Business-promoted city-regionalism? New Industrial City projects by China Fortune Land Development

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon the New Industrial City (NIC) projects by China Fortune Land Development (CFLD), a Shanghai stock-listed top 10 real estate enterprise, this article accounts for the emergence of business-promoted city-regionalism as a novel mechanism for industrial zone development in small cities near large metropolises. Lacking sufficient capital and professional personnel, local governments of these small cities made long-term contracts with CFLD, a private company, to build and develop industrial zones under the brand CFLD NIC. This novel phenomenon demonstrates the state orchestration of business-promoted city-regionalism, namely, a variegated form of state entrepreneurialism prevalent in China.

KEYWORDS:

• business
• city-regionalism
• state entrepreneurialism
• China Fortune Land Development (CFLD)
• China

JEL:

• R11
• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Fulong Wu, the three anonymous referees and the editors for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We are also especially grateful to Fenghua Pan for his help in fieldwork, and all the people that we interviewed.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 42071206 and 41601157], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China [grant number B200202147], and the Open Research Fund of Research Center for China Administrative Division, East China Normal University.