Polycentric city-regions in the state-scalar politics of land development: The case of China

Land Use Policy 59 (2016) 168–175

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Polycentric city-regions in the state-scalar politics of land development: The case of China Xianjin Huang a , Yi Li a,∗ , Iain Hay b a b

School of Geographic and Oceanographic Science, Research Centre of Human Geography, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China School of the Environment, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 22 March 2016 Received in revised form 6 July 2016 Accepted 30 August 2016 Keywords: Multi-scalar City-region Land development Politics of scale China

a b s t r a c t China’s recent rapid urban growth has embraced city peripheries, with such great expansion occurring that polycentric city-regions have been created. Recognizing that multiple levels of government are entangled in this process our paper attends to multi-scalar state interactions in the process of city-region formation. Using two cases from Jiangsu province in China’s east, we demonstrate that as a consequence of urban expansion the scale of urban politics is shifting from the intra-urban to the metropolitan, involving processes such as annexation and the selective mapping of governance under a city-administering-county system. Additionally, the scalar relations between the different levels of government, which centre on land interests and the corresponding redistribution of fiscal revenue and social provisions, play an important part in the formation of city-regions. We argue that the state-scalar politics involved in peri-urban development demand more attention and theorization in future studies of Chinese urbanization. © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction: emerging Chinese polycentric city-regions, neoliberal urban politics, and beyond City-regionalism is considered to be a distinct form of spatial development in the post-Keynesian era, emerging as a result of rescaled urban-regional governmental interventions (Brenner, 2004). Large cities expand into larger agglomerations such as global city-regions or mega-city regions as part of accelerated globalization and economic integration (Hall and Pain, 2006; Scott, 2001). In addition to geo-economic driving forces, spatial agglomeration is also shaped by governance strategies and policies (Jonas et al., 2010; While et al., 2013). “Centrally orchestrated regionalism” (Harrison, 2008: 924) is rolled out by the neoliberal state within discourses of city-region competitiveness, with the character, construction, and consequences of city-regionalism depending on the specific national context (Jonas, 2013). The city-region agenda is more than simply a state-orchestrated neoliberal project (Harding, 2007). Some city-region projects have been active for a long time, emerging as a response to locally rooted demands rather than as part of an imposed national programme (Deas, 2014; Jonas and Pincetl, 2006; McCann, 2007).

∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (Y. Li). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.08.037 0264-8377/© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

In China, while the development of polycentric city-regions has attracted academic attention, many studies have adopted restricted economic geography approaches (Liu et al., 2015; Yeh et al., 2015; Zhao and Zhang, 2007). However, several studies have examined these spatial agglomerations from a governance perspective (Li and Wu, 2012; Zhang, 2006; Wu and Phelps, 2008). The dominant role of the state and its entrepreneurial thrust are highlighted in some of this literature (Wu and Phelps, 2011). With rapid urban sprawl towards and beyond the outer suburbs, spatial polycentrality is extending from the intra-urban to the city-region level (Shen and Wu, 2012). The dynamics of this and other aspects of Chinese urbanization are increasingly interpreted from the theoretical perspective of neoliberalism (He and Wu, 2005, 2009; Lin and Zhang, 2015). Urban spaces are no longer regarded as mere outgrowths of agglomeration but are strongly affected and shaped by political and governance strategies (Lin, 2014). The well-rehearsed thesis of this city-based regional development describes administrative annexation and land commodification at the urban fringe, which transforms extensive rural land for urban functions (Lin, 2009). The resulting land income windfall has, in turn, financed largescale urbanization across the country (Liu and Lin, 2014), yielding city-based regional development that increases intra-regional discrepancies (Lin et al., 2015). Of course, the planning and building of regional infrastructure such as bridges, high-speed railways, inter-city light rail, and cooperative industrial parks have also con-

