Theorising small city as ordinary city: Rethinking development and urbanism from China’s south-west frontier

Abstract

Chinese

A recurrent critical argument in urban studies holds that theories about relationships between cities and globalisation need to account for a broader diversity of urban experiences and contexts. Scholarship needs to move beyond the narrow focus on a limited number of prototypical cities exerting high degrees of command and control in the global system through networks of specific corporations and sectors, and account for the diverse, inventive ways of being urban. This article contributes to the agendas of ordinary city and comparative urbanism by applying this epistemology to analyses of the recent urban development and urban strategies in Ruili, Yunnan, a small border city at China’s south-west frontier. It argues that, although not qualified as a global or world city, Ruili is a hub of busy connections and flows, drawing opportunities from a vast territorial frame and navigating multiple layers of social, economic, cultural and institutional embeddedness. Engaging with scale thinking to operationalise theoretical ideas in the ordinary city treatise, this study pays specific attention to two scenarios in the recent urbanisation of Ruili: (1) cross-border trade and the blueprint of local industrial upgrading; and (2) the rapid expansion of the jadeite and red timber economy.

Keywords

agglomeration/urbanisation comparative urbanism development globalisation ordinary city

Introduction

Over the past 15 years or so, there have been emerging voices in urban studies appealing for the theorisation of ‘ordinary cities’, the concept denoting that all cities are ‘dynamic and diverse, if conflicted, arenas for social and economic life’ (Robinson, 2006: 1). Above all, the ordinary city concept has established two critical foci of inquiry. On the one hand, the ordinary city agenda is a critical response to the fact that, while urban studies have begun to theorise the extended socioeconomic networks within which disparate cities are nodal points, the literature has been largely lopsided on a limited number of prototypical cities exerting high degrees of command and control in the global system through networks of multi-national corporations, infrastructure and specific economic sectors. Criticisms have been levied, for example, against the study of global and world cities (GAWCs). Established with the aim of analysing the roles of cities in ‘geographies of uneven development under global capitalism’ (Van Meeteren et al., 2016: 255), the GAWC studies invoke a compelling imagination of globalisation – that is, a relatively small number of GAWCs hierarchically ranked based on the notion of command and control over the global capitalist system (Derudder and Parnreiter, 2014). The calculation of command and control is based on a select number of prominent, globalised economic sectors and activities, foremost of which are advanced producer services (but other indicators, such as transport networks, NGO networks and media conglomerates, have also been used; e.g. Derudder and Parnreiter, 2014; Smith and Timberlake, 2001).

While GAWC theorists acknowledge that they simply describe one of a cacophony of processes that make up globalisation (Taylor, 2014), critical remarks have pointed out that urban scholars need to resist the temptation of reifying the experiences of a small subset of cities as the standard accounts of the world economy, or as the prototypical urbanisms to be emulated by cities all over the world (Edensor and Jayne, 2012). By focusing on a narrow range of specific measures and economic activities, approaches such as the GAWC may blind analysts to myriad other ways that cities are connected to other places and the global economy (Jayne, 2013; McCann, 2004; Robinson, 2002, 2005). This omission impacts the theorisation of urbanisms in the Global South in evident ways, because it is disproportionately difficult for cities in poorer countries to make it to the rankings reifying a West-dominated global capitalist system.

In this vein, on the other hand, the ordinary city concept joins the more recent agenda of developing alternative perspectives to explain plural urbanisms around the globe, and relishes ‘a lively vigilance for difference’ (Robinson and Roy, 2016: 184; Sheppard et al., 2013, 2015). It considers the diverse ways of being urban and making urban futures as equally inventive and innovative, and equally worthy of theorisation (Robinson, 2006, 2017). Decentring the meanings of being urban entails that we draw from urban experiences beyond the West, and beyond a small set of alpha and beta cities, to account for those highly contingent ways in which the mix of people, things, cultures and knowledge effectuates socioeconomic changes (Edensor and Jayne, 2012). The ultimate purpose is to stimulate conceptual, theoretical and methodological revisions and innovations (Robinson, 2016).

This article applies the epistemology of the ‘ordinary city’ to frame its study of recent urban development in Ruili, a small county-level city under the jurisdiction of Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. Ruili borders on the south the city of Muse, Shan State, Myanmar. Even though Ruili is a small city located at China’s south-west frontier and largely irrelevant to the corpus on GAWCs, the city is positioned by the national, provincial and local states as a key nodal point in the rapidly expanding networks of socio-economic connections involving China, Myanmar and other South/South-east Asian countries. This has resulted in the transnationalisation of the urban strategies of Ruili. Policy makers in China are keen to use Ruili as a gateway to facilitate export and outbound investment to Myanmar, and extract natural resources from the same, while Myanmar is imagined in Chinese state discourses as an emerging market and fertile resource base appealing to the increasingly powerful Chinese economy.

