Centrality of land and real estate dynamics in China through the prism of the Developmental State[Centralité du foncier et dynamiques immobilières en Chine au prisme de l’Etat Développeur]

This paper engages in a discussion between regulationists and urban scientists with the aim of bringing awareness of the growing role of property markets as drivers of contemporaneous capitalist regimes — a dimension that has not been given proper consideration by the French Regulation School. The case of China exemplifies the centrality of land in macroeconomic dynamics. The paper explores this centrality trough the prism of the Development State (DS), a framework that sets China's experience in the broader context of Northeast Asia. Three main characteristics of Johnson's DS framework are mobilized to highlight the role of property value enhancement in the regime of capital accumulation in China, i.e. the state's productivist approach, the main bank system and a nationalistic ethos in economy. It is argued that the state (at both central and local levels) has used the mechanism of property value enhancement as a major tool to ensure a smoother economic transition. By keeping the ‘main bank system' and avoiding the development of financial markets, it has created a dual track financing system of urban production, evidenced by the process of ‘landed urbanization' (Li, 2014) and the proliferation of grey finance. To keep the land rent under control, foreign investment had to be restricted despite the strong focus put by local governments on international design in urban (re) development.