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tributed to the development and reshaping of regions (Li et al., 2014; Luo and Shen, 2007; Xu and Yeh, 2013; Yang, 2006; Ye, 2014). Chinese neoliberalism shows persistently strong state intervention (Ma, 2009), which is far from the orthodox theory of neoliberal urbanism that suggests state retreat to make room for the market (Wu, 2010). To address this seemingly odd contradiction, it has been proposed that neoliberalization in China is not at all engaged with liberal ideology but is instead a practical and pragmatic response to a crisis of economic growth and state legitimacy (Wu, 2008). Strong state control is not a legacy or path dependency inherited from a planned economy but is instead a powerful instrument to legitimize and facilitate marketization and to maintain social order throughout the process (He and Wu, 2009; Wu, 2008, 2010). With the focus on state-market relations, relatively little attention has been accorded to the internal dynamics of the state in Chinese neoliberalization (except for He and Wu, 2005, 2009; Shin, 2015). Hidden in the analysis is the state administrative hierarchy and China’s complex urban system. Consideration of both is pivotal to theorization given that the territorial structure of the state associated with China’s system of administrative divisions creates the fundamental conditions for the nation’s urban political economy (Cartier, 2005, 2015; Ma, 2005). However, other than some initial work on inter-scalar state relations and the contested process of state rescaling based on the Pearl River Delta (Li et al., 2014; Xu and Yeh, 2013), the structure of the state and the sophisticated interactions between its different levels remain under-examined in the study of the formation of city-regions. So, contemporary examinations of China’s rapid urbanization tend to conceptualize the state and urban space as unitary and pay little attention to the multi-scalar state relations involved in the development of city-regions, which generate scalar politics within specific geopolitical contexts (Cox, 2010). Within the Chinese literature, there is a conventional discussion about centrallocal relations, particularly regarding fiscal affairs (Chung, 1995). The state’s reshuffling of liabilities and responsibilities sets the fundamental background for the emerging neoliberal urbanism (Lin, 2014; Lin et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2007). However, the process for producing the new spaces of city-regions, in which multiple government agencies at diverse levels are involved, remains unclear. In attending to this lacuna, this paper explores two emerging polycentric city-regions in Jiangsu province to identify and illuminate the sophisticated inter-governmental relationships involved in urban and land development at the edge of the city. The coastal province Jiangsu is one of the fastest growing and urbanizing areas in China, with phenomenal land development taking place in its urban periphery (Lin and Yi, 2011). Two municipalities in Jiangsu, Nanjing and Xuzhou, have been selected for this study to represent different governance structures within city-regions. By mid-2016, Xuzhou governed 5 urban districts, 3 counties and 2 county-level cities. By contrast, Nanjing annexed its last 2 counties in 2013 and so governed 11 urban districts. On the basis of these two archetypal local governance structures, the comparative case studies promise insights into the multi-scalar state interactions in the process of city-region formation. This study draws on qualitative data obtained through research involving 19 semi-structured interviews with local government officers, planners, and officials at new town development corporations and industrial parks in Jiangsu province (Table 1). Through a combination of purposive and snowball sampling interviewees were selected carefully on the basis of their role and expertise in urban and regional development. Respondent selection was also intended to maximize the range of perspectives possible. Openended interview questions were focused to explore the role and involvement of different levels of government as well as interactions and contradictions between them. The thematic areas that the questions covered included the administrative apparatus, land

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use governance, and financing in the peripheral development. The interviews were supplemented by careful analysis of urban planning documents, development strategies, and other related reports collected during visits to the study area. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. We begin with a discussion of the need to approach city-regional development from the perspective of ‘politics of scale’ (Cox, 2010). After a brief overview of state rescaling and inter-scalar state relations in post-reform China, we discuss the complex spatial system of the Chinese urban administration and its implications for producing spaces in city-regions. In subsequent sections, we examine the development of peripheral areas of two municipalities in Jiangsu province. These examples are reviewed in relation to multi-scalar state relations and their effects upon city-region formation. In the final section, we offer conclusions and point to implications for future studies.

