The production of extended local territory: A topological investigation of scalar dynamics in the Pearl River Delta
Topics: China
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Keywords: scalar politics, territory, topology, zoning, China
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Wednesday
Session Start / End Time: 4/7/2021 04:40 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/7/2021 05:55 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 31
Authors:
Xuan Wang, Renmin University of China
Yimin Zhao, Renmin University of China
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Abstract
In the authoritarian setting of Chinese politics, subnational administrative units are not locally constituted but demarcated by the central government. A new trend, however, emerges in the last two decades in China’s urban transformation: it becomes prevailing to extend one municipal authority to another with the boundary transcended, often leading to the establishment of joint development zones. These newly produced sub-national “territories” are worth further attention to clarify the underlying territorial and scalar dynamics of China’s state space. Drawing on a case study of Shenzhen-Shanwei Special Cooperation Zone in the Pearl River Delta, this paper analyses the historical-geographical process through which a certain area of Shanwei has gradually been transferred to Shenzhen for industrial uses. Here we focus on the topological process in which different scales and territories are consistently produced and reshaped by a relational power nexus formed by trans-scalar forces. In particular, we examine the manoeuvres of Shenzhen, which deploys a variety of discourses – including upward lobby, official dispatch, industrial transfer and cross-border planning – to rationalize its aggressive territorial ambitions and to dominate this territorial-scalar pattern. Shenzhen-Shanwei Special Cooperation Zone, in turn, marks an extended local territory where economic growth is appealed to for the production of a new topography of spatial form on the one hand and the topology of flexible territorial arrangement on the other. This recognition enables us to rethink scalar politics from a territorial perspective, where the scalar dynamics among state authorities are shaping, while also “embedded” in, the process of place-making.
