Concessionary governance: The shifting local statecraft in Nanjing’s innovation-driven urban redevelopment

Abstract

Responding to the real estate cooling down and post-COVID-19 economic challenges, China’s urban paradigm is marked by moving away from expansive construction to in situ redevelopment. An emergent trend is innovation-driven urban redevelopment that aims to foster technology firms. While existing studies on urban redevelopment in China often adopt a state centrality perspective, governing innovation-driven urban redevelopment initiatives under austerity would require alternative local statecraft. Our research employs the theoretical lens of state entrepreneurialism to examine the governance of Xuanwu Silicon Alley in Nanjing. Empirical evidence is collected from in-depth interviews with government officials, project operators, firm representatives, academics, and participant observations. Findings unfold the shifting local statecraft through the states’ concession to business actors’ autonomy in self-governance and their profit-driven actions. We argue that local statecraft in post-pandemic China needs to be revisited as it may move away from centrality to concession. In the absence of effective market instruments, the local government was compelled to make provisional concessions to market actors instead of commanding them. These emergent practices do not necessarily signify the end of state entrepreneurialism, but rather its local state-level mutation under emergent constraints.