2. State rescaling, city-regions and politics of scale Within the general context of global production and new economic agglomeration, global city-regions have been recognized as having prominence in the organization of future global and national economies (Scott, 2001). With the main city continuing as the node of the economy, the dispersal of urban functions from there to the wider city-region is observed (Hall and Pain, 2006; Lang and Knox, 2009). In addition to the relational linkages and networked clusters that feature in post-Fordist knowledge economies, the formation of city-regions is reflective and constitutive of extra-economic dimensions, including political mobilization, cultural performances, and institutional accomplishments (Jones and MacLeod, 2004). That is, city-region development is socially and politically, as well as economically, constructed (Jonas and Ward, 2007; Jonas et al., 2010; While et al., 2013). Influential work on the rescaling of statehood (Brenner, 2004) has shown the city-region to represent a new form of ‘spatial selectivity’ by the state (e.g., Jones, 1997, 2001). The material or discursive ‘new state space’ of the city-region is created through rearticulated governance strategies within discourses of competitiveness (Bristow, 2010). New state spatialities are remapped against functional economic spaces in ways that favour the free flow of capital and markets (Bristow, 2013; Harrison, 2012). Although insightful, the theoretical framework of state rescaling has been challenged because of its generality and the precedence it ostensibly gives to economic regulation (MacLeavy and Harrison, 2010). From the perspective of state rescaling, city-region analysis also demonstrates at least a hint of political-economic functionalism (Jonas, 2012a). Increased emphases are in turn placed on decoding the spatiality of the state in association with its contextspecific territorial politics (Cox, 2009; Jonas, 2012b; Park, 2008) to determine the processes and nature of scale building (Klink, 2013). The concept of ‘politics of scale’ offers an analytical protocol for deciphering agents and tensions in the processes of state rescaling and city-region development (MacKinnon, 2011). The socioeconomic and political dependence of state and non-state actors at different geographical scales has created place-based politics in the restructuring of state and space (Cox, 1998). The ‘politics of scale’ perspective has long been deployed in research on political ecology and environmental governance (McCauley and Murphy, 2013). Locally-rooted regional challenges such as urban sprawl, fiscal disparities, and the provision of collective goods such as water services and large-scale infrastructure constitute major political issues in city-regions dealing with increasingly fragmented and networked post-neoliberalization urban governance (Cox, 2011; MacLeod and Jones, 2011). However, the employment of politics of scale in the study of city-regionalism in general begins with a more

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Table 1 List of interviewees. Interview date

Nanjing June 2014

July 2014

July 2014

July 2014

July 2014

July 2014

May 2015

July 2015

July 2015

Xuzhou November 2014

March 2015

Interviewee details

Interview city

Relevance (Claim to authority)

Scale of dependence (Socioeconomic and political dependence of relevant actors)

Two staff from a state-owned investment group An executive from a state-owned investment group Two senior-level cadres from the management committee of a new town development in Jiangbei, Nanjing A middle-level cadre from the management committee of a science and technology industrial park in Jiangbei, Nanjing A middle-level cadre from the planning bureau of an urban district in Jiangbei, Nanjing A cadre from the street office of an urban district in Jiangbei, Nanjing A middle-level cadre from the development and reform committee of an urban district in Jiangbei, Nanjing A senior-level cadre from the development and reform committee of an urban district in Jiangbei, Nanjing A senior planner from the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design

Nanjing

The investment group is in charge of financing Jiangbei’s development on behalf of the municipal government The investment group is in charge of financing Jiangbei’s development on behalf of the municipal government A key stakeholder (state-affiliated investment platform) in Jiangbei land development

Dependent on the municipal government

Nanjing

A key stakeholder (state-affiliated investment platform) in Jiangbei land development

Dependent on the urban district government at the county level

Nanjing

Administrative authority for urban and rural plan-making of the urban district in Jiangbei, Nanjing

Dependent on the urban district government at the county level

Nanjing

Administrative organisation at the township and town level

Dependent on the urban district government at the county level

Nanjing

Administrative authority for the urban district’s social and economic development

Dependent on the urban district government at the county level

Nanjing

Administrative authority for the urban district’s social and economic development

Dependent on the urban district government at the county level

Nanjing

Involved in preparation of the Short-Range Plan for Jiangbei New District of Nanjing, which is designated by the municipal government

Dependent on the municipal government

A middle-level cadre from the Development and Reform Committee, Xuzhou A planner from Tianjin Institute of Urban Planning and Design

Xuzhou

Administrative authority of Xuzhou’s social and economic development

Dependent on the municipal government

Nanjing(By telephone)

Involved in preparation of the strategic plan for Xuzhou’s aviation industrial development, which is designated by the municipal government Involved in preparation of the Plan for Guanyin Industrial Development Zone, which is designated by the government of Suining Involved in preparation of the Detailed Plan for Shuanggou town, where Guanyin Industrial Development Zone is located Administrative authority for urban and rural plan-making of Xuzhou Administrative authority for inward investment promotion for Suining

