Pseudo-Urbanization? Competitive government behavior and urban sprawl in China

Abstract

Urban population size is a slippery indicator of China's urbanization level. Urban sprawl through infrastructure construction, the setting up of development zones and administrative adjustments, expands urban space and in turn inflates urban population size without necessarily urbanizing the overall landscape or economy. This article seeks to distinguish urbanization from urban sprawl. It aims to uncover why and how local governments have spurred urban sprawl and shaped urbanization in today's China. It suggests that urban sprawl is a land-centered process engineered by the government primarily to generate revenue for local coffers. City building has become a competitive enterprise for local governments who seek to outdo each other in ‘place-making’, both to attract investments and to conjure up highly visible trophy projects. The implications of these findings on China's urbanization and how urban sprawl may be further studied are addressed at the end of the article.

Notes

*Chiew Ping Yew is Research Associate at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS). She is the author of ‘Explaining land use change in a Guangdong county—the supply side of the story’, The China Quarterly 207, (September 2011). Her ongoing research interests include the politics of land use conversion in China, transnational activism for the Tibet cause, as well as comparative development and democratization in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. Currently, she is involved in an inter-disciplinary research project—‘The impact of land rights on sustainable urbanization in China’—funded by the NUS Global Asia Institute. The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. The author can be reached by email at [email protected]

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^90. For details on the extent of annexation in recent years, refer to Zhongguo Chengshi Tongji Nianjian 2003 (Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe, 2004), pp. 4–7; Zhongguo Chengshi Tongji Nianjian 2005, pp. 4–6.

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^98. Wen Zhang and Shuzhi Xing, ‘Guangdong dazao di san cheng’ [‘Guangdong builds the third largest city’], Xinwen Zhoukan [News Weekly], (2003), pp. 28–30; Li et al., ‘Cong qu de shijiao dui “cheshi shequ” de jixiao yanjiu’, pp. 111–114.

^99. Li Zhang, ‘Conceptualizing China's urbanization under reforms’, Habitat International 32(4), (2008), p. 454.

^100. See, for instance, Keng, ‘China's land disposition system’, pp. 325–345; Yeh and Wu, ‘The new land development process’, pp. 330–353; Peter Ho, ‘Who owns China's land? Policies, property rights and deliberate institutional ambiguity’, The China Quarterly 166, (2001), pp. 394–421; Chengri Ding, ‘Policy and praxis of land acquisition in China’, Land Use Policy 24(1), (2007), pp. 1–13; Chengri Ding, ‘Land policy reform in China: assessment and prospects’, Land Use Policy 20(2), (2003), pp. 109–120; Lin and Ho, ‘The state, land system, and land development processes in contemporary China’, pp. 411–436.

^101. Samuel P. S. Ho and George C. S. Lin, ‘Non-agricultural land use in post-reform China’, The China Quarterly 179, (2004), p. 760.

^102. Wei Zou, Fen Zhang, Ziyin Zhuang and Hairong Song, ‘Transport infrastructure, growth, and poverty alleviation: empirical analysis of China’, Annals of Economics and Finance 9(2), (2008), pp. 345–371; Sylvie Démurger, ‘Infrastructure development and economic growth: an explanation for regional disparities in China?’, Journal of Comparative Economics 25, (2001), pp. 95–117.