Nomocracy versus teleocracy: Comparing participatory urban redevelopment in Shenzhen and Kashgar

ABSTRACT

The Chinese regime in urban redevelopment has evolved from a command type to one that seems committed to adopting the successful elements of participatory institutions. Recent studies mostly focus on the analysis of cities populated by the Han ethnic group and, as such, are susceptible to ethnographical and cultural bias. Building upon the concepts of habitus and nomocratic-teleocratic imbrication, this article investigates the variegated forms of Chinese urban governance in redevelopment projects through a comparative view of critical geopolitics in cities with stark ethnographical differences—a Uyghur community in Kashgar’s Old Town, and a Han community in Shenzhen. Our findings reveal that, when faced with a teleocratic order imposed on their nomocratically formed space, Uyghur residents with a community-based habitus preferred non-confrontational practices for self-protection, rather than direct engagement in open conflict; conversely, Shenzhen residents with state-preference habitus chose public mobilization as a means to seek state attention, largely because their teleocratic community was allowed certain room for negotiations and contestation in the planning process. Two hybrid planning orders are identified: teleocratized nomocracy and nomocratized teleocracy, manifesting the divergent ways in which collaborative strategies have been incorporated by China’s governing authorities in order to increase policy adaptability. These findings contribute to understanding the complexity and flexibility of urban governance in the participatory transformation of the urban policy framework in China.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory urban redevelopment
• nomocracy
• teleocracy
• habitus
• China

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Special economic zones are granted more free market-oriented economic policies and flexible governmental measures by the Chinese government, so they can utilize this preferential policy arrangement to attract foreign and domestic businesses.

2. For field observation and interviews, one author spent one month each in Kashgar in 2016 and 2018 respectively while the other author spent three months in Shenzhen in 2017.

3. For Kashgar, this section investigates the situation prior to 2000, the analysis of which is mainly based on secondary sources from the official archives of Kashgar and Xinjiang from 1990 to 2000. For Ludancun, this section investigates the situation prior to 2009, the analysis of which is mainly based on interviews and secondary sources from news articles, planning schemes and official documents.

4. This socio-spatial spontaneity suggests the spatial order of the Old Town before redevelopment was not imposed by a single partisan power, but involved politics, conflict and local religious negotiations in the past decades of urban history. The historical anthropological work by Bellér-Hann (2013) is illuminating on this.

5. It should be acknowledged that the state intervention of the private spaces (for example, the civil servant–family pair-up program) has created variegated forms of loyalties. Even at the family level, most Uyghur families in the Old Town had at least one relative employed by the state—party officials, police officers, and so on. However, the access of local ethnic communities to contest or change political decisions was still constrained at the city or local level. Some local ethnic officers also developed ways to weaken or challenge state policy in their own communities (Xie & Liu, 2019).

6. We should note that Kashgar Old Town is traditionally a merchant city, so the Uyghur connection to state government has long been very limited. This is also confirmed in some of our interviews conducted in Kashgar.

7. Writers in critical historiography of this movement have tended to dispute the use of the term “terrorism” by the Chinese state (see the recent book by Roberts, 2020). In contrast to critical historians, scholars in International Relations have documented an escalating threat of Islamic insurgency in Xinjiang and Central Asia (see Greitens et al., 2020).

8. While urban developments are part of the state’s attempt to increase oversight and combat terrorism, we should not ignore the neoliberal logic behind such developments. Recent works have disputed the extent of the state’s consultation with Uyghurs in their design of homes and incorporated notions of authoritarian reflectiveness and ethno-racial capitalism in analysis (see Cappelletti, 2014; Kobi, 2016; Steenberg & Rippa, 2019).

9. See Powers (2014). Äziz is a young Uyghur man who had just returned to his hometown after completing his university education in an eastern Chinese city, a vocal opponent of redevelopment project.

10. Quote from an interview conducted by Powers (2014).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was partially supported by the Peking University Lincoln Institute Centre research fund 2020 to 2021 [grant numbers: FS04-20201101-LX]; the Principal Fund of Xiamen University [grant number: 20720210054] and the National Social Science Fund of China, Youth Project [grant number: 20CZZ014].

Notes on contributors

Xiang Li

Xiang Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning, School of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Xiamen University. He received his PhD from the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. His research interests lie in urban redevelopment, policy mobility and institutional reform, urban governance and urban politics in China. Xiang’s work has been published in journals such as Journal of Planning Education and Research and Urban Studies.

Tianyang Liu

Tianyang Liu is an associate professor in the School of Politics and Public Administration at Wuhan University. He obtained his PhD in political science from the University of Melbourne, Australia. His recent publications appear in International Affairs, Political Geography, Critical Asian Studies, The Pacific Review, Terrorism and Political Violence, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Comunicar, Asian Studies Review, Political Studies Review, International Communication Gazette, and others. In addition, he authored the book China’s Soft War on Terror: Space-Making Processes of Securitisation (Routledge 2022).