Changing Urban Renewal Policies In China: Policy Transfer And Policy Learning Under Multiple Hierarchies 3030360075, 9783030360078, 9783030360085

Table of contents :
Foreword......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 9
Contents......Page 12
List of Figures......Page 14
Chapter 1: Studying the Transfer and Learning of Careful Urban Renewal in a Chinese City......Page 15
1.1 The Contribution of an Analysis of the Micro-Dynamics of Transfer in a Chinese City......Page 18
1.1.1 The Study of the Micro-Dynamics of Transfers......Page 19
1.1.2 China in Policy Transfer Studies......Page 25
1.2 Yangzhou: A Case of (Difficult) Policy Learning......Page 27
1.3 Researching the Local Process of Policy Transfer, Learning and Translation......Page 30
1.4 Structure of the Book......Page 32
References......Page 36
Chapter 2: A Research Framework to Capture the Complexity of Policy Transfers......Page 40
2.1 How to Understand Careful Urban Renewal and the Process of Policy Change......Page 42
2.2 How to Capture the Characteristics of the Transfer and Learning Process......Page 45
2.3 A Summary of the Research Framework......Page 49
References......Page 50
3.1 Introduction......Page 53
3.2.1 Mayor Ji Jianye and the Spectacular Transformation of Yangzhou......Page 55
3.2.2 The Place of Yangzhou Old City in the Plans of the Early 2000s…......Page 57
3.2.3 … and in the “Ecological Construction” of Yangzhou......Page 59
3.3 Shifting to the National Scale to Understand Yangzhou City Plans......Page 62
3.3.1 A New Division of Labour Between the Central Government and City Governments......Page 64
3.3.2 The Fiscal Reform and Its Pressure on Local Governments......Page 65
3.3.3 The Land Reform, the Housing Reform and Their Combined Effect with the Fiscal Reform......Page 66
3.4 The Fate of Old Neighbourhoods Under the “Construction Fever”......Page 68
3.4.1 A Little Bit of History: Old Cities During the Maoist Epoch......Page 69
3.4.2 Old Cities at the Time of the Reform......Page 70
3.5 Yangzhou Old City Under the Redevelopment Paradigm......Page 73
3.5.1 First Experiments of Old City Conservation......Page 75
3.5.2 The Paradigm of “State-Dominated Urban Redevelopment”......Page 77
3.6 Conclusion......Page 78
References......Page 82
4.1 Introduction......Page 87
4.2 Origins of the GTZ “Eco-City Planning and Management Programme”......Page 89
4.3 Yangzhou Old City and Its Problems in the Eyes of GTZ Experts......Page 91
4.3.1 The Proposal of Careful Urban Renewal......Page 93
4.3.2 Replace Renewal Projects with a Renewal Process......Page 96
4.4 Learning and Experimenting with ‘New’ Ideas......Page 97
4.4.1 The Lessons Learnt in Germany......Page 98
4.4.2 The Proposal to the Mayor......Page 100
4.4.3 The Difficult Preparation of the Pilot Projects......Page 104
4.4.4 Pilot Projects and Policy Recommendations......Page 107
4.5 Appraising the Outcomes of International Cooperation......Page 111
4.5.1 Did the Project Really Fail?......Page 113
4.5.2 GTZ as an Intermediary Organisation for the Production and Transmission of Knowledge......Page 115
4.5.3 Yangzhou’s “Endogenous Forces of Mutation” and Local Stock of Knowledge......Page 119
4.6 Conclusion......Page 121
References......Page 126
5.1 Introduction......Page 128
5.2.1 The Emergence of Problems in the Local Approach of Urban Renewal......Page 130
5.2.2 The Local Approach Showed Signs of Failure......Page 134
5.3 A New Window for Policy Learning and the Development of a Local Conservation Paradigm......Page 139
5.3.1 At the Heart of the Conservation Paradigm: The Re-Foundation of the Old City Office......Page 140
5.3.2 The Main Features of the Conservation Paradigm: What to Protect?......Page 142
5.3.3 How to Protect? New Policies… and Failed Attempts......Page 146
5.3.4 How to Proceed? The Procedural Novelties of the Conservation Paradigm......Page 150
5.4 Learning at the Time of the OCO: A Case of Imitation and Translation......Page 153
5.4.1 The Challenges to Policy Learning and Translation......Page 157
5.5 Conclusion......Page 162
References......Page 168
6.1 Introduction......Page 171
6.2 The ‘Missing’ Conservation Paradigm......Page 173
6.2.1 The U-Turn of the City Government and the Aims of the District Governments......Page 174
6.2.2 The Saga of Public Housing......Page 176
6.3 A Return of the Conservation Paradigm......Page 179
6.3.1 A Triumph For the OCO?......Page 180
6.4 A Bumpy Way to Paradigm Shift and the Multiple Hierarchies of the Chinese Local State......Page 184
6.4.1 A Possible Paradigm Shift......Page 187
6.4.2 The Interaction of Hierarchy With Laws and Regulations......Page 191
6.4.3 City Hierarchies and Their Interactions With Individuals’ Orientations, Interests and Administrative Customs......Page 195
6.4.4 Hierarchy and the Relevance of Citizens’ Protests and of Other Forms of Participation......Page 201
6.4.5 Learning Under Multiple Hierarchies......Page 205
6.5 Conclusion......Page 207
References......Page 211
7.1 What Have We Learnt About the Transfer of Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou?......Page 215
7.2 Drawing Some Lessons from This Case Study......Page 217
7.3 How Does This Case Contribute to Develop Further Knowledge About the Micro-Dynamics of Policy Transfers?......Page 224
7.4 Talking About the ‘Chinese Specificities’......Page 230
References......Page 233
References......Page 236
Index......Page 250