Under the auspices of the ordinary city optic, this study starts from a brief delineation of geopolitical repositioning of Ruili in the context of borderland opening spearheaded by the Chinese state. It then pays attention to two parallel scenarios in the recent development of Ruili: (1) the heavy traffics of cross-border trade, and the blueprint of urban industrial upgrading by capitalising on Myanmar and South/South-east Asia as emerging markets of Chinese products and destinations for Chinese capital; (2) the rapid expansion of local processing of jadeite (fei cui, ) and ‘red timber’ (hong mu, ; i.e. timbers of various tree species belonging to the genera of Pterocarpus and Dalbergia, in the family of Fabaceae, and used by Chinese people for producing luxurious furniture) imported from Myanmar and other South-east Asian countries, which satiates consumption tastes of the nouveau riche and middle classes in China’s developed regions. These situated activities and economies may be readily dismissed by GAWC theorists. However, as this article tries to argue, Ruili is undoubtedly a hub of dense connections and flows, drawing opportunities for development from an expansive territorial frame, and navigating multiple layers of social, economic, cultural and institutional embeddedness. This theoretical position is not to devalue approaches such as the GAWC. We acknowledge that cities such as New York and London do exert much more power in commanding the global economy than small cities such as Ruili. Yet, precisely because approaches that adopt a hierarchical view of cities are not suited to researching small cities, this study turns to the ordinary city treatise to take seriously alternative trajectories of development and translocal networking, which are by no means outside globalisation but are constitutive of the spaces and power geometries of global economy. This research also emerges out of the observation that the study of urban China predominantly focuses on a handful of developed cities on the east coast and a small range of stylish sectors, projects and activities (Neo and Pow, 2015). Problematising this necessarily partial portrayal of the nexus of China and the global economy, this article re-thinks Ruili as a vanguard, rather than marginal player, in the global integration of the Chinese economy. Ruili fulfils this vanguard role through a remarkable richness of activities: export; trade; mobilities of people, goods and natural resources; even dealings with the messy political conditions in Myanmar’s warlord-controlled regions. The ‘flows of capital, culture and people’ in which Ruili is enmeshed justify the theoretical and analytical relevance of small cities to a fuller understanding of how China is shaping global economic spaces and landscapes (Bell and Jayne, 2009: 695).

This article contributes to urban studies and in particular the agenda of comparative urbanism by highlighting mundane and ordinary urban experiences that problematise the paradigmatic (Schmid et al., 2018). It suggests that we can overcome obstacles in revising and innovating theories and concepts in urban studies, if we develop nuanced biographies of diversification and mutation of urban landscapes, spaces and practices, and bring them to bear on relational and topological lenses (Robinson, 2011; Ward, 2008). Specifically, it ventures to rethink the notion of development, in an attempt to rid this term of its teleological and universal connotations. Our approach towards development underscores that there is no template for best practice of development. Navigating rich empirical realities in Ruili, we suggest that development is embedded in various factors that the widely publicised rankings of global cities render invisible, such as political processes, everyday social relations, cultural affinity, communal ties, informal practices, etc. Development is a fluid process and outcome, constituted by diverse types and forms of connections and relations which are often of a very different nature from those of global networks of services, businesses and firms, but are nonetheless important to specific hinterlands, regions and nations (Jayne, 2013; McCann, 2004; Robinson, 2002, 2008).

This study also contributes to a dialogue between the ordinary city intervention and a cognate agenda that focuses on the relevance of small cities to urban theory. Running through this small body of literature is the argument that all cities can be important nodal points through which globalisation is constituted, and small cities develop their competitive advantages through a multitude of linkages with other cities and places (Bell and Jayne, 2006, 2009; James et al., 2016; Kanna and Chen, 2012). This article pushes these views a step further by proclaiming that small cities are integral to global economic integration if the latter is to achieve its ‘structured coherence’ at all, as per Jessop’s (2002) term. Small cities drive, and are driven by, globalisation in manifold ways. At one level, Ruili parallels Neo and Pow’s (2015) work on Jinhong, whereby the export of tea and rubber links a marginal city to global circulations and mobilities. But Ruili is theoretically valuable also because it reveals that the effects and consequences of global integration can be felt and absorbed by small cities in very substantive ways: in the case of Ruili, this reflects the need for transferring products and capital from an emerging centre of global economy to peripheries of the world-system (first Ruili and further to Myanmar) to create a new frontier for global economy.

Analysing ordinary city: The lens of scalar articulation

As Robinson (2002) suggests, the spatial reach of the economic connections of a city varies. Hence, a crucial task for furthering the theory of ordinary city is to identify the varying ranges, impacts and socioeconomic consequences of these connections and relations. We find that the recent geographical debates on scale and re-scaling provide a useful toolkit for operationalising nuanced empirical analysis of ordinary cities. In short, this article uses scale as a proxy concept to map out ‘multiple and overlapping networks of varying spatial reach’ (Robinson, 2008: 75). The current global system, after all, is a ‘complex rearticulation of socioeconomic space upon multiple geographical scales’ (Brenner, 2000: 366). In a scalar perspective, the vectors, webs and topologies of connections and relations, in which all cities are embroiled, can be analysed as the different scales that work in synergy with each other (McCann, 2004).

The past three decades or so have witnessed a proliferation of cross-border regions across the globe. The trend is exemplified by a gamut of initiatives such as INTERREG, Euroregions, Great Mekong Subregion and the Asian Growth Triangles (Chen, 2005; Grundy-Warr et al., 1999; Johnson, 2009; Medeiros, 2013). Above all, the cross-border regionalisation literature inspires the current study by supplying an understanding of development as the synchronisation of the regional, national and transnational scales. First, cross-border scaling evidences the revival of the regional/local scale as the new raison d’etre of economic development (Jones and MacLeod, 1999). It enables regions to circumvent nation-state-centred governance, and tap into situated regional assets (Brenner, 2009; Scott, 1999). In this vein, the local has become a key scale at which economic and institutional experiments for innovative development approaches are undertaken (Deas and Lord, 2006; Gualini, 2004).

