Globalization and the Chinese City

Fulong Wu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134263868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Introducing readers to the far-reaching global orientation that is now taking place in urban China, an international team of contributors describe overarching globalization through a detailed examination of the transformation of the built environment.

A range of urban development processes are analyzed including urbanization, real estate development, changing landscapes, the industrial restructuring of the second-tier city, and the formation of the city-region in the context of global and local interactions. In examining city development and local practices as part of globalization processes, the global city is treated as a collection of microcosms and concrete places, overcoming the analytical tension of the dichotomy of the perceived 'East versus West' divide.

1 Globalization and China’s new urbanism

Fulong Wu

‘Being national is being global’ (minzu de jiushi shijie de)

This is a common expression in China about how to become part of world culture; it emphasizes that world culture is itself composed of individual national cultures and that the more distinctively national the culture that one attempts to foster the more attractive and recognizable that national culture is in the world. Thus to become ‘global’, rather than imitating others, one should maintain one’s indigenous cultural roots. This introductory chapter is about the emergence of China’s new urbanism in the context of globalization.

Globalization has now become a ‘new meta–narrative’ of contemporary world changes of which the global city has been represented as the key manifestation (Sassen 1991, 2002, Short and Kim 1999, Taylor 2003, Olds and Yeung 2004). The rise of global awareness on the other hand promotes the imperative of local knowledge. Even in what is asserted as a global economy, activities rarely operate truly at a ‘global’ scale – more or less this globalization means transcending national boundaries or being ‘trans–local’ (Smith 2001). The recent proliferation of local growth research has concentrated on the scale of the city and region through which the new global economy is formed and ‘negotiated’ (Scott 2001, see also the special issue of Urban Studies, 2003). An extensive literature on global cities has been developing ever since the seminal hypothesis was developed by Friedmann and Wolff (1982) and the research by Sassen (1991, 1994) and others (Knox and Taylor 1995, Short and Kim 1999, Marcuse and van Kempen 2000). The focus on the city has begun to reveal a so–called global–local nexus (Beauregard 1995) through which globalization is no longer understood through the paradigm of ‘top–down’ and externally imposed processes. The critical local dimension has begun to be appreciated. It is this discovery that brings the need to address the imbalance in the literature, which is highly skewed towards Western economies. Despite some recent reflection on globalization in Asian Pacific cities (e.g. see the special issue of Urban Studies, 2000, Lo and Yeung 1998, Lo and Marcotullio 2000, Olds 2001) and on Third World cities, cities in developing countries have not been addressed adequately from the perspective of globalization (Smart and Smart 2003). More recently, there has been an appeal for studies to go beyond the ‘Third World city’ to examine the similarities and dissimilarities of urbanization in Southeast Asia and the Western world (Dick and Rimmer 1998). From studies outside the ‘core’ global cities, it is shown that there are indeed different typologies of ‘global cities’ in the making (Olds and Yeung 2004). While globalization does not necessarily lead to the ‘hegemony’ of Western or American institutions (Hannerz 1992, 1997), such a notion still implicitly accepts that there is an external process called ‘globalization’. Our view is that globalization is built up from the local – this is particularly important to the ‘developing countries’, commonly regarded as the ‘periphery’ and hence as being subject to ‘external’ global forces.

Nowadays globalization is used, together with ‘marketization’, to capture the change in the Chinese city (Logan 2002, Ma 2002, Lin 2004, Wu and Ma 2005b). For mainland China, such a globalization process has been made possible by the ‘open door’ policy and the subsequent adoption of an ‘export–oriented’ growth strategy, following the economic growth model in the greater China region and East Asia. This opening–up has been coupled with ‘economic reform’. The initial stage (from 1979 to 1992) of economic reform was perhaps more oriented towards internal institutional changes. But since 1992, especially after China joined the WTO in 2002, the pace of opening–up has quickened. While recent research has begun to pay attention to the impact of globalization on Chinese society (e.g. Lin 2000, Zhou 2002, Ma and Cartier 2003, Zheng 2004), there has been no systematic attempt to address the economic, cultural and political implications for the Chinese city. This chapter aims to rethink the concept of globalization from the point of view of a much longer time scale. The study of Chinese cities under globalization may thus bring a fresh understanding of the global city. At the same time, using the perspective of globalization to examine the Chinese city will generate a deeper understanding about changing Chinese society. This edited volume explores the intersection between globalization and local changes in the Chinese city, thus attempting to contribute in a timely way to these global and local dynamics.

Our interrogation begins by rethinking the term of ‘globalization’ – a hectic and overloaded term (Yeung 1998, Jessop 1999). Globalization is often thought of as a very recent phenomenon associated with transnational corporations (TNCs) and supernational organizations (Knox and Taylor 1995) which are forming the ‘global economy’. Yeung (1998), however, contests the common wisdom that globalization is creating a ‘borderless world’ and argues that the state is important in creating necessary territorial conditions within which the global economy can operate. Now there are sophisticated views about globalization through concepts such as the politics of scale (Swyngedouw 1997, Brenner 1999) and ‘glocalization’ as a place–based strategy (Jessop and Sum 2000), which are superseding the old notion of global and local dichotomy. The understanding of globalization has therefore shifted towards territorially based politics.

