Commentary: Three Chinese cities and their pathways to globalisation

Abstract

As the world entered the twenty-first century, population trends as forecast by the United Nations pointed clearly to the onset of the 'urban century', in which more people on earth would live in urban places for the first time in human history. Against this trend is the growing pace of globalisation and the attendant emergence of a genre of cities world cities or global cities - that are poised to exert an increasing influence on the political economy of countries and cities and the lives of their citizens. Exactly a decade ago, an edited volume on the emerging world cities in the Asia-Pacific region was published, the culmination of several years of research by a group of scholars across the region on a relatively novel phenomenon (Lo and Yeung, 1996). The book emphasised the emergence of a class of cities that were distinguished by the functions they brought to bear on world affairs, be they in economic, cultural, religious or other domains. The functional city system formed a central thesis of that study which also examined the interrelationship of cities within the region. Ten years later, the world is more urban and globalised. The tale of three Chinese world cities that constitutes the core of this special issue makes fascinating reading because they offer insights and images that have come with rapid political and economic changes. The cities have been shaped and reshaped during this period. Within these ten years, China has continued its rapid economic growth, having become, by some reckoning, the fourth most powerful economic nation in the world. It was admitted to the World Trade Organisation in late 2001, won its bid to host the Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008, and won a similar bid to host the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010. China is being rapidly integrated with the community of nations and has become a new centre of converging globalising forces. In 1997 Hong Kong went through a historic handover back to Chinese sovereignty and has now settled into more than eight years of One-country, two-systems' rule. Taiwan saw the fall of Kuomingtang (KMT) from political power after the general election in 2000 and the rise of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), with very different political philosophies and severe implications for the mode of governance in Taipei. Indeed, the past ten years have witnessed different trajectories of world-city formation and distinct modes of governance in Taipei, Beijing and Hong Kong, as the authors present in their case studies. Certainly, they have gone another step further in their formative process and governance evolution from the situation I described a decade ago (Yeung, 1996). At that time, there was no Chinese world city to speak of, but the situation has been changing rapidly. For example, in recent years, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have actively fostered their international and global status by taking pertinent measures and investment to further their development goals. In a 1999 study (Beaverstock et al., 1999), a total of 122 world cities were identified, and these included Hong Kong, Beijing and Taipei in Asia. Hong Kong was one of three highest (alpha) order world cities in Pacific Asia, whereas Beijing and Taipei belonged to the lowest (gamma) order world cities. Clearly, Hong Kong is a relatively more advanced world city, a fact which is readily understandable given its long history of being an active participant in world trade and a free port. The mode of governance in the three cities is, as a result, very divergent. The similarity between Beijing and Taipei is striking in their being capital cities, with another higher level of government which wields more power and resources above the city. Yet the hierarchical relationships between different levels of government in urban and spatial planning are played out in very different ways in the two cities. The state has been a dominating factor in shaping Beijing's urban form, functions and spatial order since 1949. …