China's Special Economic Zones: From Shenzhen to Shanghai. A new path to industrialization, urbanization, globalization and modernization.

摘要

Contrary to a common expectation that China would follow either American capitalism or the Soviet model in post-Mao era, the new Chinese leadership experimented with limited capitalism in six Special Economic Zones to produce a system of large-scale, state-sponsored, Party-guided, and technocrat-administered economic reforms. Interestingly enough, this reform was initiated "from below" and then expanded "from above." Over the course of twenty-five years, SEZ developments expanded from Shenzhen, a small border village town, to the giant metropolis of Shanghai, gradually bringing about tremendous economic restructuring, urban transformation and social changes within China and beyond. China's quick rise to a "world workshop" and a potential global power within the contemporary world system indicates that the state has successfully established the SEZ growth model as an alternative developmental path to industrialization, urbanization, globalization and modernization. However, without a complementary political reform, the unilateral focus on economic reform has also led to a series of grave social problems.; This dissertation offers an in-depth analysis of policy changes in SEZ policy formulation and implementation at the local and central government levels. Through a chronological presentation of the developmental process and a focused sociological analysis, the author demonstrates how the Party-State managed to use capitalist-oriented SEZ economic growth strategies to achieve socialist-dominated political control. And yet, the ultimate compatibility between the economic success of China's SEZs and the lagging changes in democratic reforms remains an open question. Based upon the author's systematic analysis of the SEZ practice over two decades, a diagnosis of three SEZ models in discerning China's prospects reveals that not only is there no universal development model for all nations, but also no single recipe for success. Thus, this case study contributes to a wider theoretical understanding of the relationship between economics and politics within urban studies.