Second, cross-border regionalisation is part and parcel of a post-Fordist world economy, characterised by extended transnational cooperation, mobilities and policy networks. In conjunction with this broader scenario, cross-border regions involve supranational frameworks of socio economic regulation and governance, institutionalised to varying extents (Perkmann, 1999). The territorial logic of integration and differentiation is thus superseded by a multi-layered and function-centred one (Blatter, 2004). For national and regional states alike, there is a general tendency towards the convergence of domestic development policy and actions addressing extraterritorial and transnational forces and processes (Jessop, 2002).

Finally, cross-border development by no means bypasses but rather depends on the scale of the nation-state (Brenner, 2009). Cross-border regions are often orchestrated by policies instituted by the central state (Jones, 2001; Perkmann, 1999), and the national state may also promote cross-border regionalisation to strategise the national economy or address its inherent problems (Perkmann and Sum, 2002; Su, 2012, 2013). Moreover, cross-border development is closely linked to, and dependent on, the spatialities and organisations of the national economy. We may, therefore, grapple with the national scale as a structured spatial ‘framework’ of socio economic practices, activities and organisations, which provides opportunities and resources for initiatives anchored at other scales (Jessop, 1999; O’Dowd, 2010). As Prokkola (2011: 1193) points out, ‘the reproduction of a nation and national borders does not occur only on a national scale, but is bound up with everyday practices on a range of scales’ (see also Mansfield, 2005).

This article suggests that the complex socio economic worlds that Ruili has mobilised within and beyond its physical edge can be analysed as a process whereby the relative weights of transnational, national and regional scales fluctuate but articulate with each other (Jessop, 2002). This context-specific scalar articulation is central to the intrinsic inventiveness of Ruili’s urbanisation. For the plural geo-economic phenomena and activities which we discuss in this study, the joint effect of the different scales varies from one issue to another. For instance, national and local policy makers conceive of Ruili as an ideal receiver of surplus industrial capacities transferred from the eastern coast to tackle narrowing profit margins and redress the uneven regional development in China. Ruili has also been strategised as an outpost of the Chinese economy, a direct outcome of the state’s advocacy for the ‘going-out’ of the Chinese economy (Su, 2012, 2013).¹ In this scene, therefore, the articulation between national economic restructuring, spatial fix of surplus capital in a local place with situated advantages and transnational trade linkages is essential. Similarly, the transnational mobility of jadeite and red timber articulates with social, economic and cultural transformations occurring at other scales – the emergence of middle-class and nouveau riche cultural tastes in post-reform China, and subsequent mobilities of products, skills and knowledge at the national scale, have triggered highly localised practices of production and knowledge spillover in Ruili.

Before proceeding to the empirical study, we want to clarify that the ‘urban-ness’ of ordinary cities is not diluted by connections and spatial reaches beyond their physical extents. In the case of Ruili, what multiple scales have co-constituted is still in essence an ‘urban’ economy, because translocal economic ties contribute to density, proximity and agglomeration of specialised economic activities, or in more general terms, the urban agglomeration economies, within the physical perimeter of the city. Meanwhile, economic benefits generated by the networks of connections circulate into all aspects of urban development, including the production of spaces and the built environment. We will specify such economic activities and spaces where needed in the subsequent sections.

Methods

Fieldwork in support of this study was conducted during two research visits to Ruili, in August 2014 and April 2016, respectively. This article mainly draws from three sets of data. First, the researchers systematically collected policy documents at local, provincial, national and transnational levels. These include: (1) transnational cooperation frameworks regulating, for instance, the Greater Mekong Subregion and the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area;² (2) policies devised by Chinese central government which set in place a broad outlook for cross-border urban and regional development involving the Sino-Myanmar borderlands; and (3) provincial and local policies operationalising policy discourses mandated by the central state.

Second, this study delves into local planning documents, yearbooks and statistics to examine the extent to which policy discourses have been materialised in concrete projects of urban development. Of particular relevance to this study is the Master Plan of the Experimental Zone of Development and Opening in Ruili (the ‘Experimental Zone’, hereafter; the document is appended by six second-tier plans specialising in different areas of development), which sets directions for local social, economic and spatial transformation.

Finally, the researchers conducted 19 semi-structured interviews with actors directly related to state policies on cross-border urban development and the red timber and jadeite economies. The interviewees were accessed through a snowballing process, and the two authors collectively conducted all the interviews. With regard to state policies, development projects and cross-border governance frameworks, we interviewed eight local state officials in Ruili (seven men and one woman), employed variably in urban planning, foreign affairs, the management of land ports, etc. To examine the cross-border flows of jadeite and red timber and their relations to specialised economic activities in Ruili, nine entrepreneurs and artisans were interviewed (eight men and one woman), all of whom operated, at the time of research, business related to jadeite and/or red timber. In addition, interviews were conducted with two Kunming-based scholars (both men) to garner extra information about cross-border processes in Ruili.

