Guanchi Zhang

* Outstanding Student Paper Award, China Geography Specialty Group, American Association of Geographers, 2022

Territorial organization of the state is a critical condition in the formation and expansion of the market. This paper contributes to the discussion by investigating China’s massive consolidation of local government amid decentralization in the 1980s that laid a foundation for the country’s economic takeoff. Building on an extensive survey of published and unpublished materials, I investigate the interaction between multi-level territorial politics and the market transition. In the 1980s, China faced a classical dilemma of decentralization: interlocal competition would stimulate short-term growth at the expense of macroeconomic stability and long-term prosperity. Beyond the two traditional approaches of economic coordination—leveraging either administrative or market discipline—I find that China’s reformers viewed territorial reforms as a third way forward. City-centered government consolidation not only created market dynamics between urban and rural China previously kept apart by state planning, but also offered regional-level coordination to discipline excessive inter-governmental competition. This territorial reform helped moderate reformers resist both the centralists who favored austerity methods and the radicals who pursued shock therapy, permitting a relatively smooth transition from a planned to a market economy.

Constitutional law and urban law scholars have considered constitutional empowerment of megacities a pivotal strategy to combat political divide and uneven development in the “era of the city.” By granting megacities unique voices and powers in national constitutions, the strategy safeguards democratic values hindered by “anti-urbanism” in national politics and fulfills the economic promises of megacities in delivering equal growth. This paper argues that the size and impact of megacities do not automatically justify the scheme of constitutional empowerment. Before elevating their constitutional status, we first need to develop a deeper understanding of the dynamics among law, megacities, and uneven development. This paper draws on the experience of East Asian countries—Japan, South Korea, and China—which have already adopted various legal strategies to empower cities. First, we find that East Asian countries embrace a variety of measures to empower megacities where constitutional empowerment only occupies a marginal place. Second, the powers and privileges bestowed on megacities are double-edged swords that can either reduce or intensify the political divide and economic disparity. Overall, this paper argues that the empowerment of megacities can take many legal forms and constitutional empowerment is far from the only viable option. On the contrary, without proper constitutional design, it might further entrench geographical disparities and exacerbate deep-running issues of geographical tension.