Christian Sorace 中国的幽灵城市化与鬼城的病态

克里斯蒂安·索拉西亚和威廉·赫斯特

https://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Econ%205420-6420-Fall%202018/Sorace-China_s%20phantom%20urbanization.pdf

a 澳大利亚国立大学世界中国研究中心，澳大利亚；

b 美国西北大学政治学系，美国

摘要

本文考察了中国“鬼城”的形成和持续的城市扩张，旨在挑战以农村人口向城市迁移为城市化驱动力的主流概念叙事。

文章认为，在中国“奇迹般”的城市化故事背后，隐藏着一种强大的意识形态信念，即城市增长是通往现代化和政治绩效评估的“康庄大道”。地方政府拥有一套广泛的“工具箱”来推进城市化，从行政边界的划定到农村土地的征用，再到对城市基础设施扩建的投资，无所不包。

城市化似乎是所有道路最终的归宿。事实上，地方政府不惜一切代价，甚至在经济上也置之不理，也要建设新的城市空间。但这是为什么呢？“幽灵城市化”的概念揭示了这样一个过程：对于地方政府而言，构建城市的美学形态比经济、人口或环境影响更为重要。

如今，大跃进的悲剧正在重演，而资本主义快速迈向现代化的“大跃进”则演变成了喜剧，昔日的口号“每个村庄都有一座炼铁厂”如今变成了“每条街道都有一座摩天大楼”（齐泽克，2011，718）。

自十九世纪中叶以来，城市发展一直带有投机性质，甚至可能更早，但中国城市发展的投机规模似乎与人类历史上的任何时期都截然不同（Harvey 2013, 60）。

关于中国城市化的传统观点遵循一套标准叙事，将农村人口向城市迁移、现代化和发展等假设结合起来。随着中国试图从出口导向型经济向内需型经济转型，城市化既吸收了投资，也创造了城市消费者，而城市消费者的消费能力往往高于农村居民（Harvey 2008, 25; Walker and Buck 2007, 50）。尽管中国房地产市场存在诸多低效和过剩问题，但投资者和观察人士普遍认为，供应过剩的问题是暂时的，随着越来越多的农村人口涌入城市，这些问题终将得到解决。正如经济学家斯蒂芬·罗奇（Stephen Roach，2012）所言，中国的发展是“世界历史上最伟大的城市化故事……根据经合组织的预测，到2030年，中国本已蓬勃发展的城市人口将增加3亿以上……如今所谓的‘鬼城’将迅速成为明日繁荣的大都市区。”中国奇迹般的城市化进程和未来的经济增长，是那些“极具韧性的叙事”（李，2009，69）之一，其基础是“只要你建造，他们就会来”这一神奇公式。即使是批评者，认为中国的城市化并非通过市场机制，而是通过国家主导的自上而下的规划和强制性迁移来实现，他们仍然接受农村向城市迁移叙事的基本框架（《纽约时报》，2013年6月6日）。

然而，在中国的学术、政策和大众话语中，一种关于“城市病态”的反叙事追踪了高速城市发展带来的问题，例如房屋空置、人口过密、生态破坏和基础设施恶化（DRCSC 2012；Yin 2010）。1 事实上，许多中国学者和政策分析人士使用诸如“伪城市化”、“半城市化”（ARDHMC 2010–2011）、“冒进城市化”（Yuan 2008）以及“有城无市”（Zhu 2011）等新词来描述这种仅在名称和形态上类似城市的建设现象。与发展中国家常见的模式截然相反——在发展中国家，数百万人口在缺乏城市土地或基础设施的情况下涌入城市——中国的土地城市化和基础设施建设速度往往远远超过人口的城市化速度。

“城市病理学”的论述提出了一个概念上的难题：在中国，“城市化”一词是否仍然与一个可靠且可识别的指称对象相连？或者，它的“定义轮廓是否已经变得难以捉摸”（Brenner 2013, 91）？我们称之为“幽灵城市化”的概念，通过将城市外壳的构建与传统的城市化进程剥离开来，挑战了中国城市化叙事背后许多未经审视的假设。如果不再存在未来大批农村移民终有一天会通过某种未知的方式买得起新城市住房的神话，那么剩下的就只有脱离城市实践和用途的城市形态的激增。鬼城就是这种现象的极致体现。

