Regional Studies

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State rescaling, policy experimentation and

path dependency in post-Mao China: a dynamic
analytical framework

Kean Fan Lim

To cite this article: Kean Fan Lim (2017) State rescaling, policy experimentation and path
dependency in post-Mao China: a dynamic analytical framework, Regional Studies, 51:10,
1580-1593, DOI: 10.1080/00343404.2017.1330539

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2017.1330539

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REGIONAL STUDIES, 2017
VOL. 51, NO. 10, 1580–1593
https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2017.1330539

URBAN AND REGIONAL HORIZONS

State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in

post-Mao China: a dynamic analytical framework
Kean Fan Lim

ABSTRACT
State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in post-Mao China: a dynamic analytical framework. Regional
Studies. This paper evaluates the applicability of the state rescaling framework for framing politico-economic evolution in
China. It then presents an analytical framework that examines institutional change as driven by the dynamic entwinement
of state rescaling, place-specific policy experimentation and institutional path dependency. The framework problematizes
simple ‘transition’ models that portray a mechanistic ‘upward’ or ‘downward’ reconfiguration of regulatory relations after
market-like rule was instituted in 1978. It emphasizes, instead, a more established pattern of development marked
simultaneously by geographically distinct (and enduring) institutional forms and experimental (and capricious) attempts
to transcend them.
KEYWORDS
China; political economy; state rescaling; policy experimentation; path dependency

摘要
中国后毛泽东时期的国家再尺度化、政策实验与路径依赖：一个动态分析架构。Regional Studies. 本文评估国家再尺
度化的架构对于框架中国的政治经济改革的适用性。本文接着呈现一个分析架构，该架构检视制度变迁作为由国家
再尺度化、地方特定的政策实验与制度的路径依赖之动态交缠所驱动。该架构对于将1978年类市场制度建立后的规
范关系描绘成机械式地“升高”或“降低”的简易“变迁”模型进行问题化。反之，该架构强调一个同时以地理上特殊（且
持续）的制度形式和企图超越这些形式的实验性（且善变的）尝试为特徵的更为确立的发展模式。
关键词
中国; 政治经济; 国家再尺度化; 政策实验; 路径依赖

RÉSUMÉ
La révision de l’État, l’expérimentation des politiques et la dépendance à la trajectoire dans la Chine de l’après-Mao: un
cadre analytique dynamique. Regional Studies. Cet article évalue l’applicabilité du cadre de révision de l’État à
l’encadrement de l’évolution politico-économique en Chine. Il s’ensuit une présentation d’un cadre analytique qui
examine la mutation institutionnelle pilotée par l’entrelacement dynamique de la révision de l’État, de l’expérimentation
des politiques spécifiques à un lieu et de la dépendance institutionnelle à la trajectoire. Le cadre problématise des
modèles de ‘transition’ simples qui présentent une reconfiguration mécanistique ‘à la hausse’ et ‘à la baisse’ des
relations réglementaires suite à l’établissement d’une sorte d’économie de marché en 1978. Ce dernier souligne plutôt
un modèle de développement plus établi caracterisé simultanément par des organisations institutionnelles qui sont
différentes sur le plan géographique (et durables) et par des tentatives expérimentales (et changeantes) de les surmonter.
MOTS-CLÉS
Chine; économie politique; révision de l’État; expérimentation de politiques; dépendance à la trajectoire

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Staatliche Neuskalierung, politische Experimente und Pfadabhängigkeit in China nach Mao: ein dynamischer analytischer
Rahmen. Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag wird die Anwendbarkeit des Rahmens der staatlichen Neuskalierung auf

CONTACT
keanfan.lim@nottingham.ac.uk
School of Geography, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.

© 2017 Regional Studies Association

 State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in post-Mao China 1581

die politische und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in China untersucht. Anschließend wird ein analytischer Rahmen vorgestellt,
in dem der institutionelle Wandel als durch die dynamische Verflechtung der staatlichen Neuskalierung, der
ortsspezifischen politischen Experimente und der institutionellen Pfadabhängigkeit bedingt untersucht wird. In dem
Rahmen werden einfache ‘Übergangsmodelle’ problematisiert, die eine mechanistische ‘Aufwärts’- oder ‘Abwärts’-
Neukonfigurierung der behördlichen Beziehungen nach der Einführung von marktähnlichen Regeln im Jahr 1978
porträtieren. Stattdessen wird ein etablierteres Muster der Entwicklung betont, das sich gleichzeitig durch geografisch
verschiedene (und dauerhafte) institutionelle Formen und experimentelle (und unbeständige) Versuche ihrer
Transzendenz auszeichnet.
SCHLÜSSELWÖRTER
China; politische Wirtschaft; staatliche Neuskalierung; politische Experimente; Pfadabhängigkeit

RESUMEN
Reajuste estatal, experiencias políticas y dependencia de rutas en China después de Mao: un marco analítico y dinámico.
Regional Studies. En este artículo se evalúa la aplicabilidad del marco estatal de reajuste para la evolución político-
económica en China. Luego se presenta una estructura analítica en la que se examina el cambio institucional según la
imbricación dinámica del reajuste estatal, los experimentos políticos específicos a un lugar y la dependencia de rutas
institucionales. En este marco se cuestionan los modelos sencillos de ‘transición’ que representan una reconfiguración
mecanística ‘ascendente’ o ‘descendente’ de las relaciones reguladoras después de la introducción de normas
mercantiles en 1978. En cambio, se pone de relieve un patrón más establecido de desarrollo marcado simultáneamente
por formas institucionales geográficamente distintas (y duraderas) e intentos experimentales (y caprichosos) de
trascenderlas.
PALABRAS CLAVES
China; economía política; reajuste estatal; experiencias políticas; dependencia de rutas

