Looking back and ahead: lessons from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Hyun Bang Shin looks back at the Beijing Olympics to derive some indication of the what the legacy of the London Games might be. He warns that diversion of national resources may pose additional development opportunities for host cities, but constraints for others in the country in terms of resource redistribution

‘Entrepreneurial’ local state: the implications of Beijing’s shifting emphasis on urban redevelopment policies

The entrepreneurial nature of local government activities has significantly influenced socio-economic and spatial changes in urban China. It was against this backdrop that property-led redevelopment projects were implemented in Beijing since 1990 by a programme whose very success depended on the participation of developers and prospective homebuyers as major financial contributors. By the end of 1999, roughly onefifth of Beijing’s inner city households were directly hit by this programme. In 2000, however, a new redevelopment policy was introduced in Beijing, and has received an increasing policy emphasis since then. This new policy aims at supplying affordable housing on government-provided land so that it increases existing residents’ re-housing rate. In this context, this paper aims at analysing the implications of this shifting emphasis on Beijing’s urban redevelopment policy to examine if the local government has become less entrepreneurial, thus giving more weight to promoting a more socially inclusive approach. Through a detailed examination of two case studies of inner city redevelopment projects, the paper argues that the entrepreneurial nature of the local state has remained consistent and characterises the revised redevelopment strategy, and that the entrepreneurial state activities are largely supported by the local state power to dispose of urban land use rights, which effectively makes the local state as part of urban rentiers as de facto landlords

Right to the city and critical reflections on property rights activism in China’s urban renewal contexts

The rapid transformation of urban socio-spatial landscape in China has resulted in an increasing degree of frustration and discontent among local residents who face threats of demolition and eviction. This has given rise to sporadic protests by local residents who are often known as 'nail households', that is, persistent protesters who are fixed to the land and hold onto their dwellings in protest against unwilling eviction and demolition of their dwellings. The presence of these protesters provides an effective example of local residents' out cry in China. This paper is an attempt to critically re-visit the existing debates on local residents' property rights activism in urban redevelopment processes, and to discuss the extent to which it can be an effective strategy. The paper refers to the right-to-the-city debate to examine whose right counts in China's urban renewal contexts. It also makes use of empirical findings, both quantitative and qualitative, to examine how nail houses are received among local residents and migrants, and discusses the extent to which migrants can fit into local residents' struggle against the top-down imposition of neighbourhood transformation. The paper ultimately calls for the need to form a place-based alliance that enables urbanites including migrants to come together to launch an effective claim on their right to the city.right to the city, property rights, urban renewal, nail houses, displacement, China

Book review: a middle class without democracy: economicgrowth and the prospects for democratization in China by JieChen

In this book Jie Chen explores attitudinal and behavioural orientation of China’s new middle class to democracy and democratization. Hyun Bang Shin finds that this is a valuable addition to our understanding of the future of Chinese society and politics, and especially of the country’s future prospect of political reform that is perceived not to have progressed as much as the economic reform. It is strongly recommended to observers of China who may wish to find out more about the meaning of middle class expansion in contemporary China

Economic transition and speculative urbanisation in China: gentrification versus dispossession

Gentrification requires properties to be available for investment through market transactions. In mainland China which has gone through transition from a planned to a market economy, it is necessary to unleash decommodified real estate properties and make them amenable to investment. This entails inhabitants’ dispossession to dissociate them from claiming their rights to the properties and to their neighbourhoods. This paper argues that while China’s urban accumulation may have produced new-build gentrification, redevelopment projects have been targeting dilapidated urban spaces that are yet to be fully converted into commodities. This means that dispossession is a precursor to gentrification. Dispossession occurs through both coercion and co-optation, and reflects the pathdependency of China’s socialist legacy. The findings contribute to the debates on contextualising the workings of gentrification in the global South, and highlight the importance of identifying multiple urban processes at work to produce gentrification and speculative urban accumulation

Chapter 4 Urban transformation “Korean style”

There is an increasing tendency to use the development experience of Asian countries as a reference point for other countries in the Global South. Korea’s condensed urbanization and industrialization, accompanied by the expansion of new cities and industrial complexes across the country, have become one such model, even if the fruits of such development may not have been equitably shared across geographies and generations. The chapters in this book critically reassess the Korean urban development experience from regional policy to new town development, demonstrating how these policy experiences were deeply rooted in Korea’s socioeconomic environment and discussing what can be learned from them when applying them in other developmental context

How stubborn ‘nail houses’ take a stand against China’s rapid urbanisation

A single house balancing precariously in the middle of a construction site may seem like a doomed and fragile structure. But in China, these residences have become a potent symbol of resistance. Known as “dingzihu” in Chinese – which can be translated as “nail house” or “nail household” – buildings like this represent those who, like stubborn nails, defy state-ordered evictions and demolitions by refusing to vacate their properties

Urban state venturism or urbanization of state capital? Views from the global East

While appreciating the novelty of conceptualizing urban state venturism, this commentary proposes that the state’s role as capital can be clearly evidenced by the urbanization of state capital, which involves the active deployment of state-owned corporations in the global East amid the region’s pursuit of rapid and developmental urbanization and industrialization