这正是“幽灵城市化”综合症的一种病态表现。

中国“奇迹般”的城市化故事背后，蕴含着一种强大的意识形态信念，即城市发展是通往现代化的“康庄大道”，也是衡量政治绩效的指标。地方政府拥有广泛的“工具箱”来推进城市化，从行政边界的划定到农村土地的征用，再到对城市基础设施扩张的投资，无所不包。即便城市化是被迫的、适得其反的，甚至是人为制造的，它仍然是所有道路最终的归宿。

即便建设新的城市空间会给地方政府带来经济损失，他们仍然不顾一切地推进。但这是为什么呢？我们提出的“幽灵城市化”概念，指的是这样一种过程：对于地方政府而言，构建城市的美学形态甚至比经济、人口或环境影响更为重要（Cartier and Tomba 2012）。

地方官员实现城市化的途径之一是改变和“升级”一个地区的行政地位，而不一定改善其物质条件。中国社会长期以来都存在着城乡空间泾渭分明的行政区划。但是，如果一个地方在行政上被命名为“城市”，它就真的是一座城市吗？这个问题并非理论上的空想，而是反映了我们传统的概念体系与所谓“行政城市化”动态之间的滞后。一波城市化浪潮是通过行政上的更名和升级实现的，例如将“镇”改称为“市”，将“县”改称为“县市”，将“地级市”改称为“地级市”（Ma 2005; Lin and Ho 2005; Bulag 2002）。Ulfstjerne 和 de Muynck (2012, 2) 指出：“将某些地方贴上‘城市’的标签一直是中国加速全国城市化和现代化进程的手段之一。”行政上的城市化提高了城市空间的统计比例，但未必改变了相关地区的实际情况。

城市化的另一种途径是构建城市表象，其外表看似一座城市，但其华丽的外表之下却缺乏城市生活所需的基本基础设施和经济条件，甚至在某些情况下，连居民都缺乏。在中国，城市化是人们对现代化的渴望，并且常常以审美奇观的形式出现（Ren 2012, 20-22; Harvey 2013, 60）。Bulag（2002, 198）认为，“城市”一词的魔力在于它能成为“通往现代化的捷径”，尤其是在欠发达地区和少数民族地区，城市“被誉为驱散现代化失败阴影的灵丹妙药”。Yeh（2013）关于西藏领土化政治的研究也关注到城市景观被“视为国家发展馈赠”的现象。城市既是建构的产物，也是人们想象的对象。正如“在当代艺术语境下，创作艺术即展示艺术”（Groys 2009, 1）一样，在中国的城市化进程中，建造一座城市即展示一座城市。因此，正如Harvey（2013, 60）所评论的，“如今在中国内陆地区，我们可以找到一些全新的城市，但几乎没有居民，也没有任何实际活动。”

城市立面的例子比比皆是。在东北的辽宁省，一片沼泽地被排干，用于建造铁岭新城。由于缺乏足够的就业机会，“铁岭新城实际上成了一座鬼城……那些本应创造当地就业机会的企业并没有出现。没有工作，人们就没有动力搬到那里。” 具有讽刺意味的是，2009年，铁岭新城因“提供完善的现代化生活空间”而获得了联合国人类住区规划署的特别表彰（《华尔街日报》，2013年8月8日）。然而，正如联合国和铁岭市政府似乎都忘记的那样，“城镇化并非统计数据的问题。

那些留在小城镇、养家糊口的人在大城市工作，留下的儿童和老人并非真正的城市居民。那些名义上是城市居民，却没有谋生手段的人也并非真正的城市居民”（China.org，2010年8月28日）。

另一种“幽灵城市化”的美学变体是建造著名城市的复制品。

浙江省于2007年建成的天都城，原本计划建成一座拥有1万居民的微缩版巴黎。然而，如今它却被认为是一座“鬼城”（雅虎新闻，2013年8月5日）。天津市政府正在建造一座名为余家堡的曼哈顿复制品（美国国家公共广播电台，2013年11月13日）。除了复制城市之外，中国还参与了生态城市的建设（Caprotti 2014, 7–9），例如中国和新加坡政府合作在天津滨海新区建设的生态城市。到2013年，据报道，这座生态城市已沦为又一个空洞的“鬼城”（《金融评论》，2013年7月20日）。

