The ivory tower in China’s speculative urbanism: instrumentalizing the university-healthcare nexus

ABSTRACT

This research investigates how the public university engages in China's speculative urbanism by establishing and operationalizing the university-healthcare nexus through both real estate and healthcare businesses. Drawing on open company data and expert interviews, the organizational structure of public and private actors in the university-healthcare nexus of the Peking University Healthcare City was unfold as a case study. Findings reveal that the university-healthcare nexus was established by Peking University and its subsidiary private companies. The nexus enables speculative urban development by aligning stakeholders' interests, branding healthcare businesses, and camouflaging profit-driven real estate development. This research thus brings an alternative perspective to understanding the relationship between public and private institutions and the critical role of universities in China's urbanization process. Since the research is based on an individual case study, future comparative studies could help test the scalability of the implications.

KEYWORDS:

• University
• hospital
• university-healthcare nexus
• urban development
• China

Acknowledgments

The paper is an extension of Xuanyi Nie's doctoral dissertation “The Civic Value and Economic Promise of Medical Cities in the United States and China.” The author is grateful for the committee members’ encouragement, guidance, and feedback along the way. The author specially thanks Professor Winnie Yip for sharing her contacts, and thanks the anonymized interview participants who have offered critical information and insights into the case study. The author also thanks the organizers for their feedback at the 2022 JPER Writing Workshop and the insightful comments from the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the Code for Classification of Urban Land Use and Planning Standards of Development Land (GB50137-2011), A35 belongs to type A administration and public services land, which is usually allocated for free for 50 years of use. Housing development on A35 land cannot be sold unless overriding the land use.

2 A few universities have created some of the largest and most successful high-tech enterprises in the country. Besides PKU Founder, the Chinese Academy of Sciences established Lenovo and Tsinghua University created Tongfang. They have been the top personal computer makers in China.

3 Data collected from https://aiqicha.baidu.com, updated in August 2023.

4 The author made four visits in total: one in June 2019, one in December 2019, one in November 2020, and the last one in December 2021.

5 The second interview was conducted in Beijing on 10 November 2020, in person with A (anonymized) who previously held a position in the leadership of Peking University.

6 The leadership of Peking University included the former party secretary Weifang Min, the former president Zhihong Xu, and the former deputy vice-president Qide Han.

7 The first interview was conducted in Beijing on 23 December 2019, in person with A (anonymized) who previously held a position in the leadership of Peking University.

8 Interview conducted in Beijing on 5 July 2019, in person with B (anonymized) who previously held a position in the Changping District Government. The land for the Peking University International Hospital was initially given to another public hospital, but later the land was transferred to PKU Founder. Details on this land transfer cannot be revealed by the author due to confidentiality.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.