Jiang, Y and Waley, P (2020) Who Builds Cities in China? How Urban Investment and Development Companies Have Transformed Shanghai. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 44 (4). pp. 636-651. ISSN 0309-1317
Abstract
While there is general acceptance that urban governance in China is entrepreneurial in nature, little has been written about the precise ways in which Chinese cities implement entrepreneurial policies. In this article we argue that the primary agents of urban entrepreneurialism in China are urban investment and development companies (UIDCs), known in Chinese as chengtou for short. We start by defining UIDCs as a category of state‐owned enterprise, but one that is wholly owned by local (often city) governments. We note that in the literature UIDCs are generally recognized for their involvement in raising funds for projects and piling up hidden debts, but their multiple roles in urban development tend to be neglected. We introduce here four UIDCs that have been largely responsible for the transformation of Shanghai into a modern city spearheading Chinese state entrepreneurialism, and in doing so we delineate the full range of the activities of these urban business empires. We argue in particular that they represent a corporate involvement by the state in urban development—the state presenting itself in the guise of a market player, a corporate entity able to raise funds and act as if it were a private company. UIDCs are the driving force behind China's urban entrepreneurialism and are without a clear parallel elsewhere.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 the authors. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Urban Research Publications Limited. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. |
Keywords: | China; entrepreneurial cities; Shanghai; state‐owned enterprises; urban governance; urban investment and development companies |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > SOG: Cities & Social Justice (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 06 Mar 2020 16:35 |
Last Modified: | 27 Jul 2022 08:47 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/1468-2427.12918 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:158088 |