JEL H83, N95, P40

HISTORY Received 19 September 2016; in revised form 29 April 2017

INTRODUCTION hinterland was rescaled from massive communes to the

It is now broadly accepted that processes of contemporary
state restructuring are deeply entangled with transformations
in scalar relations. What is at stake here is far more than
rescaling for rescaling’s sake, because these forms of scalar
restructuring are both a medium and an outcome of changes
in the means and ends of state action. Hence the need to
move beyond ‘thick descriptions’ of state restructuring, policy
reforms and new forms of governance to ask what it is that
the state is actually doing – why, where and with what politi-
cal, social and economic implications. The careful mapping of
emergent state forms can, and should, be an important part of
this process.
(Peck, 2003, p. 222)
The transition from a nationally configured, Fordist–
Keynesian developmental approach in Western Europe
and North America has been underpinned by a corre-
sponding reconfiguration of regulatory relations between
national, subnational and supranational governments.
Broadly conceptualized as state rescaling, this reconfigura-
tion simultaneously produced ‘post-national’ states that are
oriented towards economic integration and city-regions as
‘new state spaces’ of/for capital accumulation (Brenner,
2004; Jessop & Sum, 2006; Peck, 2002, 2003). A similar
reconfiguration was occurring in previously insulated
China following the reintroduction of market-like rule in
1978: specific cities were selected to embed transnational
circulatory capital, while production within the vast rural
individual household. Unsurprisingly, the state rescaling
framework has attracted the attention of researchers seek-
ing to evaluate and explain these changes.
Featuring prominently in this emerging research stream
is the constitutive and at times conflictual role of city-
regionalism. As Li and Wu (2013, 2017) show, competing
interests encumbered the central government’s unilateral
implementation of the Yangtze River Delta regional plan
(see also Wang & Shen, 2016; Wu & Zhang, 2007).
Locally differentiated definitions of citizenship, inter-city
collaboration and growth have similarly generated tensions
in the urbanization of the Pearl River Delta (Li, Xu, &
Yeh, 2014; see also Li, Wu, & Hay, 2015; Smart & Lin,
2007; Sun & Chan, 2016; Yang & Li, 2013). Yet state
rescaling was also characterized by centrally driven ‘upscal-
ing’, as shown in the re-designation of an entire province,
Yunnan, to enhance engagements with the Mekong sub-
region in Southeast Asia (Su, 2012a, 2012b; cf. Tubilewicz
& Jayasuriya, 2015). Underpinning these studies is a com-
mon, if not always explicit, assumption: the threefold
engagement with marketization, geo-economic liberaliza-
tion and economic globalization has necessitated the recali-
bration of national-level regulation in China. By extension,
previously subordinate regulatory scales – namely the col-
lective, municipal, county, prefectural, provincial, cross-
provincial and transnational – have become functionally
and strategically more important.
This paper evaluates the conceptualization of Chinese
state rescaling based on this assumption. While concurring