Contextualising Ruili: Cross-border connections and the ‘going-out’ aspirations of China

The Ruili–Muse borderland is located in what Scott (2009) once analysed as the Zomia region. Historically, China’s southwest frontier has always seen vibrant cross-border livelihoods and trade, made possible by the incessant traffic of people, goods, cultures and knowledge with Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, etc. (Qian and Tang, 2017; Turner, 2013; Turner et al., 2015; Walker, 1999). These cross-border mobilities not only negotiate state borders and policies, but also draw on regionally embedded social and cultural relations bypassing state mechanisms (Schoenberger and Turner, 2008). More recently, this liminal border zone has witnessed deepening economic ties between sovereign states, evidenced for example by China’s investments in South-east Asian countries and the promotion of development there (High, 2010; Nyíri, 2012; Nyíri and Tan, 2016).

Closely juxtaposed with the Myanmar city Muse, and as a key transport hub along the legend-laden Ledo Road (i.e. Stilwell Road) linking China and India, Ruili is the principal border city at the Sino-Myanmar borderland. Geographical proximity to two Myanmar states, that is, Shan and Kachin, makes Ruili well positioned for cross-border connections. Its three major ethnic groups – Han, Dai and Jingpo – have ethnic ties, respectively, with Chinese, Shan and Kachin people in Myanmar. Despite its smallness, Ruili outstrips all the other border cities in China in terms of the volume of trade with Myanmar. In 2015, while the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Ruili was US$ 1.24 billion, the trade flowing through the city amounted to US$ 4.54 billion (Table 1). In the same year, the city had a total area of 1020 km² under its jurisdiction (the densely built urban core in Jiegao is 1.92 km²), and a population of 202,000 (58.6% Han, 29.4% Dai, 7.1% Jingpo) (Ruili Municipal Government, 2016).

Table 1.

Foreign trade in Ruili (2012–1015; figures in US$ billion).

	Import	Export	Total
2015	1.840	2.700	4.540
2014	1.819	2.949	4.768
2013	NA	NA	3.392
2012	0.334	1.741	2.075

Source: Composed from the Ruili Municipal Government (2013a, 2014, 2015, 2016); no specific data for import and export is available for 2013, due to a sudden change in the statistical method.

In Ruili, the outlook of venturing beyond the border to enhance the urban economy draws from a rich history of grassroots cross-border relations based on ethnic ties. Official rhetorics in Ruili describe the Sino-Myanmar relationship as one of ‘baobo’ (), the Chinese transliteration of the Burmese word meaning ‘brotherhood’:

In Ruili, we have always looked beyond the border and always known that Ruili does not have the same opportunities as coastal cities in China. We have to turn to Myanmar for development. So, we really emphasise the rapport between people and ethnic communities in Ruili and across the border. (Mr C, official in ethnic and religious affairs, August 2014)

The same outlook is also the cumulative outcome of a long trajectory of state-led cross-border initiatives. As early as 1992, the Chinese central government designated Ruili as a ‘Borderland Open City’, endowing cross-border trade with preferential tariff policies. Also, to maximise economic utility, the state entered into experiments with territoriality and institutions. In 2000, the State Council made a move to establish in Ruili’s Jiegao District a ‘Border Trade Zone’, and implemented a policy called ‘inside the border, outside the customs’ (jing nei guan wai, ) (Master Plan, 2013). Under this policy, Jiegao is considered to be outside the jurisdiction of Chinese customs, and goods traded there enjoy tariff exemption or export rebate.

Entering the new millennium, the narrow focus on trade in China’s border initiatives moved gradually to more expansive, inclusive conceptions of cross-border integration. This was in part a response to transnational cooperation frameworks in which China became actively involved. The Greater Mekong Subregion programme, for example, promotes the vision of a vast policy network comprised of infrastructure construction, trade, investment, private sector participation, sustainability of environment and natural resource, human resource development, etc. (Asian Development Bank, 2002; Glassman, 2010). The China–ASEAN Free Trade Area, while emphasising primarily the liberalisation of trade, calls for strengthened cross-border ties in terms of investment, transport, telecommunication, finance, tourism, human resource, environment, etc. (ASEAN, 2002).

In reality, however, it is rare for Ruili to directly tap into transnational cooperation frameworks to cash in on its situated advantages, while no local development project is sponsored directly by transnational organisations such as the Asian Development Bank. In fact, how the discourses and frameworks of transnational cooperation are translated into concrete local agendas still hinges on vertical flows of policy discourses and political mandate within the bureaucratic hierarchy of the Chinese nation-state. As Su (2013) has pointed out, the Chinese central state has prioritised the repositioning of Yunnan from an economic periphery to a bridgehead linking South and South-east Asia through trade, outgoing investment and transnational infrastructure networks. This is a strategic manoeuvre deployed to address uneven development between the advanced east and less developed west. To achieve this goal, one approach that the state utilises is ‘industrial transfer’, namely, the relocation of industrial productive activities to western provinces (Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China, 2011). On top of this is another layer of policy priority, namely, the global expansion of Chinese products and investment to secure new spatial fixes for surplus capital (Su, 2012). In 2010, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council jointly issued guidelines on measures to ‘deepen the Great Western Development Campaign’, in which the central state mandated the establishment of an Experimental Zone in Ruili. The Experimental Zone is expected to serve two purposes: first, ‘bringing in’ (yin jinlai), namely, to attract investments from economically developed regions in China; and second, ‘going out’ (zou chuqu), namely, to expand Chinese products and investments to the neighbouring countries in South and South-east Asia (Chinese Communist Party and State Council, 2010).

