Gongyu village in Xianju National Park. Faced with a decline due to isolation, this mountain village is a representative site for cooperation between the local government of Xianju and AFD © Mengcheng LI, 23/02/2019.
Xianju: the economic transition of a small city pioneering “green development” in China
Mengcheng LI (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne / Géographie-cités) defended his thesis entitled “Xianju: the economic transition of a small city pioneering “green development” in China” on Thursday November 28, 2024 at 2pm.
Jury
Natacha AVELINE-DUBACH, CNRS Research Director in Urban Geography, UMR Géographie-cités – Director
Guillaume GIROIR, Professor of Geography, Université d’Orléans – Rapporteur
Anne-Christine TRÉMON, EHESS Research Director in Anthropology, UMR 8173 China, Korea, Japan (CCJ), EHESS – Rapporteur
Judith AUDIN, CNRS Research Associate, UMR Prodig – Examiner
Jean-Charles EDOUARD, Professor of Geography/Planning, Blaise Pascal University, UMR Territoires – Examiner
Abstract
Following decades of rapid industrialization and urbanization, China has committed to sustainable development by defining its own strategy, focusing on improved management of resources and environmental quality through technological innovation and industrial modernization. Given the intense competition among local government teams at the national level, the question arises of how the leaders of cities at the lowest administrative level manage to organize the economic development of their territory within the framework of China’s “ecological civilization” initiative.
This thesis explores the strategies deployed by local officials in Xianju, a small city of 200,000 inhabitants located in a remote region of eastern China, to develop a “green development” project aimed at reconciling the contradictory orders of productivity and environmental sustainability.
The method involved several surveys of around fifty local stakeholders, supplemented by the gathering documentary sources and a participatory observation approach. The data collected was analyzed using a framework combining the three main challenges facing Chinese cities: the State’s productivist ideology, asymmetric decentralization, and structural deficits of local budgets.
In the case of Xianju, it appears that the city’s small size, scenic attributes and low level of industrialization were major assets in enabling the rapid “greening” of the local economy. The system for evaluating local managers proved particularly effective, leading to an agile and adaptive productivist strategy by both local government teams. The judicious industrial choices, anchoring R&D investments in the research ecosystems of major metropolises, were aimed primarily at generating tax revenues rather than relying too heavily on land revenues by encouraging real estate investment. While this model promotes job creation and mitigates the adverse effects of unregulated industrialization, it also has the potential to create new social and environmental disparities.