REGIONAL STUDIES
1582 Kean Fan Lim
with the prevailing literature that state rescaling offers a
useful platform to examine the relationship between city-
regional transformation and state restructuring in China,
the paper is cognizant of its conceptual limitations as ident-
ified in existing studies. To Li and Wu (2012, p. 58), the
rescaling framework ‘does not offer an effective tool for
examining the causal relationships and dynamic processes
of the changing statehood’. Surveying the broader state-
rescaling literature, Li et al. (2014, p. 131) identify an
additional ‘tendency to apply a hegemonic interpretation
of state space theory, at the expense of knowledge of
place-specific practice’; correspondingly, there is ‘a lack of
detailed case studies revealing the key political processes
and relationships that reflect historical contingencies and
path dependencies under transition’. For this reason and
considering the Chinese institutional context, Sun and
Chan (2016, p. 5) argue that the ‘genesis’ of each city-
regional new state space ‘deserves a meticulous examination’.
Building on these critical insights, this paper shows
how studies of post-1978 regulatory reconfigurations in
China overlook a fundamental aspect of the original state
rescaling framework: the crisis of and subsequent tensions
with the preceding regulatory institutions. Indeed, state
rescaling was originally portrayed as a strategic response
to the limits of Fordism as an accumulation regime; as a
shift from a nationally oriented, geographically egalitarian
mode of surplus redistribution known as ‘spatial Keyne-
sianism’ towards more flexible, ‘post-national’ accumu-
lation in city-regions (Brenner, 2004, 2009; Jessop,
2016). Fresh debates subsequently emerged as research
demonstrates city-regionalism was not accompanied by
clean breaks with the legacies of Fordist–Keynesianism
(Peck, 2003; MacLeavy & Harrison, 2010; see also the
journal special issues edited by Lobao, Martin, & Rodrí-
guez-Pose, 2009). The dynamic tensions between insti-
tutional continuity and change are largely unaddressed in
current studies of Chinese state rescaling, however, and
this calls for a more incisive analytical framework.
To this end, the paper moves beyond Western accounts
of state rescaling by situating Chinese regulatory reconfi-
gurations vis-à-vis two cognate drivers of political–econ-
omic evolution: policy experimentation and path
dependency. Aligning with Peck’s (2003, p. 222) caveat
not to focus on ‘rescaling for rescaling’s sake’, this frame-
work engages in a ‘careful mapping of emergent state
forms’ by asking why and how regulatory changes (primar-
ily effected through experimental policies in targeted city-
regions) interact with inherited pathways (the retention, if
not reinforcement, of national-level institutions). Rather
than periodize regulatory reconfiguration as static shifts
‘upwards’ or ‘downwards’ from the national scale, the fra-
mework contributes to existing debates through fore-
grounding state rescaling as a politicized process shaping
institutional continuity and change at different spatial
scales.
The paper is structured as follows. The next section cri-
tically reviews the conceptual origins of state rescaling and
delineates four reasons for reconfiguring the existing fra-
mework. The third section outlines an integrated analytical
REGIONAL STUDIES
framework that places state rescaling in dynamic engage-
ment with place-specific policy experimentation and path
dependency. The paper closes by highlighting the impli-
cations of the new framework for research on politico-
economic evolution in China.
STATE RESCALING AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC
REFORMS IN POST-MAO CHINA: A
CRITICAL OVERVIEW
The concept of state rescaling was originally developed to
explain changing spatial divisions of regulation in Western
Europe following the Fordist–Keynesian regulatory crisis
in the mid-1970s. Underpinning this crisis was a move
away from a political commitment to full employment
and (relative) regional equality, or what is widely known
as spatial Keynesianism. In its place were rolling urbanizing
strategies that qualitatively modified the nationally oriented
regime of capital accumulation. While these strategies gen-
erated new growth opportunities, they similarly contained
fresh crisis tendencies and therefore generated recurring
rounds of rescaling. As Brenner (2009, p. 127) reflects on
New State Spaces (2004), a major book-length reference
point for the state-rescaling approach, ‘urbanization pro-
cesses would engender contextually specific forms of
socio-spatial dislocation and crisis formation, as well as cor-
responding strategies of political intervention designed to
confront the latter’. Brenner (2009, p. 128) then clarifies
the connection between this recurrence and regulators’
inability to contain crises:
[S]ince the 1990s, new forms of state rescaling have emerged
largely in response to the crisis tendencies engendered
through the first wave of urban locational policy. This has
led to the construction of new scales of state intervention
(neighbourhoods, metropolitan regions and transnational
interurban networks), to the crystallization of additional crisis
tendencies and dislocations and, subsequently, to a further
intensification and acceleration of rescaling processes. Pro-
cesses of state rescaling therefore appear to be animated
through regulatory failure.
Primary aspects of ‘regulatory failure’ in Western Europe
were encapsulated within the dismantlement of what Jes-
sop (1993) terms the ‘Keynesian welfare state’. These
aspects were the crisis of the welfarist state system, the
‘internationalization’ of previously Fordist corporations,
and the ‘hollowing out’ of the state (cf. Peck, 2001; Rhodes,
1997). For Jessop and Sum (2006, pp. 271, 281), the
decline of the national scale as the ‘taken-for-granted object
of economic management’ across Western Europe, the
East Asian ‘trading nations’ and important-substituting
Latin America marked the emergence of a ‘relativisation
of scale’ in socio-economic regulation, namely ‘the absence
of a dominant nodal point in managing interscalar
relations’.
This ‘absence’ consequently led to the emergence of
what Peck (2002) terms ‘inter-scalar rule regimes’. While
states remain key actors under this new arrangement,
 State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in post-Mao China
Peck observes, ‘they are now engaged in more active pro-
cesses of scale management and coordination at the local
and international levels’ (p. 340). This management and
coordination process is multidirectional; agendas espoused
by subnational and supranational regimes influence
national regulation in strategic and dynamic ways (Harri-
son, 2010; Jonas, 2013; Jones, 2001). The predominant
objective and outcome of Western European state rescaling
was and remains the negotiation between actors in these rule
regimes to concentrate capital in and across selected city-
regions (Cox, 2009, 2010; Harrison, 2012; Ward &
Jonas, 2004). This led to questions about whether the
structural coherence underpinning Fordist–Keynesianism
– and, indeed, of nation-states in general – has been com-
pletely transformed.
Structural coherence extends Harvey’s (1985) concept
of ‘structured coherence’. By Harvey’s formulation, capi-
tal seeks to accelerate the time it takes labour to convert
commodities into more commodities and profits. This
process is premised on geographical transformations in
and through nation-states (hence, transnational circula-
tory capital hereafter). Places must be (re)produced to
coordinate capital circulation through the concentration
of infrastructure, transport connections, housing for
labour power, factories and consumer markets. Harvey
(1996) subsequently terms such places ‘permanences’,
namely the provisional stabilization of investments and
processes in place. Once stabilization is achieved, a par-
ticular place would enhance the ability of capital to
extract value from labour power and accelerate the
exchange of goods from plants to final markets. The
intrinsic contradiction of structured coherence is it con-
tains conditions that could undermine the ‘permanences’
that constitute this coherence. Firms and governments
elsewhere could try to outperform the dominant locations
of accumulation, or firms in the ‘permanent’ territories
could seek to leave for places that could potentially gen-
erate more surpluses. Any sort of coherence that emerges
is therefore intrinsically unstable.
Jessop (2001) develops this point to evaluate transfor-
mative change between regulatory regimes: change would
not have undermined structural coherence if the dominant
scale of accumulation – which, in the case of North Amer-
ica and Western Europe in the post-Second World War
period, was the ‘nation-state’ – has remained stable despite
disruptions (cf. Brenner, 2004; Jessop, 2002; Peck, 2001).
The crucial variable rests in the ability of changes to disrupt
the structural coherence of this dominant scale. Policy-
makers of structurally coherent territories have to respond
reflexively to the new policies in order to retain that coher-
ence. Where changes could no longer ensure coherence, a
period of ‘relative discontinuity’ sets in, often triggering
regulatory reconfiguration. In this sense, state rescaling is
a change that redefines national-level structural coherence;
whether it disrupts or, perhaps counter-intuitively,
reinforces this coherence has become a key research focal
point on the periodization of political–economic evolution.
How relevant, then, are these insights for explaining chan-
