The state acts through the market: ‘State entrepreneurialism’ beyond varieties of urban entrepreneurialism

Abstract

This commentary reflects on varieties of urban entrepreneurialism and rethinks its application to China. I argue that the state is proactively using market instruments for more strategic and developmental objectives in China. Characterized by ‘planning centrality, market instruments’, state entrepreneurialism manifests a different state–market relation: the state acts through the market rather than just being market friendly. In the post-crisis West, it is claimed that urban entrepreneurialism mutates into a financialized value extraction machine. Similarly, state entrepreneurialism reveals the usefulness but also the limits of the concept of urban entrepreneurialism. State entrepreneurialism adds a new narrative to the current description of governance changes associated with financialization and market operations.

Financing urban development, three business models: Johannesburg, Shanghai and London

“…But its business model is not that of urban entrepreneurialism or financialization. Instead, it reveals some salient feature of ‘state entrepreneurialism’, or, that the state acts through the market ( Wu, 2018 , 2020 ).…”

“…And on the other we include a Chinese case, Shanghai, as another equal starting point for theorising about urban development. Neither exceptions nor recipients of external theories ( Parnell and Pieterse, 2014 , Wu, 2017 , 2020 ), the cases of Shanghai and Johannesburg have informed our analysis of London. Placed as just another “ordinary city” ( Robinson, 2006 ), studies of London can both learn from insights generated in other contexts – as a destination for theory generated elsewhere - and in turn inspire innovative analysis in the context of comparative reflection.…”

“…On this basis, we seek to build towards emergent generalisations, close to the specific experiences we recount ( Lancione and McFarlane, 2016 ), but with potential to be more widely relevant ( Schmid et al, 2018 ). Although all three projects occurred in contexts with some experience of the neoliberalisation of urban policy and governance ( Massey, 2007 ; Murray, 2011 ; Wu, 2017 ) and the financialisation of investment ( Halbert & Attuyer, 2016 ; Wu, 2020 ), resisting applying these weighty analytical perspectives as a priori explanations for outcomes has allowed us to focus on the cases in their own right, rather than as different versions of neoliberalisation or financialisation. In this way we hope to enrich the analytical framework for urban politics.…”

The entrepreneurial lie of the land

“…From the production side-with which developers and local governments are primarily concerned as part of entrepreneurialism-the development process and its financing can be relatively simple in those many instances at the urban fringe where land is developed for the first time (Phelps, 2012). It may be simpler still in those societal contexts where the state has significant power to annex and rezone land for development as in China where, as Wu (2020) describes, the local state itself is able to be fundamentally entrepreneurial in a way not envisaged by Harvey. Third, there may also be some false oppositions in what is depicted as our underplaying of financialization. Some elements of financialization are hardly independent of the land value capture or betterment issues on which we focus.…”

Relational regulation and Chinese real estate investment in London: moving beyond the territorial trap

“…This is reinforced by broader simplifications of mobile 'investors' and 'footloose' firms. For decades, much of the academic literature on urban development projects and the entrepreneurial, boosterist policies of public agencies, have been underpinned by representations of an increasingly internationalized private sector that needs to be 'attracted' by public policy (Wu, 2020). For instance, in an excellent collection of recent writings on city marketing, the emphasis of conceptual and empirical narratives is predominantly state centric and focused on how 'almost all major cities now apply these [marketing and branding] strategies to improve their image' (Zenker, 2018, p. 1) to attract investors.…”