Producing spatial justice: Scalar governance and territorial differentiation in coastal China’s nuclear development

Nuclear infrastructure development highlights an important empirical case in environmental governance: nuclear facilities concentrate environmental and social burdens locally, yet many projects proceed without sustained opposition. In the context of China, this paper argues that such outcomes are produced through county-level scalar governance strategies. Focusing on the Zhangzhou Nuclear Power Project, the study reconstructs how local authorities designed four concentric governance zones (20 km, 10 km, 2 km, 200 m) and calibrated distance-based interventions—compensation and relocation, tiered emergency planning and monitoring, graded communication and participation, and differentiated infrastructure and welfare investments—so that governance intensity corresponded to spatial exposure. Drawing on archival materials, policy documents, and semi-structured interviews with officials and project actors, corroborated by administrative records and implementation milestones, the analysis shows that scalar governance pursued distributive, procedural, and recognition objectives across zones. Importantly, the absence of organized resistance is interpreted not as conflict resolution but as the managed incorporation of grievances into institutional channels within a constrained political environment. By reframing nuclear legitimacy as the outcome of territorially differentiated state action, the paper contributes to debates on territory, scale, and environmental governance and positioning spatial justice as a conditional mechanism for managing uneven infrastructural risk.