Land Financialisation as a Statecraft within Authoritarian Regime: the case of Zhongshan Revenue Regeneration in Wuhan, China

Keywords: Land financialization, statecraft, imitation
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 6

Abstract

Financialization acts as a global tendency to resolve fiscal crisis and to create better economic performance within an austerity period. Land financialisation, as permits to transform land into a liquid asset, can be understood as a statecraft within Chinese cities. This is because municipal leaders’ have responded to challenges against their governance through creatively transforming land assets into financial resources. Due to characteristics of China’s authoritarian regime, such land financialization can be distanced from Western modes in terms of distinct nature of political power and financial capital. Through employing the Zhongshan Revenue Regeneration in Wuhan, China as the studied case, this paper aims to argue that the meaning of finance in Chinese cities cannot be paralleled to its meaning in global market. Rather, finance in Wuhan can be considered as an imitation of its original ideas; it is a branch of the totalitarian power from the state and has been transformed into the form of financial capital to imitate the market dynamics. Such an imitation of finance may create both high speed of development and high degree of risks at the same time. This dualistic nature of land financialization may reveals one of the reasons which have pushed Chinese cities into the status with dangers and great achievements.