尽管这些“被忽视的”教训表明形式并不代表实质，但中国对城市形态的痴迷依然存在。

中国太平洋建设集团与兰州市政府合作，宣布计划夷平700座山（超过500平方英里的土地），为“兰州新区”这一大型城市和工业开发项目腾出空间。学者和官员对“在沙漠中心建设一座新城”的财务风险表示担忧（《卫报》，2012年12月6日），并担心它有可能成为中国下一个国际知名的“鬼城”。

幽灵般的城市化机器 传统上，学者们将“大规模土地转换”解读为“由移民驱动的城市化的结果”（Lin and Yi 2011, 52）。近年来，这种将移民视为城市化因果变量的传统观点已被另一种观点所取代，即“资本积累的逻辑和动力”（Lin and Yi 2011, 50）驱动着全球乃至中国城市化进程的空间重构。近期的学术研究提供了新的概念工具、解释机制，并详细描述了城市空间如何与地方政府、房地产开发商和私人投机者的收入相互依存，共同扩张。

根据 Hsing (2010, 7) 的观点，“地方积累依赖于销售和开发，而地方政府机构也随着城市扩张而壮大。”

也就是说，地方政府依赖土地收入来维持财政偿付能力，并扩大其权力基础。Rithmire (2013) 进一步指出，宏观经济改革的先后顺序、优惠的国家政策以及获得外国资本的途径，都会影响地方政府采取的不同土地开发策略。Lin (2009) 描述了一种“通过剥夺进行积累”的过程，即高价值地段的房屋被拆除，居民仅获得少量补偿，取而代之的是利润丰厚的开发项目。这些旨在改变城市经济和美学构成的尝试，偶尔会受到“钉子户”（Shin 2013）的挑战，这些“钉子户”指的是拒绝放弃房产的当地居民。事实上，资本流动的逻辑和模式已经取代了农村向城市迁移的逻辑，成为中国快速空间重组的因果变量。

即使是那些不依赖城市建设收入的富裕地方政府，仍然在扩张城市景观方面拥有既得的政治利益——将其作为政治权力的视觉展示和现代化发展的壮观美学证据。在内蒙古鄂尔多斯地级市（下文将讨论）等地区，地方政府从煤炭和天然气中获得的意外之财被用于建设一座新的“速成城市”（Pond 2010/2011），损害了地方政府的财政健康。“鬼城”只是最直观的“证明地方建设是为了盈利，而不是为了人”（Ulfstjerne and de Muynck 2012, 6）的证据。事实上，有些城镇的建设仅仅是为了维持体面（即便造成财政亏损）。

究竟是什么在城市化？

中国学术界普遍认为，土地城镇化的速度远超人口城镇化。根据内部刊物《中国区域经济参考》（2011年）的一篇文章指出：“……土地城镇化与人口城镇化不协调——土地城镇化速度远远超过人口城镇化速度。” 2013年3月，国家国土资源局副局长胡存志在一次讲座中警告说：“过去20年，人口城镇化明显滞后。1990年至2000年，土地城镇化速度是人口城镇化速度的1.71倍……

2000年至2010年，这一速度上升至1.85倍……这表明土地正在被浪费，城市扩张速度过快。”（引自《财经》，2013年3月31日） 2013年8月，国家发展和改革委员会城市发展中心副主任钱润玲再次发出警告，称“中国现在存在城市过剩问题”。她援引的统计数据是：“2000年至2010年，城市建设用地增长了83.41%，而同期城镇人口仅增长了45.12%”（新华社，2013年8月10日）。国家国土资源局法律中心主任王（2013）则直言不讳地指出：“空城和鬼城是土地城镇化而人口城镇化的极端现象”。中国荒凉的鬼城和废弃的开发项目生动地印证了马克思（2007，67）所说的“死物对人的完全支配”。

