Neoliberalism and the Neoauthoritarian City in China—Contexts and Research Directions: Commentary in Conversation with Jennifer Robinson's Urban Geography Plenary Lecture

Abstract

Emerging research on comparative neoliberalism at the urban scale seeks to trace its diffusions and document its contours and trajectories in regions beyond the trans-Atlantic corridor. Discovering geographical variation in neoliberal policy should produce more incisive understandings of neoliberalism's creative transformations, yet the emergent research on comparative urban policy may route uncomfortably close to the world of world and global cites. This brief discussion considers expanding places of inquiry to non-growth economic contexts and complex urban conditions in the world of cities. It introduces contemporary conditions of urban political economy in the People's Republic of China, where neoliberalization works in the interests of the party-state and resists critical analysis in association with debates over strains of neoconservatism (neoauthoritarism, neosocialism, and statism) in the Chinese academy and their mutual imbrication in an array of complex issues.