Dependent on the municipal government

Administrative authority in charge of development zones

Interplay with Xuzhou municipality and Suining county

Nanjing

Nanjing

March 2015

A professor from Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Social Sciences

Nanjing

March 2015

Two planners from the Urban Planning Institute of Nanjing University

Nanjing

March 2015

A middle-level cadre from Xuzhou Planning Bureau A middle-level cadre from the Suining Bureau of Commerce A director from Party Committee of Jiangsu province

Xuzhou

March 2015

March 2015

Xuzhou

Nanjing

recent call to move beyond the focus on horizontal partnerships to embrace the relations between different levels of government (Cox, 2010). The form and governance of extended urban regions not only involves the local stakeholders’ pro-growth machine but also relates to the scalar division of labour and power within the state at different geographic scales (Cox, 2010). That is, analysis of the political construct of a city-region must refer to the actors

Dependent on the municipal government Dependent on the urban district government at the county level

Dependent on the government of Suining at the county-level

Dependent on the government of Shuanggou at the township and town level Dependent on the municipal government Dependent on the government of Suining at the county-level

involved and their inherited inter-scalar relations within the existing administrative hierarchy (Harrison, 2010, 2013; Rees and Lord, 2013). The examination of politics of scale not only helps to uncover the role of political regulation in the development of city-regions but more importantly serves as a tool to unpack their territorial context and geopolitics (Jonas, 2012b). Although scalar politics

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appear to be associated primarily with matters of environment and sustainability (Jonas, 2012a), increased inter-scalar tensions over the distribution of fiscal resources, democracy, and the provision of public infrastructure are being documented (Harrison and Hoyler, 2014; Jonas et al., 2014; MacLeod, 2011). In the current global context of fiscal austerity and the crisis of collective provision the form and governance of city-regions are being challenged by wider struggles of state restructuring (Jonas, 2013). Because city-regionalism cannot be detached from its territoriality, it is important to expose the global diversity of city-regionalism and scrutinize its embedded national, specific context. Thus, this paper examines the emerging city-region in the Chinese context.

3. Changing land use governance, contested inter-scalar state relations, and the creation of city-regions in the Chinese context 3.1. Rescaling Chinese state power and the contested inter-scalar state relations The Chinese state territory is governed through a system of administrative divisions which are currently structured into four levels of local government, namely the province level, the prefecture level, the county level, and the township and town level, all under the central state (Fig. 1). In the post-1978 Economic Reform period, important administrative powers have devolved from the central state, level by level (Wei, 2002; Wu et al., 2007). Despite increasing local autonomy, the scalar division of power throughout the hierarchy is not legally stipulated but is contingent on local negotiations and historical conditions. The power dynamics between the central state and local governments are extremely salient. As noted by political scientists and fiscal specialists, administrative decentralization and fiscal sharing are often readjusted after entrenched vertical control (Solinger, 1996; Tsui and Wang, 2004). In the sphere of land use activities, for example, the decentralization of land management has been partially recentralized to minimize the acquisition of farmland by the central government’s Ministry of Land Resources (Xu and Yeh, 2009). The legitimacy of local innovation and initiatives can succumb to the attitudes of central government (Chien, 2007, 2013; Li et al., 2014). Even for a municipality as global as Shanghai, its Dongtan eco-city project stalled, partially because of a lack of recognition from the central state (Miao and Lang, 2015). Implicit permission to implement the ‘scale-jump’ strategy associated with the Guangzhou Asian Games and intended to reposition Guangzhou on the global and national stage also had to be negotiated with the central state (Shin, 2015). In other words, although top-down control has decreased substantially since the Economic Reform, the national scale retains significance through party control (Edin, 2003) and various measures of state recentralization (Mertha, 2005; Xu and Wang, 2012). However, what has garnered less attention are the relations between different layers of the local state. The division of power below the province level displays variations depending on local, place-specific conditions. For instance, the Suzhou city-region demonstrates strong local government at all levels from town to county and to prefecture (Wei, 2002; Yang and Wang, 2008). In contrast, development in the Pearl River Delta area demonstrates a different governance map, with weaker local government at the prefecture and county levels but stronger village governance based on clans (Xue and Wu, 2015). With power to dispose of land use rights devolving, local governments at and below the prefecture level have effectively become de facto landlords (Shin, 2009). Because local finances are predominantly dependent on land revenue (Lin and Yi, 2011), inter-scalar state relations are to some