甚至华尔街的房地产分析师也借用了马克思的比喻。当开发项目中住房供应过剩时，开发商会将这些“未消化”的房产存量归类为“待售房产”。

所谓“空置土地”和“僵尸土地”。根据花旗集团中国房地产部门的一份内部报告，截至2012年7月，中国主要房地产开发公司23%的土地储备处于“死亡”状态（花旗集团，2012，2-3）。这不包括作为投资购买但未居住的房产，也不包括故意未完工以在房地产开发公司的账簿上被列为“资产”而非“负债”的房产。

最后，它也不包括因资金短缺而停工至少一年的未完工建设项目。虽然目前尚无关于此类“烂尾楼”的系统性数据，但一些零散的报告表明，这种现象十分普遍。然而，要准确确定这些问题的严重程度，在政治上仍然十分敏感，在实践中也难以实现。

事实上，即使是“空置/闲置住房”（更不用说更广泛的“鬼城”现象）的定义，也是一个颇具争议的技术问题。争议的焦点在于，空置住房的衡量标准究竟是采用“存量”还是“增量”。

“存量”法将空置住房定义为空置房屋总面积与中国住房总面积之比。“增量”法则将空置住房定义为新建开发项目中空置住房面积与同期新建住房总面积之比。然而，这两种方法都存在不足。

此外，对于由哪个政府机构负责收集和规范中国空置住房率的数据，目前也未达成共识。建设部、国家统计局、住房管理局等机构都提出了各自的诉求，甚至有人提议设立一个专门机构，其唯一职责就是收集空置住房总面积的数据。模糊不清的定义和行政上的混乱使得“幽灵城市化”问题——以及其以“鬼城”形式呈现的病态表现——难以界定、衡量，更遑论加以控制。

李克强总理将新型的“以人为本”的城镇化作为政府经济纲领的核心。其目标是实现农民到城市居民的转变，保障他们的物质福利，并为他们提供稳定的职业。预期结果是治愈“城市病态”，并刺激国内消费（参见Sorace 2014）。然而，中央政府的“良好意愿”却受到现实的制约，因为城镇化是地方政府重要的财政命脉。如果党想要实现以人为本的和谐城镇化目标，就必须彻底改革中国国家和地方的财政结构，以取代目前以征地和房地产开发为基础的资本积累和收入攫取模式，这将挑战许多既得利益集团对现状的维护。

这样一来，将会形成怎样的城市环境？

许多城市发展项目缺乏完善的城市基础设施，例如交通、教育和医疗设施，以及就业机会。朱（2011）指出，“大规模建设忽视了提高城市居民的收入和生活质量”。对地方政府而言，扩张城市空间可以实现两个关键目标：获取财政资本和打造令人瞩目的政绩。只要建成类似城市的雏形，它是否充满活力、以人为本、经济可持续就无关紧要了：“在追求GDP和政治成就的背景下，重要的是搭建城市的框架；其内部如何填充、填充什么都无关紧要”（袁2008，7）。

除了财政上的考量，城市化还会带来许多有害的社会和经济影响。何和吴（2009）探讨了“新自由主义城市化”，并着重分析了中国城市化进程中的阶级动态。就连花旗银行似乎也认同，“中国房地产市场存在严重的供需不匹配问题。大部分供应集中在高端/豪华住宅，而中低端住宅的供应不足”（花旗2011，20）。对于地方政府而言，高端住宅的投资回报最高（以土地出售和未来税收的形式体现）。正如米尔肯研究院的一份报告所指出的，“地方政府尤其不愿为经济适用房项目提供土地，因为此类开发会吸引周边地区的低收入居民，并给公共设施和现有基础设施带来越来越大的压力”（Barth、Lea 和 Li，2012，15）。这种对豪华住宅领域的集中表明存在大规模的投机和过度投资（Gaulard，2013，10）。

需求集中在富裕阶层手中。在中国房地产市场，需求分为两类：投资型住房和自住型住房。许多市民渴望拥有城市住房自住，但缺乏足够的资源购房。供应往往迎合投资型住房的需求，导致平均房价居高不下，越来越多的人因此买不起房。事实上，尽管收入不断增长，但“收入增长速度与房价上涨速度之间存在着令人担忧的差距”（Gaulard 2013, 5）。这给乐观主义者带来了挑战，也对房地产市场的未来发展提出了挑战。

China’s Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities

Christian Soracea and William Hurstb

https://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Econ%205420-6420-Fall%202018/Sorace-China_s%20phantom%20urbanization.pdf

a Australian Centre on China in the World, The Australian National University, Australia;

b Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, USA 

ABSTRACT
This article examines the production of China’s “ghost cities” and constant urban expansion to challenge the dominant conceptual narrative of rural-to-urban migration as the driver of urbanisation.