Citation preview

Changing Urban Renewal Policies in China Policy Transfer and Policy Learning under Multiple Hierarchies

Giulia C. Romano

Changing Urban Renewal Policies in China

Giulia C. Romano

Changing Urban Renewal Policies in China Policy Transfer and Policy Learning under Multiple Hierarchies

Giulia C. Romano Institute of East-Asian Studies (IN-EAST) University of Duisburg-Essen Duisburg, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-36007-8    ISBN 978-3-030-36008-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36008-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Image courtesy of Liu Jian This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To the residents of Yangzhou Old City who have the right to a city that makes them feel home and belongs to them…

Foreword

The book the reader is about to engage with is not one with grand theories about ‘how urban planning in China works’ or one that claims to have the ‘final say on theories regarding cross-national policy transfer’. Although it definitely deals with these topics, its proclaimed level of ambition is at first sight far more trivial. It exposes the micro-dynamics of an evolutionary process in which the Chinese city of Yangzhou, located in the fairly prosperous Eastern province of Jiangsu, learns meaningful lessons from abroad on how to do preservation of ordinary residential buildings in its historical central districts. It is about the power-play of local politicians and civil servants engaged in the trading off of various public values such as municipal GDP growth, offering residents modern quality of life as they (i.e. the officials) see it and preserving old neighbourhoods in their original if not improved state of architecture. The institutional incentive systems through which these trade-offs occur do not as such change that much in the period covered in this book, but the position and attitude of a German agency offering its expertise on potentially attractive cautious European approaches to this problematique does. So do the people occupying key positions in the political and administrative hierarchy. They enjoy the responsibility to determine how these trade-offs play out in practice, to what extent the lessons drawn from the Berlin policy example should be adopted in Yangzhou and how these ideas end up being digested and embedded in new planning practices in their own local government bureaucracy. Although author Giulia Romano would herself emphatically deny the relevance or even existence of Chinese exceptionalism in planning or vii

