SHANGHAI, CHINA’S CAPITAL OF MODERNITY: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE AND URBAN EXPERIENCE OF WORLD EXPO 2010 by GARY PUI FUNG WONG A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOHPY School of Government and Society Department of Political Science and International Studies The University of Birmingham February 2014 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis examines Shanghai’s urbanisation by applying Henri Lefebvre’s theories of the production of space and everyday life. A review of Lefebvre’s theories indicates that each mode of production produces its own space. Capitalism is perpetuated by producing new space and commodifying everyday life. Applying Lefebvre’s regressive-progressive method as a methodological framework, this thesis periodises Shanghai’s history to the ‘semi-feudal, semi-colonial era’, ‘socialist reform era’ and ‘post-socialist reform era’. The Shanghai World Exposition 2010 was chosen as a case study to exemplify how urbanisation shaped urban experience. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews. This thesis argues that Shanghai developed a ‘state-led/-participation mode of production’. The state redefined its distributive role to act as both a regulator and a market player, and manipulated its regulatory power to generate revenue from land commodification. The state thus accelerated urbanisation by relocating residents to new towns. Inhabitants’ daily routines were rearranged. Lefebvre envisaged an urban revolution to occur when urbanisation is complete. But my data illustrates that civil resistance is not widely supported because urbanisation has generally improved living quality. This thesis concludes by examining the possibility of Shanghai’s resuming its status as the site of modernisation and the critique of modernity. Keywords: Shanghai, Henri Lefebvre, the production of space, urbanisation, World Expo, everyday life, urban China, mode of production, Chinese modernity, Chinese modernisation. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I give my deepest gratitude to my parents. They supported my study, even though they did not exactly know what I did during this unexpectedly long period of study. I would also like to express my heartfelt thanks to my girlfriend, Sze, for her love and support. In Birmingham, which Jane Austen regarded as ‘not a place to promise much’, life would be extremely hard without her as a companion. I greatly appreciate all those who helped me in data collection, in particular Universitas 21 for sponsoring part of the travel expenses of my fieldwork. I should also thank my fellows at the Department of Sociology, for our memories in the Sociology House. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Lynn and Chris at Birmingham, Iris and Darrel at Manchester for generously providing Sze and me accommodations. Last but not least, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my supervisors, Mairtin Mac an Ghaill and Ross Abbinnett. Without their supervision and encouragement, I would have already given up on writing my thesis a long time ago. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................. iv LIST OF CHARTS ...................................................................................................... viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................ ix GLOSSARY .................................................................................................................... x NOTES ON ROMANISATION AND TRANSLATION .......................................... xiv CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background of this Study ......................................................................... 1 1.2 The Theoretical Concern .......................................................................... 4 1.3 The Methodological Concern and Execution Process .............................. 6 1.4 Research Questions and Significance ....................................................... 8 1.5 Organisation of Chapters ........................................................................ 10 CHAPTER TWO: THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE IN THE MODERN WORLD ............................ 14 2.1 The (Re)Production of (Social) Space .................................................... 17 2.1.1 Spatial Triad ........................................................................................... 19 2.1.2 The History of Space .............................................................................. 24 2.1.3 The Survival of Capitalism ..................................................................... 29 2.1.4 The State Mode of Production ................................................................ 32 2.2 Urban Experience and Urban Revolution ............................................... 35 2.2.1 Everyday Life in Modern Society .......................................................... 36 2.2.2 Social Space and Social Time ................................................................ 39 2.2.3 Urban Problematic and Urban Revolution ............................................. 42 2.2.4 Moments and the Right to the City ......................................................... 46 2.3 The Spatial Turn and Critique ................................................................ 50 2.3.1 The Spatial Turn ..................................................................................... 51 2.3.2 A Critique ............................................................................................... 54 iv 2.4 The Studies of Urban China ................................................................... 56 2.4.1 The Great Urban Transformation ........................................................... 56 2.4.2 Theorising Urban Transformation .......................................................... 58 2.5 Conclusion: A Lefebvrian Analysis of Chinese Urbanisation ............... 61 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES ................................................................................. 67 3.1 Regressive-progressive Method ............................................................. 70 3.1.1 Space as Concrete Abstraction ............................................................... 71 3.1.2 Regressive-progressive Method as a Social-historical Method .............. 73 3.2 Research Questions and Methodology ................................................... 77 3.2.1 Research Questions ................................................................................ 78 3.2.2 Data Collection Methods ........................................................................ 79 3.3 Methodological Issues and the Executive Process ................................. 82 3.3.1 Secondary Data Analysis ........................................................................ 82 3.3.2 Semi-structured Interview ...................................................................... 83 3.3.3 Execution Process ................................................................................... 86 3.3.4 Autobiographical Reflexivity ................................................................. 90 3.4 The Empirical and The Theoretical ........................................................ 92 3.4.1 Regressive-progressive Method as a Theoretical-empirical Method ..... 93 3.4.2 The Application of the Regressive-progressive Method ........................ 94 3.5 Conclusion: A Dialectical Method Uniting Content and Form .............. 96 CHAPTER FOUR: A SPATIAL HISTORY OF SHANGHAI .................................................................. 98 4.1 A Gateway to Modernity: 1843-1949 ................................................... 102 4.1.1 From a Market Town to a Cosmopolitan City ...................................... 103 4.1.2 Spatial Practice: The World Expo of Architectures .............................. 107 4.1.3 The Emergence of New Social Classes ................................................. 111 4.1.4 The Emergence of a New Urban Culture ............................................. 114 4.1.5 Contradictions in the Capitalist City .................................................... 117 4.1.6 Industrialisation and the Nationalist City ............................................. 120 4.2 The Aversion of Urban Culture: 1949-1978 ......................................... 123 4.2.1 The Production of Socialist Space ........................................................ 125 4.2.2 Industrialisation without Urbanisation ................................................