Pushing the Urban Frontiers: Infrastructure Funding and Local Growth Coalition in China’s Relocation Programs

In the last decade, the Chinese state addressed the dilemma between economic growth and environmental protection by pushing further the urban frontiers on an unprecedented scale. It launched a master plan of mass peasant relocation: By moving peasants into high-rises and reclaiming their living spaces, new arable lands were created to counterbalance the farmland lost to urban sprawls. The central argument of this paper is that as the Chinese state encouraged private investment in state-oriented programs to avoid further accumulation of local debts, a fundamental change took place in local growth coalitions when private sectors gradually took over the land requisition and preparation from local government in relocation programs. By comparing relocation programs in two counties in Chengdu, Sichuan and Shangqiu, Henan, before and after the transition into private investment, the paper explores the changes in urban infrastructure funding model, the shifts in local growth coalition, and the profound influences upon the relocated peasant households. The paper reveals that instead of a smooth cooperation between local government and private sectors often assumed by the growth coalition literature, the particular funding model of the program had a profound influence upon the negotiation between actors within the coalition, as well as the actual effects of the programs. Specifically, the transition to private investment in relocation programs had resulted in local government compromises and consequently, the exacerbation of peasant conditions. The paper concludes by reflecting on the social consequences in the form of benefit encroachment and risk transfer in the transition to private investment in the state-oriented development programs.