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extent shaped by the possession of, and access to, land resources (Hsing, 2010). In other words, the land-centred growth regime has generated administrative-territory-based interests, particularly for local governments at and below the prefecture level. The administrative jurisdiction constitutes the territory that political leaders use to create fortunes and develop glorious projects for political promotion (c.f. Li et al., 2014). Therefore, any type of rescaling strategy or administrative readjustment that will disturb jurisdictions is bound to arouse tensions (Zhang and Wu, 2006). For example, industrial restructuring led by Guangdong’s provincial government encountered resistance from township and village authorities (Yang, 2012). Overall, power relations between the different levels of the state in China have not flattened or become more coherently distributed since 1978. Indeed, inter-scalar state relations have been complicated by parallel processes of political centralization and administrative/fiscal decentralization (c.f. Chien, 2007). On one hand, local autonomy is justified by the state’s downscaling of liabilities and responsibilities. On the other hand, inter-governmental relations in China remain heavily conditioned by the scalar structure of the state (Cartier, 2015). Contested inter-scalar state relations manifest themselves clearly in the urban sprawl and polycentric city-region formation process, upon which the next section expounds. 3.2. New town development, peri-urban governance and land politics New town development at the urban periphery has been promoted in post-reform China (Hsing, 2010) and represents a key state spatial strategy to facilitate capital accumulations centred on land resources (Lin, 2007). ‘New town’ is a term used loosely in China referring generally to new settlement mega projects and to large-scale regeneration (Wu, 2015). Mega projects at the urban fringe lead the polycentric spatial structure extending from the urban to the city-regions, however they present governance challenges associated with the coordination of different governments in the region (Wu, 2015). Peri-urban governance is complicated by the Chinese urban administrative system that was established in the early 1980s, and within which a nationwide so-called city-administering-counties system was implemented (Ma, 2005). In the system, prefecturelevel cities assume the role of administrative bodies to manage a number of counties and county-level cities (Chung, 2007). This element of urban administrative restructuring has had profound effects on the territorial and scalar relations between prefecturelevel and county-level cities (Li and Wu, 2014). In territorial terms, a municipality at or above the prefecture level1 is essentially transformed into a de facto city-region whose nominal administrative territory incorporates the counties and county-level cities under its jurisdiction (c.f. Hsing, 2010: 95). In scalar terms, the municipality functions as the immediate superordinate level to the rural county and to county-level cities. Thus, territorial governance at the urban periphery is covered by two different layers of government: municipal government and county-level government. This nested territorial governance system suggests ambiguous land jurisdiction across the urban periphery. However, this ambiguity did not lead to many disputes in the early days when municipal governments lacked the personnel and funds to govern an entire

1 China has a complex ‘city system’ affiliated with hierarchal administrative rankings (Chung and Lam, 2009; Ma, 2005). For example, the government of Centrally Administered Cities sits above the prefecture level, at the provincial level, positioning which falls beyond the discussion of this paper. This paper uses the term municipal government to refer to city government at and above the prefecture level.

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Fig. 1. China’s administrative system and multi-levels of government. Note: 1. Dotted lines indicate administrative units without separate fiscal budgets but subordinate to superior levels; 2. Special administrative types such as Centrally Administered Cities (e.g. Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing), Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macao) and Autonomous Regions are not discussed in this paper. Source: Based on Ministry of Civil Affairs (2015) and Ma (2005) with modification.

