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Multiscalar Institutional Complicity: An Entrepreneurial City in China's National New Area
- China: An International Journal
- NUS Press Pte Ltd
- Volume 18, Number 2, May 2020
- pp. 120-142
- 10.1353/chn.2020.0019
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
Since the 1990s, the Chinese government has built 19 National New Areas (NNAs) in its implementation of the national development strategy. Although public narratives have acclaimed the construction of NNAs as entrepreneurial cities, scant attention has been paid to understanding the internal administration of NNAs as an entrepreneurial agent and the state logic of the NNA governance. Based on the case study of Gui'an NNA, this article attempts to study the multiscalar institutional complicity in China's NNAs. It argues that the Chinese state has the capacity to create new growth poles both by motivating local governments to introduce streamlined administration and by controlling the regions. However, the authoritarian bureaucratic system, despite being the cause of the birth of NNA entrepreneurship, has also obstructed the development of entrepreneurship.