b;LIN, 2012LIN, , 2015. Affluent southern coastal cities with successful SEZs achieved relative financial independence, but northern and western cities continued to struggle, often heavily dependent on less profitable and outdated mining and heavy industries (LIU, 2009).…”

Economic transition and speculative urbanisation in China: Gentrification versus dispossession

“…In short, urbanisation has become synonym with accumulation (Hsing 2010;Wu 2009;Shin 2014a (Shin 2009). This owes much to the land reform, which paved the way to land-based accumulation (Hsing 2010;Lin et al 2014). While…”

“…This is further strengthened by the fact that as far as legal provisions are concerned, rural collectives are not able to hand over their land rights to a third party for nonagricultural use (Cao et al 2008:24 (Wu 2011:254). These land-derived extra-budgetary revenues have emerged as a key source of financing fixed assets investments (Lin et al 2014). The fiscal arrangement provides incentives for urban governments to bring more lands into their urban land reserves, facilitating urban territorial expansion through land-taking and conversion of existing urban lands to put them into a higher and better use.…”