IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirc/v38y2020i2p329-346.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Small horse pulls big cart in the scalar struggles of competing administrations in Anhui Province, China

Author

Listed:
  • Yanpeng Jiang

    (Center for Modern Chinese City Studies and School of Urban and Regional Science, East China Normal University)

  • Paul Waley

Abstract

With its various layers of territorial administration, China provides a picture of the intricacies of scalar practices designed to enhance the competitive position of local governments. In this paper, we examine one arena of scalar competition, a fourth-tier city in Anhui Province that struggles to maintain its authority over its component parts. We focus on contests that play themselves out both vertically and horizontally over prestige projects and territory that can enhance revenue and fill coffers, noting their intensity and complexity. We argue that scalar arrangements in China have at least two distinctive features: they are bound into an all-encompassing system of hierarchical ranks, which covers not only territorial administrations but also all party and state institutions and officials; and the competition they engender is first and foremost related to position within this hierarchy. We discuss the scalar struggles of territorial administrations in terms of flux and fixity, the flux induced by intense competition and the hierarchical fixity sought by the central state. We conclude by arguing that these processes diverge from conventional analyses that explain state reterritorialisation as a response to capital flows.

Suggested Citation

  • Yanpeng Jiang & Paul Waley, 2020. "Small horse pulls big cart in the scalar struggles of competing administrations in Anhui Province, China," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(2), pages 329-346, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:38:y:2020:i:2:p:329-346
    DOI: 10.1177/2399654419866469
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399654419866469
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2399654419866469?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brenner, Neil, 2004. "New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270064.
    2. Paul Kendall, 2015. "Between big city and authentic village," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(5), pages 665-680, October.
    3. HaeRan Shin & Se Hoon Park & Jung Won Sonn, 2015. "The emergence of a multiscalar growth regime and scalar tension: the politics of urban development in Songdo New City, South Korea," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(6), pages 1618-1638, December.
    4. Jingxiang Zhang & Fulong Wu, 2006. "China's changing economic governance: Administrative annexation and the reorganization of local governments in the Yangtze River Delta," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 3-21.
    5. Takashi Tsukamoto, 2012. "Neoliberalization of the Developmental State: Tokyo's Bottom‐Up Politics and State Rescaling in Japan," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 71-89, January.
    6. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    7. Fulong Wu, 2016. "China's Emergent City-Region Governance: A New Form of State Spatial Selectivity through State-orchestrated Rescaling," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(6), pages 1134-1151, November.
    8. Bae‐Gyoon Park, 2008. "Uneven Development, Inter‐scalar Tensions, and the Politics of Decentralization in South Korea," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 40-59, March.
    9. Shenjing He & Lingyue Li & Yong Zhang & Jun Wang, 2018. "A Small Entrepreneurial City in Action: Policy Mobility, Urban Entrepreneurialism, and Politics of Scale in Jiyuan, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 684-702, July.
    10. Neil Brenner, 1999. "Globalisation as Reterritorialisation: The Re-scaling of Urban Governance in the European Union," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 36(3), pages 431-451, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhou, Changchang & Chan, Roger C.K., 2022. "State-scalar politics of rural land reform in China: The case of Wujin district," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Li Wang & Heng Chao & Guicai Li, 2019. "Diversification and Local Embeddedness: The Rescaling of National New Area Governance in Post-Reform China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-22, November.
    2. Gordon MacLeod, 2011. "Urban Politics Reconsidered," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(12), pages 2629-2660, September.
    3. June Wang, 2021. "UNDERSTANDING SCALAR POLITICS THROUGH THE FRAMEWORK OF RELATIONAL ARCHIPELAGOS: The Case of Shenzhen Fair, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(4), pages 716-731, July.
    4. Pengfei Ban & Wei Zhan & Qifeng Yuan & Xiaojian Li, 2021. "Delineating the Urban Areas of a Cross-Boundary City with Open-Access Data: Guangzhou–Foshan, South China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-17, March.
    5. Feng, Rundong & Wang, Kaiyong, 2022. "The direct and lag effects of administrative division adjustment on urban expansion patterns in Chinese mega-urban agglomerations," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    6. Carol Upadhya, 2017. "Amaravati and the New Andhra," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 12(2), pages 177-202, August.
    7. Yun Zhong & Xiaobo Su, 2019. "Spatial selectivity and intercity cooperation between Guangdong and Hong Kong," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(14), pages 3011-3029, November.
    8. Ayda Eraydın & Bilge Armatlı Köroğlu & Hilal Erkuş Öztürk & Suna Senem Yaşar, 2008. "Network Governance for Competitiveness: The Role of Policy Networks in the Economic Performance of Settlements in the Izmir Region," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(11), pages 2291-2321, October.
    9. Matjaž Uršič & Blaž Križnik, 2012. "Comparing urban renewal in Barcelona and Seoul—urban management in conditions of competition among global cities," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 21-39, May.
    10. lain Deas & Alex Lord, 2006. "From a New Regionalism to an Unusual Regionalism? The Emergence of Non-standard Regional Spaces and Lessons for the Territorial Reorganisation of the State," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(10), pages 1847-1877, September.
    11. Shutian Zhou & Guofang Zhai & Yuwen Lu & Yijun Shi, 2021. "The development of urban mega-projects in China: A case study of Nantong’s metro project," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 48(4), pages 759-774, May.
    12. Hickman, Hannah & While, Aidan, 2023. "Housing and the politics of Nationally Strategic Infrastructure Planning in England," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    13. Gordon Macleod & Martin Jones, 2007. "Territorial, Scalar, Networked, Connected: In What Sense a 'Regional World'?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(9), pages 1177-1191.
    14. Mengzhu Zhang & Si Qiao & Xiang Yan, 2021. "The secondary circuit of capital and the making of the suburban property boom in postcrisis Chinese cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(6), pages 1331-1355, September.
    15. Nikita Sud, 2017. "State, scale and networks in the liberalisation of India’s land," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(1), pages 76-93, February.
    16. Xiaobo Su, 2012. "Transnational Regionalization and the Rescaling of the Chinese State," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(6), pages 1327-1347, June.
    17. Alessandro Coppola & Alberto Vanolo, 2015. "Normalising autonomous spaces: Ongoing transformations in Christiania, Copenhagen," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(6), pages 1152-1168, May.
    18. Dong-Wan Gimm, 2013. "Fracturing Hegemony: Regionalism and State Rescaling in South Korea, 1961–71," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 1147-1167, July.
    19. Shenjing He & Rong Cai, 2024. "Negotiating the exclusive right to public schools in China’s education-featured gated communities under multiscalar and multidirectional urban entrepreneurialism," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(14), pages 2756-2777, November.
    20. Shaobo Wang & Junfeng Liu & Kunyao Xu & Meicheng Ji & Feifei Yan, 2023. "Cross-Regional Cooperation and Counter-Market-Oriented Spatial Linkage: A Case Study of Collaborative Industrial Parks in the Yangtze River Delta Region," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(2), pages 1-18, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirc:v:38:y:2020:i:2:p:329-346. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.