ging regulatory dynamics in China?
1583
Research has demonstrated how the gradual but ulti-
mately expansionary exposure of the Chinese political
economy to transnational circulatory capital has triggered
the urbanization of means of production (Li & Wu,
2012; Ma, 2005; Shen, 2007). After the Deng Xiaoping
government re-established cities as the primary sites of
engagement with transnational capital, the platform was
established for the emergence of a new inter-scalar-rule
regime that is increasingly dominated by growth-oriented
urbanizing initiatives (Hsing, 2010; Wu, 2015). Over the
last decade, a series of ‘nationally strategic new areas’ (guojia
zhanlüe xinqu), each charged with policy experimentation
to smoothen and enhance global economic engagements,
have been instituted in selected city-regions. As subna-
tional policies and practices gain prominence over the
highly politicized, national-level ‘permanent revolution’ of
the Mao era, state rescaling has unsurprisingly become an
attractive concept to frame Chinese political–economic
evolution. However, scholars have reflected critically on
the conceptualization of state rescaling as a strategic
response to Fordist–Keynesianism, and a succinct overview
of these critiques vis-à-vis the Chinese developmental tra-
jectory demonstrates at least four reasons for developing a
revised framework.
First, while state rescaling in China appears similarly as
a response to crisis tendencies of preceding regimes, socio-
economic regulation after 1949 was not predicated on a
Fordist mode of production and its corresponding territor-
ial strategy, ‘spatial Keynesianism’. At first glance, it is
possible to argue that the predominance of national regu-
lation in Fordist economies overlapped that of Maoist
‘new China’. In tandem with the Fordist–Keynesian regu-
latory approach was a rolling series of economically natio-
nalistic projects based on rural industrialization (Bramall,
2007; Day, 2013; Walder, 2015). The vision was first
actualized through the land redistribution to poor peasants
between 1950 and 1952, and was further intensified
through the reconfiguration of national state space into
people’s communes (renmin gongshe) and industrial work
units (gongye danwei). As neoliberalism set in motion the
new international division of labour in the late 1970s,
new projects of/for capital accumulation were launched in
targeted cities in China (just as they were in Western
Europe). The urban bias of this developmental process
across China took definitive form by the mid-1990s and,
like the situation in Western Europe and (to a lesser extent)
North America, has been regularly reinforced since (Shen,
2007; Wei, 2013; Wu, 2016).
Yet the empirical presupposition of spatial homogeneity
in the Fordist heartlands before the launch of urban-
oriented state rescaling appears too generic, as was the pre-
supposition of socio-spatial egalitarianism in Mao-era
regulatory logics prior to Deng Xiaoping’s introduction of
market-like rule in 1978. Spatial Keynesianism was consti-
tuted in practice by historically specific and geographically
uneven conditions such as post-colonial populist politics
and centralized state bureaucracy in Ireland (Breathnach,
2010); actually existing urban bias in a Canadian economy
based significantly on natural resource extraction and
REGIONAL STUDIES
1584 Kean Fan Lim
staples exports (Hayter & Barnes, 1990, 2001; Ley & Hut-
ton, 1987); or, as Cox (2009, p. 116) demonstrates, it was
‘at best a very, very stunted creature’ in the United States.
The economic phenomena demarcating a definite change
to post-Fordism is further complicated by research demon-
strating the reconfiguration rather than the total disinte-
gration of Keynesian spatial strategies (Davoudi, 2009;
Olesen & Richardson, 2012; Tomlinson, 2012). Herein
lies an important question for framing Chinese state rescal-
ing: was national-level egalitarianism under Mao more of
an aspiration rather than an actual fact?
Empirical evidence has shown how the Mao era was
paradoxically characterized by institutionalized uneven
development (cf. Donnithorne, 1972; Dunford & Li,
2010; Whyte, 2005). Directly contrasting the equalization
objective of spatial Keynesianism, the Mao administration
instituted economically nationalistic projects on the basis of
the urban–rural dual structure, decentralized regulation in
the rural people’s communes; and centrally planned indus-
trial production in urban areas (Day, 2013; Lim, 2017;
Walder, 2015). Socio-economic disparities were conse-
quently entrenched in situ. More importantly, the post-
Mao policies to urbanize means of production – including
labour power previously delimited to atomized rural com-
munes – do not imply a new preference for urban-scale
regulation; the Mao administration always privileged the
urban, with 18% of Chinese citizens enjoying enhanced
social benefits in Chinese cities (Bray, 2005; Whyte,
1996). As Ma (2005, p. 483) observes, ‘Despite Mao’s per-
sonal anti-urbanism during the Cultural Revolution
(1966–1976), the urban scale has always been the preferred
scale on the part of officials.’ What happened in post-Mao
China, then, was more accurately a qualitative shift in cen-
tral–local regulatory relations: while municipal govern-
ments enjoyed greater decision-making autonomy in
resource allocation and engagement with transnational
circulatory capital, a one-track, historically sequential devo-
lution of regulatory power from the national to the city-
region did not take place.
Second, the retention of a unitary and hierarchical state
structure in China suggests urban-oriented rescaling is not
an historical inevitability. Here, Brenner’s (2004, p. 16)
claim of a new and universal historical moment is open
to debate: ‘it is no longer capital that is to be molded into
the (territorially integrated) geography of state space, but
state space that is to be molded into the (territorially differ-
entiated) geography of capital’. Specifically, it remains
unclear what policy alternatives were available as policy-
makers in Fordist heartlands decided to concentrate the
means of production in city-regions during and after the
late 1970s. More empirical clarity is also needed on
whether the major city-regions chose to implement the
new urban locational policies, or whether there were
specific socio-ideological objectives behind what appeared
to an inevitable evolution towards city-regionalism.
In the Chinese context, the central government’s pre-
ference for territorially targeted policy experimentation
clearly demonstrates its ability to ‘mould’ the practices of
transnational circulatory capital. Furthermore, while it is
REGIONAL STUDIES
possible to discern a clear urban bias in industrialization,
particularly since the 1990s, this bias continues to be consti-
tuted by differentiated pricing controls on rural production,
the enforced reconfiguration of rural land use, and the
unwillingness of city governments to offer social benefits
to migrant rural workers (Bramall, 2007; Kanbur &
Zhang, 1999; Webber, 2012). For this reason, the concep-
tualization of state rescaling in China needs to consider
how the urban bias in domestic resource allocation and
engagement with transnational circulatory capital is neither
a stand-alone nor a permanent process. Rather, the orien-
tation towards one scale of accumulation (the city-region)
cannot be independent of rural (primitive) accumulation
and social transformation. This further suggests it would
be premature to frame the contextually specific emergence
of Chinese city-regions as the new state spaces of/for capital
accumulation (more below).
The third reason for reconfiguring the state-rescaling
framework is to highlight the role of politicization.
Research has demonstrated how the reconfiguration of
state space is a contested process with no predetermined
cause or outcome. As Harrison (2012) shows, city-region-
alism in England became a political strategy mobilized by
actors in response to the then Labour government’s
ambivalence towards devolution. Bayırbağ’s (2013, p.
1142) work on Turkey similarly reveals rescaling as an effect
of the interaction of ‘rival hegemonic projects’:
State rescaling is not the product of a structural tension
between central government policies and inevitable local
responses. It is a conflict-ridden process where rival hegemo-
nic projects clash as they strive to (re)define the meaning of
‘nationhood’ and ‘national interest’, which determine the
(future) spatiality of exclusion from/inclusion into national
public policies.
Bayırbağ’s emphasis on ‘structural tension’ is particularly
pertinent in the Chinese context, both during and after
the Mao era. The Mao administration’s quest to base ‘Chi-
na’s tomorrow’ on the Soviet Union regulatory blueprint
was characterized by high-profile intra-party conflicts, as
exemplified by the sudden sacking of two senior revolution-
ary cadres, Gao Gang and Rao Shushi, in the mid-1950s;
the public humiliation of reform-minded cadres like Liu
Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Xi Zhongxun and Bo Yibo during
the Cultural Revolution (1966–76); and the political intri-
gue surrounding the sudden demise of Mao’s appointed
successor, Lin Biao, in the early 1970s.
Yet, in a development unthinkable just a few years
before, even Mao Zedong’s regulatory approach mutated
drastically from relatively localized experiments modelled
after Soviet communes to more direct engagements in
the 1970s with what the Chinese propagandistic machine
termed ‘American imperialism and its lackeys’ (mei diguoz-
huyi jiqizougou). Particularly telling was the involvement of