It is in this broader context that we can make sense of the key ideas embraced by the Master Plan of the Experimental Zone, approved by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2013. While the plan tackles a vast compendium of issues related to urban and regional development, what most interests us is the strategic and geopolitical positioning of Ruili. The Master Plan sets the objectives for Ruili to develop into: (1) a ‘centre of economy and trade at the Sino-Myanmar borderlands’; and (2) ‘a key open land port in southwest China’ (Master Plan, 2013: Appendix, p. 12).

With respect to the first, the plan envisions that Ruili will thrive predominantly on trade connections with South and South-east Asia. It is expected that the improvement of the local industrial base will be realised through investments in the manufacturing and processing sectors, mainly from China’s east coast. Flourishing local industries will, in turn, rely on sophisticated transnational and national circuits of trade. These include: (1) ‘export-orientated’ industries, which manufacture goods to meet the demands in Myanmar and other South and South-east Asian countries; and (2) ‘import-based’ industries, which process raw resources imported from Myanmar (jadeite, red timber, ores, rubber and crude oil, as Ruili is at the terminus of the Sino-Myanmar Pipelines), and then supply products to the Chinese market. Eventually, the Plan anticipates that enterprises based in Ruili will be given incentives to invest in Myanmar, making the city a regional centre of the ‘headquarters economy’.

The second objective envisages that Ruili’s economy will benefit from serving as a transnational transport hub. The ‘going-out’ aspiration of the Chinese state is vividly played out in the visions of cross-border transport infrastructures, which take stock of both existing projects (such as the Pan-Asia Railway Network) and new proposals still at the conception stage. Should these blueprints be eventually realised, Ruili would be linked, via railway and road, to the Myanmar cities of Lashio and Mandalay, and eventually to the Indian Ocean port of Kyaukpyu; via road to the Myanmar city Myitkyina, and eventually to India; and via road to the Myanmar city Bhamo and then via Irrawaddy River waterway to Mandalay and Yangon. These routes would allow Chinese products to conveniently access the Indian Ocean and the markets of India, Myanmar, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Again, these cross-border transport linkages will make Ruili an ideal location for manufacturing and service industries targeting the emerging markets in South and South-east Asia, giving its urban economy a new edge of competitiveness (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The location of Ruili in relation to Myanmar, and the three planned transport routes.

A caveat, however, is warranted: despite the optimistic tone of the Master Plan, the realisation of such blueprints depends on at least two geopolitical indeterminacies: (1) geopolitical negotiations and tensions between Chinese ambitions, the Myanmar state and local society in Myanmar; and (2) the internal fragmentation of sovereignty in Myanmar, especially the armed conflicts between the Myanmar central government and ethnic warlords in Shan and Kachin States. The officials that we interviewed hint at the hindrances to cross-border projects led by China: the Sino-Myanmar Pipelines began to transmit oil only in April 2017 (though flows of gas started in October 2013), after several years of protests against forced land expropriation; there are still unsolved controversies over the China-funded Myitsone Dam and Letpadaung Copper Mine; and the China–Myanmar Railway has been suspended since 2014, due to concerns over national interests, local protests and armed ethnic conflicts. In other words, Ruili illustrates the relevance of non-economic factors such as state power, geopolitics and grassroots resistance to a comprehensive theorisation of the relational making of places and cities (Derudder and Parnreiter, 2014).

Two scenarios of cross-border connectivity in Ruili

Another important theoretical proposition in the ordinary city thesis is that we need to move beyond the narrow focus on a few advanced producer service sectors that derive global city networks and look closely at diverse economic activities linking cities to flows of capital, materials, technology, knowledge and culture. This section echoes this point by unpacking the ‘unspectacular’ facet of globalisation and tracing the networks of border trade, jadeite and red timber.

Cross-border trade and industrial development

Ruili’s urban economy is highly reliant on cross-border trade, which is also central to the livelihoods and economic practices at the borderlands. A book entitled The Chronology of Border Trade (Ruili Municipal Government, 2013a) documents that, in addition to rich practices of grassroots, informal trade based on ethnic and social ties (Turner et al., 2015), state-regulated trade has been existent ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. After China’s Reform and Opening, formal cross-border trade became open to private businesses and enterprises in 1985. Indeed, it was the spatial agglomeration of trading activities and firms that kicked off Ruili’s transformation from a small market town into a qualitatively urban settlement. Since then, cross-border trade grew from 45 million RMB in 1985 (US$19.3 million, as per exchange rate in 1985), to 149 million RMB in 1996 (US$17.9 million, as per exchange rate in 1996), reaching 11 billion RMB in 2011 (US$1.70 billion, as per exchange rate in 2011). The landscape of trade in Ruili is closely tied to the rise of China as a global manufacturing base: while import from Myanmar is dominated by natural resources and fishery/agricultural products, the export from China is comprised mainly of industrial products, such as cars, motorcycles, machines, fabrics, clothing, home appliances, consumer chemical products, exemplifying China’s rise as the ‘workshop of the world’ in a global age (Ruili Municipal Government, 2013a).

