Domination and Contestation in the Urban Politics of Shenzhen

In its history of urbanization, the literature on Shenzhen has given inadequate attention to the dynamic relationships between the state and the villages. The former is characterized as “state-led” to show the power of the state in the development of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) since 1980, and the latter are depicted as an “organic” or “spontaneous” development to provide cheap housing for a large number of migrant workers. These studies neglect the politicized aspect of the territory, which actually shapes the pathway of urbanization for Shenzhen. Thus, two arguments will be presented in this paper. First, the urbanization of Shenzhen is not simply a result of “state-led planning”. Second, the mushrooming of chengzhongcun, or urbanized villages is not outside the realm of the government. It will briefly highlight the context of Shenzhen and its changes in the past three decades. By employing the concept of territory, the paper aims at exploring the dialectic relationships between the state/city and c...