It argues that behind China's “miraculous” urbanisation story is a powerful ideological commitment to urban growth as the “royal road” to modernity and assessment of political performance. Local governments have a wide-ranging “tool-kit” for pursuing urbanisation, ranging from administrative border-drawing to expropriation of rural land and investment in expanding urban infrastructures.

Urbanisation is the destination to which all paths seem to lead. Indeed, local states pursue the construction of new urban space, even when doing so harms them financially. But why? The concept of phantom urbanisation names the process whereby constructing the aesthetic form of the urban is even more important to local state actors than economic, demographic or environmental repercussions.

Today the tragedy of the Great Leap Forward is repeating as the comedy of the rapid capitalist Great Leap Forward into modernization, with the old slogan “an iron foundry in every village” reemerging as “a skyscraper on every street” (?i?ek 2011, 718).

Urban development since the mid-nineteenth century, if not before, has always been speculative, but the speculative scale of the Chinese development seems to be of an entirely different order than anything before in human history (Harvey 2013, 60).

The conventional wisdom regarding China’s urbanisation follows a standard narrative, combining assumptions regarding rural-to-urban migration, modernisation and development. As China attempts to transition from an export-driven economy to one based on domestic consumption, urbanisation both absorbs investment and creates urban consumers, who tend to consume more than their rural counterparts (Harvey 2008, 25; Walker and Buck 2007, 50). Even though China’s property market is plagued with myriad inefficiencies and excesses, investors and observers alike have tended to see over-supply problems as temporary, to be resolved as ever-more rural villagers migrate to China’s cities. In the words of economist Stephen Roach (2012), China’s development is “the greatest urbanisation story the world has ever seen. . .[A]ccording to OECDprojections, China’s already burgeoning urban population should expand by more than 300 million by 2030. . . today’s so-called ghost cities quickly become tomorrow’s thriving metropolitan areas.” China’s miraculous urbanisation story and future economic growth are one of those “remarkably resilient narratives” (Li 2009, 69) that rest on the magical formula “if you build it, they will come.” Even critics, who argue that China’s urbanisation is not occurring through market mechanisms but by state-led top-down planning and forced migration, still accept the basic co-ordinates of the rural-to-urban migration narrative (The New York Times, June 6, 2013).

In China’s scholarly, policy and popular discourses, however, a counter-narrative of “urban pathologies” tracks the problems caused by high-speed urban development, such as empty housing, population overcrowding, ecological destruction and deteriorating infrastructures (DRCSC 2012; Yin 2010).1 Indeed, many Chinese scholars and policy analysts use neologisms like “fake urbanisation” [伪城市化], “half urbanisation" [半城市化] (ARDHMC 2010–2011), “impetuous urbanisation” [冒进城市化] (Yuan 2008), and urbanisation yielding a “city without a city” [有城无市 – literally, walls without a market] (Zhu 2011) to describe the phenomenon of building what resembles a city in name and morphology only. In a stark reversal of patterns typical across the developing world – where millions of people urbanise in the absence of urbanised land or infrastructure – China’s urbanisation of land and creation of infrastructure often far outpace the urbanisation of its people.

The discourse of “urban pathology” poses a conceptual quandary: does the term “urbanisation” in China still connect to a reliable and identifiable referent? Or, might its “definitional contours have become unmanageably slippery” (Brenner 2013, 91)? What we call phantom urbanisation challenges many unexamined assumptions behind China’s urbanisation narrative by disentangling the production of an urban carapace from traditional processes of urbanisation. Without the myth of future waves of rural
migrants who will some day by some unspecified means afford new urban housing, what remains is the proliferation of urban forms divorced from urban practices and uses. Ghost cities are the extreme pathological expression of this syndrome of phantom urbanisation.

