“…Many empirical studies reveal that the strategic goals of central and local states overlap but are not identical (Zhang, 2022, 2023; Zhang et al, 2023b), and local states may selectively implement the central state’s strategic goals (Chung and Xu, 2021), such as strategic industries (Pan et al, 2021) and infrastructure development (Shen et al, 2020), industrial structure upgrade (Li and Xiao, 2022), maintaining party-state legitimacy (Sum, 2019), and population control (Chan and Li, 2017; Immel, 2020; Ong, 2007). As the central state attaches increasing importance to extra-growth objectives (Luan and Li, 2022; Wu et al, 2022), such as ecological civilisation (Zhang and Wu, 2022; Zhang et al, 2022), food security, arable land conservation (Zhang et al, 2023b), social justice (Nie, 2023; Zhang, 2023), stability (Li and Jonas, 2022; Pan et al, 2017), indigenous technological innovation (Zhang and Wu, 2019), and national security, the local state still cares more about short-term growth (Chien and Woodworth, 2022; Wang et al, 2022), fiscal revenue (Luan and Li, 2022), and territorial competition (Zhang, 2022). However, the local state can also go beyond speculation and focus on long-term growth elements (Li and Xiao, 2022; Lin et al, 2022; Shen et al, 2020), including strategic space production (Chan and Li, 2017), striving for urban land development quota (Yang et al, 2019), attracting investors and taxpayers, and competing for young talents (Cheung, 2021).…”