Concessionary governance: The shifting local statecraft in Nanjing’s innovation-driven urban redevelopment
研究南京玄武硅巷创新驱动城市更新案例，发现地方政府在财政紧缩下从主导转向让步，允许企业自主治理和逐利，揭示了后疫情时代地方治理的变迁。
Responding to the real estate cooling down and post-COVID-19 economic challenges, China’s urban paradigm is marked by moving away from expansive construction to in situ redevelopment. An emergent trend is innovation-driven urban redevelopment that aims to foster technology firms. While existing studies on urban redevelopment in China often adopt a state centrality perspective, governing innovation-driven urban redevelopment initiatives under austerity would require alternative local statecraft. Our research employs the theoretical lens of state entrepreneurialism to examine the governance of Xuanwu Silicon Alley in Nanjing. Empirical evidence is collected from in-depth interviews with government officials, project operators, firm representatives, academics, and participant observations. Findings unfold the shifting local statecraft through the states’ concession to business actors’ autonomy in self-governance and their profit-driven actions. We argue that local statecraft in post-pandemic China needs to be revisited as it may move away from centrality to concession. In the absence of effective market instruments, the local government was compelled to make provisional concessions to market actors instead of commanding them. These emergent practices do not necessarily signify the end of state entrepreneurialism, but rather its local state-level mutation under emergent constraints.