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­ olicy making, I personally consider her empirical work an especially valup able and precious exercise in describing the intricacies, subtleties and specificities of the policy process of a given Chinese municipality. It is not that all Chinese municipalities are all the same or that what happens in the bosom of Chinese urban government administration is fundamentally different in all conceivable ways from what happens in cities elsewhere in the world. It is rather that when browsing through the meticulous descriptions of the administrative events on the pages of this work, a reader familiar with Chinese policy practice goes through an unmistakable and decidedly pleasant ‘Aha Erlebnis’: Yes, this is how it is done in reality. It is that when one has one’s own experience in Chinese policy practice, as I had in my advisory projects to the Shenzhen (Guangdong province) and Jingmen (Hubei province) municipal governments, one recognises so many things. It is just that these constellations of positions, ideas, events, incentives and types of policy officials could have existed in one’s imagination as fictitious sublimations based on true stories, but had never been so eloquently put together in an academic narrative like this. To get there, Giulia as a person particularly gifted in languages but with no previous experience in non-European ones, threw herself with more than average effort at Chinese language acquisition, written and spoken, effectively delaying her study by a couple of years. But that uncertain investment eventually paid off. Further down the road, she was able to converse with local officials and residents in their own language. She could consult relevant past and contemporary documents and manuscripts and comprehend them in-depth. She managed to build up professional and personal networks of respondents and informants allowing her to grasp new developments and circumstances each time she came to town. The above enabled her to describe decision making processes with impressive detail at some moments while also giving incisive interpretations of them at others. Considering that China for long time has not been a classical focus of policy transfer studies, I consider this work an important contribution to build up knowledge on a country which is still poorly explored by scholars interested in the travelling of policies and knowledge. Armed with the conviction that China should no longer be studied as an exotic country with a culture that is very foreign to us, but as a normal country, Giulia has launched herself into a passionate study of the policy learning process of a Chinese locality often unknown to us Westerners–one of these dozens of Chinese cities ending with “zhou” that we can barely locate on the map. While not a simple task–doing fieldwork in China is not that

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obvious–she has brought us to learn about the administrative logics of this locality by means of a vocabulary–the literature in public policy analysis and the sociology of organization–familiar to us. I hope she will forgive me for calling that social science conducted humanities style, and of a kind I have not often seen. The result is a compelling story where events unfold in a manner rarely told by social or political scientists, for whom generalisation and replicability in presenting findings and drawing conclusions normally rank higher than elegance and precision in presenting their narrative. Finally, what characterizes both her way of working when she did her data collection and her work as it now appears in front of us, is that her concern and compassion in the end revolve around the people whose neighbourhoods are or should have been preserved. She cares about China and things Chinese, but she will not easily defend or be automatically apologetic about things which somebody with a European heart cannot endure. She may be emotional about human dignity of the underprivileged, but listens to their side of the story rather than filling it in as many a European would be tempted to do without them on their behalf. It is therefore a publication about local politics and administration, but clearly with the interests of those these policies are made for at heart. Carpe historiam terrae incognitae I wish the reader the same uncanny recognition of a familiar strangeland that I had when I read it. Rotterdam, The Netherlands Shanghai, China

Martin de Jong

Acknowledgements

Changing urban renewal policies in  China is the culmination of a long research process that started in 2011 and ‘concluded’, so to speak, in 2018, as I’ve never stopped looking at what is happening in Yangzhou. It is the fruition of a long-term piece of research work for my doctorate, carried out at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po). The idea of looking into projects of international cooperation in the field of ‘sustainability’ realised in China goes back to the time I was a young student in Italy. I wondered whether ideas and practices in this field can travel, and whether they can also find a new home at thousands of miles away from their place of origin. It is with these questions that I left France in 2012 (where in the meantime I had moved to study Chinese and do my doctorate) to China, to begin a long journey that allowed me to know a multitude of things that I could have never imagined if I had stayed in my little hometown, Alessandria. What I present here is the result of years of enquiries, of a hundred and a few dozen interviews (even if the study itself is based on a half of them), spent on to know something about international cooperation projects in the field of “sustainable urban development” that were either in progress or had been carried out in China. Several papers on this topic began to appear in 2013, including the pioneer article by Martin de Jong, the only one who treated the subject from a policy transfers perspective. A common trait of this literature, which I could also notice in my interviews, was the acknowledgment that the results of these projects were really far from whatever understanding of sustainable urban development, and that the transfer of ideas often resulted in failures. xi

