China meets Jeju Island: provincializing geopolitical economy in East Asia

This article presents Jeju Island, the largest island in the Korean Peninsula, as a spatial ensemble newly constructed by various geopolitical and geoeconomic forces in East Asia. A new urban model called the Jeju Free International City has integrated China’s growing presence as a geoeconomic opportunity for local economic development. Yet, the subsequent establishment of Jeju Naval Base is premised on the vision of China as a new geopolitical threat that should be addressed. This incoherence results from the problematic articulation between the geopolitical–economic imaginations of the central government and economic development imperatives of the local growth coalition. This paper draws upon recent discussions of geopolitical economy and calls for provincializing geopolitical–economic analysis. The operation of zoning technologies in Jeju Island has been closely associated with the promotion of the contradictory visions of China’s rise, and as a result fails to reconcile geoeconomic and geopolitical discourses, practices and desires.