Meanwhile, small-scale, grassroots trade practices were invigorated, and credited with much of Ruili’s prosperity during the early years of economic liberalisation. From the Myanmar side, as Chang (2014) documents, migrants of Chinese descent have played abiding and pivotal roles in facilitating trade with China. This article affirms that trade underscores individual agency, not merely structural economic forces, and turns economic peripheries into a vibrant centre of transnational connections (Chang, 2014). As we have mentioned, one policy innovation adopted by the Chinese state is the Border Trade Zone in Jiegao, within which tariffs are not levied. The policy further prescribes that for transactions made in Jiegao and worth no more than 8000 RMB (US$121), tariff is exempted even beyond the zone. The Shan State of Myanmar echoes China by designating an area between Muse Land Port and the trading place ‘105 Mile’ a tariff-free zone, where an equivalent tariff exemption policy applies. Policy innovation has given rise to a ‘trade enclave’ (Ishida, 2013) at the Sino-Myanmar borderlands, which considerably widens profitability margins for small transactions. As a result, small enterprises and firms specialising in trade have flourished and concentrated in Ruili, not to mention vibrant trading activities conducted on an individual basis.

This landscape of trade, nonetheless, is beset by certain conflicts. Most importantly, Myanmar hopes to reverse the imbalance in border trade by increasing the export of rice and agricultural products to China. But the Chinese state is yet to lift the strict quotas on Myanmar agricultural products, for the purpose of protecting Chinese farmers. This has aroused some resentment from the Myanmar side, though has not yet led to substantive actions to restrict export from China (interview, Mr W, official in municipal government, April 2016).

Drawing on the ample opportunities afforded by trade, the state has emphasised the prospect of improving the local industrial base through industrial transfer. Local officials, during the interviews, envisage that Ruili will build a robust industrial base by producing for Myanmar and other South and South-east Asian countries, which are becoming new destinations for Chinese capital and goods. As a former Deputy Mayor of Ruili remarks:

Myanmar has very limited capacity in manufacturing. As demands for consumer goods increase, it will be reliant on the supplies from China, not to mention the markets of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; the advantages of Chinese products are cheap prices and comprehensive varieties. (Mr S, April 2016)

To operationalise these policy visions, the provincial government and the Prefectural Government of Dehong have put forward a series of preferential policies to enhance the locational advantage of Ruili. In addition to the relatively abundant and cheap supply of land and labour, one major move made by the provincial government is to exempt enterprises that settle in the Experimental Zone from revenue tax for the first five years of operation, while the tax is reduced by 50% for the second five years.³ Other preferential policies in terms of local financial institutions, social services and border clearance have also been specified.

In the Master Plan, a broad gamut of industries are mentioned. Spatially, Zhangfeng Township is planned to grow into an industrial zone for import-orientated industries, although the implementation of the plan is slow, because most imported raw resources are further transported to larger cities for processing. In contrast, the export-orientated industrial zone established in Wanding and Jiegao is gaining more momentum. There, the outlook for expanding new frontiers for China as the ‘workshop of the world’ envisages both the continuous growth in market share for products which have already secured a foothold in Myanmar (e.g. motorcycles, agricultural vehicles, home appliances and fabrics), and the consolidation of those yet to compete effectively with products from industrialised economies such as Japan and Korea (e.g. biotechnology, cars and construction machinery) (Master Plan, 2013). So far, the status quo of exogenous investments from the east coast has, to an extent, fallen short of the visions. Although official statistics claim that between January 2013 and October 2016, 1639 enterprises have been set up in the Experimental Zone, the majority are small, endogenously emerging ventures not very different from grassroots firms portrayed earlier. The spatial unevenness of development in China remains a principal structural constraint for Ruili, expressed locally in the absence of railway connections, limited motorway access and a weak local knowledge base (interview, Mr W, official in municipal government, April 2016). Notwithstanding, breakthroughs in local industrial improvement have been made in motorcycle production (investment from Chongqing), car assembling (investment from Beijing) and mobile phone and LCD production (investment and technology from Jiangsu). In particular, the manufacturing base established by Yinxiang Motorcycle Corporation from Chongqing has been very successful in securing the markets of Myanmar and India, producing 2000 motorcycles on a daily basis ( Yunnan Daily, 2017) .

Jadeite and red timber: An emerging cultural economy

Another engine of growth emphasised by local officials is the import and processing of jadeite and red timber (jadeite imported exclusively from Myanmar; red timber from several South-east Asian countries). Thanks to cross-border traffic of jadeite ore and red timber, over the past two decades Ruili has witnessed rapid growth in activities and entrepreneurships based on the trade and processing of raw materials and the sale of finished products. Although accurate statistics are not available, the Master Plan indicates that the jadeite sector contributed about US$151.5 million to the local economy in 2012, while the figure for red timber was US$106 million. Given that in the same year the GDP of Ruili was a mere US$605 million, the importance of the jadeite and red timber economies is apparent.

