Abstract
ABSTRACTOn the Shifting Spatial Logics of Socioeconomic Regulation in post-1949 China. Territory, Politics, Governance. This paper argues that new rounds of socioeconomic reforms in post-1949 China, each with their distinct geographical expressions, constitute a complex palimpsest rather than a straightforward process of historical succession. Drawing on a review of extensive empirical evidence, the paper complicates two dichotomous portrayals of socioeconomic ‘transition’ in China, namely centralization and egalitarianism (the Mao era) and decentralization and uneven development (the post-Mao era). It demonstrates these binaries cannot adequately explain the post-Mao economic ‘miracle’ when decentralized governance and uneven development also characterized the Mao era. The paper concludes that decentralized governance and uneven development are not antithetical to the quest for perpetual Communist Party of China rule; just as the Mao administration strategically blended centralizing mechanisms with instituted uneven development to consolidate its power, the post-Mao regimes are repurposing Mao-era regulatory techniques to achieve the same objective.
Highlights
During a meeting with the Danish Premier, Poul Hartling, in October 1974, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Mao Zedong, observed that approaches to socioeconomic regulation in post-1949 ‘new China’ were “not much different from the old society” (CCCPC Party Literature Research Office, 1998: 413)
The paper concludes that decentralized governance and uneven development are not antithetical to the quest for perpetual CPC rule; just as the Mao administration strategically blended centralizing mechanisms with instituted uneven development to consolidate its power, the post-Mao regimes are repurposing Mao-era regulatory techniques to achieve the same objective
When Mao Zedong told Poul Hartling in 1974 that efforts at building a socialist state used and reproduced the methods of the “old society”, he was arguably aware of the limits to driving capital accumulation on the basis of instituted uneven development and geoeconomic insulation
Summary
During a meeting with the Danish Premier, Poul Hartling, in October 1974, the Chairman of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Mao Zedong, observed that approaches to socioeconomic regulation in post-1949 ‘new China’ were “not much different from the old society” (CCCPC Party Literature Research Office, 1998: 413). Territorial reconfigurations in the post-Mao era exemplified a qualitative shift from one decentralized “cellular” structure – to re-borrow Donnithorne’s (1972) term – to another based on city-regional capital accumulation and provincial-level protectionism (more on this shortly) Connected to this shift is the second issue: taken as an endogenous phenomenon independent of political centralization, ‘decentralization’ takes on the appearance of a selfcontained process that shaped the ‘miraculous’ outcomes of post-1978 economic reforms in/across China. It does not explain why some local governments are more innovative than others This logic suggests China’s post-1978 geography of state power is diverging from a top-down mode of regulation when, as the section will show, the legacy of decentralized governance jumpstarted new rounds of centralizing measures in the 1990s as well as consolidated the importance of the urban-rural ‘dual structure’, a sociospatial regulatory tool instituted in 1958. Why territorially-fragmented logics of socioeconomic regulation function at the national scale to preserve CPC power
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