Entrepreneurial party-state, territorial corporatism and new urban spaces: state-led urban redevelopment inNingbo, China, 2000-2011

Abstract

The production of China’s new urban spaces is an important articulation of China’s local state transformation and evolving state-society relations. Previous studies have utilized theories of the entrepreneurial state and corporatism to examine the role of the Chinese state and China’s state-society relations. The entrepreneurial characteristic and direct involvement in productive and profitable activities of the Chinese state are widely analyzed. And state corporatism helps explain how the Chinese Party-state deals with new social strata, such as private entrepreneurs, through state imposition, sponsorship and co-optation. In both fields, the organizational adaptation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) per se to the changing social stratification structure, industrial structure and urban spatial structure plays a key role in undertaking entrepreneurial local governance and imposing control over China’s new social spaces.

This thesis is based on an in-depth case study of Ningbo’s state-led urban redevelopment from 2000 to 2011, the two representative projects of which are Tianyi Square and the Laowaitan. Ethnographic fieldwork and documentary research were conducted as the major methods of data collection. The two urban redevelopment projects were undertaken by the Ningbo Urban Construction Investment Holdings Co., Ltd. (NBUCI), a local state-owned enterprise group specifically committed to strategic urban development projects and provision of municipal public utilities designated by the Ningbo Municipal Government. The Ningbo government significantly facilitated the two projects through high-profile promotional campaigns in an entrepreneurial manner. These phenomena represent state entrepreneurship of Ningbo’s Party-state agencies in Ningbo’s urban redevelopment.

In the governance of Tianyi Square and the Laowaitan, “territorialized Party-building” is undertaken in office buildings and business districts, and within private enterprises and new societal organizations. Organizational adaptation helps the CPC to consolidate its membership basis and expand its organizational control over the economic resources and talents in the non-state sector. The concept of “entrepreneurial Party-state” is thus proposed to highlight the “Party dimension” in China’s entrepreneurial urban governance.

And in the context of inter-district competition, territoriality has become central to authoritarian corporatist state-business intermediations and policy concertation, which is committed to forging the identity and promoting the interests of certain urban territories, and the subtle power struggle between the NBUCI on behalf of the Ningbo municipal authority and the district-level authority governing the territory of the Laowaitan area. The concept of “territorial corporatism” is thus proposed to articulate the territorial dimension in China’s changing state-business relations in China’s entrepreneurial urban governance.

This research provides new cases of state entrepreneurship, Party-state adaptation and state corporatism taking place in the domain of urban redevelopment and urban governance, which in turn lead to new theorization of the Chinese Party-state and China’s state-society relations at the local level in urban China. The directions for future research on Party-state adaptation and territorial corporatism in relation to urban governance in urban business districts are also identified, which necessitates comparative studies of more cases in different localities in urban China.