Chinese banks coordinating trade and raising capital
in Hong Kong since the mid-1960s, ironically enabled
by the circulation of Hong Kong dollars – a product
and legacy of imperialism – throughout the Mao era
 State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in post-Mao China
(Schenk, 2002, 2007). It appears the Mao administration
had long adopted the ‘yellow cat, black cat’ pragmatism
so popularly associated with Deng Xiaoping’s market-
oriented reforms in 1978 – any spatial strategy is a good
strategy so long as it ensures regime stability.
Post-Mao attempts to institute a ‘socialist market econ-
omy’ were likewise unstable. In the late 1970s and early
1980s, Deng Xiaoping had to address opposition from
conservative cadres like Hua Guofeng, Chen Yun and
Yao Yilin, before negotiating divergences with reform-
minded members of his administration like Hu Yaobang,
Zhao Ziyang and Hu Qili. Perhaps the most prominent
exemplars of marked intra-party differences in recent
times were the public purges of Liu Zhijun, the former rail-
way minister who ran the sprawling transport bureaucracy
as a fiefdom, in 2011, and Bo Xilai, the party secretary of
Chongqing city-region who was associated with a series
of law-bending ‘socialistic’ reforms, in 2012. Associated
with each round of conflict were myriad socio-economic
institutions and political actors in different localities, each
with its own agenda, interests and visions (Ngo, Yin, &
Tang, 2017; Shih, 2008; Wedeman, 2003). In this respect,
state rescaling in China exemplifies a recurrent, tension-
filled and inter-scalar process that feeds back into what
post-1978 Communist Party of China (CPC) regimes reg-
ularly terms the ‘national strategy’ of development (the pre-
1978 term was the ‘general line’, a Soviet-inspired term that
has not been officially repudiated).
Connected to this ongoing attempt to actualize the
‘national strategy’ is the fourth reason why a geographi-
cal–historical contextualization of state-rescaling processes
in post-Mao China is necessary: political restructuring is
entwined with place-specific policy experimentation (e.g.,
de Jong, 2013; Rawski, 1995; Zhu, 2007) (also, more
below). Defined as the institution of reforms that could
potentially alter the entire national regulatory structure in
selected locations, this gradualist approach has been regu-
larly termed ‘feeling for stones while crossing the river’
(mozhe shitou guohe) by CPC leaders since it was first intro-
duced by Chen Yun, a senior economic advisor to Mao, in
April 1950. It simultaneously encompasses urban and rural
domains and differs from the marketizing ‘shock therapy’
within the former Soviet ‘socialist’ bloc (for an elaborate
overview, see Lim, 2017). Launching market-oriented
reforms a decade before the Soviet(-linked) economies,
the CPC was cognizant that changes were needed to actua-
lize transformative socio-economic reforms, but was uncer-
tain on what directions to take without undermining its
fundamental Marxist–Leninist principles. The end-goal
of reforms, as Deng Xiaoping explained in 1978, was
(and seemingly remains) the modification of national-
level institutions through place-specific experimentation.
No predetermined playbook guided this process:
Before a unified national agenda is developed, new methods
can be launched from smaller parts, from one locality, from
one occupation, before gradually expanding them. The cen-
tral government must allow and encourage these experiments.
All sorts of contradictions will emerge during
1585
experimentation, we must discover and overcome these con-
tradictions in time.
(Deng, 1994, p. 150; author’s translation)
Underpinned by a growing number of institutionally dis-
tinct experimental territories, Deng’s tenure in the 1980s
and early 1990s was qualitatively distinct from those insti-
tuted during the Mao era. While it was superficially similar
to decentralized governance in the communes, this exper-
imental approach was reconfigured on the basis of market
logics and encouraged greater spontaneity. Rawski (1995,
p. 1152) puts this shift in clear perspective:
China’s reforms typically involve what might be termed
‘enabling measures’ rather than compulsory changes. Instead
of eliminating price controls, reform gradually raised the share
of sales transacted at market prices. Instead of privatization,
there was a growing range of firms issuing shares. Production
planning does not vanish, but its span of control gradually
shrinks. This open-ended approach invites decentralized reac-
tions that the Centre can neither anticipate nor control.
Vis-à-vis the most recent wave of policy experimentation in
‘nationally strategic new areas’, this ‘open-ended’ approach
continues to define the contemporary spatial logics of
socio-economic regulation in China. Much has changed
in post-Mao China, to be sure, but reforms in China
remain, in Zhu’s (2007) observation, ‘without a theory’.
‘Crucially’, Peck and Zhang (2013, p. 380) argue, this
approach ‘has meant that endogenous state capacities and
centralized party control have been maintained through
China’s developmental transformation’. What these recent
studies collectively suggest is that post-Mao experimental
reforms and state rescaling do not lead to absolute auton-
omy for subnational governments. Rather, the lack of a
‘unified national agenda’ vis-à-vis increasingly differen-
tiated subnational demands to engage with transnational
circulatory capital has generated new impetuses for
national-level regulatory adjustments. The challenge,
then, is to develop an analytical framework that can explain
and evaluate this dynamism.
FRAMING STATE RESCALING, POLICY
EXPERIMENTATION AND INSTITUTIONAL
PATH DEPENDENCY IN CHINA: A
DYNAMIC ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
As the foregoing section indicates, it would be problematic
to describe or interpret the shifting institutional foun-
dations of state regulation and socio-economic develop-
ment in China through a framework derived from
Western developmental experiences. This section will
integrate the primary insight from Western-based research
– state rescaling as a strategic response to national-level
regulatory failure – with two major aspects of Chinese
political evolution: policy experimentation and institutional
path dependency. Expressed diagrammatically in Figure 1,
this new analytical framework portrays national-level gov-
ernance, which occupies a central position, as constituted
REGIONAL STUDIES
1586 Kean Fan Lim
by interactive tensions between four broad forces: (1) trans-
national circulatory capital searching for new locations of/
for accumulation (see the discussion of ‘permanences’
above); (2) subnational developmental agendas geared
towards the political–economic goals of individual political
actors; (3) the quest by these actors to institute place-
specific policy experimentation in the name of the ‘national
interest’; and (4) the operational and ideological effects of
inherited institutions.
Before exploring the dynamics and implications of
these interactions, it would be helpful to introduce the fol-
lowing caveat: these four forces do not collectively comprise
the sole origin and/or outcome of state rescaling in China.
To be sure, there are different factors driving state rescaling
and the framework presented is necessarily partial. This
said, these four forces were identified and integrated in
the revised framework because they are major aspects of
post-Mao politico-economic evolution. Unlike other East
Asian ‘developmental states’, the CPC proactively engaged
transnational capital to drive economic growth. Simul-
taneously, however, its retention of many Mao-era regulat-
ory policies vis-à-vis the intensifying crisis tendencies
within the global economy explains its tentative approach
to private-driven marketization (Horesh & Lim, 2017).
It is within this multidimensional context that this frame-
work is developed; it is of this same context that this frame-
work seeks a deeper and fuller understanding.
Figure 1. Integrated analytical framework on state rescaling in China.
REGIONAL STUDIES
The experimental engagement with
transnational circulatory capital
Policy experimentation in growth-oriented projects is
arguably the fundamental characteristic of national-level
regulation in contemporary China. The content of exper-
imental policies is not mandated in a top-down fashion;
it is an outcome of negotiations between subnationally
positioned actors (e.g., provincial secretary, municipal
mayors) and central policy-makers (both within the polit-
buro and the state council). In this regard, policy exper-
imentation becomes integral to state rescaling within
China’s unitary and hierarchical political structure: some
subnational actors compete with others for new regulatory
powers in exchange for aligning endogenous plans with
nationally defined objectives (cf. Ahlers & Schubert,
2015; Göbel, 2011; Shirk, 1993). To retain control, the
central government has been allowing potentially path-
changing experimental policies to be launched on a ‘move
first, experiment first’ (xianxing, xianshi) basis. While for-
mer experimental policies have been extended nationwide if
they prove successful, they are increasingly retained in situ
because of the need for geographically differentiated
engagements with transnational circulatory capital (Florini,
Lai, & Tan, 2012; Heilmann & Perry, 2011; Lim, 2014).
This competitive alignment to the previously mentioned
‘national strategy’ is perhaps best summarized by the obser-
vations of Lu Dadao, a renowned economic geographer
 State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in post-Mao China 1587

