- Nottingham, UK
- I am Lecturer in Economic Geography and Urban and Regional Development at the Centre of Urban and Regional Developmen... moreI am Lecturer in Economic Geography and Urban and Regional Development at the Centre of Urban and Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University. My overarching research interest is in the constitutive and constraining role of uneven geo-institutional development on the evolution of national economies. I aim to explain the interaction between industrial, social welfare and financial policies within particular city-regions, with a specific focus on how this interaction is at once path-dependent and path-generating. My current research project explores the relationship between policy experimentation and economic-geographical transformations in China, while I have a longstanding interest in changes in the socioeconomic policies of Hong Kong and Singapore.edit
This paper critically evaluates the relationship between state capitalism and "strategic coupling" within global production networks (GPN). It underscores specifically the lack of cases on "coupling" involving state-owned enterprises... more
This paper critically evaluates the relationship between state capitalism and "strategic coupling" within global production networks (GPN). It underscores specifically the lack of cases on "coupling" involving state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from developing countries and city-regions within developed countries. Most existing studies focus on the connection between regions in developing economies with lead firms originating from developed economies. This leaves open a conceptual and empirical gap as SOEs from developing countries (like those of China and India) are (1) increasingly becoming lead firms in their own right and (2) investing in developed economies. Against this backdrop, this paper highlights conceptually significant points from the acquisition of Nexen, a Canada-based oil and gas TNC, by CNOOC, a large Chinese SOE, and argues for a fresh research agenda that examines the strategic coupling of lead firms that are also SOEs from developing economies. The state capitalist countries do not exist apart from the rest of world capitalism; they are an integral part of it, one where state ownership and state enterprise have become the predominant institutional form for the operation of the economic mechanism of capitalism. (Buick & Crump, 1986, p. 15) State action and inaction is often a key aspect of GVC/GPN research narratives (about firms, regions, nations), but is rarely placed in the foreground, and even more rarely, given due theoretical consideration.
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This paper foregrounds and evaluates the research design associated with the study of Chinese state rescaling. It first synthesizes the existing gaps in the original, western-based state rescaling framework. The paper then explores how... more
This paper foregrounds and evaluates the research design associated with the study of Chinese state rescaling. It first synthesizes the existing gaps in the original, western-based state rescaling framework. The paper then explores how different methodological channels are integrated to support a revised analytical framework. Specifically, it presents the value of multi-sited comparisons through (a) the 'extended case method' and (b) the role of the 'concurrent nested strategy' to data collection. In so doing, the paper offers a systematic assessment of the methodological contributions and constraints in ascertaining and explaining how regulatory reconfigurations unfold across space and time in China.
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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... more
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.
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This paper evaluates how economic restructuring in Guangdong is entwined with the politicization of state rescaling during and after the global financial crisis of 2008. It shows how a key industrial policy known as ‘double relocation’... more
This paper evaluates how economic restructuring in Guangdong is entwined with the politicization of state rescaling during and after the global financial crisis of 2008. It shows how a key industrial policy known as ‘double relocation’ generated tensions between the Guangdong government, then led by Party Secretary Wang Yang, and the senior echelon of the Communist Party of China in Beijing. The contestations and negotiations that ensued illustrate the dynamic entwinement between state rescaling and institutional path-dependency: the Wang administration launched this industrial policy in spite of potentially destabilizing effects on the prevailing national structure of capital accumulation. This foregrounds, in turn, the constitutive and constraining effects of established, national-level policies on local, territorially-specific restructuring policies.
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The ‘Singapore Model’ has constituted the only second explicit attempt by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to learn from a foreign country following Mao Zedong’s pledge to contour ‘China’s tomorrow’ on the Soviet Union experience during... more
The ‘Singapore Model’ has constituted the only second explicit attempt by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to learn from a foreign country following Mao Zedong’s pledge to contour ‘China’s tomorrow’ on the Soviet Union experience during the early 1950s. This paper critically evaluates policy transfers from Singapore to China in the post-Mao era. It re-examines how this Sino-Singaporean regulatory engagement came about historically following Deng Xiaoping’s visit to Singapore in 1978, and offers a careful re-reading of the degree to which actual policy borrowing by China could transcend different state ideologies, abstract ideas and subjective attitudes. Particular focus is placed on the effects of CPC cadre training in Singapore universities and policy mutation within two government-to-government projects, namely the Suzhou Industrial Park and the Tianjin Eco-City. The paper concludes that the ‘Singapore Model’, as applied in post-Mao China, casts institutional reforms as an open-ended process of policy experimentation and adaptation that is fraught with tension and resistance.
