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- Title
Urbanization as A Process of State Building: Local Governance Reforms in China.
- Authors
Wai Wong, Siu
- Abstract
Existing scholarship suggests that local transformation in reform-era China has been a process of decentralization of state power driving extractive local governments to pursue economic growth through rapacious land appropriation and producing many miserable landless villagers. This study puts forward an alternative perspective by arguing that local governance reforms in China to advance urban development should also be interpreted as a process of state building, whereby local government reshaped its governance strategy so as to mitigate potential social unrest and strengthen its political legitimacy in governing rapidly urbanizing areas. Based on intensive fieldwork in a periurban district in southern China, this research examines how the local state has heightened its control over urbanizing villages through its day-to-day governance practices and the pursuit of a complex policy agenda comprising social welfare provision, shareholding reforms and intervention in grassroots politics. The findings of this study shed new light on understanding local state transformation in periurban China and on explaining why the country still maintains tremendous urban growth despite incessant land disputes and numerous social tensions at different localities.
- Subjects
CHINA; URBANIZATION; NATION building; POLITICAL reform -- Social aspects; LOCAL government; DECENTRALIZATION in government; STATE power -- Social aspects; HISTORY of economic development; ECONOMIC development; CHINESE politics &; government, 1949-; GOVERNMENT policy
- Publication
International Journal of Urban & Regional Research, 2015, Vol 39, Issue 5, p912
- ISSN
0309-1317
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1468-2427.12250