Chinese City and Urbanism: Evolution and Development (review)

Victor Sit, geographer and founding director of the Advanced Institute for Contemporary China Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, writes that the purpose of this book is to guide debates about China’s future by “pinpointing the relevance and significance of Confucianism in the course of development in China’s history and in its city and urbanism” (p. 309). Rather than pinpointing, however, it seems to me that he has covered his topic with a very broad brush — so broad that it is unlikely that policy makers and general readers will be able to gain useful insights beyond a sense of the richness of China’s urban past. Historians of China will find the volume frustrating for its generalizations, particularly concerning the main point: the relationship between Confucianism and urban development.

Sit’s argument is simple — Confucianism has shaped Chinese cities for thousands of years and, if city planners are wise, will continue to do so for many more. His conception of Confucianism is very broad. Essentially, it is Chinese culture, a homogenizing force that has changed, but not very much, over five thousand years. The book is organized as a chronological survey, with chapters on the Yangshao and Longshan cultures, as well as on each of the major dynasties — Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin/Han, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing. The longest chapter surveys developments in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with sections on the Maoist period and the post-Mao period. A concluding chapter is entitled “Message from Chinese Urbanism” and sets out the thesis that, before Mao, Chinese cities evolved in a smooth path of incremental change under the influence of Confucianism, unlike Western cities, which have changed radically over the centuries. Sit accepts Marx’s Asiatic mode theory of Chinese history, and sees Confucianism as providing the stability of social order and ideals that allowed for a relatively unchanging urbanism.

Each chapter gives a brief account of the history of the relevant time period and then summarizes the nature of cities and the urban system in that era. Chapters end with descriptions of representative cities of the period — Erlitou for the Xia, Linzi and Qufu for the Zhou and Warring States period, and so forth. More than a third of the text concerns the pre-Qin period, as do well over half the entries in the bibliography, which is sorely lacking for the imperial era. This focus on the period before 221 b.c.e. enables Sit to share many interesting details from recent archeological finds, and it raises the question of the connection between these city forms and the philosophical tradition called Confucianism, which began to be systematized in the Han period (206 b.c.e.–220 c.e.). Sit’s discussion of this question touches on the Kaogongji, a section of the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli) that has a description of the ideal kingly city. Sit’s later chapters show that city planners over the ages took seriously the prescriptions in that account — cities in the imperial era were often rectangular, with walls and symmetrically placed gates, regular street grids, and government offices in the center. The other Confucian elements of urbanism identified by Sit are the lead role of officials in developing cities, the close correspondence between city hierarchy and administrative hierarchy, the mission of cities to serve their agricultural hinterlands to support the stability of the empire, the presence of commerce in cities but its strict regulation by the government, and land use and structure that “reflect the rank ordering of urban functions and Confucian values regarding the ordering of space and orientations” (pp. 122–123). In the chapters on the Tang and Song, Sit describes what has been characterized by others as a major transformation of Chinese urbanism — a commercial revolution that broke down the tightly regulated markets and ward system of the early Tang — as merely a new variant of Confucian urbanism. Confucianism’s adaptability is so...