Grounding border city regionalism in contemporary China: evidence from Ruili and Mengla in Yunnan province

Abstract

ABSTRACT The border city regionalism framework, a conceptual and empirical coalescent of city regionalism and border scholarships, has utility to foreground the major roles of borders as key sites for contemporary city regionalism through state orchestrations and spatial restructuring for various geopolitical motives. In this paper we decipher the transformation of border city regions in the context of complex geopolitical orchestration and Chinese statehood restructuring. We argue that the Chinese border city regionalism should be regarded as a geopolitical and domestic tool of the state territory and economy. By embedding border city regionalism into broader political, economic and social visions of the national state in China’s international and internal contexts, we endeavour to clarify the territorializing legitimacy of city regionalism among the vast borderland combination in terms of both securitization and growth. Border city regionalism serves as the inevitable outcome of discursive and material arrangements, including planning strategies, special economic zones and connectivity projects, which are orchestrated by multi-scalar actors at various spatial scales, such as transnational actors and policy discourses, in pursuit of national geopolitical imaginaries and praxis. We also highlight the evidence of border city regions centred on Ruili and Mengla for their roles in the China–Myanmar and China–Laos nexus relationships, respectively. These different actors create multi-scale border landscapes that are dependent on various situational factors, which are often more complex than tends to be acknowledged by national governments.