ABSTRACT
Chinese cities are emerging in multiple senses: Physically, they are growing rapidly as a result of fast urbanization and the economic growth of the country. Focusing on Chinese cities, this chapter reviews the political economic processes underlying urban transformation. A familiar paradigm is neoliberalism, initially developed in the West. In the regional context, another relevant perspective is the "developmental state" developed in East Asia. Land-driven urban development and urban village expansion both reveal a wide process of neoliberalization and associated informality. Regarding spatial forms, globalization has created immense impacts on Chinese cities. As seen in Southeast Asian cities, the spatial form is a mixed pattern of urban and rural land uses described as desakota. As seen in emerging Chinese cities, market transition is not an ideology but a governance technique. The introduction of market mechanisms and market operational instruments has intrinsically changed the nature of the developmental state at the national scale.
