State-steered smartmentality in Chinese smart urbanism

Abstract

This study explores the socio-political shaping of Chinese smart urbanism by examining the power relations between the government (national and municipal), private firms and citizens embedded in smartmentality. Our exploration begins with teasing out key analytical standpoints of Alberto Vanolo’s concept of smartmentality applied in neoliberal practices of smart urbanism. Through this analytical framework, we conceptualise Chinafied smartmentality and illustrate how it is actually playing out in China by undertaking documentary research and in-depth interviews from an inductive case study of the Smart Transportation System (STS) in the city of Shijiazhuang. We observe that the idea of Chinafication extends smartmentality with a focus on the power dynamic. We further argue that this Chinafied smartmentality implies uncritical technological solutionism that is state-steered in nature, and citizen participation in digital platforms that is performed with limited roles and power for inclusion. The article concludes by calling for future research on the critical examination of value co-creation for shaping a truly citizen-centric mode of governance in Chinese smart urbanism.