Synopses & Reviews
China's coastal region between Shanghai and Hong Kong is one of the most dynamic regions in the world, having undergone a transformation widely attributed to economic reform. This insightful account shows that rapid economic growth in China has a history and a geography, and demonstrates how regional restructuring is far from an economic 'miracle'. Instead of a linear historical approach, the analysis shows how history matters in contextualized geographies, in regional places and their transnational connections. The book situates the analysis in the contemporary globalization debates and the most current ideas in human geography to develop a cultural economy perspective that anticipates the 'new regionalism'.
Globalizing South China provides readers with an invaluable evaluation of 'Greater China', the Chinese diaspora, regional identity formation, the gendered conditions of the regional economy, nature-society relations, and world city transformation. The book concludes by anticipating the futures of Hong Kong and Shanghai and relations between China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore in the wider Asian region. By contributing to theory building and interdisciplinary studies, and based on numerous examples of comparative empirical research, the book is engaging and provocative, and will change the way we understand the region of rapid development in South China.
Synopsis
This invaluable introduction and critical evaluation examines regional transformation in south China, the center of the world's fastest growing economy. The book combines both geographical and historical perspectives to explain why and how this traditionally frontier area has become the most dynamic region of China.
The author brings together a range of perspectives to promote understanding of the globalized regional economy, the human and environmental conditions in the region, the distinctions in social and economic practices that have characterized contemporary landscapes of development, and the maintenance of sub-regional identities.
Synopsis
This insightful account demonstrates that capitalism in China has a history and a geography, and combines perspectives from both to demonstrate that regional economic restructuring in South China is far from an economic 'miracle's.
Find out more information about the RGS-IBG journals by following the links below:
AREA:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0004-0894
The Geographical Journal:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0016-7398
Transactions of the Insititute of British Geographers:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0020-2754
Synopsis
Carolyn Cartier is assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
About the Author
"Relying on a wide grounding in the historical literature as well as a specialist's sense of spatial history, [Cartier] offers nuanced, often fascinating portraits of South China's economic and cultural dynamism."
Choice "The book has broken new ground in promoting the study and understanding of urban and regional development and also China study. With the meticulous evaluation of research materials under the contextualist approach, Globalizing South China exhibits a high standard of scholarship and intellectual sophistication." Journal of Oriental Studies
Table of Contents
List of Figures, Maps and Tables.
Preface.
1. Introduction: Negotiating Geographical Knowledges:.
Region of Reform.
Representing South China:.
Special Zone 'Experiment' Meets 'Miracle' Development.
Area Studies Debates:.
China's 'Response to the West'.
Restructuring Area Studies.
China Area Studies and the 'Macroregion'.
Transboundary Cultural Economy.
Region, Place / Space, and Scale:.
Scaling Social Processes.
Contextual Geographics.
2. Region and Representations:.
Geographical Representations:.
Northern Vantage.
Coastal Imaginaries.
Coming into Difference.
Rewriting South China:.
Bai Yue.
Kingdom of Chu.
Region as Greater China:.
Myth of 'Ungrounded Empire'.
Transboundary Economies and the Territorial Trap.
History of the North and the South.
Regional Thinking.
3. Maritime Frontier / Mercantile Region:.
Region and Nature-Society Relations.
Fringe of Empire.
Early Coastal Settlement:.
Cities of Min.
Quanzhou and Ningbo.
The Deltas and Land Reclamation.
Mercantile Region:.
The Zheng He Voyages.
Zheng He and Tianhou.
The Amoy Network.
The Junk Trade.
4. Open Ports and the Treaty System:.
'Semicolonialism':.
The Treaty Settlements.
Opium for Tea.
The Open Ports:.
Foreign Settlement.
The Spirit of Min.
Commercial Organization:.
Ningbo: The Pivotal Port.
Xiamen: Remittance Economies.
Infrastructural Development:.
Rebuilding Xiamen.
Mercantile Society and Mercantile Cities.
5. Revolution and Diaspora:.
The Southern Revolutionary Axis: From Guangzhou to Shanghai.
Revolution and the Overseas Chinese.
Southeast Asian Chinese Communities.
Malaysia and the National Culture Debates.
Melaka: The Bukit China Movement:.
Rise of a Social Movement.
Region as Homeland.
Negotiating Absolute Space.
The Social Construction of Place.
Constructing the Nationscape.
Place and National Culture.
6. Gendered Industrialization:.
Who Cares?:.
Regional Economy.
Engendering Industrialization:.
Male Bias in the Development Process.
Gendered Reform Policies:.
Rural Reform and the Feminization of the Agricultural Labor Force.
The Export-Oriented Industrialization Regime.
The New Services Sector: Prostitution.
Redirections.
7. Zone Fever:.
The Proliferation of Special Development Zones:.
'Model' Development.
The Land Conversion Moratorium.
Rapid Development and the 'Arable Land Problem':.
Policy Shifts and Arable Land Loss.
The Contradictions:.
Administrative Hierarchy Contradictions.
Land Monitoring Contradictions.
Rural-Urban Contradictions.
Real Estate Fever and Financial Collapse.
8. Urban Triumphant:.
1997 and the Hong Kong Handover:.
One Country, All Kinds of Systems.
Geographies of Globalization:.
Cosmopolitics.
Property Development in Hong Kong.
Exhibitionary Complex.
New Environmental Movements.
Rebuilding Shanghai.
New Cosmopolitanisms?.
Globalizing Cities.
Epilogue:.
Region and Globalization.
Region, State and Identity.
Index.