ABSTRACT
Since the onset of reform and opening in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after 1978, decentralization of state power has arguably been the most consequential transformation of the Chinese political economy, underpinning the dynamics of economic growth and state-society relations. The outstanding geographical manifestations of these processes are growth in the number and size of cities and the urban population—urbanization. How should we analyze the relationships between them? This chapter introduces scale relations as a basis for assessing the decentralization of state power and urbanization; and analyzes the “rescaling” of the Chinese state in an era of globalization.
