ABSTRACT
A good way to approach the shifts in the position and role of large, key cities in China since the urban component of economic reform began is to draw on perspectives offered by scholars from various disciplines who have written on cities. The insights of several analysts, among them urban anthropologists, help to highlight the differences between pre-1949 and post-1949 urban policy; between prereform era plans for cities and the designs of the reformers; and between what has been intended by reformers, on the one hand, and the often convoluted offshoots of those intentions, on the other.