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This paper argues that new rounds of socioeconomic reforms in post-1949 China, each with their distinct geographical expressions, constitute a complex palimpsest rather than a straightforward process of historical succession. Drawing on a... more
This paper argues that new rounds of socioeconomic reforms in post-1949 China, each with their distinct geographical expressions, constitute a complex palimpsest rather than a straightforward process of historical succession. Drawing on a review of extensive empirical evidence, the paper complicates two dichotomous portrayals of socioeconomic ‘transition’ in China, namely centralization and egalitarianism (the Mao era) and decentralization and uneven development (the post-Mao era). It demonstrates these binaries cannot adequately explain the post-Mao economic 'miracle' when decentralized governance and uneven development also characterized the Mao era. The paper concludes that decentralized governance and uneven development are not antithetical to perpetual CPC rule; just as the Mao administration strategically blended centralizing mechanisms with instituted uneven development to consolidate its power, the post-Mao regimes have been repurposing Mao-era regulatory techniques to achieve the same objective.
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Through a framework drawn from Karl Polanyi’s substantivist theorization of economic practices, this paper evaluates the quest for equitable urbanization in Chongqing, a major city-region in southwestern China. Illuminating the tensions... more
Through a framework drawn from Karl Polanyi’s substantivist theorization of economic practices, this paper evaluates the quest for equitable urbanization in Chongqing, a major city-region in southwestern China. Illuminating the tensions arising from two interrelated reforms, namely the ambitious attempt to construct 40 million m2 of public rental housing between 2010 to 2012 and the large-scale drive to ensure peasant migrants enjoy equal access to social benefits as current urban residents, the paper explains how the quest for equitable urbanization magnifies two nationwide dimensions of institutionalized uneven development, namely 1) the caste-like categorization of populations according to ‘urban’ and ‘rural’; and 2) the coastal bias in national economic development. The paper concludes that this state-driven pursuit of spatial egalitarianism in Chongqing expresses the dialecticism of economic development in China: it is a social ‘counter movement’ against the effects of an uneven spatiality that was instituted to drive and deepen the marketization of Chinese society.
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While ‘neoliberalization’ is increasingly used to conceptualize concrete realities of China’s economic development, it is not employed in dialectical relation with China’s prevailing developmental ideology – ‘socialism with Chinese... more
While ‘neoliberalization’ is increasingly used to conceptualize concrete realities of China’s economic development, it is not employed in dialectical relation with China’s prevailing developmental ideology – ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. This paper offers a fresh framework and research agenda from which to examine this relation. It argues that neoliberalization across China is a variegated process, formed and fractured by actually existing uneven state spatiality and the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) ostensibly contradictory historicization of a Marxian socialist end-state. How neoliberalization works simultaneously in/through multiple sites in China and consequently reproduces the CPC’s ideological legitimacy has become a theoretically significant question for research on geographical political economy.
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China’s growing geo-economic clout globally has attracted significant research attention over the pastfew years. Rather than strictly adopt a national-specific and path-dependent perspective, this paper offers a nuanced perspective on the... more
China’s growing geo-economic clout globally has attracted significant research attention over the pastfew years. Rather than strictly adopt a national-specific and path-dependent perspective, this paper offers a nuanced perspective on the rationale of Chinese economic expansions overseas. I propose we view China’s growing geo-economic influence as a relational development, inextricably connected to broader changes in global capitalism, especially the failure of the US government to maintain confidence in thedollar. The paper probes critically the underlying logics of two recent developments: (1) the role of the China Investment Corporation (a new sovereign wealth fund) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) inaccessing new markets worldwide; and (2) the policies to extend the global reach of the Chinese yuan. I argue that these phenomena are concatenated to China’s broader aim to secure domestic economic security, given its vast holdings of dollar reserves and its macroeconomic constraints through the maintenance of a fixed foreign exchange regime. These developments in turn contour and sustain the evolution of the variegated global system of capitalism.
