On Shifting Foundations: State Rescaling, Policy Experimentation and Economic Restructuring in Post–1949 China

On Shifting Foundations: State Rescaling, Policy Experimentation and Economic Restructuring in Post–1949 reshapes the conceptualization of socioeconomic regulation in China. It provides readers with insights into the targeted institutional change that is occurring simultaneously across the entire country. It also presents context–rich accounts of how and why these changes connect to (if not contradict) regulatory logics established during the Mao–era. This book provides readers with a new analytical framework that explicitly considers the relationship between state rescaling, policy experimentation, and path dependency. By doing so, it prompts readers to think about how experimental initiatives reflect and contribute to the national strategy of Chinese development. This also helps make a clear geographical–historical contribution to studies of the Chinese state s engagement with the global system of capitalism.

On Shifting Foundations is presented in three parts: Connecting Mao and post–Mao logics of socioeconomic regulation; Conceptualizing the (dis)integration of Chinese state spatiality; and Evaluating two Nationally strategic sites of policy experimentation. It is an excellent extension of ongoing theoretical work examining the entwinement of subnational regulatory reconfiguration, place–specific policy experimentation, and the reproduction of national economic advantage.

Kean Fan Lim is a Lecturer in Economic Geography and Urban and Regional Development at Newcastle University, UK. He is primarily interested in the impact of city–regional policy experimentation on national–level regulatory pathways in China. Kean s research has been widely published in journals within and beyond geography.