Papers by Yimin Zhao
Overlooked Cities: Perspectives from Medium Sized Cities of the Global South, 2020
A new trend is emerging in China that categorises cities according to economic conditions and pol... more A new trend is emerging in China that categorises cities according to economic conditions and political statuses and that formulates a new urban hierarchical system. This urban hierarchy has historical echoes from several decades ago, when the country was divided into three “fronts” for geopolitical concerns. Ironically, the Chinese character of “tiers” and “fronts” is identical: “线” (xian). By referring to Luzhou, a medium-sized city in Western China that bears the same label as “三线” (“third tier” / “third front”) in different periods, we explore the change of urban political economy and governing techniques that are underlying these two different (yet at the same time identical) labels of a city. It turns out that the two labels of Luzhou indicate dissimilar logics of the state. The “third front” in the Maoist era, with centrally-dominated redistribution of resources, rendered the local state a passive political subject. In contrast, the recent rise of “tiers” discourse has a lot of purchases from the local state. Situating in inter-city competitions, they are empowered yet also impelled to be more active in promoting the urbanisation process and boosting “urban-ness” in partnership with capital. Here, between the territorial logic of the planned economy half century ago and the ongoing entrepreneurial local governance at present, we are invited to further reflect on how the development trajectory of an ordinary (and even overlooked) city could contribute to more global urban studies.
CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 2020
Compressed development experiences, especially in Asia, have translated into expectations for 'fa... more Compressed development experiences, especially in Asia, have translated into expectations for 'fast cities' where time and space are compressed to materialise 'real' Asia experiences. However, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who see Asian cites as reference points? Moreover, what does 'fast urbanism' mean for those who have living memories of such fast-paced development, and how might this be different for their future generations? This intervention addresses these two questions by reflecting on the politics of temporality, calling for critical attention to the ideological imposition of 'fast' development in Asia and beyond. We argue that the 'Asian speed' of development was enabled in specific historical and geographical conjunctures, which entailed the appropriation of individual and collective aspirations through the invention of a certain kind of futurity and in so doing, consolidated of local politico-economic structures that displace both the present and the future.
Chinese Urbanism: Critical Perspectives, 2018
We often hear the frustrations of villagers whose lands are violently taken away against their wi... more We often hear the frustrations of villagers whose lands are violently taken away against their will with no or poor compensations (e.g. Hoffman 2014; Johnson 2013; Pomfret 2013). Sargeson (2013) argues that violence is an integral element of China’s urbanisation project, authorising urban development. In this chapter, we show that such use of state violence goes hand in hand with another dimension of state action, that is co-optation of villagers (cf. Gramsci 1971) by the imposition of what Henri Lefebvre (2003) refers to as ‘official urbanism’. Drawing on Lefebvre’s critiques of urbanism, this chapter aims to reflect upon the use of official urbanism to advance China’s ‘urban age’, and addresses two analytical objectives by dissecting green belt policy in Beijing. First, we demonstrate China’s urbanism as an institution and an ideology is a state project: it is integrated with both economic and political practices, and plays a critical role in sustaining the state strategy of land-based accumulation. Second, we also illustrate that official urbanism, as an ideology, has been successfully instilled into the national ethos, imposing it upon the population (especially villagers) as a new and desirable way of life, which in turn supports the state’s project of urbanism. We conclude that urbanism is one and the same expression of politics of urban space, with the Party-state’s ideological, economic and political ambitions put at the centre. For this reason, any meaningful approach to critiquing existing sets of urban knowledge and practice that produces urban inequalities and injustice in contemporary China should start from negation of the ‘official urbanism’.
通过塑造一种全新的空间和尺度想象，资本及其权力便可经过“二手空间”的中介而实现全球范围的流动，最终改变（甚至摧毁）各个地方每条街道的日常生活。为了避免这样的状况及其恶化，我们应当首先反思类似《宣... more 通过塑造一种全新的空间和尺度想象，资本及其权力便可经过“二手空间”的中介而实现全球范围的流动，最终改变（甚至摧毁）各个地方每条街道的日常生活。为了避免这样的状况及其恶化，我们应当首先反思类似《宣言》这样的二手空间观，然后从我们的身边和脚下出发去构想自己的空间观念。只有当我们认识到地方本质上就是种种全球/全局性过程的交错所在（a global sense of place），开始从本地出发去探索这些更广阔的、超越了本地尺度的空间属性，用比较的方法重新审视别人和自己，我们才可能真正把握空间和生活的密切关联，才可能发现和对抗萦绕四周的社会和空间不义，才可能重写多元且动态的城市宣言。
Citation: Zhao, Yimin. 2017. "Second-hand space: Unthinking the Quito Papers." Dushu Journal (读书杂志), 2017 (12): 3-12 (in Chinese)
Great urban transformations are diffusing across the Global South, removing the original landscap... more Great urban transformations are diffusing across the Global South, removing the original landscape of urban margins to make of them a new urban frontier. These processes raise questions of both validity and legitimacy for ethnographic practice, requiring critical reflection on both spatiality and method in fieldwork at the urban margins. This article draws on fieldwork experience in Beijing's green belts, which could also be labelled the city's urban margin or frontier, to reflect on the space-time of encounter in the field. I aim to demonstrate how space foregrounds not only our bodily experiences but also ethnographic investigations of the daily life, and hence becomes a method. Beijing's green belts symbolise a historical-geographical conjuncture (a moment) emerging in its urban metamorphosis. Traditional endeavours (immanent in various spatial metaphors) to identify field sites as reified entities are invalidated over the course of the space-time encounter, requiring a relational spatial ontology to register such dynamics. The use in fieldwork of DiDi Hitch, a mobile app for taxi-hailing and hitchhiking, reveals the spatiotemporal construction of self-other relations needing recognition via the dialectics of the encounter. In this relational framework, an encounter is never a priori but a negotiation of a here-and-now between different trajectories and stories as individuals are thrown together in socially constructed space and time.
