Cities in China's large-scale state-designated territories.
The geography of power in China: urban expansion and administrative empire
- Professor Carolyn Cartier
This unprecedented collaboration with the Center for Research on the Administrative Divisions in China focuses on discovering how the Chinese state changes subnational territory, especially prefectures and counties, to designate cities and enlarge their territories to propel growth and transformation.
The Chinese government organises state power to establish and adjust the areas, ranks, and functions of the administrative divisions (xingzheng quhua 行政区划), the state system of subnational territory. This project develops new qualitative and quantitative data, translations of Chinese specialty scholarship, and a new approach, ‘territorial urbanization’.
The collaboration introduces to the international scholarship the pioneering work of Liu Junde, founding director of the Center for Research on the Administrative Divisions in China, on comparative case fieldwork, which has focused on the Pudong District, Shanghai, and Suzhou and Changzhou.
- Professor Liu Junde – 25 Years of Research on the Administrative Divisions (PDF, 352kB)
- 刘君德教授 – 中国行政区划研究中心发展纪实 (PDF, 720kB)
Subnational territories are not constitutionally guaranteed in China and the state maintains powers to establish new cities and enlarge and merge existing ones, and even eliminate others, with significant implications for geographically targeted economic development and governing powers.” – Carolyn Cartier, ‘Territorial Urbanization and the Party-state in China’
Mapping changes to the administrative divisions of the Pudong New Area, Shanghai. These maps demonstrate experiments in depicting a territorial merger in which the area of Pudong doubles in size.
Publications
- Cartier, C. 2016. ‘A Political Economy of Rank in China: Urban Growth, Territorial Expansion and Elite Mobility in Suzhou’, Journal of Contemporary China 25, no. 100: 529–546.
- Cartier, C. 2016. ‘The City that Ate China: Restructuring and Reviving Beijing’, in G. Davies, J. Goldkorn and L. Tomba, eds., China Story Yearbook 2015: Pollution, The ANU Press, 178–201.
- Cartier, C. 2016. ‘The Territorial City II – Shanghai Pudong’, The China Story Journal, 14 January.
- Cartier, C. 2015. ‘Territorial Urbanization and the Party-State in China’, Seminar, University of Sydney, China Studies Centre, 15 June.
- Cartier, C. 2015. ‘Territorial Urbanization and the Party-state in China’, Territory, Politics, Governance 3, no. 3: 294–320.
- Cartier, C. and Hu, D., 2015. ‘Administrative Territory’ in D.S.G. Goodman, ed., The Handbook of Chinese Politics, Edward Elgar, 147–164.
- Cartier, C. 2013. ‘The Territorial City’, The China Story Journal, 3 July.
- Cartier, C. 2013. ‘What’s Territorial about China? From Geopolitical Narratives to the Administrative Area Economy’, Eurasian Geography and Economics 53, no. 6: 55–77.
- Cartier, C. and L. Tomba. 2012. ‘Symbolic Cities and the “Cake Debate”’ in G. R. Barmé et al, eds., China Profile: Red Rising, Red Eclipse, The China Story Yearbook 2012, The Australian National University: Australian Centre for China in the World, 25–52.
- Cartier, C. 2012. ‘Uneven Development and the Symbolic Time/Space Economy’ in Y. Guo and W. Sun, eds., Unequal China: The Political Economy and Cultural Politics of Inequality, Routledge, 77–90.
- Cartier, C. 2012. Review of ‘Beijing Record: A Physical and Political History of Planning Modern Beijing’ by Wang Jun, The China Journal 69 (January): 216-17.
- Cartier, C. 2011. Review of ‘The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China’ by You-Tien Hsing, The China Quarterly No. 205 (March): 178–79.
- Cartier, C. 2011. Review of ‘Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity’ edited by Xiangming Chen, Urban Geography 32, no. 4: 606–7.
- Cartier, C. 2005. ‘City-Space: Scale Relations and China’s Spatial Administrative Hierarchy’ in Laurence J.C. Ma and Fulong Wu, eds., Restructuring the Chinese City: Changing Society, Economy and Space, London and New York: Routledge, 21–38.
Funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Projects, DP120101901, in collaboration with the Center for Research on the Administrative Divisions in China, East China Normal University.