How China reinvented its cities

Since the late 1970s, China has undergone perhaps the most sweeping process of urbanisation ever witnessed. It’s a story largely understood as one of growth, rapid development and economic dynamism. But it could also be seen as a tale of sprawl, bad planning and alienation. Now all the talk is of ‘quality’ in urban planning and city studies.

Richard Hu, a professor at the Canberra Business School, looks at the changes in China’s cities since 2010 and dares to make some bold predictions about the future. In the past, Hu has written about Shenzhen as well as comparing Chinese cities to the rapid urban growth in other Asian countries. Now, his book Reinventing the Chinese City (Columbia University Press) is available and perhaps points the way to the urban future in China.

Read on for Paul French’s conversation with the author …

At the start of the book, you posit the question of whether China is now entering a new era of urbanisation. Is this the case, and how do you define this new era? And, as you also ask, is the current urban transformation leading to a new normal or following an old path?

China’s urbanisation is entering a new era. After four decades of growth at a speed and scale unprecedented in human history, China’s urbanisation is now transitioning into a stage of post-growth. This new era of urbanisation is characterised by a pursuit of qualitative upgrading to replace the previous one of quantitative growth. This shift is reflected in policy priorities like ‘new-type urbanisation’ and ‘high-quality development’, which the Chinese government has put in place in the recent decade.

This shift from growth to post-growth is reshaping China’s urban policy and planning system. It is also likely to reshape urban development approaches in the coming decades. Green, smart, and innovative, among other notions, are the keywords underpinning this shift. This shift is a long-term process spanning through the middle of the 21st century. If these are going to happen as planned and aspired, they will lead to a new normal of Chinese-style urbanisation. But the process will not be smooth. It will fluctuate among the tug-of-war between the new normal and the old path, and between imagination and reality.

You note the emergence of a ‘state-led green revolution’ in Chinese cities and use Beijing as a case study in your book. Do you think China can overcome the difficulty of maintaining growth and greening its cities?

The Chinese government vowed to achieve both modernisation and decarbonisation by the mid-21st century. These are promises made to people within China and in the world. Both goals require specificity and clear roadmaps. However, they embed an intrinsic paradox: many aspects of achieving them are contradictory rather than balanced in the current circumstance. This paradox is a challenge. It also creates a great aspiration for achieving them through innovation or through developing ‘new quality productive forces’, a key word of China’s two congresses just completed in March 2024.

History does not seem to suggest an optimistic outlook. Numerous eco-city programmes were proposed and endorsed before. Some did not achieve the eco outcomes, although they were propagated as eco projects. Hopefully, these unfulfilled projects can offer some lessons to be learnt. However, it should also be acknowledged that Chinese cities have made great achievements in addressing environmental degradation and improving air quality in the recent decade, largely thanks to the green revolution underway. Both lessons and best practices can be drawn to inform a reconciliation of the growth and greening of Chinese cities.

You focus in on Hangzhou to look at the smart city movement in China. Can you tell us what this is and why Hangzhou is an important example?

Hangzhou is an emerging star city in the Chinese and global urban systems. The city’s transformation is swift, agile, and smart. Despite being under the shadow of Shanghai in the Yangtze River delta region, Hangzhou has been searching for an alternative path of urban development, drawing upon its local assets, regional context and national positioning.

Hangzhou has well utilised the opportunities of digital technologies to drive its transformation. The entrepreneurs and enterprises capitalising on digital technologies are home-grown in the city. These innovation factors are fused with a local milieu that is conducive to their emergence and growth.

Hangzhou is an important example in that the city’s transformation has been unplanned. It is more an outcome of bottom-up ingenuity, local entrepreneurship, and market forces than top-down planning. Hangzhou showcases the importance of market forces in enhancing a city’s exploitation of and adaptability to the ‘new quality productive forces’ the Chinese government is aspiring to.

You’ve also looked closely at China’s newest city, Xiong’an in Hebei, and how well it has learnt from the lessons of past urbanisation. How’s that experiment going?

The vision for Xiong’an is the opposite of many problems of past urbanisation. Obviously, lessons are learned in the imagining of the new city that has been drawn and is being developed from scratch.

Xiong’an is 100km away from Beijing and is meant to decentralise certain urban functions from the capital to address its big city syndrome – pollution, congestion and urban development pressures. It also aims to rebalance the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, where Beijing dominates while the other cities are less developed. In the long run, it is planned to be a city of five million people. This bold idea must await the test of time.

It has been seven years since Xiong’an was announced as a new city in April 2017. Its planning has been completed. The progress of infrastructure and early construction is impressive. Although it is largely a construction site at present, the constructed area has started to look like a city. So far, the construction has been based on state investment. It is not clear yet how this state project will sustain its strategic growth through engaging market forces.

Another issue of concern is the indigenous residents who are displaced by the state project. They are urbanised, passively, at the cost of their rural household sites and farmland. How they are surviving in and adapting to an instant city presents a challenge.

Obviously, Hong Kong has historically had a special role for British businesspeople, yet the place has changed so much, and its future role is far from certain. What are your conclusions regarding Hong Kong and the likelihood it will remain a place foreign business people feel comfortable operating in?

Since 2019, Hong Kong has experienced the most drastic changes since its return in 1997. It is increasingly integrated with the regional development of the Greater Bay Area and the national development. This process started before 2019, but it has been explicitly accelerated since then. The development of the Greater Bay Area has been elevated into a national strategy, enhancing the complementarity and fusion of Hong Kong and its neighbouring city Shenzhen and other major cities like Guangzhou in the region.

Hong Kong has played a prime gateway role in the Mainland’s reform and opening-up since the late 1970s. With the rise of other Chinese cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen, this gateway role has been downplayed in the national urban system. However, Hong Kong still has its advantages that other Chinese cities do not have: international connections, talent, its legal system and environment for doing business. Hong Kong’s competitiveness is its bridging role in connecting China and the world. This role is unique to Hong Kong, providing it with opportunities that no other city ­in China or overseas can access.

You have a chapter entitled ‘Imaging 2035 and Beyond’ – it’s always bold to make predictions, but would you care to share with us a few predictions on what China’s cities may start to look like in 2035…and beyond?

The year 2035 is only a bit more than one decade away. It is a benchmark year in the current strategies for almost all Chinese cities since as it is aligned with the Chinese government’s goal of achieving ‘basic’ modernisation by then. Urbanisation is integral to China’s modernisation, in history and in future. By 2035, China will become a highly urbanised society with around 75% of its population living in cities based on assumptions of its urbanisation in the past and at present. Urbanisation will continue to drive China’s economic growth and socioeconomic transformation.

China’s urbanisation will take new forms in the coming decades. One of them is an emerging urban structure of mega regions. Each of these mega regions (like the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region, Yangtze River delta region, and Greater Bay Area, and numerous regions of smaller sizes) comprises a chain of cities that are linked by transport infrastructure and mobility of factors of production, forging a regional economy and market. Mega regional development creates new opportunities for integrated, balanced development of cities across a region. It also raises important issues of mega regional planning and governance to enable regional development that is now unbalanced and fragmented.

Photo by Zhang Kaiyv on Unsplash