Behind China’s “miraculous” urbanisation story is a powerful ideological commitment to urban growth as the “royal road” to modernity and assessment of political performance [政绩]. Local governments have a wide-ranging “tool-kit” for pursuing urbanisation, ranging from administrative border-drawing to expropriation of rural land and investment in expanding urban infrastructures. Even when urbanisation is forced, counter-productive, or fabricated, it is the destination to which all paths lead.

Even when building new urban space is financially detrimental to local states, they pursue it regardless. But why? Our concept of phantom urbanisation names the process whereby constructing the aesthetic form of the urban is even more important to local state actors than economic, demographic or environmental repercussions (Cartier and Tomba 2012).

One pathway to urbanisation for local officials is to change and “upgrade” the
administrative status of a locality, without necessarily improving its material condition. Chinese society has long been marked by the sharp administrative separation of urban and rural spaces. But, if a place is named a city administratively, is it thus a city? This question is not theoretical navel-gazing, but the mark of a lag between ourconventional conceptual apparatus and a dynamic of so-called urbanisation by administrative fiat. A wave of urbanisation occurred via the administrative re-naming and upgrading of town to city (zhen gai shi 镇改市), county to municipality (xian gai shi 县改市) and prefecture to municipality (di gai shi 地改市) (Ma 2005; Lin and Ho 2005; Bulag 2002). Ulfstjerne and de Muynck (2012, 2) observe that: “The labeling of places as ‘cities’ has been part of China’s means toward quickening urbanisation and modernization processes throughout China.” Administrative urbanisation inflates the statistical percentage of urban space, without necessarily changing the reality of the places involved.
Another route to urbanisation is to construct an urban façade, which resembles a city externally, but lacks basic infrastructural and economic requirements for city life, or, in some cases, even people, behind its showy exterior. In China, urbanisation is a scene of desire for modernity and can often take the form of aesthetic spectacle (Ren 2012, 20-22; Harvey 2013, 60). According to Bulag (2002, 198), the “magic of the term city” functions as “a short-cut to modernity” especially in underdeveloped and minority regions where it is “hailed to exorcise the haunted failure of modernization.” Yeh’s (2013) work on the politics of territorialisation in Tibet also draws attention to the representation of urban
landscapes “as gifts of development from the state.” The city is a conjured object as much as a constructed one. Just as, “in the context of contemporary art, to make art is to show art” (Groys 2009, 1), in China’s urbanisation process, to make a city is to show a city. Thus, as Harvey (2013, 60) comments, “whole new cities, with hardly any residents or real activities as yet, can now be found in the Chinese interior.”
Examples of urban façades are common. In the Northeastern Province of liaoning, a marshland was drained to construct Tieling New City. Lacking adequate employment opportunities, “Tieling New City is virtually a ghost town. . . The businesses that were supposed to create local employment haven’t materialized. Without jobs there is little incentive to move there.” Ironically, in 2009, Tieling New City won a special mention from the United Nations (UN) Human Settlements Program for “providing a well-developed and modern living space” (The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2013). Still, as both the UN and Tieling City Government apparently forgot, “urbanisation is not a matter of statistics.
Children and old people left behind in small towns while breadwinners work in big cities are not genuine city dwellers. Neither are people who are formally urban residents but have no means of making a living” (China.org, August 28, 2010).
Another aesthetic variation of phantom urbanisation is the building of replicas of
famous cities. The city Tianducheng, built in Zhejiang Province in 2007, was meant to be a miniature Paris with 10,000 residents. It is now, however, considered a “ghost city”(Yahoo News, August 5, 2013). Tianjin Municipality is in the process of building a replica of Manhattan called Yujiapu (National Public Radio, November 13, 2013). In addition to replica cities, China has engaged in the construction of eco-cities (Caprotti 2014, 7–9), such as the joint venture between the governments of China and Singapore to construct an eco-city situated in Tianjian’s Binhai New Area. By 2013, the eco-city was reported to be another ghostly hollow urban landscape (Financial Review, July 20, 2013).
Despite these “unheeded” lessons that form does not guarantee substance, China’s obsession with the urban form persists. China Pacific Construction Group, working in tandem with the Lanzhou government, announced plans to flatten 700 mountains (over500 square miles of land) to make way for the “The Lanzhou New Area,” a massive urban and industrial development. Scholars and officials have raised concerns over the “financial risk of building a new city in the middle of a desert” (The Guardian, December 6, 2012) and its potential to become China’s next internationally infamous ghost city.
The phantom urbanisation machine Traditionally, scholars have interpreted, “massive land conversion as a consequence of urbanisation driven by migration” (Lin and Yi 2011, 52). The conventional view of migration as the causal variable of urbanisation has been replaced in recent years by the argument that “the logic and dynamics of capital accumulation” (Lin and Yi 2011, 50) drive the spatial reconfigurations of the urbanisation process globally, as well as in China. Recent scholarship has provided new conceptual tools, explanatory
mechanisms and detailed accounts of how urban space expands in symbiosis with the revenues of local governments, real estate developers and private speculators.

