Urbanization And Party Survival In China

While the Chinese urban movement has successfully transferred surplus labor from the countryside to urban industries that urgently require free and cheap labor, numerous problems have arisen as a result of the unprecedented huge-scale process. Such conditions such as overcrowding, substandard housing, lack of social services, corruption, and abuse of power have often reached crisis stage. American college students often ask: How does the government control the largest urban population in the world? Why do newly developed, highly commercialized cities continue to support the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rather than challenging the old regime? What happens when urban residents have problems with a party-controlled government? This book, collects essays from the best scholars in their fields and examines urban issues, including identifying residents’ concerns, analyzing policy problems, and providing some answers to these pivotal questions. They address this important topic from a Chinese-American perspective through a cooperative interdisciplinary research effort among Chinese-American scholars interested in the subject. Their scholarship makes a significant contribution through multi-faceted components from different fields such as economics, political science, criminal justice, law, anthropology, sociology, and education. The authors introduce and explore the theory and practice of policy patterns, political systems, and social institutions by identifying key issues in Chinese government and society contained within the larger framework of the international sphere. Originally from Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Tianjin, and other cities in China, these authors have received training and advanced degrees from American universities and colleges, thus bringing uncommon perspective and conclusions by focusing on urban studies specific to China. Their endeavors move beyond the existing scholarship and seek to spark new debates and proposed solutions while reflecting on established schools of history, religion, linguistics, and gender studies. Crucial to this volume is the assessment of historical and empirical data found in these essays that place major events in the context of Chinese tradition, its culture, and national security. Using comprehensive coverage to create a broad and solid foundation of knowledge, this collection presents a better understanding of the current Chinese metropolitan climate and includes legitimate issues with city policy implementation.

This title examines the threats that large cities pose to authoritarian regime survival and the ways that regimes respond to those threats, particularly focusing on China's management of urbanization through its household registration (hukou) system.

China’s extraordinary economic boom since the late 1970s has been accompanied by massive urbanization, with the proportion of the population living in cities rising from 18% in 1978 to 54% in 2014. Currently the Chinese government has amongst its objectives the target to increase this to 60% by 2020, and also to improve the quality of China’s cities. This book examines a wide range of issues connected to China’s urbanization. It considers the many problems which have come with rapid urbanization, including urban housing problems, difficulties affecting rural migrants in urban areas, and a lack of social protection. It examines areas of current reform, including land reform, shanty town renewal and moves to address environmental problems. It explores governance issues, and throughout assesses how urbanization in China is likely to develop in future.

This book examines the settlement space of special communities in China on the community scale from an interdisciplinary approach that combines perspectives from urban planning and sociology. Using the framework of integration response, it theoretically and empirically explores the approaches these communities adopt to survive and evolve. Empirically, this discussion centers on four particular groups, namely international students, land-lost peasants, ethnic minorities, and migrant workers, and offers an analysis of their settlement spaces from different perspectives. Theoretically, this study optimizes the logic of one-way integration as used in classical theories. By constructing a two-way linkage in the theoretical framework of integration response, it provides a multi-scenario interpretation and summary of the laws of survival and evolution that govern the urban settlements of special communities in China. This study conforms to the major transformations that China has undergone in the concepts, models, and orientation of its development since the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Furthermore, it renders profound research value and bears practical significance for the adjustment and management of urban spatial patterns in China, social care for marginalized groups, and the construction of a harmonious and moderately prosperous society. This study provides valuable reference for educators, researchers, and management personnel across various fields, including urban planning, geography, and sociology.

Originally published in 1985, Urbanisation in China is based on extensive original research and fieldwork, considers the whole problem of urbanisation in China. Starting with an outline of the pre-communist legacy, the author traces population changes and urban growth throughout the communist period, assesses policies aimed at restricting urban growth and contrasts the reality of urban China with the image the authorities have tried to project. The policy changes that occurred following the death of Mao are analysed and concludes with a consideration of likely developments up to the end of the century.

This title examines the threats that large cities pose to authoritarian regime survival and the ways that regimes respond to those threats, particularly focusing on China's management of urbanization through its household registration (hukou) system.

Given China’s rapid economic growth and massive urbanization, no one in the world can ignore what is happening in urban China. This book is a critical review of existing urban China research, which is found wanting due to the decontextualized use of theories and concepts developed in the West. Urban China Reframed: A Critical Appreciation consists of epistemological, theoretical and methodological contributions to remedy these limitations by focusing on a number of relevant topics. First, models are widely employed in any study, and China nowadays has invoked models like city system, zones and global city in socio-economic development. How to interpret them in terms of knowledge production in a strong party-state? Second, given the global prevalence of neoliberalism, it is an important debate whether neoliberalism is applicable to China. Third, what is urban ideology in China? How to contextualize it? Are debates about the differentiation between the city and urbanization relevant to China? Fourth, massive rural-urban migration in China has taken place within its mega rural-urban dual system, an institution that has persisted since the 1950s. How does it manifest nowadays? Fifth, has the town-country divide in China, like in the West, disappeared? If not, how can one interpret China’s town-country relations, within the politics and administration of the Chinese state? Sixth, how to decipher the territorial development in the Pearl River Delta, the "world’s factory," under the auspices of the state? The collection of essays in this volume contributes to the theoretical understanding of urban China. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Eurasian Geography and Economics.

This book explores the process of urbanization and the profound challenges to China’s urban governance. Economic productivity continues to rise, with increasingly uneven distribution of prosperity and accumulation of wealth. The emergence of individual autonomy including demands for more freedom and participation in the governing process has asked for a change of the traditional top-down control system. The vertical devolution between the central and local states and horizontal competition among local governments produced an uneasy political dynamics in Chinese cities. Many existing publications analyze the urban transformation in China but few focuses on the governance challenges. It is critical to investigate China’s urbanization, paying special attention to its challenges to urban governance. This edited volume fills this gap by organizing ten chapters of distinctive urban development and governance issues.