Citation: Zhao, Yimin. 2017. “Space as method: Field sites and encounters in Beijing’s green belts.” City: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 21(2), 190-206
CFP by Yimin Zhao
The overseas expansion of China’s economic influence has recently been foregrounded in media repo... more The overseas expansion of China’s economic influence has recently been foregrounded in media reports and policy debates. The term ‘Global China’ has been widely adopted to depict the geopolitical dimension of this immense flow of capital. However, there is still a lack of attention to the urban dimension of ‘Global China’, especially regarding its impacts on the (re)imaginings and manifestations of urban futures – both within and beyond China.
In extant literature on Global China, two main features stand out. The first is the tendency to bound discussions of China’s role in global capital flows within Africa, and to theorise this role in terms of neo-colonialism. The second feature is the overt focus on the role of Chinese capital in industrial sectors – for example through investigations of labour conflicts (Giese 2013), labour regimes (Lee 2009, 2018), and workplace regimes (Fei et al. 2018). While there are increasing discussions on the spatiality of ‘Global China’, especially in relation to the ’Belt and Road’ (BRI) discourse, they are still closely linked to industrial sectors.
In this stream, we seek to address the existing gaps identified above through a focus on the urban spectre of ‘Global China’. We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that address the interconnections and intersections between the rise of ‘Global China’ and ‘the urban’ (broadly defined). We aim to bring together papers that (1) critically examine the differentiated modes of speculative and spectacular urban production; (2) discuss the ways in which ‘the urban’ has been reconfigured by ‘Global China’; and (3) identify the theoretical and empirical implications for urban futures.
Journal Articles by Yimin Zhao
Urban Geography, 2022
While green urbanism has been discussed extensively in the urban studies literature, less attenti... more While green urbanism has been discussed extensively in the urban studies literature, less attention has been paid to the micropolitics of its cross-border transplantation. Using the case of Forest City, a mainland Chinese developer-led mega-project in the Iskandar Malaysia, we analyze the different ways green urbanism has been deployed in speculative city-making. The state seeks to position Iskandar Malaysia as greener than its global competitors, while the developer consolidates its brand image and marketing aesthetics with selective “green and smart” techniques, yet at the cost of local residents’ habitat. In moving mountains to green the sea, the logic of speculative urbanization prevails and presides over sustainable and equitable green urbanism. Further attention to the complex local power nexus and the micropolitics of speculative green urbanism contextualizes different stakeholders’ rationales and practices, and contributes to critical reflections on the entanglement of green urbanism and speculative urbanization.
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Papers by Yimin Zhao
Citation: Zhao, Yimin. 2017. "Second-hand space: Unthinking the Quito Papers." Dushu Journal (读书杂志), 2017 (12): 3-12 (in Chinese)
Citation: Zhao, Yimin. 2017. “Space as method: Field sites and encounters in Beijing’s green belts.” City: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 21(2), 190-206
CFP by Yimin Zhao
In extant literature on Global China, two main features stand out. The first is the tendency to bound discussions of China’s role in global capital flows within Africa, and to theorise this role in terms of neo-colonialism. The second feature is the overt focus on the role of Chinese capital in industrial sectors – for example through investigations of labour conflicts (Giese 2013), labour regimes (Lee 2009, 2018), and workplace regimes (Fei et al. 2018). While there are increasing discussions on the spatiality of ‘Global China’, especially in relation to the ’Belt and Road’ (BRI) discourse, they are still closely linked to industrial sectors.
In this stream, we seek to address the existing gaps identified above through a focus on the urban spectre of ‘Global China’. We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that address the interconnections and intersections between the rise of ‘Global China’ and ‘the urban’ (broadly defined). We aim to bring together papers that (1) critically examine the differentiated modes of speculative and spectacular urban production; (2) discuss the ways in which ‘the urban’ has been reconfigured by ‘Global China’; and (3) identify the theoretical and empirical implications for urban futures.
Journal Articles by Yimin Zhao
Citation: Zhao, Yimin. 2017. "Second-hand space: Unthinking the Quito Papers." Dushu Journal (读书杂志), 2017 (12): 3-12 (in Chinese)
Citation: Zhao, Yimin. 2017. “Space as method: Field sites and encounters in Beijing’s green belts.” City: Analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 21(2), 190-206
In extant literature on Global China, two main features stand out. The first is the tendency to bound discussions of China’s role in global capital flows within Africa, and to theorise this role in terms of neo-colonialism. The second feature is the overt focus on the role of Chinese capital in industrial sectors – for example through investigations of labour conflicts (Giese 2013), labour regimes (Lee 2009, 2018), and workplace regimes (Fei et al. 2018). While there are increasing discussions on the spatiality of ‘Global China’, especially in relation to the ’Belt and Road’ (BRI) discourse, they are still closely linked to industrial sectors.
In this stream, we seek to address the existing gaps identified above through a focus on the urban spectre of ‘Global China’. We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that address the interconnections and intersections between the rise of ‘Global China’ and ‘the urban’ (broadly defined). We aim to bring together papers that (1) critically examine the differentiated modes of speculative and spectacular urban production; (2) discuss the ways in which ‘the urban’ has been reconfigured by ‘Global China’; and (3) identify the theoretical and empirical implications for urban futures.