who is regularly consulted by state policy-makers, and
Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China:
What is the national strategy? It refers to the guiding capacity
of the development of one region within the broad national
domain, including a huge supportive impact. Currently, at
the demands of different regions, the problem is the desig-
nation of regions as nationally strategic when they should
not be. … The current problem is some regions emulate
one another to develop plans. Through communication and
other manoeuvres, they hope the National Development
and Reform Commission will organize and draw up these
plans and forward them for approval by the State Council.
Some of these have been approved, others are still lobbying
the central government to organize and include their plans
within the national strategy.
(Lu, interview with Liaowang, 17 June 2010;
author’s translation)
The enthusiasm for reforms is very high at the local and
grassroots levels, many provincial and urban governments
and some organizations are earnestly requesting experimental
grounds for reforms. Amongst the reasons is a common
recognition that only through reforms would the consolida-
tion of local economic development be possible, that it
would be possible to push through various endogenous inno-
vations and sustain local social stability. This point differs
from some eastern European countries, in these countries a
particular term known as ‘reform fatigue syndrome’ [gaige
pilao zheng] has emerged, people are no longer motivated
by or confident about reforms. In China, however, there is
a lot of enthusiasm for reforms in all kinds of domains, pro-
posals come incessantly from the grassroots level, in the hope
that higher-level governments would allow them to launch
experimental reforms.
(Zhou, 2012, n.p.; author’s translation)
As Box 1 elaborates, subnational actors have immense
incentives to lobby for and implement ‘nationally strategic’
policies. These policy-makers are construed as individuals
with self-defined agendas rather than as homogeneous
agents of/representing the CPC. This said, the primary
research question is not simply why these actors choose
to promote their own agendas, but also why the central
government is pursuing national-level change through
some of these agendas. Answers could be found by

