Discovering a ‘post-revolutionary’ sense of place in China’s small commodity city of Yiwu

Abstract

The ‘small commodity city' of Yiwu in China specialises in low-end products, enjoying economic success due to its early establishment of private enterprise, yet relying upon traditional forms of solidarity as well as those provided by the structures of the market. It has ‘history', but one that has been reconstructed beyond all recognition. Drawing primarily upon the work of Doreen Massey, this article explores the burgeoning sense of place in Yiwu and the wider implications this has for thinking on place. The article analyses two specific elements: the ‘Wenzhou model', on which China's small commodity economy is built, and the architectural form of the ‘small district'. It argues that the use of the Wenzhou model in Yiwu situates it at the forefront of an economic national historical trajectory, and that the development of small districts, tied as they are to previous historical built forms, provides a sense of the past as an assemblage from which current identity can be forged. A sense of place, it proposes, has arisen precisely due to the unusual assemblage of those elements, but is less tied to traditional notions of place, being more grounded within moments and networks that resonate with current post-revolutionary lived experiences.

Key words:

• assemblage
• commodities
• Wenzhou model
• Doreen Massey
• place
• architecture

ORCID

Alison Hulme http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2651-3520

Notes

1 The YRD economic zone refers to 28 cities across Jiangsu, Anhui and Zhejiang provinces. It is dominated by Shanghai and its vast interior is heavily industrialized with an advanced transport infrastructure that includes road, rail, air and ports.

2 All these figures can be found at http://www.yiwu-market.cn/About%20yiwu.htm.

3 It should be noted that throughout the article there are a few terms that are difficult to translate as they are bound in nuanced cultural understandings in the Chinese context. Whilst aware of the loss incurred in translation, these appear in the English with an initial explanation of their Chinese meaning, and their pinyin translation.

4 Celebrity businessman Jack Ma (who stars in Win in China - China’s version of the TV show The Apprentice) is the founder of the ali group of companies, which includes the business-to-business website alibaba.com. It is his belief that the future will be based on small to medium sized enterprises (shrimps), rather than large corporations (whales), and this has informed his highly successful business models.

5 Technically neo-Confucianism began in the Tang (772–841) dynasty when Han Yu and Li Ao strove to empty it of its more mystical elements that had come from Buddhism and Daoism and place emphasis on the creation of rules for an ethical life. It became prominent during the Song and Ming dynasties.

6 This is the logic proposed and promoted by Deng in his famous speech often characterised with the words ‘to get rich is glorious’.

7 For a more detailed account of how Deng Xiao-ping managed to gain acceptance for his policies through respecting Mao’s legacy and re-appropriating Confucian ideals, see Vogel (2011).

8 This ‘cleansing’ was most dramatically put into action with the razing of Zhejiangcun in Beijing, in 1995 a manufacturing area comprised of the largest collection of migrants in any Chinese city. Located in the Fengtai district in the south of Beijing it had grown from just six families in 1984 to a population of over 100,000 (see Li Zhang 2001; Xiang 2005).

9 The city of Datong is typical here; its Mayor determinedly razing thousands of hutong homes in order to rebuild the 14th century Ming dynasty defensive wall to create a city that feels ancient and will attract tourists. The redevelopment of Datong is detailed in director Hao Zhou’s 2015 documentary film The Chinese Mayor in which Mayor Geng Tanbo grants access to his political life, displaying his ambitious plans to rid the city of pollution and create economic opportunities precisely by making it visitable.

10 The notion of the ‘iron rice bowl’ relates to the idea of welfare provision being solid and unbreakable, as it was deemed to be under Mao.

11 Guanxi is often translated as ‘relationship’ or ‘connection’, but is best explained as a combination of ganqing (depth of feeling within an interpersonal relationship), and renqing (moral obligation and ‘face’ or social prestige). It describes personal relationships in which one is able and obliged to perform and receive favours - a long-term, obligated and heartfelt connection, in which individuals have the right to demand fair return, benefits sharing and reciprocity.

12 Brenner, Madden, and Wachsmuth (2011) critique this stance, arguing that the danger of assemblage thinking is that it downplays the ‘context of contexts’ and this fails to acknowledge the ways in which capitalism shapes contemporary urbanisation. Building on this, Simone (2011) argues that whilst the ‘contexts of contexts’ is important, capitalist logics do not provide exhaustive accounts of urban sites and practices of urbanisation.

13 See Cao and Zhongya [1997] who put forward a relatively straight-forward connection between the onset of market economics and the rise of non-collective, i.e. individualistic, identities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alison Hulme

Alison Hulme is a lecturer in International Development at the University of Northampton, UK.