The Geographies of Secondary City Growth in a Globalized China

Abstract

China's dramatic economic growth trajectory during the post-1978 reform era has been in part dependent on the important role of secondary cities as regional articulation points in the country's engagement with globalization. This article compares the urban—economic experiences of the two prefecture-level municipalities of Dongguan and Suzhou with respect to a number of overlapping vantage points, each possessing an inherent spatiality. These include a national administrative rescaling of urban places producing greater economic autonomy at local and regional scales, the differing temporal engagement of each region with the global economy, and the structure of regional production chains, particularly in relation to the global gateway cities of the larger urban regions in which each secondary city is locationally and functionally embedded.