Box 1. Policy experimentation and central power preservation in post-Mao China.

‘Move first, experiment first’: the new imperial sword?

In imperial China, anyone bestowed the ‘imperial sword’ (shangfang baojian) would be a representative of imperial power and,
concomitantly, possessed the authority to ‘act first and answer afterwards’ (xianzhan houzou). In contemporary China, the
institution to ‘move first, experiment first’ (xianxing, xianshi) with so-called ‘nationally strategic’ policies has arguably become a
new version of this ‘imperial sword’ – it is the object of much lobbying from provincial and municipal governments.
There are two reasons why this new institution is strongly coveted. First, the ability to launch innovative policies that move
beyond from the standard parameters designated (ironically) by the central government allows immediate economic–
geographical repositioning in relation to the global economy. Second, there is sufficient leeway for ‘getting things wrong’ (i.e.,
infringements that are inimical to national structural coherence). In other words, a government that can ‘move first, experiment
first’ also has the ‘power to be wrong’ (shicuoquan). This power – which technically is an experimental outcome rather than
conferred a priori as a legal right – has triggered widespread debates on whether it is antithetical to the rule of law.
Unsurprisingly, the ‘power to be wrong’ is taken to be representative of a form of ‘special power’ (tequan). Just like the power
conferred on the ‘imperial sword’, the power to ‘move first, experiment first’ is taken as a directive to ‘act first and answer
afterwards’.
It is increasingly apparent that intention of the ‘move first, experiment first’ institution is to mediate the tensions associated
with inherently unpredictable place-specific reforms and national-scale structural stability. In some ways this institution is
integral to what Heilmann and Perry (2011) term ‘adaptive governance’, namely the guerrilla-like tendency for the Communist
Party of China (CPC) to break new regulatory ground spontaneously in different places before deciding whether to extend the
new regulations nationwide. The gist of ‘adaptive governance’ is an underlying desire on the part of the CPC to transcend its
existing governance structure without knowing exactly where this transcendence will lead. On the other, and this overlaps the
key argument of this dissertation, the ‘move first, experiment first’ institution is integral to a process known as ‘decentralization
as centralization’. By devolving the power to institute new policies to selected local governments, the central government
enhances its leverage over uneven economic–geographical development. It first sets the targeted areas for policy reforms, and
has to approve or veto the suggestions before they are implemented.
Through this leverage, the Chinese state apparatus could determine the extent to which its inherited institutions could be
reformed without undermining the four cardinal principles within the Chinese constitution. And it is in this sense that the ‘move
first, experiment first’ institution most resembles the ‘imperial sword’ – whatever happens on its travels, it remains in the first
instance a function of the powers that be in Beijing.

