Village transformation : clan settlement and industrial landscape of the Pearl River Delta

Abstract

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, long home to Cantonese and coastal Hakka clans, has become one of the most industrialized areas in China today. Scholars have widely attributed the contemporary spatial transitions in China to the reformed policies. However, studies on the critical territorial roles of the state, local governments, and villages in the industrial growth in the fringe of Southern China reveal that the rural landscape of the PRD remains very distinct from that of the northern central regime because of the regional complexity in the periphery of the state. Legitimized by the royal orthodoxy and the imperial administrative system, the self-governing tradition of great lineage families outside the city wall has differentiated their clan power in the management of agricultural, residential, ritual, and commoditized market spaces, thereby creating unique features for China. In this context, this work re-constructs the historical narrative of post-socialist village transformations by examining the relations between clan settlement and industrial landscape as well as by enhancing the explanatory model of territorial dynamics by considering the socio-spatial characteristics of the lineage. By focusing on the advent of the transitioning socialist market planning ideology, this work explores the typological characteristics of clan settlements and their industrial equivalents that are related to their traditional lineage self-governing patterns. Selected cases in Dongguan, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou offer great examples and research potentials that can help us further understand the forces that control the production of these new village spaces. This study contends that post-socialist collectivism, as an evolutional self-governing of clan tradition, is crucial in fostering radical village transformations that are mainly rooted in three types of clan territories in the PRD, namely, the Cantonese grid-structure settlements, the Hakka walled-structure settlements, and the hybrid of these aforementioned settlements. Moreover, given the imbalanced development in the pre-modern era, the developments in the Chinese industrial landscape during the Deng era have been differentiated and linked to multiple urbanization measures, including the top–down industrial projects of the state, the villages as enterprises, and the leasing of land to private sectors by establishing coalitions with local governments from various forms of village leaderships, to preserve the local authority. Using historical insights and socio-spatial evaluations from the regional and community scales, this study introduces a methodological approach that can help reveal the origins and contested meanings that shape the built environment of the contemporary villages in the PRD.