This ‘neutral’ treatment of globalization as a bottom–up and trans–local process embedded in national territories is important in the context of this book, which is about the Chinese city. Here the term Chinese city is used with a collective meaning to include various cities within ‘Great China’ (Sum 1999). By including Hong Kong, Macau and Taipei, I attempt to highlight the cultural dimension of the ‘Chinese’ city. This goes beyond treating the Chinese city only as the ‘post–socialist city’. Both perceptions of ‘(post–)socialism’ and of Chinese versus ‘Western’ society stress their ‘abnormality’ as opposed to the norm seen in ‘market economies’ and ‘democratic societies’. The study of globalization in these contexts often holds up an implicit instance to see how this abnormality is becoming normal through globalization. This instance can be seen from the use of so–called transitional economies¹ and emerging markets, as these economies and markets are often believed to be ‘outliers’ of the global market economy that are now returning to a ‘normal’ market situation. This common perception is problematic because it falls into the global and local dichotomy and because it equates the ‘global’ with the ‘Western’.

Globalization, in its broad sense, is a process associated with increasing mobility and faster temporality driven by the changing ‘regime of accumulation’.² In a more open–ended definition, globalization is seen as the ‘stretching and deepening of social relations across national borders so that everyday activities are more influenced by events at great distances’ (Smart and Smart 2003: 265), or as Appadurai’s (1996) five fluid and irregular ‘scapes’ brought about by ‘deterritorialization’, which loosens connections between people, capital, ideas and space. As such, a wider spatial manifestation results: we have seen a familiar re–configuration of urban space, with the emergence of differentiated residential space, relying on consumption together with its glamorous landscapes as a driving force, the creation of spaces of globalization itself (e.g. central business districts) and contrasting spaces of people who have migrated from different places. This process cannot be separated from its material existence.

By looking at it this way, we can avoid confusing globalization with ‘Westernization’ – a term containing a specific meaning in the long Chinese intellectual anxiety towards the West. In 1890, Zhang Zhidong of the late Qing Dynasty proposed a compromise solution towards the overwhelming penetration of Western influence suggesting ‘Chinese learning for the essential principles, Western learning for the practical application’ (zhongxue wei ti, xixue wei yong). He speciously invoked a Song Dynasty philosophical distinction between ‘ti’ (substance, the term literally means ‘body’) and ‘yong’ (function, the term literally means ‘use’). Zhang was mainly arguing for the use of Western technology without fundamentally altering the foundation of Chinese culture. Essentially what he proposed was a limited and selective ‘modernization’. Rather, this chapter attempts to see how globalization is constructed from below – a process embedded in place, by arguing that the Chinese city, now at the frontier of globalization, may be one materiality of globalization. As such, I am against the convergence thesis and the licensing of specific knowledge of the ‘normal’ (Western) market as a universal one. This is not simply because there are geographical differences (‘geography matters’) but also because there are profoundly diverse materializations of globalization. This materiality is built upon historically and institutionally conditioned differences. As suggested in the special issue of Urban Geography (Wu 2005a), the ‘transitional city’ reflects the transition of the city. The global is, therefore, no more than a constellation of multiple microcosms. Indeed there is no such distinction between ‘Western’ technology and ‘Chinese’ principle. What has been described in this book is a set of local changes, but these changes clearly show the globalization.

As shown in the table of contents, all chapter titles bear the ‘catchword’ globalization. However, ‘local changes’ are coherently argued throughout the book. This chapter sets the scene by emphasizing the central ‘theme’ of the book. By ‘theme’, I do not suggest there is just one defined and definite position. Understandably in a collection like this covering a wide range of topics, authors have different theoretical stances and hence do not produce a singular argument. But their discussions evolve around this theme. Part I of this book examines the reach and limit of globalization focusing on the relationship between globalization and urbanization: China’s urban frontier in the age of globalization and the relationship between urbanization and openness (in particular foreign investment). Part II further examines China’s most globally oriented cities: Beijing, Macau, Hong Kong, Taipei and the cross–boundary city region in the Pearl River Delta. Part III analyses the process of city building for global cities: city building and land rights, transplanting cityscapes and the influence of foreign built form on Chinese luxury housing estates. Part IV assesses urban political and economic implications for the high–tech industries, the new economic sector in the second–tier cities, the emergence of ‘public space’ and the role of the state and the grassroots practices of ‘community construction’.

Globalization and temporality

Temporality is absolutely critical but under–appreciated for understanding such a fashionable term as globalization. Is globalization a new phenomenon? There are assertions from cities such as Istanbul (Keyder 1999) or Cairo (Abu–Lughod 1971) that world cities existed long before postwar episode of globalization. But the current phase of globalization does have something new. On what time scale do we observe the emergence of the so–called global city? By linking globalization (a process claimed to be recent) and the Chinese city (a place(s) in a civilization with a long history), this volume brings together a collection of reflective chapters to contribute to the understanding of the temporality of globalization. Despite the long history of Chinese cities, the city of modern industries is relatively new in China, and the city of ‘postmodernity’ (a term of controversy) is also in its embryonic stage. Such a contrast between different temporalities might be an ideal context for rethinking globalization.