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Nevertheless I continued to hope to find a project where it was possible to observe something different. So I found the case of Yangzhou. I went there for the first time in 2013 and to my greatest surprise I was able to discover that ideas born in Europe have found a home in this Chinese city–which I understood to have been the home of my well-known compatriot Marco Polo for some years. In an attempt to reconstruct the process of an international cooperation project that had already ended in 2007, I dug amidst abandoned folders, full of dust, rust and spiders. I have consulted hundreds of pages, sometimes in Chinese, sometimes in English, sometimes in German, taken photos, packed piles of documents and crammed into my suitcase, hoping each time that at the check-in the attendants didn’t complain about the 30 and more kilograms baggage. I then started a journey that conducted me to Berlin, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and of course again and again to Yangzhou to talk to ex cooperation agents and local officials, Yangzhou residents and experts from China and Germany. A research of this type is challenging, because it requires immersion in a fieldwork that is of difficult access. Doing this would have not been possible without the help and care of many people, on top of them my interviewees in Yangzhou, which I cannot name, but to which I want to express all my deepest gratitude. The same goes for GIZ agents and particularly to Hannes Cassens, who supported me in the reconstruction of the project and allowed me to use the project’s reports and publications for my study. A big heartfelt thank goes to Lü Kai and his students at the Faculty of Architecture of Yangzhou University. I will always keep in my memory our long discussions and the warm reception and help of his students. A big heartfelt thank also to Lü Kunbin and Zhang Liping, who opened the door of their house and welcomed me as a family member. Thanks to them I never felt a foreigner in Yangzhou and their friendship is a precious gift I will always be grateful for. My deepest gratitude goes also to my supervisor, Richard Balme, who has continued believing in me throughout the research process and gave me carte blanche in all these years. A special mention also goes to François Bafoil, which introduced me to the exciting world of studies on bureaucracy. I am also deeply grateful to Bernd Seegers, which taught me to look at cities with a new pair of glasses, introducing some rudiments of urban planning and architecture. Special thanks also to Martin de Jong and Claire Colomb, who discussed the previous version of this work and gave me many ideas for the preparation of this manuscript. Thanks also to Laura Brown, for having supported me to polish my ‘too Italian’ English.

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Many people and institutions helped me during the fieldwork in China and back to Paris and Duisburg, and I owe to them my sincere gratitude. First of all, I would like to thank the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation for having supported my fieldwork via the exchange programme Cai Yuanpei. I also would like to thank the IN-EAST School of Advanced Studies, an initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, for their support in my research period 2018–2019. In Beijing: Professor Wu Yongping and the doctoral students at the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University for having helped me during my early stay in Beijing. A special thank goes also to Cyril Cassisa, Benjamin Denjean, Chin By and Wang Yan. In Shanghai: Professor Jiang Ping and his students at the Tyndall Centre in Fudan University. My special thanks also go to the friends that accompanied my long stay in Shanghai: Shoko, Bernd, Sawako and Keisuke, as well as Jérémy Cheval, who taught me a lot of things about ‘urban China’. Thanks also to Harry, Joseph, Polina, Ricky, Roland and Yong. In Paris: Fariba Adelkhah, Stéphanie Balme, David Camroux and Jean-François Di Meglio for their encouraging words and suggestions. Thanks also to Harald Bodenschatz, Osmany Porto de Oliveira, Tommaso Vitale and Zhou Xueguang. This work also benefitted from the support of several friends, with whom I spent unforgettable moments in my years of studies and peregrinations. Special thanks go to Alexandre Kazerouni, Olga Alinda Spaiser, Antoine Maire, Cuma Ciçek, Erica Guevara, Marie-Hélène Schwoob, Lucas Gomez, Marie Bassi, Marie Vannetzel, Merve Ozdemirkiran, Nicolas Fescharek, Wolfgang Göderle and Xavier Mellet. Thanks also to the CERI at Sciences Po, particularly to Joëlle and Roxana, and to Annie of the Ecole Doctorale. They come late, but they are the most important persons to whom I express my gratitude, as this research would have not been possible without their full and unconditioned support. My parents, Silvana and Nicolò, tried despite the distance to be close to me all the time. Their love and trust constantly nourished this work and helped me to go through its difficulties and challenges. I also would like to thank my brave brother Luca, a wonderful doctor, who inspired me with his research for perfection, continuously studying to improve his ability to assist his patients. A special thought also to my sister in law Marzena and to my two nephews, Matteo and Alessandro, for whom I’ve been an unforgivably distant aunt, “always working, always working”. My final big thank goes to Armin, my twin soul, who supported me in these years, fully understanding the hardship of ‘giving birth’ to a book, for having shared this same special exercise.