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Despite emergent trends of geo-economic integration between nation-states, the role of realist-driven geopolitical calculation appears highly enduring. This paper explores the potential contradictions between state-centric geopolitical... more
Despite emergent trends of geo-economic integration between nation-states, the role of realist-driven geopolitical calculation appears highly enduring. This paper explores the potential contradictions between state-centric geopolitical concerns and transnational geo-economic formation through an exploration of China–US tensions over Taiwan, a territory of indeterminate geo-legal status and which China regards as its own province. I consider how the Taiwan Relations Act, a domestic public law of the US that frames US–Taiwan relations and has a major influence on East Asian geopolitics, could contradict emergent “China region”, and possibly even China–US, geo-economic integration. This is because the US-sustained arms sales to Taiwan rest on imagining and containing China as a “threat”, while geo-economic integration entails enrolling China as a strategic partner, if not an ally. Consequently, the Taiwan issue could stifle the enhancement of Sino-American relations at a historical juncture when the Chinese and American economies are more intertwined than ever.
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The global subprime mortgage crisis in 2007–2008 led to an economic recession in Singapore, but the economy recovered strongly to post a 14.5% expansion in 2010. This article examines how labour market repositioning policies contributed... more
The global subprime mortgage crisis in 2007–2008 led to an economic recession in Singapore, but the economy recovered strongly to post a 14.5% expansion in 2010. This article examines how labour market repositioning policies contributed to this recovery. Following Karl Polanyi’s conceptualization of the economy as an ‘instituted process’, I explore how these policies function as state-driven redistributive strategies aimed at triggering reciprocal responses from employers and workers within the putatively self-regulatory local labour market. The Singapore case foregrounds the causal roles of place- and time-specific state–firm–labour interactions in precluding what Polanyi calls society’s ‘double movement’ against market-driven regulation. This successful preclusion exemplifies how the conditions and relations of economic production are not reproduced solely through market exchange; to sustain the capital accumulation dynamic, complementary acts of reciprocity and redistribution from different socio-economic stakeholders could be equally, if not more, important.
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Economic regulation is dynamically entwined with deregulation. Contrary to the logic of market fundamentalism, producers and/or consumers do not always benefit from deregulation. Rational-choice theories of regulation have not impacted... more
Economic regulation is dynamically entwined with deregulation. Contrary to the logic of market fundamentalism, producers and/or consumers do not always benefit from deregulation. Rational-choice theories of regulation have not impacted economic-geographical research as much as Regulation Theory (RT). Developed in France to theorize the crisis of Fordism, RT underscores the importance of social regulation in the capital accumulation process. Rather than study deregulation as an endstate, RT emphasizes regulatory reconfiguration and repurposing. Despite its eventual decline, RT left a strong legacy on economic-geographical research on (de)regulation. There is strong potential for current and future studies to build on this legacy, particularly in research on variegated neoliberalization and primitive accumulation.
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International division of labor refers to a conception of economic production as intrinsically transnational; of economic production as intrinsically interdependent on labor power based in different places. ‘Old’ and ‘new’ versions of the... more
International division of labor refers to a conception of economic production as intrinsically transnational; of economic production as intrinsically interdependent on labor power based in different places. ‘Old’ and ‘new’ versions of the concept abound: the ‘old’ international division refers to the Ricardian view that labor power enjoys comparative advantage based on finished products; the ‘new’ international division defines comparative advantages on the basis of tasks and processes. The new international division of labor was caused in large part by the crisis of Fordism, a process researched extensively by economic geographers. Empirical findings demonstrate a more complex process of transformation: the international division of labor was shaped by as much by changes in firm cultures and new political objectives in developing countries as they were by the vertical distintegration in and relocation of production processes by firms based originally in industrialized economies.
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Labor markets are socially-constructed entities that facilitate the buying and selling of labor power. They are effectively political-geographic institutions, governed predominantly by state regulations that apply within specific... more
Labor markets are socially-constructed entities that facilitate the buying and selling of labor power. They are effectively political-geographic institutions, governed predominantly by state regulations that apply within specific territorial boundaries. For this reason, analyses of labor markets have tended to be state-centric. Economic geographers have worked assiduously at transcending state-centrism through showing how the buying and selling of labor power is a gendered, multi-dimensional and often transnational process – it is never about the self-correction of prices by abstract forces of demand and supply.
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AAG review of books review of Monopsony Capitalism by Kean Fan Lim
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Book review published in The Canadian Geographer, 2015
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This article complicates existing portrayals of the China developmental "'model" from two angles. First, it problematises the historical basis of what many in the advanced "First World", particularly in America,... more
This article complicates existing portrayals of the China developmental "'model" from two angles. First, it problematises the historical basis of what many in the advanced "First World", particularly in America, used to see as their superior model of governance. In the final analysis, the current enthusiasm in these countries about the "China model" may have nothing to do with China per se but more to do with the decline of self-celebrated Western models that are themselves ideal-typical abstractions. Second, upon re-examining its historical record, it posits the alternative "China model" as similarly problematic. Triumphant portrayals of Chinese exceptionalism by China-based scholars have been predicated on a troubled Mao-era legacy, the implications of which remain unclear for understanding the increasingly fragmented and globally involved Chinese economy. Building on this double complication, the article concludes with a call for more historically grounded and geographically variegated examinations of Chinese political-economic evolution.