region. At that time, planning and land management were devolved to the county units and even to urban and suburban districts in order to share the municipality’s burden. In other words, although municipal governments claimed nominal governance authority at the city-region level, it was subordinate units that actually had access to the land. Thus, income distributions from the sale of land were justified under the principle of ‘who develops, who benefits’ to boost local initiatives. However, frictions over land development began to emerge as land resources became increasingly scarce in the inner city relative to the abundant spaces available in suburban districts and rural county units at the remote urban periphery. To seize the underexploited land and consolidate their overall authority, a large number of municipalities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou made administrative adjustments to annex suburban counties (Ma, 2005; Lin, 2007; Zhang and Wu, 2006). Under the post-reform climate of decentralization, while county units stand below municipalities in the governance hierarchy they are practically independent but when suburban counties are converted into urban districts, they fall under the firm control of the municipality. Power rescaling and territorial readjustments have been resisted due to the authoritarian manner of the agglomeration process. Compromises have been made by municipalities to allow counties to retain their territorial and financial autonomy for several years (Zhang and Wu, 2006: 13–14). In other words, arbitrary administrative realignments do not resolve scalar tensions but internalize the scalar politics between the municipal and county-level governments. Discussion thus far has established the context for China’s regional politics. Friction is particularly apparent at the urban periphery, where different levels of local government scramble for additional land resources to produce (sub)urban space. We go on to argue that contested relations between different levels of local government together with the politics exposed throughout these processes play crucial roles in forging the polycentric spatiality of urbanism in China. We use two pertinent case studies to expand on this argument and to illuminate the complex relations of land development at the edge of China’s municipalities. 4. City-region development and politics of scale: two cases compared 4.1. Case 1: the rising polycentric metropolis of Nanjing Nanjing is the capital city of Jiangsu province and has been conferred sub-provincial-city administrative status. The jurisdictional area of the municipality is divided by the Yangtze River. The vast area of 2438 square kilometres that lies on the north side of the river is called Jiangbei; jiang is literally river, and bei is north. Jiangbei previously constituted four administrative subunits, including two small-sized suburban districts (Pukou and Dachang) surrounded by

two large rural counties (Jiangpu and Liuhe). In 2002, the two rural counties were annexed by the suburban districts to yield two new urban districts called Pukou and Liuhe. However, the administrative readjustment did not accelerate urban expansion. Separated from the central city by the river, Jiangbei developed as a typical urban fringe with a concentration of manufacturing and chemical industries. However, slow development at the periphery reached a tipping point in 2012 as a result of direct and indirect support from the municipal and higher-level governments. In contrast to conventional suburban development, which is led by municipal and urban district governments via a master plan or strategic urban plan (Wu and Phelps, 2008, 2011), national level policy and strategy were articulated in this case to prompt Jiangbei’s development. The Nanjing municipality and the Jiangsu provincial government exerted tremendous effort to lobby the State Council to approve Jiangbei as an additional national-level new district (guojiaji xinqu)2 similar to Pudong, Shanghai (Cartier, 2015) and Binhai, Tianjin (Wu, 2015: 173). The national title not only means further deregulation and devolution but also indicates a guarantee of land, facilities, and financial resources for government-led urban development even within a policy context of tightening land supply and bank loans (Executive from a stateowned investment group, interview, July 2014. Translated.). Thus, strategic partnerships across the scales are of critical importance to developing new towns at the urban edge. Without support from province and prefecture level government, the urban districts cannot skip levels to make the application. However, cooperative tendencies between municipal and district governments do not imply that cross-scale coalitions are tension free. Admittedly, municipal involvement provides Jiangbei with great benefits. For example, with its focus shifting from the central city towards Jiangbei, the municipality of Nanjing has improved Jiangbei’s transportation accessibility enormously. Two metropolitan rail lines have opened since 2014, facilitating commuting and boosting the local property market. Conversely, however, intervention implies a reshuffling of power in ways that favour the municipal level in matters such as land development and revenue: Jiangbei New District is the brainchild of the municipal authorities. This means it is a municipal-level project, and the municipality takes charge of planning, development and other relevant matters. For example, the planned centre of Jiangbei

2 After three years of preparation, Jiangbei was ultimately designated the 13th national-level new district on 2 July, 2015. The administrative authority of Jiangbei New District is a dispatched organ of Nanjing Party Committee and Nanjing municipal government. The municipal bid has created upbeat economic prospects for Jiangbei. Prior to its approval, housing prices increased rapidly with the entry of property tycoons and the development of flagship projects.