According to Hsing (2010, 7), “Local accumulation is dependent on sales and
development, while the local state apparatus grows along with urban expansion.”
That is, local governments are dependent on land revenue for their fiscal solvency
and augmentation of their power-base. Rithmire (2013) argues further that the
sequencing of macro-economic reforms, preferential national policies and access to foreign capital influences the different land development strategies adopted by local states. Lin (2009) describes a process of “accumulation through dispossession” whereby homes in high-value locations are demolished with low compensation provided to their residents and replaced by lucrative development projects. These attempts to transform the economic and aesthetic composition of the city are occasionally challenged by “nail houses” (Shin 2013), local residents who refuse to abandon their property. The logic and pattern of capital flows has indeed replaced the logic of rural-to-urban migration as the causal variable of China’s rapid spatial reorganisation.

Even wealthy local municipal governments that do not depend on revenue from
urban construction still have vested political interests in expanding the urban landscape –as a visual display of political power and spectacular aesthetic evidence ofmodernising development. In areas like Inner Mongolia’s Ordos Prefecture-Level Municipality (discussed below), the local state’s windfall revenues from coal and natural gas were channelled into the construction of a new “insta-city” (Pond 2010/ 2011), to the detriment of local state fiscal health. Ghost cities are only the most visible “proof that place can be built for profit, not people” (Ulfstjerne and de Muynck 2012, 6). In fact, they are sometimes built just to keep up appearances (even at a fiscal loss).

What is being urbanised?

There is a consensus in China’s scholarly community that land is being urbanised [土地城镇化] at a much faster rate than people. According to an article in the internal (内部, circulated only to government officials or Party members of sufficient rank) publication Chinese Regional Economy Reference (2011): “. . .the urbanisation of land and theurbanisation of population are uncoordinated – the urbanisation of land far exceeds the urbanisation of the population.” During a March 2013 lecture, Deputy Minister Hu Cunzhi of the National Land and Natural Resources Bureau warned that: “over the past 20 years, population urbanisation has clearly lagged behind. From 1990–2000, the speed of land urbanisation was 1.71 times faster than the speed of population urbanisation. . .

From 2000–2010, this trend increased to 1.85 times as fast. . . This demonstrates land is being wasted and urban expansion is happening too fast” (cited in Caijing, March 31, 2013). This warning was reiterated again in August 2013 by Qian Runling, Deputy Director of the China Center for Urban Development under the National Development and Reform Commission, who claimed that, “China now has an oversupply of cities,”based on the statistic that “land used for urban construction rose by 83.41 percent from 2000 to 2010, while the urban population saw an increase of 45.12 percent in that period” (Xinhua, August 10, 2013). The Director of the National Land and Natural Resources Bureau Law Center put it starkly: “empty cities [空城] and ghost cities [鬼城市] are extreme phenomena of land urbanisation without population urbanisation”(Wang 2013). China’s desolate ghost cities and abandoned development projects vividly display Marx’s (2007, 67) reference to the “complete domination of dead matter over man.”

