“Global city building in China and its discontents”

This chapter is excerpted from Building Globalization, which analyzed urban social change in contemporary China in the context of architectural globalization. Departing from past studies that emphasized China’s institutional reforms in land and housing sectors, Xuefei Ren spotlights the Chinese state’s role in harnessing transnational forms of architectural production to build global cities. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping’s tour of southern China marked the real beginning of the pragmatic market reform. In the same year, at the Sixth Communist Party Congress of Shanghai, the Shanghai municipal government announced the famous 365 Plan, declaring that by the year 2000, the city would finish demolishing 365 hectares of “dangerous houses.” It is apparent that demolition of “dangerous houses” has become the most important instrument used by city governments to intervene in the land and housing markets. Incidents of housing activism in Shanghai have increased over the course of urban renewal as residents have begun to combine various tactics to fight for their rights.