A thoughtful governor of the late Qing Dynasty, Zhang Zhidong, deplored that the defeat of the Middle Kingdom in the Opium War symbolized an unprecedented ‘great transformation’ (da bian ju) (Hao and Wang 1993: 186); Similarly, Li Hongzhang, the premier of Qing’s ‘all foreign affairs’, suggested in 1872 that Chinese society had experienced great transformation in the last three millennia. In short, the defeated Chinese at that time had begun to realize that the change was ‘unprecedented in millennium’ (‘qiannian weiyou zhibian’). What exactly was this unprecedented millennium change? The Western force of intrusion was seen no longer as that of a foreign nation but rather as the ‘force of industrialization’. The sentiment echoes anecdotally the scene of a machine–propelled boat sailing fast upstream in the river (this was reportedly said by Fei Xiaotong,³ a Chinese sociologist). The scene is ‘loaded’ because it is a ‘Western’ boat and it is against ‘natural regularity’ – the regularity in the local everyday reality. Now we come to the core point: a boat is a boat, and to what extent does it become ‘Western’? What China faced was surely not foreign nations but rather a more profound transformation, now known as ‘globalization’. The temporal scale of globalization can be seen from Table 1.1 where the reach of the global is associated with the new information era.

At the millennium scale, we see technological change (known as the ‘era’ of information’) and the inherent change in production, which is often thought of as ‘foreign’ or alien, and a fundamental change in society (to what Fei Xiaotong characterized in Rural China as an anonymous, heterogeneous, high–density urbanism). In fact, before globalization became fashionable in China’s politics, the same thing had been called ‘modernization’.⁴ At a centennial scale, we see the shaped awareness of the ‘nation state’, a new construct different from the fated Kingdom and the resurgence of its strongest representation as state socialism. At decennial scale comes the notion of ‘socialism and post–socialism’, and economic reform; at the yearly scale we see ‘WTO’, foreign direct investment (FDI), the Asian Financial Crisis and international trade cycles. So it can be seen that the study of globalization should not be necessarily tied up with the very short episode of WTO, although it is necessarily a highlight.

Such a temporal perspective suggests that globalization, according to a narrowly defined concept, is something new; however, when judged by the source of

Table 1.1 The time scale of different eras: globalization from a temporality perspective

technological advances it is not entirely new. The emphasis on the ‘nation state’ is however longer than this narrow ‘globalization’, as shown in China’s bitterly resented yet fondly embraced ‘Westernization’. Such a temporality also highlights that we should not see the ‘national’ as equivalent to the local. In academia, it has been emphasized that the nation state is still alive and well, but this is beating a straw man. Indeed, by focusing on the nation one might implicitly license the phantom of an externally existing global and confine oneself to a particular temporality. It is unnecessary to confine our radar of attention to very temporal constructs such as the WTO and FDI (but I do not suggest an immediate decease; rather, these temporal constructs will be the natural elements of the ‘era’). Even ‘Westernization’ is too short a notion, as this millennium change has a more profound and prolonged temporality than that and this change is inherent in this civilization itself. As such, we come closer to the notion of the ‘ordinary city’ (Amin and Graham 1997, Robinson 2002) as the stunningly fast rhythms have become inherently ‘ordinary’. From the perspective of a longer temporality, globalization is a millennium transformation in each ordinary place.

Globalizing Chinese cities: globalization as urbanization

The narrow view of urbanization refers to the increase in urban population or population living in the cities, and the decline in rural population. The broad view, however, believes that the process includes the deepening of ‘urbanism’ (as a particular set of behavioural norms of the society). According to this broad view, urban redevelopment and the upgrading of economic structures are also part of the urbanization process. Often, the impact of globalization on the city is assessed through the ‘global city’ as a distinctive category of cities; but understanding urbanization broadly will include all city building activities towards the globally oriented economy. As will be elaborated later, the globalist view tends to see globalization as more overarching. That is, building the city for the global economy is the ultimate source of urbanization (hence the notion of territorially based globally competitive strategies – ‘glurbanization’). However, here I treat globalization as a more ‘ordinary’ scene, not confined to the global city. In fact, globalization is perhaps manifested more conspicuously in globalizing cities (see Marcuse and van Kempen 2000) than in the established command centres.

Attention to the impact of globalization on the city mainly focuses on global cities such as New York, London and Tokyo (Sassen 1991). However, there are other types of city regions that are deeply involved in globalization but have not reached the status of global city, that is, the command centres of the global economy. Xiangmin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Maps
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Globalization and China’s new urbanism
• Part I Globalization and urbanization
• Part II Globalizing large Chinese cities
• Part III City development under globalization
• Part IV Globalization and urban political and economic implications