China's dramatic economic growth trajectory during the post-1978 reform era has been in part dependent on the important role of secondary cities as regional articulation points in the country's engagement with globalization. This article compares the urban—economic experiences of the two prefecture-level municipalities of Dongguan and Suzhou with respect to a number of overlapping vantage points, each possessing an inherent spatiality. These include a national administrative rescaling of urban places producing greater economic autonomy at local and regional scales, the differing temporal engagement of each region with the global economy, and the structure of regional production chains, particularly in relation to the global gateway cities of the larger urban regions in which each secondary city is locationally and functionally embedded.
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20.
This four-tier urban administrative scheme is from Laurence J. C. Ma, "Urban Administrative Restructuring, Changing Scale Relations and Local Economic Development in China," Political Geography24 (2005): 477-97, whereas the number of cities in each urban administrative rank reflects 2003 data found in Him Chung, "The Change in China's State Governance and Its Effects Upon Urban Scale," Environment and Planning A39 (2007): 789-809. This rescaled urban administrative system is very complex and is constantly changing. Prefecture-level cities administratively control the county seats or towns within the prefecture. The townships and villages within a county are under the administrative purview of the county government and lesser administrative bodies, not the county seat. The prefecture includes all these levels of administration, but the municipality includes only the urban core (city limits), its adjacent wards or districts (urban area), and the county seats or towns.
21.
For the 1979 number, Youqin Huang, "Urban Development in Contemporary China," in China's Geography: Globalization and Dynamics of Political, Economic, and Social Change, ed. Gregory Veeck, Clifton W. Pannell, Christopher J. Smith, and Youqin Huang ( Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 233-61; for the 2003 number, Chung, "Change in China's State Governance."
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George C. S. Lin , "Metropolitan Development in a Transitional Socialist Economy: Spatial Restructuring in the Pearl River Delta, China," Urban Studies38 (2001 ): 389.
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Lin, "Growth and Structural Change," 300.
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Chung, " Change in China's State Governance."
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Ma, " Urban Administrative Restructuring," 487.
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Wing-Shing Tang and Him Chung, "Urban-Rural Transition in China: Beyond the Desakota Model," in China's Regions, Polity and Economy: A Study of Spatial Transformation in the Post-Reform Era, ed. Si-Ming Li and Wing-Shing Tang ( Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2000), 275-308.
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Jingxiang Zhang and Fulong Wu , "China's Changing Economic Governance: Administrative Annexation and the Reorganization of Local Governments in the Yangtze River Delta," Regional Studies40 (2006): 8.
30.
Chung, " The Change in China's State Governance and Its Effects Upon Urban Scale," 791.
31.
Ibid., 792.
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Cindy C. Fan , "The Elite, the Natives, and the Outsiders: Migration and Labor Market Segmentation in Urban China," Annals of the Association of American Geographers92 (2002): 103-24.
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Marton, "Local Geographies ," 27.
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George C. S. Lin , "Hong Kong and the Globalisation of the Chinese Diaspora: A Geographical Perspective," Asia Pacific Viewpoint43 (2002): 63-91.
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Ming K. Chan, "All in the Family: The Hong Kong-Guangdong Link in Historical Perspective," in The Hong Kong-Guangdong Link: Partnership in Flux, ed. Reginald Y. W. Kwok (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), 31.
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Lin, "Hong Kong."
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Smart and Lin, "Local Capitalisms."
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Chen, "A Tale of Two Regions ."
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Godfrey Yeung , "Foreign Direct Investment and Investment Environment in Dongguan Municipality of Southern China," Journal of Contemporary China10 (2001): 125-54.
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Ezra F.Vogel, One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong Under Reform ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
43.
Lin, "Peri-urbanism ," 32.
44.
Smart and Lin, "Local Capitalisms," 289.
45.
Lin, "Metropolitan Development," 391.
46.
Guangdong Statistical Yearbook (Beijing: China Statistical Press, 2006), 338.
47.
Smart and Lin, "Local Capitalisms," 294.
48.
Guangdong Statistical Yearbook, 315. The Special Economic Zones of Zhuhai, Shantou, and Shenzen as well as the provincial capital of Guangzhou are not included in the 17 cities.