Contents

1 Studying the Transfer and Learning of Careful Urban Renewal in a Chinese City  1 2 A Research Framework to Capture the Complexity of Policy Transfers 27 3 The Chinese Paradigm of Urban Renewal in the Early 2000s 41 4 Introducing a New Paradigm: The Delivery of Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou 75 5 Towards the Establishment of a New Urban Renewal Paradigm117 6 Neither Careful Nor Destructive: Is Urban Renewal in Transition?161 7 Conclusion205

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References227 Index241

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1

Schema of the research framework Plan of the entire 18.25 km2 old city of Yangzhou. The surface comprised in the ‘square’ at the bottom (right side) of the plan is the 5.09  km2 Ming-­ Qing Old City. (Courtesy of Yangzhou Urban Planning Bureau) Fig. 4.1 A narrow alleyway in Yangzhou Old City. (Credit: Image courtesy of Liu Jian) Fig. 4.2 Wenhua Lane after the refurbishment. (Personal archive)

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CHAPTER 1

Studying the Transfer and Learning of Careful Urban Renewal in a Chinese City

In recent years a series of initiatives exploring “sustainable urban development”, “eco-city” or “low-carbon city” concepts have been established in many Chinese cities. Some of these projects are the fruit of bilateral partnerships with other countries, and involve the partners in the testing of various methods and measures to improve the liveability of existing cities or to develop new cities capable of displaying sound environmental and social performances. Similarly to other urban-focused initiatives targeting developing countries, these projects share the objective of transferring knowledge, competences, recommendations, and / or technology to the targeted cities. Broadly speaking, it can also be said that a variety of approaches and collaboration patterns exists. Sometimes these collaborations try to offer policy and technical solutions in the field of city development, or in the field of urban renewal. Others offer opportunities to explore new construction concepts and to embrace ecologically and socially oriented practices, sometimes involving substantial investments from the cooperating partners. Some other projects also aim at building capacities to ensure the adoption of the approaches and measures explored via international collaborations. We can also find projects that promote specific planning and technological solutions, often proposed by famous names in the field of urban construction and design. Scholars have interrogated the appropriateness and relevance of these interventions in different contexts, reflecting on the design of cooperation projects and on their specific requirements (Louargant et  al. 2011); on © The Author(s) 2020 G. C. Romano, Changing Urban Renewal Policies in China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36008-5_1

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participating actors, on the concrete activities on the ground as well as on the results, which often turned out to be disappointing for ‘donor’ agencies (cf. de Jong 2013; de Jong et al. 2013a, b; Landel 2011). This study fits into this general research direction, which aims at interrogating the validity and the conditions of the diffusion of (Western) models of urban development in developing or transition countries (cf. Koop and Amilhat 2011). In particular, as this study focuses on China, it asks about what happens when ideas and knowledge in the field of urban development/ urban planning travel from Europe to China, and about the impacts they produce. It also asks whether models and/or approaches developed in a specific setting can be valid for other very different contexts, whether they have the capacity to inspire change in local policies and paradigms, whether they are emulated in their scopes and contents or whether they are incompatible with local practices, policymaking styles and institutions. To answer these questions, this research focuses on the impacts, from a policy-transfer perspective, of a project of international cooperation that was conducted in Yangzhou, a Chinese city in the Jiangsu province, more than 10 years ago. Looking at the reception of “Careful Urban Renewal”, an approach developed in West Berlin in the 1980s to renovate old buildings and quarters in a careful and sustainable manner, the study analyses whether such an approach could inspire change in the practices and policies of urban renewal in Yangzhou. As such, this study aims at contributing to the policy transfer literature by focusing on a context – China – which remains somewhat unexplored by this field of studies (Zhang and Marsh 2016). It hopes to shed light on as-yet-unanswered questions such as how much China learns from the West and what mechanisms promote or hinder diffusion/transfers in China, etc., which have been asked by scholars interested in assessing the impacts of international models on China’s reforms and in diffusion/transfer processes in China (Christensen et  al. 2008, 2012; Foster 2005). In particular, borrowing a classical question of Richard Rose (1993, p. 22) the study sets out to illustrate what happens when a concept developed “in one setting” is transferred elsewhere, whether this programme “is capable of being put into effect” in another context, and, if so, whether it takes roots in this setting. The case of Yangzhou is particularly fruitful to explore these questions. It shows that a foreign model such as Careful Urban Renewal could find fertile land also in Yangzhou, as it has been adopted and adapted by the local administration. It also shows, however, that the process that led to the “inventive appropriation” (Bayart 1996) of

