Financializing Chinese cities: State-capital nexus and the uneven geography of housing speculation

Current enquiries into the transformation of cities from ‘growth’ to ‘debt machines’ are largely based on studies of selected European and American cities where municipal governments temporally repackaged and rescheduled current fiscal problems by selling off city futures. This study of a recent episode of housing speculation in urban China identifies a distinctive trajectory in which the state has reshuffled financial resources sectorally and spatially. A misallocation of resources into the real estate sector and into a few top-tier cities fuelled a speculative housing market in a context of slowing economic growth. In contrast to external and horizontal public–private partnerships in American cities, coalitions of speculative urbanism in China involved vertical and hierarchical relationships internal to state power. This research calls for a broadened theoretical attention to the changing and variegated nature of the interrelationships between state, capital and space.

中國城市金融化：國家-資本關係和房地產投機的不平衡地理. Area Development and Policy. 目前對城市從’增長’向’債務機器’轉型的調查主要基於部分通過出售城市期貨來暫時重新包裝和緩解財政問題的歐洲和美國城市的研究。這項關於中國城市近期房屋投機事件的研究確定了國家在部門和空間上重新調整金融資源的獨特軌跡。在經濟增長放緩的背景下，資源錯配到房地產行業和少數一線城市推動了投機性住房市場的發展。與美國城市外部和橫向的公私夥伴關係相比，中國的投機性城市主義涉及國家權力內部的縱向和等級關係。這項研究認為對國家，資本和空間之間相互關係的變化及變化本質需要投入更多的關注和理論研究。 Copyright © 2019 Regional Studies Association.