Jadeite and red timber have different modes of cross-border trade and mobilities, and when consumed their symbolic meanings are also different. Our rationale of grouping them into the same subsection is that they similarly exemplify the entanglement of commodities, cultural consumption and cross-border material and social connections. To begin with, in both cases, the transnational mobility of raw materials and localised practices of trade processing and speculation articulate with social changes in China (i.e. the emergence and concentration of wealthy consumers in developed parts of China, especially the east coast) in distinctive ways. Both jadeite and red timber cater to the cultural tastes of nouveau riche and middle-class consumers. The Han Chinese’s love of jadeite and red timber draws from ancient cultural legacies: jadeite is worn as amulets that safeguard fortune and peace, while furniture made of red timber is recognised as an emblem of wealth and prestige. The rarity of jadeite and red timber has meant heavy speculation and soaring prices in recent years. Ruili’s closeness to the supply of raw materials results in the confluence there of merchants, entrepreneurs and artisans from all over China, triggering the mobilities of specialised skills and cultural knowledge at the national scale.

According to Egreteau (2011), Kachin State in Myanmar supplies 70% of the world’s premium jadeite, while Chinese artisans interviewed insist that only jadeite mined in Myanmar is suitable for producing commercial jewellery. China’s processing of Myanmar jadeite has a history of more than four centuries, and information about high-quality mines is part and parcel of vernacular knowledge in the borderlands. In parallel, Treanor’s (2015) analysis shows that the South-east Asian countries of Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam are among the largest suppliers ofred timber to China. Before China’s Reform and Opening, the consumption of jadeite and red timber was stigmatised as bourgeois degeneration; cross-border trade of raw materials therefore halted. Since the Reform, the slackening of ideological control and increase in household incomes has resulted in wealthy and middle-class families renewing traditional cultural tastes, expressed in the increased demand for culturally coded, highly priced commodities (Cartier, 2009). Against this backdrop, the jadeite sector in Ruili took off in the late 1990s, while the boom for red timber came slightly later, around the mid-2000s (interviews with Mr Ji and Mr Yang, entrepreneurs, April 2016).

As entrepreneurs in Ruili unanimously agree, the procurement of raw materials is by far the single most challenging crucible in the value chains. Cross-border mobilities of raw resources epitomise the fluid entanglements of grassroots practices, cross-border governance and issues of political power and sovereignty. In the case of jadeite ore, because the Myanmar people do not value the mineral culturally, overseas Chinese residing in Myanmar play an important role in managing the major jadeite mines in Kachin State. At the inchoate stage of the jadeite economy, Chinese entrepreneurs acquired ores almost exclusively from Chinese immigrants in Myanmar (Chang, 2014). Recognising the economic value of jadeite, the Myanmar government and military have intervened, and begun to heavily tax jadeite mines; also, the Myanmar central state has tried to rationalise the cross-border mobility of jadeite ore and has mandated that all trade of ore be conducted through a state-organised public auction, held annually in the country’s capital (interview, Mr Y, entrepreneur, April 2016). To bypass the extra cost incurred by the public auction, entrepreneurs in Ruili now rely predominantly on smuggling for acquiring ore – the ore is cut into smaller pieces and transported either via official checkpoints or, even more often, via the countless small pathways between the two border cities which are out of reach of the state’s gaze (interview, Mr Y, entrepreneur, April 2016). As many interviewed entrepreneurs suggest, in Kachin State local networks of political power override the frail authority of the Myanmar central state. Private transactions of ore thus continue to flourish: ‘90% of jade ores seen in Ruili were brought in illegally [meaning: via smuggling], strictly speaking’ (interview, Mr J, entrepreneur, April 2016). Even though the majority of jadeite ore transactions are off the books, the customs in Ruili recorded the import of 1811 tons of certified ore in 2015 alone.

Similar scenarios apply to red timber. Chinese entrepreneurs purchase logs from Myanmar communities or companies, but many also invest in logging camps or send logging teams directly to Myanmar. However, in 2014 the Myanmar central state outlawed the export of red timber logs in order to conserve endangered tree species, many of which are already indexed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). A dramatic episode occurred in 2015, when the Myanmar central government arrested 155 Chinese loggers who were illegally harvesting timber in Kachin. The Chinese state has cooperated with their Myanmar counterpart and imposed strict surveillance over the trafficking of logs. Hence, the source of newly harvested logs has been greatly suppressed, and as of 2017, entrepreneurs increasingly turn to existing stocks of logs to sustain their business.

But entrepreneurs do develop coping tactics to negotiate this sanction. Albeit reduced in quantity, cross-border mobility of logs has nonetheless persisted. Local warlords in Kachin and Shan states, especially the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO), a bitter foe of the Myanmar central state, continue to authorise logging and selling to Chinese businesspeople, for this is an important source of revenue. Similar to jadeite, smuggling of red timber logs is widely adopted: ‘logs are cut into small chunks, transported with motorcycles or trucks, and enter China via the small pathways at the borderlands’ (interview, Mr Y, entrepreneur, April 2016). Afterwards, Chinese businesspeople may find means to ‘legalise’ the logs by navigating the policy regime at the local scale, and paying a ‘comprehensive tax’ levied by the municipal government of Ruili. But many may not even bother to do so. In sum, the jadeite and red timber sectors thrive largely on the threshold of legality and illegality by exploiting political fluidity in Myanmar and the always porous nature of state borders (Qian and Tang, 2017).

