This session offers an intrinsically geographical understanding of
the dynamic economic and social processes bundled together under the sign of
‘China model’. In the existing China model literature, popular theories range
from the varieties of capitalism, market transition, developmental state, to
state corporatism and authoritarian resilience, among others. What these
different intellectual approaches share, however, is the persistent tendencies
in (macro)economic theorizing to treat market and state as antipodes. The
dichotomous perspective obscures mechanisms and processes that transcend the
state-market divide in the analysis of China’s contemporary
developmental/governance experience. In response, the presenters construct an
integrated scheme to incorporate the social dimension, and characterize China as
a market economy embedded in a particular system of political governance and
society, which has strongly shaped national and territorial wealth accumulation,
distribution and redistribution. This scheme brings to the fore China’s
continuing attempts to combine capitalist and territorial logics, in terms of
both enabling accumulation and spatial expansion, and addressing the attendant
multi-scalar social inequity and inequality.