Statist forms of entrepreneurialism: financing and managing urban ecological spaces in China

This paper proposes that in the dynamics of state-led financialisation and resurgent statism in global urban development, urban entrepreneurialism can mutate into statist forms. We examine this through an analysis of Chinese local governments, focusing on how they deploy financial and asset-making techniques of urban spaces in response to recentralised environmental regulations and declining land revenues. Drawing on the case of Chengdu’s mixed-use ecological spaces, we show how local state actors orchestrate the financial circuits. First, municipal governments and their market agents reduce dependence on land revenues by mobilizing state capital to finance greenway development. Second, municipal and district governments increasingly manage ecological spaces and amenities as income-generating assets. These practices preserve state ownership and position state capital as the primary driver of development. We conclude that statist forms of entrepreneurialism are highly sensitive to the territorial configuration of financial operations and the varied business models of state-led urban development.