This talk has been cancelled due to health issues, and replaced with an address from Professor Biao Xiang (Oxford) at 2.15pm on Saturday 1st June at the China Centre Lecture Theatre. Panel sessions open to all will take place on Saturday from 9.30am, please see event page: talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/series/id/e0e7395c-496a-4e04-a68f-17b8cae9757b

Abstract

The beginning of the reform era (1978) is generally seen as a fracture in the urban development of socialist China. Here I want to argue that, despite the obvious differences some of the fundamental reasons why the state has been planning the urban have long remain unchanged. Different ideological “imperatives” have shaped city models in socialist China after 1949. I argue that the continuous centrality of a utopian ideology of the future makes the rupture between anti-city Maoism and “pro-city” Reforms less significant than conventional wisdom suggests. As examples, I will take the projects of Urban Communes during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), the quintessential example of “anti-city experiment” (Salaff 1967); and compare them briefly with contemporary examples of Smart cities, to show how the dominant vision of the future makes them part of the same planning tradition. These movements share common characteristics: 1) they search for a greater “legibility” and governability of the city; 2) they trigger a political campaign to shape the territory and revise its administrative boundaries; 3) they rely on technological solutions that privilege top-down plans over a consultative alternative; and 4) finally, they embody an ethical vision for the future of the entire national community.

Speaker Bio

Professor Luigi Tomba is a political scientist with three decades of China experience. From 2001 to 2017, Luigi was teaching and researching Chinese society and politics at the Australian National University. In 2017 he was appointed as the director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. His work covers many aspects of China’s political and social change, with a particular interest in the consequences of China’s urbanisation on society and governance.

This lecture opens the second day of a two-day conference that is open to the public. For details, please visit the event page: talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/series/id/e0e7395c-496a-4e04-a68f-17b8cae9757b