Spaces of globalisation: Institutional reforms and spatial economic development in the Pudong new area, Shanghai

This paper investigates the unique institutional structures which manage interactions and interrelationships among key actors, their roles and functions, and how these articulate with national and global forces to produce new spaces of spatial economic development in the Pudong New Area in Shanghai. We begin with a revisionist historical perspective which links the official creation and initial development of Pudong to the political and international trade relations uncertainties of post-Tiananmen China and an economically laggard Shanghai of the late 1980s. The early focus in Pudong on export-oriented development has since yielded to a rather more sophisticated and comprehensive combination of strategies incorporating local, regional and international dimensions. Planning priorities and the resulting patterns of development in Pudong arose from the deliberate amalgamation and professionalisation of administrative responsibilities which have initiated and managed processes of change. The morphology of these spatial economic changes is not fully explained in relation to decentralisation, marketisation, and globalisation. The article considers a number of elements which need to be considered as part of a new conceptual framework for understanding the depth and extent of new spaces of globalisation in Pudong.