In the early days, Ruili served as merely a transit hub for raw materials. Subsequently, as more people with specialised knowledge on jadeite and red timber cultures concentrated in Ruili, some began to set up processing workshops and enterprises in the then very small city centre, to capitalise on the proximity of raw materials and minimise the costs of transporting weighty ore and logs. Access to circuits of information embedded in local social networks was also crucial – in the jadeite and red timber sectors, formal spillover of knowledge between businesses was less important than the informal networks of middlemen, fellow townspeople, acquaintances and friends. The places of origin of the economic migrants are geographically uneven: those specialising in jadeite come predominantly from provinces with sophisticated cultural knowledge and an established tradition of jade carving, such as Henan, Hunan and Guangdong; as to red timber, most craftspeople are from the coastal provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang and Fujian which, apart from having lively local traditions of consuming red timber, are home to mature markets due to post-reform economic prosperity.

The jadeite and red timber sectors have powerfully re-defined the spatial and social fabrics of Ruili. Spatially, countless small processing workshops and retailing stores are interspersed throughout the urban landscapes. All the major shopping plazas in the city are dedicated to the display and selling of jadeite and red timber products, the construction of which was sponsored by the local state (interview, Mr W, official in municipal government, April 2016). The Master Plan also includes the prospect of a Jadeite Processing Base in Meng-Mao Township, and a Red Timber Processing Base in Nong-Dao Township. Socioeco-nomically, some artisans with an entrepreneurial spirit have led to the founding of the city’s largest enterprises, reinforcing the urban economy, the tax base and employment. The spillover of skills and knowledge has occurred at the local and transnational scales. In fact, the social façade of the jadeite and red timber economies has profoundly diversified over recent years: native people in Ruili (including Dai and Jingpo), overseas Chinese in Myanmar and even people of other ethnicities in Myanmar (especially the ethnic majority Bamar) have become actively involved in gaining cultural knowledge and processing jadeite and red timber for commercial purposes, starting up businesses not only in Ruili but also in Myanmar.

Conclusion

This article understands ordinary cities as all cities that are experiencing strengthened connections with other places due to the integration of the global economy (Robinson, 2017). How the general context of globalisation constitutes specific places is fraught with possibilities. This article has engaged with the concept of scale and literatures on cross-border rescaling to grasp a concrete sense of the variegated spatial reach and the diversity of economic connections in which disparate cities are embroiled. This is to supply nuanced empirical accounts of ordinary cities as always emergent, evolving and anchored in multi-scalar topologies. In line with this framework, this article unpacks the means through which the small border city of Ruili realises its own inventive ways of being urban (Robinson, 2006). Local officials in Ruili sometimes claim that the development of this small border city is modelled on more ‘successful’ cities in China; indeed, during the interviews they are not hesitant in describing Ruili as the ‘Shenzhen of the borderlands’. Despite this rhetoric, however, Ruili has by no means followed an ‘aspirational model’ (Van Meeteren et al., 2016) of climbing up the global urban hierarchy. Rather, the making of Ruili as a highly relational and heterogeneous place is embedded in the situated conditions of the borderlands. On the one hand, transnational connections and flows, drawing on local histories and locational advantages, make Ruili an open, mobile and dynamic centre of economic innovation and improvisation. On the other, Ruili is deeply implicated in the structural and cultural changes in China, not only giving the Chinese national economy a new strategic edge, but also offering opportunities for diverse actors across the national space.

In Ruili, local initiatives of development, the agenda of the nation-state to make the national economy more equitable and open, and multidimensional transnational connections are entangled to such an extent that different scales (the local, national, transnational) constantly clash with each other. As a result, this article has situated the urbanness of Ruili in a vast territorial frame for the traffic of resources, capital, products and knowledge between China, Myanmar and other South/South-east Asian countries. More recently, cross-border development in Ruili has converged with the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) spearheaded by Beijing. So far, B&R has not given rise to any major addition to Ruili’s urban development plans. Official media in Dehong Prefecture and Ruili have used the policy rhetorics of B&R to lend stronger legitimacy to the existing emphases on cross-border cooperation, infrastructure, trade and industrial upgrading ( Dehong Unity News, 2017). These are congruent with the policy priorities of the B&R – transnational development coordination, infrastructure, markets for Chinese firms and the reinforced geopolitical influence of China ( The Economist, 2017).

To conclude, we reaffirm that this article is an endeavour in the trials of ordinary city and comparative urbanism. It engages with urban processes and changes at the margin of the global economy to enrich theoretical vocabularies on the relationships between cities and globalisation. While recognising that the network of power knitted by cities commanding and controlling advanced producer services is a dominant feature of the global economy, we explore the specific ways in which small cities such as Ruili can insert themselves into global circulations and connections, either through transnational linkages of trade or the strides of footloose capital into new locations of spatial fix. In such processes, development refers to a heterogeneous, hybrid field of actions and practices, many of which are highly improvisational. Development in Ruili defies any pre-given template or standard of urban modernity (Robinson, 2011). Still, it is intrinsically innovative and inventive (Robinson, 2017), as it coheres in historical legacies, state visions and grassroots agency to animate a vibrant relational topology.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is funded by the National Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41261031; 41401139).

Notes

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