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This article complicates existing portrayals of the China developmental "'model" from two angles. First, it problematises the historical basis of what many in the advanced "First World", particularly in America,... more
This article complicates existing portrayals of the China developmental "'model" from two angles. First, it problematises the historical basis of what many in the advanced "First World", particularly in America, used to see as their superior model of governance. In the final analysis, the current enthusiasm in these countries about the "China model" may have nothing to do with China per se but more to do with the decline of self-celebrated Western models that are themselves ideal-typical abstractions. Second, upon re-examining its historical record, it posits the alternative "China model" as similarly problematic. Triumphant portrayals of Chinese exceptionalism by China-based scholars have been predicated on a troubled Mao-era legacy, the implications of which remain unclear for understanding the increasingly fragmented and globally involved Chinese economy. Building on this double complication, the article concludes with a call for more historically grounded and geographically variegated examinations of Chinese political-economic evolution.
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The “Singapore model” constitutes only the second explicit attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to learn from a foreign country following Mao Zedong's pledge to contour “China's tomorrow” on the Soviet Union experience... more
The “Singapore model” constitutes only the second explicit attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to learn from a foreign country following Mao Zedong's pledge to contour “China's tomorrow” on the Soviet Union experience during the early 1950s. This paper critically evaluates policy transfers from Singapore to China in the post-Mao era. It re-examines how this Sino-Singaporean regulatory engagement came about historically following Deng Xiaoping's visit to Singapore in 1978, and offers a careful re-reading of the degree to which actual policy borrowing by China could transcend different state ideologies, abstract ideas and subjective attitudes. Particular focus is placed on the effects of CCP cadre training in Singaporean universities and policy mutation within two government-to-government projects, namely the Suzhou Industrial Park and the Tianjin Eco-City. The paper concludes that the “Singapore model,” as applied in post-Mao China, casts institutional reforms as...
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Research Interests: Economic History, Social Change, Economics, Economic Geography, Accountability, and 14 morePolitical Science, Politics, Ideology, Asian History, East Asian Studies, Economic Development, China, China studies, Applied Economics, Socioeconomic Status, Dynamism, Public Administration and Policy, Elite, and Finance and Investment Banking
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This interdisciplinary, international conference will advance the debate about the periodisation of global economic processes after 1945. For this, we will bring together researchers from the social sciences and the humanities whose... more
This interdisciplinary, international conference will advance the debate about the periodisation of global economic processes after 1945. For this, we will bring together researchers from the social sciences and the humanities whose recent work goes beyond the predominant notion of a radical, world-historical rupture driven by crises in industrially advanced nations in the 1970s. Instead, contributors to this conference highlight the analytical gains from research and theories with emphasis on historical trajectories in the Global South, on a broader period in world history, and on analytical models of change that consider radical rupture as much as continuities and consolidations.
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This interdisciplinary, international conference will advance the debate about the periodisation of global economic processes after 1945. For this, we will bring together researchers from the social sciences and the humanities whose... more
This interdisciplinary, international conference will advance the debate about the periodisation of global economic processes after 1945. For this, we will bring together researchers from the social sciences and the humanities whose recent work goes beyond the predominant notion of a radical, world-historical rupture driven by crises in industrially advanced nations in the 1970s. Instead, contributors to this conference highlight the analytical gains from research and theories with emphasis on historical trajectories in the Global South, on a broader period in world history, and on analytical models of change that consider radical rupture as much as continuities and consolidations.
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This book introduces readers to the current social and economic state of China since its restructuring in 1949. Provides insights into the targeted institutional change that is occurring simultaneously across the entire country Presents... more
This book introduces readers to the current social and economic state of China since its restructuring in 1949. Provides insights into the targeted institutional change that is occurring simultaneously across the entire country Presents context-rich accounts of how and why these changes connect to (if not contradict) regulatory logics established during the Mao-era A new analytical framework that explicitly considers the relationship between state rescaling, policy experimentation, and path dependency Prompts readers to think about how experimental initiatives reflect and contribute to the 'national strategy' of Chinese development 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