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this model was bumpy and uncertain from the beginning, and its results are still unpredictable. In particular, the study points out at the presence of an intermittent opening and closing of ‘windows for policy learning’, which is at the heart of the uncertainties of the local process of policy learning. This study argues that this intermittence has to be ascribed to the particular institutional system of the local government in China, which prevents the policy learning process from having continuity, from being consistent as well as from being capable of supporting paradigmatic changes and the rooting of certain practices and institutions. To capture these particular aspects, this study puts forward the concept of ‘learning under multiple hierarchies’. By opening up the ‘black box’ of the city government of Yangzhou and undertaking a longitudinal study of the local process of policy learning and lesson drawing, it was indeed possible to observe that the capacities for policy learning of the local administration are influenced by different levels of the state, as well as by different departments and units within the local government, defending different interests as well as political and technical positions. The presence of different objectives and interests in the local administration, as well as the impacts of policies defined at different levels of government, were at the heart of the bumpy process of policy learning and adaptation, of its challenges, as well as of unexpected re-elaborations of the policy model transferred. The study, in particular, underlines the role of the particular hierarchical structure to which the government of a city like Yangzhou is subjected, which may allow for the opening of windows for policy learning, or conversely, may cause their closure.1 It shows that the presence of opportunities for policy learning is dependent on the particular interactions between different levels of the state (e.g. the national government, the provincial government, the city government, the district government, etc.) and the presence or absence of local policy entrepreneurs willing and being capable to experiment with new ideas and propose new policies. It also shows that international cooperation can trigger and support policy learning, by offering local policy entrepreneurs precious chances for policy experimentation and for policy advocacy. Albeit that the insights collected in this research suggest that whatever attempt at writing any conclusion would be in vain, given that it is an ongoing process, this study hopes to prove useful for scholars interested in public policy analysis, in China studies, and in urban studies. In particular, this study sets itself two main goals. First of all, it wishes to shed light on the “micro-dynamics of policy transfers” (Hadjiisky et al. 2017) of a case

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located in China, analysing the ‘nitty and gritty’ of transfer and learning processes in a Chinese locality. As such, it cares to answer questions interested in the role and use of foreign knowledge in the realisation of reforms in China. Secondly, by building knowledge on processes of policy transfer and policy diffusion in China, this book wishes to contribute to this field of studies, recently enriched by the works of scholars looking at new contexts well beyond the classical focus on Western countries. These elements will be briefly expounded in the following paragraphs.

1.1   The Contribution of an Analysis of the Micro-Dynamics of Transfer in a Chinese City This study explores the micro-dynamics of policy transfer in a Chinese city, providing insights into how the local administration makes use of foreign knowledge. This choice responds to a call made more than 10 years ago by scholars in administrative sciences who stressed the need to gain more in-­depth knowledge about the “processes of influence” and impacts of Western norms and models in Chinese reform processes (Christensen et  al. 2008). As such, this study focuses on the external dimension of reform origins in China, complementing studies that have principally focused on domestic factors. This perspective, in particular, adds up to analyses in the field of China studies that have developed separately from policy transfer studies, but have nevertheless revealed some peculiar characteristics of policy diffusion and policy learning in the country when triggered by domestic reform initiatives (cf. Teets and Hurst 2015; Heilmann 2008). This study can thus be seen as a further contribution to this literature, dedicated to the characteristics of the policy process in China, in particular exploring how international influences trigger processes of policy learning in China and how the country transforms its policy paradigms in interaction with foreign knowledge. To this end, the study adopts the perspective of policy transfer studies and tries to provide a detailed picture of transfer dynamics in a Chinese city, with a special focus on processes of policy learning and knowledge use, as suggested by the recent literature on policy transfers (Dolowitz 2017; Hadjiisky et al. 2017). The adoption of this perspective aims at contributing to build knowledge about transfers and policy learning in China, while making this country a relevant case study to draw general lessons for the study of policy transfers, and more broadly for political studies. The complexification of transfer and

