Taxi Shanghai: Entrepreneurship and semi-colonial context

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

：This research details the mundane practices of policy mobility and entrepreneurial endeavor in Jiyuan in relation to the city"s changing administrative position, and is one of first attempts to understand how entrepreneurial policies are mobilized, mutated and diffused in a small inland Chinese city. We interpret Jiyuan"s evolving development strategies and trajectory through two interrelated conceptual lens of policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism, bridged by the analysis of the politics of scale. Over the past three decades, governance strategies in Jiyuan have evolved from policy imitation under the germination of urban entrepreneurialism, to policy mutation and diffusion under the amplification of entrepreneurialism, as the city moves up the administrative level and urban hierarchy. Involving a multi-scalar process, policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism in Jiyuan are being shaped by the interactions between the city, the region, the central state and global capital under the confluence of globalization and marketization. The "successful" story of a small entrepreneurial city tells a new tale that can inform wider contexts, through painting a fuller portrait of the evolvement of an entrepreneurial city across different scales and time, and bringing cities "off the map" back into the picture of urban entrepreneurialism against the backdrop of globalization.

Debating the Neoliberal City, edited by G. Pinson and C. M. Journel. Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge: 153-173., 2017

This chapter challenges the thesis of the neoliberal city in the Chinese context and argues that although the concept of neoliberalization captures the nature of marketorientation in the post-reform China, the notion of "the neoliberal city" does not pay sufficient attention to actors and agencies in this process. Here, the state, in particularly local state officials, is a major operator of land-centered market development. The chapter reviews the historical origin of market transition and sees it as a response to a series of economic, social and political challenges at the end of state socialism. Then, the instrument of market has been selected as a "spatial fix" to combat these challenges. This mission involved a wide range of market reform initiatives. We argue that these initiatives require more state involvement rather than less, because this is a complex project. The state intervention is not a roll-out action to remedy the market defect, but rather using its dominant position to expand capital accumulation and achieve the political career of local leaders under the mechanism of elite selection and promotion. Therefore, state entrepreneurialism is similar to urban entrepreneurialism in the sense that both recognize boosterism practices but the former emphasizes the state rather than the city as the actor.

China: An International Journal

Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has built 19 National New Areas (NNAs) in its implementation of the national development strategy. Although public narratives have acclaimed the construction of NNAs as entrepreneurial cities, scant attention has been paid to understanding the internal administration of NNAs as an entrepreneurial agent and the state logic of the NNA governance. Based on the case study of Gui’an NNA, this article attempts to study the multiscalar institutional complicity in China’s NNAs. It argues that the Chinese state has the capacity to create new growth poles both by motivating local governments to introduce streamlined administration and by controlling the regions. However, the authoritarian bureaucratic system, despite being the cause of the birth of NNA entrepreneurship, has also obstructed the development of entrepreneurship.

China perspectives, 2003

Business History Review, 2021

Business history is expanding to include a greater plurality of contexts, with the study of Chinese business representing a key area of growth. However, despite efforts to bring China into the fold, much of Chinese business history remains stubbornly distal to the discipline. One reason is that business historians have not yet reconciled with the field's unique origins and intellectual tradition. This article develops a revisionist historiography of Chinese business history that retraces the field's development from its Cold War roots to the present day, showing how it has been shaped by the particular questions and concerns of "area studies." It then goes on to explore five recent areas of novel inquiry, namely: the study of indigenous business institutions, business and semi-colonial context, business at the periphery of empire, business during socialist transition, and business under Chinese socialism. Through this mapping of past and present trajectories, the article aims to provide greater coherence to the burgeoning field and shows how, by taking Chinese business history seriously, we are afforded a unique opportunity to reimagine the future of business history as a whole.

In the early phase of economic reform in China during the eighties, the state initiated policies such as establishing state-owned enterprises to act as substantial driving forces for the national economy, opening up the Chinese market to foreign capital, as well as allowing local governments to appropri ate foreign investment and land ownership to guide economic development in accordance with national decentralization policies. These official strategies enabled local governments to utilize unique local economic features in devel oping corresponding models for economic development, such as the Sunan model with village and township enterprises at its core, and the Wenzhou model centering on private enterprise. These local models elucidate the manner in which the Chinese government manages a market economy, using the power of the state to stimulate economic growth at the regional level, while also giving local people the opportunity to accumulate wealth. positions 22:4 DOlIO.I2IS/io679847-2793221

