Zone Fever, Project Fever: Development Policy, Economic Transition, and Urban Expansion in China

With the pursuit for global competitiveness and economic growth, Chinese cities have recorded massive urban land expansion. This article examines the effects of development policies and economic restructuring on urban land expansion in China through a case study of Nanjing, representing the rapidly growing and globalizing coastal cities in China. Wei investigate the development process and changing contents of government policies, and analyze development zones and key projects as privileged, trait making, and even path‐breaking elements of the development process. We highlight the transition and paradox of the Chinese state in the urban development process, and the broad contexts underlying urban land expansion in Chinese cities. We see urban expansion in China as a process largely responding to top‐down policy change and economic transition initiated by the central government. We hold that the role of the state has to be analyzed to understand urban transformation and land expansion, moving beyond local factors of accessibility and feasibility. Development‐zone and project fevers, and lagging administrative reforms, however, have made Chinese cities heavy with debt and led to wasteful development, corruption, and social unrest in China.