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New District occupies development project land below the district government. Because the municipal government took a fancy to the location, the prior projects under construction had to move and make room for the municipal plan. Because we [the district government and its agents] had contributed to the infrastructure in the early stage, we could claim some shares from the land sale income. But the negotiations would not be easy. This creates two major problems for us. We then have extremely limited sources for fiscal generation. Currently, only one industrial park is left [affiliated with the district government]. This [the industrial park] is our one and only source for revenue generation and political achievement. Besides, we have to cover the maintenance of the infrastructure after the municipality finishes construction, which could lead to disputes in the future. I mean, the municipal government has taken most of the land revenue [in the development stage] but we have to pay the bills for future social reproduction and facility maintenance (Member of a senior-level cadre from the Development and Reform Committee of an urban district in Jiangbei, Nanjing, interview, July 2015. Translated.).3 Overall, on the basis of the scarcity of undeveloped land within the central city, the state’s entrepreneurialism (Wu and Phelps, 2011) has driven Nanjing’s municipal government to speculate on untapped land in formerly less-favoured locations. Nevertheless, the methods used to divide land revenue and social services are likely to generate tensions between the municipal and district governments in the near future. 4.2. Case 2: developing the edge of Xuzhou city-region Xuzhou is a major city situated in the northern part of Jiangsu province with economic connections to neighbouring cities in Henan, Shandong, and Anhui provinces. The accessibility of the municipality is enhanced greatly by its local airport, the Guanyin Civil Airport, which was upgraded to international status in 2012. As others have indicated (Li et al., 2014; Xu and Yeh, 2013), megainfrastructure projects such as high-speed railways and airports can generate significant regional effects and hence serve as important catalysts for regional development and the creation of city-regions. However, the development surrounding Xuzhou’s international airport tells a different story. About 2000, an industrial park, the Guanyin Industrial Development Zone, was established following 1997 construction of the civil airport. However, few industries have been attracted to the area, even with an improving local economy and booming passenger and cargo volumes (Planner from Tianjin Institute of Urban Planning and Design, telephone interview, March 2015. Translated.). Lagging growth surrounding the international airport may be attributed to scalar tensions between the different levels of local government. The so-called Xuzhou Guanyin International Airport is actually located in the county of Suining and is governed by Xuzhou under the city-leading-county administrative system. The industrial park, which is a buffer to the airport, is also situated within the county’s jurisdiction. Thus, development of the industrial park and the surrounding area involves two key levels of local government in the city-region: the Xuzhou municipal government at the prefecture level, and the Suining government at the county level. The Xuzhou municipal government initiated establishment of the industrial park. However, it was unable to implement a development programme directly because the park was situated within Suining county. To strengthen municipal interventions and to

3 This point was repeatedly mentioned by the other interviewees throughout the fieldwork.

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accelerate local industrial development, Xuzhou proposed a reshuffling of the industrial park’s governance in 2013. A development committee dispatched from the prefecture-level government suggested enhancing the administrative ranking of the industrial zone: We could contribute to promoting the industrial park and attracting investment. For the outsider, no one knows about Suining. The county is just too weak to market its location. [But] With us, the industrial park could definitely enhance its impact and reputation (A middle-level cadre from the Development and Reform Committee, Xuzhou, interview, November 2014. Translated.). However, the proposal was resisted by the Suining county government. Tensions flared over matters of revenue and the jurisdictional status associated with potential land development. Because the industrial park was a potential revenue stream for the county government, it is not surprising that Suining was reluctant to cede the industrial zone to the Xuzhou municipal government. Nevertheless, the leaders of Suining, which is located in a relatively underdeveloped region, were also aware that they could not enable local development without support from the prefecture-level government, as revealed by an internal government document: Industrial zone development requires tremendous input, especially in terms of infrastructure, which cannot be afforded at the current stage . . . Without conceding part of the ownership to the Xuzhou prefecture-level government, Xuzhou would have no incentive to provide support . . . (quoted from an internal government report collected through fieldwork in March, 2015. Translated). As a compromise, the Suining county government proposed a flexible governance arrangement. In the scheme, the industrial park was defined as a co-owned industrial zone with Suining taking charge of land supply and social management, and the Xuzhou municipality responsible for policy making, planning, attracting mega-projects, building infrastructure, and financing. The reasoning behind Suining’s change of heart was both pragmatic and political: The co-ownership [arrangement] is able to maximize the financial and political support from the prefecture level. As for Suining, it preserves a majority of its administrative control while retaining a minor responsibility for infrastructure spending. Taking into account the circumstances of Suining’s annexation to Xuzhou, it means a minimal loss of the initial spending for Suining (edited from an internal government report collected through fieldwork in March, 2015. Translated). In sum, the bargaining process associated with industrial zone development at the edge of the Xuzhou municipality reveals some of the complexities of peripheral development. Interscalar state cooperation appears founded on the complementarity of Suining’s land resources and Xuzhou’s fiscal and administrative power. Tensions are predictable because of the reshuffling of fiscal and administrative distributions between the different levels of government which themselves are a result of territorial power changes in relation to land development.

