Administrative restructuring as a strategy of urban governance in China: motivations, processes and impacts

Guo, Yu (2016) Administrative restructuring as a strategy of urban governance in China: motivations, processes and impacts. Master of Philosophy thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

Since the initiation of economic reform in 1978, a large number of Chinese cities have experienced significant administrative restructuring processes, which mainly include city administering counties, county-to-city upgrading, annexation of sub-urban counties, and urban districts reconfiguration. They not only imply spatial reorganisation in a certain area and physical transformation of built environment, but also bring profound social, economic, and political changes to the affected region. Despite the debate on its calculation and reliability, China’s urbanisation rate increased to 56.1% in 2015, according to a public report released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China in early 2016 (NBSC, 2016). However, it remains unclear to what extent the increased number of urban habitants should be attributed to such state behaviours as redrawing urban boundaries and changing urban definition. Locating state in China’s urban transformation is crucial and debatable, which needs to take into account the reshuffling state power among governments at different levels. In an outstanding example of China’s administrative system, the central government maintains power to establish new cities, enlarge existing cities, redraw and/or merge districts within cities, and even abolish cities (Cartier, 2015). To explain the significance of administrative restructuring, the state reiterates the need to facilitate effective territorial management and reconfigure central hinterland relationships in the metropolitan area. However, the underlying reasons for territorial changes in a locality vary from region to region and are under-examined. Few if any existing studies written about Chinese administrative restructuring focus on either national-level or large cities, but little is known about the process of administrative restructuring in small- and medium-sized cities, especially those in the less developed central and western China. This article examines two adjustments in Bengbu’s administrative territory, in 2004 and 2014 respectively, with a particular focus on the critical role that the local state has played in the policy design and implementation process. With reference to the institutional arrangement, pro-growth urban governance theories, the scale perspective, and their implications in China’s urban studies, this paper attempts to develop a comprehensive analytical framework and advance the understanding of administrative restructuring in Chinese cities. This analysis raises four questions. First, why and under what circumstances can local officials be motivated to promote administrative restructuring? Second, what are the main mechanisms behind administrative restructuring? Third, who are the major players if there is a pro-grow coalition built in the process and what are their roles? Finally, what are the impacts of administrative restructuring on Bengbu City and their implications? Listed as an important industrial city by the central state and allocated many heavy industry projects in the late 1970s, Bengbu is now seen as a less-developed city at provincial and national level due to the lack of capacity and flexibility in response to marketisation and decentralisation. The evidence from this study suggests that the primary motivation behind urban districts reconfiguration and part of the surrounding counties annexation lies in an urgent need to promote economic growth in the edge area between urban and rural, as well as to remove the barriers for urban development as a whole. During this process, the urban-rural integration, or the so-called functional integration of the peripheral area into the urban core can be manifested in a series of ways such as appointing urban officials in the previous rural area, introducing market mechanism to tackle economic problems during the reform, and encouraging local dwellers to work from primary industry to the secondary and tertiary industry. Although the administrative restructuring in Bengbu has statistically facilitated local economic growth, one problem with this kind of government-led urban development is that the needs of the local habitants were largely ignored and bottom-up voice could be hardly heard in the decision making process. Moreover, the evidence of Bengbu indicates that the work of urban planning and the progress of administrative restructuring have been mutually responsive to each other. As a result, the rarely coordinated development has degraded land use efficiency, forced the relocation of affected residents, and triggered conflicts over social and environmental issues. The story of the new urban district in Bengbu also echoes with what characterize most of the urban peripheries in contemporary Chinese cities –a juxtaposition of agricultural, industrial, and residential activities (Ma & Wu, 2005; McGee, 1989). Reviewing the development of a newly established urban district in Bengbu, two adjustments have gradually produced a pro-growth coalition in which the municipal government initiated, the district government led, and the private sector joined. Compared with those economically developed regions where administrative restructuring has been seen as a direct response to central government project, the impact of the central state on Bengbu is more ideological through providing broad guidelines than tangible by the means of direct intervention. Moreover, the empirical finding is different from economically advanced region with regards to the disagreements among local governments. The evidence of Bengbu tends to be more agreeable whilst the other group experiences more intense conflicts and competitions, which could be partly explained by the different extents to which administrative system lags behind economic reforms in the coastal-interior divide. Considering the extensive urban construction and industrial development in a newly established district is at the cost of destroying the place-specific locational advantage, an important implication of this study is that for other regions which may have the similar development constraints that Bengbu City faced more than ten years ago, if there is an alternative approach to figure out the problems. As reminded by Ma (2002) and Wei (2012), industrial growth should not be the only path that Chinese cities have pursued for reaching a more vibrant local economy, which makes Chinese cities are broadly similar to each other. Local endogenous resources, which are the agricultural base and beneficial transportation system in this case study, should be respected. In addition, close focus should be paid on the city-level integration and region-level cooperation.

Item Type:	Thesis (Master of Philosophy)
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General)
Divisions:	Fac of Science & Engineering > Faculty of Science and Engineering
Depositing User:	Stephen Carlton
Date Deposited:	04 Sep 2017 09:32
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2017 09:32
URI:	http://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3006456

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