Contenu du sommaire : The City, Laboratory of the New China

Metropolisation is essential to approaching the current changes in urban China. We put forward three complementary approaches to understanding the main phenomena that structure the Chinese metropolis today and will mould it tomorrow: hypermodernity, contestation, and regulation.

Since the 1950s, Shanghai has undergone major changes, reflected in the practice of urban planning, which has been influenced by different Western theories. Strategic and collaborative currents as well as the concept of sustainable development have helped reformulate urban planning styles. Does this renewal mean the emergence of an original model of Chinese urban planning, notably with the concept of harmonious urbanisation?

This paper focuses on the revival of private property and its limits in urban China. It explores the emergence of urban property markets; urban property-holding in relation to the complexity of urban governance; “minor property rights apartments” that form a de facto real estate market and cross over the urban-rural divide; the “grey areas” of blurring legal and administrative boundaries in modern China; and recent changes to the rural land system and the rural-urban divide. The conclusion flags the theme of the city as laboratory with regard to the blurring legal and governmental urban-rural distinction.

After the Chinese leadership became cognizant of the negative social externalities of marketization--especially potential threats to its hallowed objectives of social stability and successful state enterprise reform--it initiated a novel welfare approach, the dibao, to handle the people most severely affected by economic restructuring. I review the state's management of these people and the latter's experiences. I argue that they are seen subliminally (if not explicitly) by the elite as a menace to officialdom's modernization ambition. Hence, the dibao is structured so as to keep its targets quiet and out of view, now and into the future.

Based on several years of field research in urban neighbourhoods situated in several Chinese cities this paper investigates the effects of housing reform and the spatial reorganization of China's cities on the recognition of citizenship rights. It has two main objectives: firstly, to show that there is a direct relationship between the Chinese state's goal of maintaining social stability and containing social conflicts and the re-zoning of urban residential spaces. And secondly to investigate the role that these spaces and their new governance arrangements play in justifying loyalties towards the state.

Chinese cities face the challenge of battling air pollution during a time of rapid urbanisation and rising energy demand. Poor air quality is heightening anxiety over the environment. Given pollution's economic cost, a real policy of monitoring and control has emerged at the national level. Chinese researchers and industry have come up with technological responses to the enormous challenges. While some showcase cities have boosted their pollution-control measures, the situation in smaller ones remains largely catastrophic.

China's post-reform modernisation and hyper-urbanisation have brought new public spaces to Chinese cities. This article examines the development of a public sphere and five types of new public spaces: newly-open landscapes, squares, commercial spaces, “green” spaces, and transitional spaces. Specific examples are drawn from Beijing, Shanghai, and Xining.

Analysis by Hubert Kilian based on: • Wang Shan, “Ma Ying-jeou and the non-state theory: Taiwan or China's puppet,” Xin Taiwan Xinwen Zhoukan, n° 651, 11 September 2008. • Hsueh Hua-yuan, “Ridiculous non-state theory,” Xin Taiwan Xinwen Zhoukan, n° 651, 11 September 2008.