title: Regional Governance through Administrative Annexation: The Case of City–County Annexation in China
Creators: name: Ni, Hong
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2028

description: The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs points to a world that will continue to urbanise over the next three decades – from 56 per cent in 2021 to 68 per cent in 2050, with urban areas absorbing virtually all the future growth of the world’s population. In the context of urbanisation, as cities have outgrown their administrative boundaries, metropolitan areas have become strategic areas in which for countries worldwide to realise overall coordinated development. For decades, the governance of metropolitan areas has been a critical debate within public administration. Urbanisation in China is currently on a level with that of Western developed countries in the middle and late 20th century. The trajectory of how developed countries have governed metropolitan areas over the past decades may provide a point of reference for China, but the differences also need to be noted. In the face of urbanisation, the governance reforms of Western developed countries since the 1950s— represented by Regionalism, Public Choice, and New Regionalism— have resulted in different organisational systems being applied to metropolitan areas, respectively characterised by centralised, polycentric and collaborative network governance. In Europe and the Americas, metropolitan governance often centres around polycentric governance networks and involves minimal structural changes. The OECD has seen an increase in the number of metropolitan governance authorities over the past decades. The reform trend shows that government structure changes through annexation to attain various governance goals have long been criticised because of the difficulty in implementation and the neglect of collaborative processes. Intriguingly, annexation has been one of the significant planning instruments employed by Chinese local governments to govern urban development, with the most typical case being the annexation of city and county, known as ‘Turning County into District (撤县设区)’. To ascertain why China has preferred annexation – a conflict-prone approach – to strengthen regional governance, this research aims to understand the drivers and processes of Turning County into District in the context of state-led urbanisation. The research seeks to provide insight into China’s urbanisation by understanding China’s regional governance through administrative annexation. It sets out five objectives to answer three fundamental questions: Why has administrative annexation prevailed in China since 1983; how did the annexation process work; and what are the outcomes and significance of regional governance through administrative annexation. The research employs qualitative methods, including a literature review, document review, process tracing, case studies, triangulation and interviews. It begins with a review of regional governance theories, governance arrangements, and local practices in interest mediation during the governance restructuring and state rescaling of Western developed countries after World War II. It then illustrates China’s changing urbanisation patterns and strategy of regional governance since 1978 to identify the pro-annexation phenomenon and governance challenges. Two cases, Suzhou-Wujiang and Yancheng-Dafeng in Jiangsu Province, were selected for conducting interviews to investigate how different economic strength conditions, land resources reserve, driving factors, and annexation scenarios may cause different trajectories of annexation. Interviews were conducted with key government officials involved in the Turning County into District process to explore how annexations were initiated, along with their restructuring process and its effects. In addition to being a response to urbanisation, social and economic development, the strict administrative hierarchy, local government intervention and land finance impacts, the overlap between the economic and administrative zones, and national regulation has explained China’s pro-annexation phenomenon. The empirical results show that Turning County into District has been seen as an effective tool with which to create legitimacy for local growth and to form state-centred governance, adapting to China’s urbanisation and social progress, the characteristics of the political system and the development mode of government intervention in the economy. Both serving state-led urbanisation and scrambling for land-related resources, administrative annexation undertakes a mission for local social and economic development. In China, the central government, rather than cities, often takes the lead in metropolitan governance, expanding its oversight from individual cities to entire regions. Turning County into District could be regarded as a political means through which the state-led scale construction establishes a closer spatial connection between functional regions in China. Compared with the governance structure of government-market-society formed by collaborative network governance, China’s state-centred governance highlights the relationship between state, society and space. The redistribution, efficiency and fairness within the administrative annexation in China comply with the principles of institutional coordination and harmony under state control. However, this research reveals that Turning County into District forms a big government model that may result in decentralised governance. This outcome goes beyond the scope of the three governance outcomes explained by metropolitan governance theories. Furthermore, the literal meaning of decentralised governance under central political control has pointed out another finding of this study: China’s rescaling has not been accompanied by the weakening of national regulation, which contrasts with the experience of developed Western countries. Finally, this research argues that China’s administrative system, which supports local adaptation to economic development and comprehensive state intervention, is the growth machine underpinning China’s urbanisation mechanism. Given the complexity and multi-causes and multi-effects, China’s urbanisation and regional governance cannot be regarded as equal to a particular stage of Western urbanisation. A sustained and reflective study is needed.