Even Wall Street real estate analysts have borrowed Marx’s metaphors. When housing oversupply accumulates in a development project, developers classify such “undigested” property stock as “dead landbanks” and “zombie landbanks.” According to a confidential report from the China Property division of Citi, 23% of China’s major real estate development firms’ landbanks were “dead” as of July 2012 (Citi 2012, 2–3). This does not include properties purchased as investments but not lived in. It is also excludes properties remaining intentionally unfinished so as to be classified as “assets” instead of liabilities”
on the books of real estate development companies. Finally, it does not account for construction projects abandoned for at least one year and unfinished due to lack of funds. While no systematic data on such “broken tail buildings” [烂尾楼] are available, anecdotal reports suggest that the phenomenon is pervasive. Yet pinning down the precise extent of these problems remains politically sensitive and practically difficult.

Indeed, even defining “empty/idle housing” (let alone the broader phenomenon of ghost cities) is a controversial technical matter. The crux of the controversy is whether to measure empty housing by “reserves” (存量) or with an “incremental” (增量) metric.

The “reserves” method defines idle housing as the ratio of the total surface area of idle apartments to the total surface area of China’s entire housing stock. The “incremental”metric defines idle housing as the ratio of the surface area of vacant housing in newly constructed development projects to the total surface area of new housing stock constructed during the same period of time. Both methods, however, are imperfect.

There is also no agreement over which governmental agency should be in charge of compiling and standardising data on China’s idle housing rate. Competing claims have been made on behalf of the Ministry of Construction, National Statistics Bureau, Housing Management Bureau, as well as for the creation of a specialised bureau, whose sole institutional mandate would be to collect data on the total surface area of idle housing. The combination of muddled definitions and an administrative morass make the problem of phantom urbanisation – and its pathological expression in the form of ghost cities – frustratingly difficult to chart or measure, let alone rein in.

Prime Minister Li Keqiang has promoted a new-type of “People-Oriented
Urbanisation” as the centrepiece of the administration’s economic platform. This is intended to turn peasants into urban citizens [从农民到市民的转换], guarantee their material welfare [福利的保障], and provide them with stable employment opportunities [稳定职业]. The hoped-for result is a cure for “urban pathologies” and stimulus for domestic consumption (see Sorace 2014). The “good intentions” of the central state, however, are constrained by the reality that urbanisation is the key financial lifeline for local governments. If the Party wants to achieve its goal of a harmonious peoplecentred urbanisation, China’s national and local financial structure would need to be completely overhauled to replace the current model of capital accumulation and revenue extraction based on land requisition and real estate development, challenging many vested interests in the status quo.

What kind of urban environments are produced?

Many urban development projects lack proper urban infrastructures such as transportation, educational and medical facilities, as well as employment opportunities. According to Zhu (2011), “large-scale construction neglects to improve the incomes and living quality of urban residents.” For local governments, expanding urban space achieves the two key goals of securing fiscal capital and creating an impressive political achievement record [政绩]. As long as something resembling a city is built, it does not matter whether or not it will be vibrant, people-oriented and economically sustainable: “in the context of pursuing GDP as well as political achievements, it is only important to build the frame of the city; it is not important how its insides [内容物] are padded or with what” (Yuan 2008, 7).

Beyond fiscal imperatives, urbanisation produces many deleterious social and economic effects. He and Wu (2009) discuss “neoliberal urbanism,” calling attention to the class dynamics of China’s urbanisation. Even Citibank seems to agree that, “the China property market has a severe problem of supply mismatch. Most of the supply focuses on high/luxury end whilst the supply of low-to-middle housing is not enough” (Citi 2011, 20). For local governments, high-end housing provides the highest returns (in the form of land sales and future tax revenues) on investment. As a Milken Institute report argues, “local authorities are especially reluctant to provide land for affordable housing projects because such development attracts low-income residents from surrounding regions and puts ever more pressure on public utilities and existing infrastructure”(Barth, Lea, and Li 2012, 15). Such concentration in luxury residential sectors is indicative of massive speculation and over-investment (Gaulard 2013, 10).
Concentrated demand in the hands of the wealthy In the Chinese property market, there are two types of demand: for housing as an investment and for housing to live in. There are also many citizens who desire urban housing to live in but lack sufficient resources to purchase any. Supply tends to cater to demand for housing as an investment, keeping average housing prices high enough that more and more people are simply priced out of the market. Indeed, despite rising incomes, there is an alarming “gap between the rate at which incomes are growing and the increase in property prices” (Gaulard 2013, 5). This challenges the optimistic and