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diffusion phenomena indeed requires this literature to expand beyond its traditional boundaries and to consider more generally the multiple origins and destinations of travelling policy objects. Moreover, the adoption of the policy transfer perspective also seeks to promote the de-compartmentalisation of China-related studies, and suggests to study China as a “normal” country (Rocca 2006). This last remark is developed in response to works that stressed so-­ called Chinese characteristics (Zhongguo tese – 中国特色) to provide expla­ nations to the processes and outcomes of reforms observed in contemporary China. As pointed out by Jean-Louis Rocca (1996, 2006, 2016), some of these studies share, implicitly or explicitly, the similar viewpoint that as China has unique, peculiar characteristics (e.g. its culture, historical legacy and political regime), its social phenomena and trajectories are also peculiar and incomparable. Consequently, according to this point of view, the political, economic and social phenomena we can observe today in China are the result of a presumed Chinese “unchanging tradition” and “incomparable culture”. This reading of Chinese social phenomena from this “national culture” lens (cf. Friedberg 2005) does not allow us to see that, in reality, there exist also many similarities with other countries (Christensen et al. 2008). Therefore, it is important to study China as a normal country, in this specific case by adopting the same research questions as well as the same conceptual and theoretical tools as that of policy transfer and policy learning. In so doing, we can acknowledge that the studied phenomena are the products of new or original configurations of various forces which shall be carefully identified (Rocca 1996, 2006), rather than of a generic ‘Chinese culture’ or ‘Chinese tradition’. 1.1.1  The Study of the Micro-Dynamics of Transfers For the sake of analytical clarity, when talking about policy transfer this study follows the classical definition provided by David Dolowitz and David Marsh (2000). For these two authors policy transfer is “the process by which knowledge about how policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political setting” (2000, p. 5). A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since this first definition was proposed, as well as since the first ‘six-question’ methodology was drafted by these two authors.

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Their approach to study transfers consists in answering six crucial questions that focus on both macro and micro levels of enquiry (Evans 2009),2 which became the heart of the development of a very fertile research field. Following these questions, as well as other traditions that have focused on travelling public policies all over the world (e.g. policy diffusion, policy convergence, studies on Europeanisation, etc.), the so-called “policy transfer studies” have contributed a vast amount of knowledge (and literature) on the exogenous origins of policy change. Considering how each of these traditions has contributed to the decades of policy transfer studies, the study of travelling policy recipes has thus taken important steps forward.3 Albeit each of the traditions is characterised by a distinct history, approach and objective, there is now a tendency to insist less on their distinctions and to focus more on how these different fields can contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon (cf. Hadjiisky et  al. 2017; Porto de Oliveira and Pimenta de Faria 2017; Delpeuch 2009). Within these developments, the recent calls to integrate policy transfer studies with a focus on policy learning, policy translation and knowledge utilisation (cf. Pal and Porto de Oliveira 2018; Hadjiisky et al. 2017; Dolowitz 2017; Stone 2017) are particularly important for this study. For instance, for Hadjiisky et  al. (2017, p.  6), “the primary oversight” of policy transfer studies “was in neglecting the ‘micro-­ dynamics’ of transfer”, and in having not sufficiently looked at policy translation, at the appropriation of foreign models and at local resistance. To overcome this limitation, these authors invite the placement of “micro-process and actors’ configurations at the heart of analysis” to be able to capture “the processual, uncertain and context-sensitive character or transfers” (ibid., p.  15). In this way it will be possible to take into account in the analysis the social space in which actors are embedded, which has an influence on the way they appropriate the object of transfer (ibid, p. 14). This focus on the micro-dynamics of transfer, and in particular on learning, translation and knowledge utilisation, allows to observe that when models travel and are adopted in a certain locality, they often go through a process of local adaptation and hybridisation. As such, it is very rare that policies remain the same during the policy transfer process. Instead, when transfer takes place, it “is qualified by the extensiveness of hybridity, synthesis, tinkering with models, adaptation and ‘localisation’” (Stone 2017, p. 56). This implies that the analysis focuses on the receivers and their interpretation of incoming policies (Pal and Porto de Oliveira 2018). Following

