This paper regards developing an HTIP as a territorial project through which both central and local states seek to promote economic growth by reorganizing the spatial structure in their territories so as to facilitate capital accumulation. In this territorialization process, the central state, the municipal government and especially the district government have played important roles in reshaping the landscape of each city for the purpose of economic upgrading. Differing from other property-led development projects in China, this HTIP plan has involved not only local states and developers but also universities and R&D institutes. These actors have collaborated together to develop the territories in the name of high-tech development and knowledge innovation. Thus the planned areas, regardless of whether they are agricultural or established urban settlements, have had to be reshaped for hosting foreign and domestic firms or for office buildings. It is in this process that territorial places have been transformed into globalized spaces where capital has been able to move more freely to engage into manufacturing and commercial activities.
In both Beijing and Shanghai’s cases, we have seen how historical sediments had created their effects on the territorial development in time (Massey, 1984). Beijing’s Haidian district has hosted China’s most prestigious universities and R&D institutes, thus the historical heritage had enabled it to become the core innovative area of ZGC
at the earlier and later stages of development. Nevertheless, it was also due to its city center status that set its limitation in engaging manufacturing activities, many district governments in Beijing later had the opportunity to establish and use the label of ZGC to boost local economies. Thus, by observing the success of Haidian district in promoting economic growth through HTIPs, the Fengtai and other district governments in Beijing has followed suit to uphold the HTIP in affiliating it with the label ZGC.
In contrast to Beijing’s case, Shanghai’s Yangpu district, where most prestigious universities in Shanghai had resided, was almost totally ignored by the municipal government in its ambitious Pudong plan in the 1990s. It was the Yangpu district government that had observed the success of ZGC and tried to utilize the banner of HTIP and to collaborate closely with those universities to regenerate its local economy. Innovation centers and high-tech parks have thus become symbols for district government to promote the construction of office buildings and lure commercial activities into the area. In the process, the real estate sector, along with the construction of HTIP, has brought about the growth of the local economy. Yangpu district government’s effort however seems to create much more effects on the booming of real estate than it does on so-called knowledge-based economy.
The main differences that enable us to differentiate Yangpu from ZGC are factors of timing and the effect of HTIP. As regards the timing issue, it is obvious that Yangpu learned from the former success stories of the district governments of ZGC. Yangpu was discriminated against in Shanghai’s ambitious Pudong project before 2000.
Thanks to the institutional reform in the 1990s that gave district governments the power to develop their local economies, the Yangpu district government was able to utilize the HTIP banner to develop the local economy. This was very different from ZGC where the city and central states had supported its development at the initial stage.
Secondly, with regard to the social and economic effects, the development of ZGC combined technological innovation more fully with the booming of the real estate sector than did the development of Yangpu. ZGC’s development has been an evolutionary process through which various district governments in Beijing have been able to learn from the successful economic growth of the Haidian district by way of
establishing an HTIP. Nevertheless, while the Haidian district has been a dynamic region in terms of technological innovation (Zhou, 2005, 2008), the followers have not necessarily been able to perform the same level of technological development. For example, in 2007, the revenues of the IC design and software industries in ZGC contributed about one third of the income of these two sectors in China (ZGCAO:
13-14); in addition, in the past five years, the number of patents granted to ZGC constituted about 20% of the whole country, in which Haidian district had almost 61%
of all zones of ZGC17. Indeed, compared to ZGC’s excellent performance, the Yangpu case is simply an example of a district government intending to develop the local economy by using the HTIP label. Until recently, the development of the real estate sector has been much more successful than that of technological innovation. Most of the technological development in Shanghai has still been concentrated in Zhangjiang as opposed to in Yangpu, in which Wujiaochang KIC has looked more like a property-led project than a real innovation center.
Currently, the HTIP label is an attractive commodity and a label that can be sold.
An interesting development in China now is that the ZGC label has been extended beyond the territory of Beijing city. Currently, the ZGC administrative office has worked with the Hebei and Liaoning provincial and Tianjin city governments to create more ZGC zones in those places in order to generate economic value based on the label and to enhance technological development in those places18. ZGC as China’s Silicon Valley has now become a symbol in campaigning for economic development all over the country. Shanghai’s district governments have also established their affiliated HTIPs in other provinces to promote economic development. The HTIP label has become a fictive commodity that can be sold and extended to the rest of China to lure district governments to join the high-tech-led development game.
However, there are dim sides of the dazzling HTIP phenomenon. First, the booming of the real estate market has created an environment in which it is difficult for SMEs to survive. This is because the district governments have been more
17 Beijing News, 2011-08-15, adapted from http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/
big5/www.bj.xinhuanet.com/2011-08/15/content _23459532.htm
18 Data adapted from http://report.qianlong.com/33378/2011/03/05/[email protected], accessed on March 5, 2011.
interested in luring MNCs or big companies’ headquarters to inhabit the zones, and the rents and prices of the land have been escalating so that small venture firms have been forced to escape from the city centers where the universities and R&D institutes are concentrated. This in turn has enhanced the image of the HTIP as creating good business environments rather than constructing innovation milieus. The booming of the real estate sector is similar to other high tech industrial parks in other places of the world, for example Silicon Valley in the U.S. or Hsinchu science park in Taiwan.
Nevertheless, whereas in the latter cases, abundant venture capital is available to support the emerging small science firms to survive and even to become technological leaders in the world market, ZGC however lacks of this type of linkage, a type of innovation milieu has still not yet established in China (Zhou, 2008, and see Leng and Wang, forthcoming). Second, the re-settlement of the inhabitants in the planned areas has often created resentment on the part of the local population towards the zones because the district governments’ compensation fees were too low for local people to survive. As shown in the Fengtai case, many local people are still living in slums where the lands were planned but have not yet been developed.
Indeed, HTIP has become a branding competition. However, as we have shown, this branding game has been favorable to the property-led development of urbanization. As long as the branding of the HTIP, regardless of whether it is ZGC or the Headquarter Economy, can effectively generate successful economic growth for the local economy, space will be produced and reorganized along with the property-led development approach in China in the foreseeable future.
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