Recentralization, reconfiguration, and re-marketization in China’s city-region-building: Multi-relational rescaling in Jiangbei state-level new area

Abstract

This paper unravels the new multi-relational rescaling of state-level new areas (SNAs) in China’s up-to-date city-region-building. These nationwide SNAs have created an unimpeded governance pathway among multi-level governments and multi-scalar localities. As proofed by our empirical study on the establishment history of Jiangbei SNA, this new pathway has consolidated the re-centralization, reconfiguration, and re-marketization tools that can be adopted as comprehensive governance approaches by the state to resolve the long-term dilemma in city-regional governance since the incremental development in the 1990s characterized by frequent failure on administrative intervention, ungrounded regional strategies, and disordered inter-city competitions. Furthermore, the successful practice at Jiangbei SNA can function as a positive reference for developing China’s city-regions towards a region-in-becoming so that national initiatives in city-region-building can be dynamically adjusted accordingly.