Spatial egalitarianism as a social ‘counter-movement’: on socio-economic reforms in Chongqing

Kean Fan Lim

doi:10.1080/03085147.2014.883797

Abstract

Through a framework drawn from Karl Polanyi's substantivist theorization of economic practices, this paper evaluates the quest for equitable urbanization in Chongqing, a major city-region in south-western China. Illuminating the tensions arising from two interrelated reforms, namely the ambitious attempt to construct 40 million m2 of public rental housing between 2010 and 2012, and the large-scale drive to ensure peasant migrants enjoy equal access to social benefits as current urban residents, the paper explains how the quest for equitable urbanization magnifies two nationwide dimensions of institutionalized uneven development, namely (i) the caste-like categorization of populations according to ‘urban’ and ‘rural’; and (ii) the coastal bias in national economic development. The paper concludes that this state-driven pursuit of spatial egalitarianism in Chongqing expresses the dialecticism of economic development in China: it is a social ‘counter-movement’ against the effects of an uneven spatiality that was instituted to drive and deepen the marketization of Chinese society.

Highlights

Beginning from 2007, the Chinese state apparatus launched a series of pathchanging socioeconomic reforms in Chongqing, a city-region 1 in southwestern China.Widely taken by policymaking, academic and media circles as representative of a unique ‘Chongqing model’ or ‘Chongqing experience’ of development, these reforms arguably placed Chongqing amongst what Shin (2012) terms the “unequal cities of spectacle and mega-events in China”
The Chongqing government successfully pushed for the demarcation of a “nationally strategic” economic development zone known as the Liangjiang New Area; on the other hand, it implemented a host of policies in the Chongqing urban area aimed at easing uneven spatial development associated with 1) the institutionalized organization of social life according to ‘urban’ and ‘rural’, a Mao-era legacy; and 2) the coastal bias in the bid to build a ‘socialist market economy’, a definitive feature of Deng Xiaoping’s first-wave ‘liberalization’ reforms in 1978
This paper argues that socioeconomic reforms in Chongqing illustrates the importance of state-driven redistribution in easing preexisting and potential social tensions engendered, paradoxically, by the effects of an uneven spatiality instituted for economic development by the same state apparatus

Summary

Introduction

Beginning from 2007, the Chinese state apparatus launched a series of pathchanging socioeconomic reforms in Chongqing, a city-region 1 in southwestern China. All three modes would be present at any one time, one mode might be more dominant than the others Through this analytical framing, this paper argues that socioeconomic reforms in Chongqing illustrates the importance of state-driven redistribution in easing preexisting and potential social tensions engendered, paradoxically, by the effects of an uneven spatiality instituted for economic development by the same state apparatus. In relation to a diverse economy like China, Peck and Zhang (2013: 388) believe this presupposition of plural economic logics and rationalities occuring in tension with one another is more helpful for theoretical (re)construction: What if, instead of positioning the principle of market coordination in a sequential and historical relationship with social regulation and institutional embeddedness, in a temporal reading of the double-movement metaphor (as if marketization and socialization only seesaw against one another through time), this was replaced with a simultaneous and geographical conception of the contradictory coexistence of the integrative principles of market exchange, reciprocity and redistribution within fundamentally heterogeneous economies? The interplay of redistribution, reciprocity and market exchange in and through Chongqing offers an intriguing window to explore the possible forms of China’s ‘socialist market economy’ and, more broadly, those of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’

Socializing capital accumulation through urban-rural integration

Conclusion

Findings

Objectives of hukou