International Differences in Entrepreneurship

Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, 2013

Purpose -At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the paper is witnessing a new phenomenon of international entrepreneurship; skilled entrepreneurs from developed countries are temporarily moving to emerging economies in order to pursue business opportunities. While anecdotal evidence exists, very little theoretical development has taken place so far to explain to this phenomenon. The paper presents two short cases based on such anecdotal evidence. These cases form the basis for the development of a conceptual framework which entails a profile of entrepreneurs who have the ability to establish and operate new business ventures in an emerging economy which is characterized by a high psychic distance. Design/methodology/approach -Using Siu's work on immigrant laborers, the paper suggests that skilled, professional entrepreneurs from Israel, who seek business opportunities in China, have a profile that differs from typical immigrant entrepreneurs described in literature and is closer to the immigrant laborers described by Siu and the paper suggests therefore naming them "sojourning entrepreneurs". Findings -These entrepreneurs have the ability to overcome liability of foreignness, without integrating in the host society, and without becoming part of the local culture and the ability to engage both networks in the home country and in the host country to further the entrepreneurial venture in the host country. The paper poses that these foreign entrepreneurs will be more successful in China when using strategic alliances and that they will be more successful if they are able to leverage their foreignness temporarily and become liaisons and mediators between agents in the home and in the host country. Originality/value -If, as posed, these entrepreneurs will indeed be more successful in China when using alliances rather than WOFEs and if their unique capabilities enable them to become liaisons and mediators, this line of research can lead to guidelines for such entrepreneurs as well as for the Chinese Government. The paper expects that in the Chinese century, more entrepreneurs will be footloose and fancy-free and exploit opportunities in globally emerging markets and they will be in need of guidelines based on empirical research.

Choice Reviews Online, 2007

urbanism, modernity, and nationalism in China. For instance, while Carroll emphasizes that modernity in Suzhou was necessarily local, he also modifies it at various points with adjectives likè`u rban,''``colonial,''``relative,'' and``Chinese,'' which in the end leaves the reader to wonder: Was modernity in Suzhou essentially the same or different from that found in Shanghai, Calcutta, Tokyo, or Paris? If it was different (and thereby implying multiple modernities), what factors and processes distinguished modernity in Suzhou from that of other places? Was modernity dependent on or independent of the development of the urban autonomy and consciousness discussed by William Rowe in his study of late-imperial Hankow? 1 Or, as Prasenjit Duara has suggested, was the emergence of modernity in China related to the absence of direct colonial rule and of a vibrant religious domain from which elites could criticize modernist state-building? 2 Moreover, though Carroll mentions Henri Lefebvre and Doreen Massey and their respective ideas about space as a``social product'' and place as a``relational product'' in his introduction (and their and David Harvey's influence can be seen in later chapters), he does not directly grapple with the strengths and weaknesses of their ideas or with their central arguments about the role of capitalism in creating modern spaces and places. Finally, for a book that stresses the importance of place and the use of space in historical analysis, Carroll should have included more and better-quality diagrams and maps. The reader is only shown two contemporary diagrams and one small, poorly reproduced late-Qing map of Suzhou that does not include the horse road, the commercial area around Chang Gate, the Japanese concession, or the railroad station. Other quibbles include the misnumbering of footnotes in the Introduction, the mistaken romanization of``national essence'' in Japanese (it should be kokusui not kokusai), and a few minor typographical and wording errors. These criticisms aside, Between Heaven and Modernity is a model of how to combine both spatial and historical analyses. Through detailed examinations of urban planning, historical preservation, and architectural history, Carroll shows how seemingly abstract ideas about national identity and modern life took concrete form in Suzhou and linked the city to the nation and the world beyond. Moreover, by drawing on a variety of source materials, he ably contextualizes in the streets and temples of Suzhou his arguments about urbanism, nationalism, and modernity ± all important issues in the study of nineteenth-and twentieth-century China and Asia.

Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2015

In this special issue of Cross-Currents, the contributing authors look at how business linked China and the world from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, and how Chinese and foreign companies interacted with one another, as well as with political power, long before today. Some authors concentrate on material connections, including shipping, banking, the building of railroads, the spread of the motion picture industry, international treaties, and the formation of knowledge, while others investigate the role of business culture and how entrepreneurship and networks of trust crossed borders. Both of these aspects are set against the backdrop of simultaneous Chinese state-building efforts that became evident in the state creation of a national market and the formation of political borders. All of the authors collected here draw on case studies of individual entrepreneurs or companies, just as they draw on the new historical and theoretical scholarship summarized above to f...