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Interjurisdictional Cooperation through Bargaining: The Case of the Guangzhou–Zhuhai Railway in the Pearl River Delta, China*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2013

Jiang Xu  and
Anthony G.O. Yeh
Jiang Xu
Affiliation:
Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Email: [email protected].
Anthony G.O. Yeh*
Affiliation:
Centre of Urban Studies and Urban Planning, The University of Hong Kong.
*
Email: [email protected] (corresponding author).
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Abstract

Interjurisdictional cooperation has emerged as a major recent trend in China in response to challenges from market reforms and globalization. However, given that cities are in fierce competition with one another, interjurisdictional cooperation presents many difficulties for policy making. This paper attempts to examine how cooperative partnerships can be developed, sustained, or even resisted. It uses the Guangzhou–Zhuhai Railway as a case study to explore the institutional configuration of such a practice and to understand how the historical contingencies and path-dependencies in a transitional society interact with intensive bargaining to influence partnership building. It argues that the lack of a formal institutional framework to facilitate horizontal networking forces actors to opt for ad hoc collaborative arrangements. With the objective of making joint projects workable, commitments for cooperation have to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis through extensive bargaining. Although this creates much flexibility in consensus building, it does not guarantee success: success depends on the interplay of inter-ministry politics, interscalar relations, intercity politics and state–market relations. To a certain extent, the Chinese state can go beyond economic logic and shore up its legitimacy by prioritizing development. The post-reform path-dependencies can provide current political leaders with more rather than fewer instruments with which to negotiate interjurisdictional projects, and thus have greater influence over urban and regional economic governance.

Keywords

interjurisdictional cooperationbureaucratic bargainingGuangzhou–Zhuhai RailwayPearl River DeltaChina
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 213 , March 2013 , pp. 130 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2013

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Footnotes

*

We would like to thank the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project Number CUHK 453609) and the Mrs Li Ka Shing Fund and Strategic Research Theme in Contemporary China Studies of the University of Hong Kong for funding this research. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their useful comments in revising this paper.

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