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Victor F. S. Sit , "Hong Kong's `Transferred' Industrialization and Industrial Geography," Asian Survey38 (1998): 880-904.
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Lin, "Peri-Urbanism ," 38.
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52.
Lin, "Metropolitan Development."
53.
Smart and Lin, "Local Capitalisms," 287.
54.
Lin, "Peri-Urbanism ," 44.
55.
Ibid., 42.
56.
Smart and Lin, "Local Capitalisms," 291.
57.
Dongguan Statistical Yearbook (Beijing: China Statistical Press, 2006), 393.
58.
Yeung, "Foreign Direct Investment," 135.
59.
Smart and Lin, "Local Capitalisms," 295.
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Jianfa Shen , "Urban and Regional Development in Post-Reform China: The Case of the Zhujiang Delta," Progress in Planning57 (2002): 91-140.
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Chen, "A Tale of Two Regions ," 184.
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Yeung, "Foreign Direct Investment."
63.
Smart and Lin, "Local Capitalisms," 297.
64.
Jon Sigurdson , "Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) in China " (working paper 195, Stockholm, Sweden, 2004).
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Chen, "A Tale of Two Regions ."
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Sigurdson, " Regional Innovation Systems," 29.
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Chen, "A Tale of Two Regions ."
68.
Michael Marmé , Suzhou: Where the Goods of the All the Provinces Converge (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Yinong Xu, The Chinese City in Space and Time: The Development of Urban Form in Suzhou ( Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000).
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R. James Ferguson, "Suzhou: The Cultural and Economic Center of `Southern' China," The Culture Mandala3 (1999): 51-75.
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Yehua Dennis Wei and Sunwoong Kim , "Widening Inter-County Inequality in Jiangsu Province, China, 1950-95," Journal of Development Studies38 (2002): 142-64.
71.
Yehua Dennis Wei , "Beyond the Sunan Model: Trajectory and Underlying Factors of Development in Kunshan, China," Environment and Planning A34 (2002): 1725-47. Based on level of economic growth, Jiangsu Province is divided into the three regions of Subei (Northern), Suzhong (Central), and Sunan (Southern). Composing the three prefecture-level municipalities (Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou), Sunan refers to the more economically dynamic southern third of Jiangsu Province that is part of the Yangtze River Delta.
72.
Suzhou Statistical Yearbook (Beijing: China Statistical Press, 2005), 51.
73.
Tingwei Zhang , "From Intercity Competition to Collaborative Planning: The Case of the Yangtze River Delta Region of China," Urban Affairs Review42 (2006): 33.
74.
Ibid., 34.
75.
Unless otherwise noted, this description of Suzhou's dynamic functional relationship with Shanghai is from Zhang, "From Intercity Competition."
76.
Chen, "A Tale of Two Regions ," 185.
77.
Alexius A. Pereira , "The Suzhou Industrial Park Experiment: The Case of China-Singapore Governmental Collaboration," Journal of Contemporary China13 ( 2004): 173-93; Henry W. C. Yeung, "Local Politics and Foreign Ventures in China's Transitional Economy: The Political Economy of Singaporean Investments in China," Political Geography19 (2000): 809-40. Although Suzhou possesses an historically famous garden-like urban environment, the Singapore connection only magnifies the importance of urban aesthetics in promoting competitive advantage. Indeed, the marketing of Suzhou as a "green city" to high-tech investors is timely as issues of pollution in urban China have intensified.
78.
Pereira, "The Suzhou Industrial Park Experiment."
79.
Chen, "A Tale of Two Regions ."
80.
You-Ren Yang and Chu-Joe Hsia, "Spatial Clustering and Organizational Dynamics of Transborder Production Networks: A Case Study of Taiwanese Information-Technology Companies in the Greater Suzhou Area, China," Environment and Planning A39 (2007): 1346-63.
81.
Chen, "A Tale of Two Regions ," 186.
82.
Suzhou Statistical Yearbook, 52-53, 147.
83.
Chyau Tuan and Linda F. Y. Ng, "The Place of FDI in China's Regional Economic Development: Emergence of the Globalized Delta Economies," Journal of Asian Economics18 (2007): 348-64.