4.3. Summary: politics of scale and its role in city-region development in China Peri-urban development in China involves different levels of government due to the nested administrative system within which municipal level territorial management sits. Cities’ expansion into their surrounding regions are shaped by two different gover-

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nance configurations exemplified in the discussion above. The peri-urban development of Nanjing represents an annexation approach to developing city-regions. That is, suburban counties are annexed and converted into municipal districts and, thus, integrated development under the direction of the municipal government is made possible. The second example, drawn from the urban periphery of Xuzhou, shows the mapping of governance under a city-administering-county system. Suining, a rural county subordinate to Xuzhou, was reluctant to co-operate fully due to its relatively independent status under decentralization. Its selective co-operation with Xuzhou was designed to take advantage a pool of resources conferred by the urban administrative hierarchy. Despite the hierarchical division of state power, the process of city-regionalization in China is not smooth and, indeed, might be seen to be characterized by tense relationships. As illustrated by the empirical cases, and paraphrasing Cox (2010: 216), cityregion development unfolds as an expression of the politics of scale between different levels of government in relation to land ownership and development. In the case of Nanjing, the administrative annexation of suburban counties has not reduced contradictions but instead internalizes the original metropolitan politics at the intra-urban level. And in the case of Xuzhou, in which an administrative annexation was not undertaken, a wider politics of scale involving the municipal government and county government is apparent. Regardless of the type of politics of scale, key concerns for all parties include the redistribution of income and social management responsibilities that emerge from reshuffling access to land at the urban periphery across the different levels of government. It appears that the two different governance structures have shaped city-region development quite differently. For Nanjing, rapid peri-urban development has been facilitated by the administrative annexation because the independence and autonomy of urban districts are more constrained than the county-level government under the city-administering-county system. Consequently, the municipal government is able to act with minimal resistance from the lower level government, despite the fact that after administrative decentralization it is actually in charge of land management. In contrast, the peripheral development process at Xuzhou has been much slower due to the lengthy negotiations between the municipal and county-level governments.

5. Conclusion This paper has examined the process of city-region development using two comparative studies based in China’s Jiangsu province. While development at the periphery of central cities contributes to the formation of city-regions, China’s nested and hierarchical urban administrative system, involving multiple levels of government, complicates the process of peri-urban development substantially. In a sense, the situation demonstrates, under Chinese circumstances, ‘the fluid multi-scalar nature of the urban process’ (Addie and Keil, 2015: 408). Rampant urban expansion in China reflects the dominance of state entrepreneurialism (Wu and Phelps, 2011) in which the multiple levels of local governments play proactive roles and have intimate involvement in the development and evolution of urban peripheries (Hsing, 2010). In other words, the multi-scalar nature of urbanization in China is reflected in the intra-state power dynamics underlying urban sprawl and metropolitan development processes. Beyond the fairly well-known measures of administrative annexation used to overcome administrative fragmentation at the urban fringe (Lin, 2009; Ma, 2005; Zhang and Wu, 2006), initiatives to coordinate development across the different levels of government have also seen new towns built at the urban periphery. Strategic cross-level partnerships are negotiated and achieved

by suburban districts and rural county units at the remote urban periphery through the transfer of part of the land development authority in exchange for political support from municipal and higher-level governments. That is, although the different factions of government agencies and community interests are often documented in the western literature (Harrison and Hoyler, 2014; Jonas et al., 2014; MacLeod, 2011) to engage in regional agendas under policy rhetoric such as sustainability, regional infrastructure deficit and regional competitiveness, the creation of Chinese city-regions is driven by a covert scramble for land resources and land speculation at the urban fringe. The scalar politics revolving around land interests are closely associated with the particularities of China’s urban administrative system and the wider state restructuring that has been initiated since the 1978 Economic Reform. Scalar tensions have developed within an era of fiscal recentralization that has occurred simultaneously with the central state’s gradual abdication of social provision and welfare functions to local governments. While this paper pays primary attention to conflicts among local levels of state emerging as a result of urban expansion into city-regions, China’s complex urban systems and affiliated administrative hierarchy suggest that upper levels warrant detailed scrutiny in future studies.

Funding The research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, 41571162) and the Ministry of Education Grant for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars.

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