REGIONAL STUDIES
1588 Kean Fan Lim
examining two interrelated dimensions of policy exper-
imentation: (1) the politics (particularly the discursive jus-
tifications and counter-arguments) that led to the central
government’s eventual decision to launch (or negate) exper-
imental policies in specific locations (Li & Wu, 2012;
Zeng, 2015); and (2) the interaction between the exper-
imental policies with national-level institutions inherited
from the Mao era (Heilmann & Perry, 2011; Lim,
2017). As discussed above in the second section, state
rescaling occurs in response to regulatory failures. An
emphasis on policy experimentation – now increasingly tar-
geted at city-regions – as a symptom of potential regulatory
failure offers new insights into aspects of the inherited
institutions that subnational and central policy-makers
deem to have either failed or are almost obsolete. Through
identifying these targeted aspects of change, research on
state rescaling could foreground the constitutive – if not
also constraining – effects of inherited institutions on
national-level structural coherence (see the first section
above).
For this reason, this paper does not presuppose exper-
imental changes to subnational pathways as antithetical
to national-level institutional continuity. Some changes,
such as the attempts by local cadres to institute ‘nationally
strategic’ reforms in domains such as landownership and
hukou in re-designated urban ‘new areas’, have been
accepted insofar as they persuaded the Chinese central gov-
ernment of the potential to fortify national-level control
(Box 1). Other changes, such as the locally driven initiatives
in the late 1970s to institute household agricultural pro-
duction (baochandaohu) and enable private trade, have
been considered relevant because they triggered structural
disruptions that consequently engendered new, if necess-
arily rudimentary, regulatory structures and accumulation
regimes. The ‘relevance’ of any national-level institutional
change, expressed through subnational policy experimen-
tation, is to be assessed in relation to the ‘coherence’ of
the prevailing regulatory structure, expressed through the
ability of the Chinese central government to dictate and
embed the flows and allocations of finance, production
and labour power across the national scale. This emphasis
on ‘relevant changes’ through policy experimentation does
not presuppose the corresponding disruption of established
regulatory paths – there is every possibility that change
could be a precondition of continuity.
Cross-scalar path dependency: enabling or
encumbering state rescaling?
Against the rolling series of territorially selective exper-
imentation, an important challenge for research on Chinese
state rescaling is to ascertain how these policies interact
with other institutions not only across space but also
through time. To follow Jessop, Brenner, and Jones (2008,
p. 392):
sociospatial theory is most powerful when it (a) refers to his-
torically specific geographies of social relations; and (b)
explores contextual and historical variation in the structural
REGIONAL STUDIES
coupling, strategic coordination, and forms of interconnec-
tion among the different dimensions of the latter.
Emphases are given to the notions of ‘historically specific
geographies’ and ‘contextual and historical variation’ in
the new framework because research increasingly present
contemporary reforms in China as situated within inherited
developmental pathways. Reviewing the connections
between regional development and economic globalization,
Wei (2007, p. 25) notes how ‘China’s reform is a gradual,
experiential, and path-dependent process, and its multi-
plicity of space-times and geographical heterogeneity are
underinvestigated’. At the intra-urban level, Wu (2009,
p. 886) observes how socio-economic inequalities ‘show a
strong path-dependence feature’. This corresponds with
Lin’s (2007, p. 10, original emphasis) broader survey of
post-Mao Chinese urbanism:
If state–society relations have a particularly important role to
play in Chinese urbanism, which in turn occupies a special
position in the state scaling strategy that deals with the Chi-
nese society, then the processes underlying Chinese urbanism
would remain culturally specific and path-dependent despite
the observation that certain forms of Western urbanism are
replicating themselves in contemporary China under
globalization.
Path dependency has evolved into an increasingly unclear
concept, however, and there is no systematic conceptual
attempt in urban and regional studies to assess its relation-
ship with socio-economic reforms in China. To begin, it
would be useful to define its parameters and connection
with place-specific policy experimentation (Figure 1).
Arguably the most common definition of path dependence
is the dependence of current and future actions/decisions
on the outcomes of previous actions or decisions. As
Page (2006, p. 89) puts it, path dependence ‘requires a
build-up of behavioral routines, social connections, or cog-
nitive structures around an institution’. Path formation is
commonly construed as an accidental outcome; a chance
event. Central to this process is the eventual formation of
institutional ‘lock in’, whereby a practice or policy becomes
effective or feasible because a large number of people have
adopted or become used to this practice or policy. Any
drastic alterations to the path, even in the face of inherently
superior alternatives, would thus encounter resistance from
groups of ‘locked in’ actors whose interests would be com-
promised by the proposed changes.
How state rescaling and policy experimentation interact
with inherited developmental pathways offers a unique
prism to ascertain the impact of regulatory reconfiguration
on national-level coherence. At one level, path dependency
is an attractive concept to explain how attempts to ‘move
first, experiment first’, driven through the rescaling agendas
of political actors based at different subnational scales,
interact with established institutions at different levels. In
exchange for retaining some Mao-era institutions, dom-
estic economic actors gained more ‘freedom’ to accumulate
capital, consequently deepening their dependence on these
 State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in post-Mao China
institutions in spite of their limitations. The contemporary
‘nationally strategic’ reforms are situated within this path-
dependent context.
At another level, however, the conceptual application of
‘path dependency’ has to be mindful of some of its biggest
problems. One major problem is the lack of emphasis on
the ‘build up’, in Page’s (2006) parlance, to the formation
of path-setting institutions. Developing this point, Peters,
Pierre, and King (2005) argue that there exists a tendency
in research on institutional path dependence to accord his-
tory a logical trajectory, or ‘retrospective rationality’, such
that available alternatives and political conflicts that
occurred alongside more ‘visible’ historical processes are
neglected. It is important, argue Peters et al. (2005, p.
1282), to be cognizant ‘that prediction of persistence
does not help at all in understanding institutional change’.
The notion of a ‘logical trajectory’ is further complicated
by geographical variegations in the developmental path-
ways within nation-states. As Martin and Sunley (2006)
and Martin (2010) have shown, the developmental paths
of subnational regions are neither unique nor delimited to
those regions. And as Peck (2002, p. 340) observes, ‘the
present scalar location of a given regulatory process is
neither natural nor inevitable, but instead reflects an out-
come of past political conflicts and compromises’. In this
regard, the existence of a scale of socio-economic regulation
such as ‘the city’, ‘the province’ or ‘the national’ cannot be
assessed narrowly from the contemporary vantage point; a
robust historicization of cross-scalar relations is necessary
(see the second section above).
These insights collectively foreground two interrelated
blind spots in the historical institutionalist literature on
path dependency: the politics that produced a specific
‘path’ are often unclear, as is the connection between insti-
tutional reforms at the subnational or supranational scales
and national-level structural coherence. The possibility of
institutional continuity-in-change through state rescaling
suggests rescaling is not a linear historical process that is
exclusively derived from market-oriented reforms insti-
tuted in and after 1978 (see the second section above).
Rather, the post-Mao party–state has been working at var-
ious levels – albeit on a tentative basis – to drive develop-
ment through reconfiguring Mao-era policies. Generated
by and expressed through policy experimentation in tar-
geted territories (e.g., marketizing land use through ‘land
tickets’ or dipiao in Chongqing and financial innovation
in the Pearl River Delta city-region), the reconfiguration
process illustrates the relevance of inherited policies (path
dependency) but also develops fresh regulatory capacities
(path generation).
A new research agenda
Building on the foregoing emphasis on institutional conti-
nuity and change, this paper presents a new research
agenda that aims to make two advances. First, it moves
beyond the relatively static periodization that underpins
state-rescaling research by focusing on tensions between
continuity (retention of inherited policies) and change
(policy experimentation). In so doing, the aim is not to
1589
establish the existence of historical periods distinguished
by specific regulatory scales (e.g., a Mao-era defined by
national-level regulation), but rather to establish the his-
torical significance of contemporary change as pursued
through state rescaling (e.g., hukou reforms in Chongqing).
Second, it engages explicitly with the connections between
scalar configuration and national-level coherence. State
rescaling may have led to the privileging of specific subna-
tional scales (particularly the city-region), but this is argu-
ably a means to attain a broader objective – the sustained
stability of the national structure. The agenda is under-
pinned by the following interrelated questions:
. If actors positioned at multiple scales proactively cla-
mour for place-specific policy experimentation after
1978, does it mean only centrally driven regulation
was previously predominant under the Mao Zedong
regime (1949–76)?
. Could pre-1978 China be periodized as a structurally
coherent, nationally oriented and centrally driven devel-
opmental approach such as ‘spatial Keynesianism’?
. What regulatory crises triggered successive waves of
state rescaling in China? What aspects of regulatory fail-
ure have central policy-makers been responding to as
they accept proposals to ‘scale up’ or ‘scale down’
socio-economic regulation?
. What does the success and/or failure of policy exper-
imentation in the rescaled territories reveal about
national-level institutional continuity and change?
This agenda is expected to produce an interconnected,
two-part narrative that deepens the contextualization of
Chinese state rescaling. Analyses of contemporary cases
of state rescaling and policy experimentation comprise
the first part, and the second provides geographical–histori-
cal re-evaluations of institutional legacies. Its primary chal-
lenge is to craft and implement a research design that could
dynamically connect the two parts so that the present could
offer distinct avenues to analyse past spatial configurations
of regulatory relations in China, and the resultant geo-
graphical–historical analysis could re-inform theorizations
of the experimental present. In so doing, this dynamic fra-
mework avoids periodizing the post-Mao ‘transitional’ pre-
sent as something like the opposite to the Maoist past. By
extension, it would not construe institutions inherited from
the Mao era as statically constraining marketization in the
first instance.
The two-part research process is mutually constitutive.
The first part of the process begins with the observation
and documentation of experimental policies introduced in
selected city-regions (the first two sets of questions).
Here, specific questions are raised regarding the content
and applicability of the new policies. As mentioned
above, this is set within an actor-focused analysis that
evaluates the specific agendas and discourses of the primary
proponents of these reforms. To facilitate a clearer com-
parison, research must also be conducted on the preceding
policies and their accompanying discourses, which leads to
the second part of the research. This segment aims to
REGIONAL STUDIES
1590 Kean Fan Lim
evaluate and reconstruct existing geographical–historical
narratives that illustrate how inherited institutions enabled,
guided, channelled and constrained policy experimentation
across post-Mao China (the third and fourth sets of ques-
tions). Each targeted territory of/for policy experimen-
tation contains its own set of spatio-temporal relations
with actors and institutions, and it is through aggregating
these relations that researchers could ascertain whether
reforms are truly transformative. The overarching focus of
this engagement goes beyond delineating the implications
of current reforms; it also aims to trace and reassess related
policies implemented as far back as the Mao era.
Through this multilayered, mutually reinforcing
attempt to theorize the past from the lens of the present,
and to conceptualize the present through ascertaining the
impacts of policies inherited from past regimes, the pro-
posed framework problematizes simple ‘transition’ models
that portray a unidirectional, epochal change in the post-
1978 Chinese political economy, a change characterized
by decentralized governance and intensified economic–
geographical inequality (cf. Lim, 2017). It emphasizes,
instead, a more deeply sedimented pattern of development
that is marked simultaneously by significant (and enduring)
forms of uneven socio-economic development and exper-
imental (and capricious) attempts to transcend them.
CONCLUSIONS
State spatial reconfiguration is a central feature of socio-
economic reforms in post-Mao China. This process is
unfolding against a dynamic context of economic globaliza-
tion, the corresponding rise of neoliberalism after the
1970s, and the CPC’s insistence on retaining a strong
state role in economic development. While a growing scho-
larship has defined this restructuring as a ‘scaling down’
from national-level central planning to urban entrepre-
neurialism, what remains unclear is its connection to
research showing the CPC to be more robust, resilient
and flexible (Nathan, 2003; Zeng, 2016). By extension,
how state rescaling reproduces – if not also reinforces –
the national scale as a regulatory platform has not been
explicitly addressed. This paper is an attempt to foreground
and address this conceptual gap.
Working from a critical review of conceptual and
empirical work on state rescaling, the paper highlighted
four main reasons why a recalibration of the original, Wes-
tern-focused framework is necessary. First, the geographi-
cal–historical conditions that generated state rescaling
across China differed fundamentally from those associated
with the crisis of Fordist–Keynesianism. Second, socio-
economic reforms do not inevitably privilege the city-
region as the primary regulatory scale. This ties in with
the third reason: the politicization of state rescaling invol-
ving specific interest groups has been relatively overlooked.
Last, but not least, the Chinese party–state continues to
prize major institutional foundations established during
the Mao era, which explains its preference for territorially
contained policy experimentation rather than ‘big bang’,
national-level reforms. These reasons collectively
REGIONAL STUDIES
underpinned the development of a new framework and
research agenda that illustrates the co-constitutive relation-
ship between successive rounds of policy experimentation
and institutional renewal since the CPC took political
power in 1949.
At one level, the framework offers a platform to exam-
ine the connections between institutionally distinct locations
that are jointly pursuing ‘nationally strategic’ reforms (e.g.,
the Guangdong free trade zone vis-à-vis the Shanghai free
trade zone). As Brenner (2009, pp. 42–43) puts it, the
‘institutional and spatial coherence’ of a scale ‘can be
grasped only with reference to their distinctive roles and
positions within interscalar hierarchies’. Ascertaining the
relations of place would thereby entail tracing the constitu-
tive extra-local processes of an apparently localized
phenomenon (e.g., how the launch of cross-border flows
of the Chinese currency – the renminbi (RMB) – between
Shenzhen and the special administrative regions (SAR) of
Hong Kong and Macau as a three-way process involving
the central, provincial and the SAR governments).
At another level, the framework facilitates a robust his-
torical engagement that goes beyond periodizing an entire
political economy. Through tracing the historical signifi-
cance of experimental policies in individual locations, the
framework avoids treating political economies as internally
homogeneous within a temporal period. Rather, the path
dependency of specific rescaling processes will be called in
question. Cognizant of the contributions and constraints
of the path-dependency paradigm, the paper construes
state rescaling as simultaneously a reaction to inherited
institutions and an attempt to transform these institutions.
In so doing, it circumvents the pre- and post-Mao tem-
poral dichotomy and leaves open ended the interpretations
of policy experimentation in selected city-regions. Specifi-
cally, contemporary rescaling processes become empirical
platforms for historical re-evaluation. To re-borrow Jessop’s
(2001) terms, if the Mao-era regulatory structure remains
characterized by ‘coherence’ (and this ‘structure’ includes
the spatial configuration of socio-economic activities), the
post-1978 changes triggered by Deng and his successors
would be relevant insofar as they ensured and extended
the stability of this ‘structure’. The implication of this ‘rel-
evance’ is clear: ‘liberalization’ reforms, expressed through
increasingly differentiated experimentation in targeted ter-
ritories, have thus far been a function of a ‘transition’
towards an as-yet-determined end-state. A major challenge
for urban and regional research, then, is to ascertain the
extent to which these reforms, each increasingly taking
on distinct city-regional forms, are truly disruptive of the
existing structure, or whether change has become a
means to reinforce national objectives already concretized
in the heady days of the ‘socialist high tide’.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Sarah Hall
and John Harrison, the editor of the Urban and Regional
Horizons section, for offering very constructive feedback
that sharpened the discussion. The constant support of
 State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in post-Mao China
my wife, Stephanie Lim, and the broad smiles of our son,
Ethan Lim, provided much encouragement and warmth
during the writing journey – thank you so much.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCiD
Kean Fan Lim http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7979-2068
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