The evolution of China’s urban governance towards strategic statization: A perspective of state entrepreneurialism

This paper revisits the recent transformation of China’s urban governance through the lens of state entrepreneurialism. Its earlier model was characterized by the commodification of housing, export-oriented industrialization, and land-driven urban expansion. By examining new practices across cities and regions, we find that the model has entered a new stage of ‘strategic statization’. As a framework, state entrepreneurialism includes state mandates and governance techniques. Now, state mandates have become more ‘strategic’, shifting from a local growth mentality to one focused on political objectives and regime stability in a contested geopolitical environment. Governance techniques evolve towards ‘statization’ – a trend that fosters non-entrepreneurial subjects and adopts managerial forms of statecraft. Strategic statization means that the state dominates the definition of priorities and orchestrates diverse stakeholders to achieve them. As a historical material understanding of the political economy, state entrepreneurialism remains a powerful framework that explains the ‘origin’ of earlier neoliberal-like economic reforms in response to globalization and the current trend towards statization in the new polycrisis.