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this recommendation, this research was predominantly inspired by an article written by Laurence Dumoulin and Sabine Saurugger (2010), two French political scientists who suggested combining the analysis of policy transfers with sociological approaches. This expedient shall help capture the unpredictable reality of transfer processes, which are most of the time “floating” and “hesitant”. In particular, they proposed looking at the sociology of translation of Bruno Latour and Michel Callon. In so doing, we shall stress the continuity between endogenous and exogenous factors in the explanation of policy change, thereby considering both transferred knowledge and local endogenous reform processes in policy change to be equally important (Dumoulin and Saurugger 2010, p. 22).4 In this respect, Pierre Lascoumes’ (1996) notion of transcodage (transcoding), elaborated on the basis of Michel Callon’s sociology of translation to apply it to the specific conditions of public action and policymaking, is a fruitful entry point to reflect on these aspects. This concept resonates with the recent conceptualisation of policy transfers as proposed by eminent representatives of this tradition, such as David Dolowitz and Diane Stone. For instance, Diane Stone (2017, p. 67) wrote that research shall “escape from the idea” of having dual tendencies of success and failure “to evoke the metaphor of policy translation as an experimental process in constant policy motion turning between innovation and reaction, compliance and invention”. In this respect, “divergence is expected”, as well as “fluid multi-actor processes of interpretation, mutation and assemblage”, which represent “the constant reality” (ibid.). In a recent article, David Dolowitz (2017, p.  48) then provided a very useful conceptualisation of the characteristics and outcomes of policy transfers. This author wrote that: to understand transfer scholars must look beyond where policymaker A sees a policy in system B and then uses it in an unaltered form to create a similar policy in system A. Rather, it is far more likely that due to the complexity of the policy process policymakers in system A are likely to see a range of policies in systems B, C and D and that these (or part of these) policies are combined with E, F, G to create a “new” policy Z. And, that as Z works its way through the policymaking process, it will be further altered and modified as new ideas (some transferred some indigenous) mix with it.

This conceptualisation is contained in a section of the article called “Where do we go from here?”. In this section, David Dolowitz (2017, p. 45)

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recommended that in order to further develop policy transfer studies, researches have to use literature on knowledge utilisation and on policymaking. These literatures in particular focus on the development of knowledge, on the way in which it is appropriated in the policy-making process, as well as on the way in which it is used by relevant actors in policy “development, implementation and evaluation” (ibid., p. 46). All these elements will finally enable us to track policy change. Starting from this point, he proceeded to theorise the characteristics of transfers and knowledge utilisation, stating, as a first point that foreign knowledge works its way through the policy system with a relatively slow pace and that it can produce change gradually, with the possibility of “leading to second and third order change in the long-run”. In this process, the agents responsible of policy transfer may also change, as the process may last several years. When we can identify the direct entrance of foreign knowledge in another system, it is very likely that original information gets transformed to fit “the political-cultural-­ ideological needs of the agent using the knowledge”. Moreover, local agents can also selectively adopt foreign knowledge. In particular, the author wrote that the ways in which knowledge is used can be understood “as a political weapon legitimising an already advocated political position” (ibid., p. 46). This aspect represents a problem for policymaking, because when information is used in such a manner, rather than as it was initially designed or as it uses to work in the original setting, knowledge loses “vital information”. The policy resulting from this process of adaption is then “likely to lead to problems” (ibid.). Even when policymakers try to truly adhere to the policy model transferred, they lack of information about the factors behind the “success (or otherwise)” of a policy “in the originating system (or systems)”. This is due to the fact that often the transferred knowledge is “packaged and moved and unpackaged” in the process of knowledge transmission, and that policymakers “are not party to all of the material that was transferred” (ibid.). Their information is incomplete. Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, it is important to look at transfers from a knowledge utilisation perspective, as the knowledge used can actually have an impact on the way in which issues and policies are understood, applied, as well as on the ways in which specific questions are framed. (ibid., p. 47). Dolowitz also offered some theorisations as for the ways in which knowledge updating and policy change take place, “likely to occur over a series of stages rather than a single instance of all-­encompassing

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updating”. In other words, transfer and knowledge use are more likely to be gradual, rather than a one-shot adoption and integration of foreign knowledge into local policy frames. Namely, as a first step, foreign knowledge may play an “enlightenment function” that can help local policymakers “focus on a situation in their home system” that shows similarities to problems in other localities. This new awareness might encourage them to use the new knowledge “symbolically” or to start understanding certain situations as problems that need corresponding solutions. With the time passing, and with policy solutions being designed, these will more likely correspond to “a combination of a number of different knowledge bases” that were collected or “built up over the policy process” (ibid.). As a matter of fact, with the development of a policy, we can observe the participation of different actors and institutions in the policy process, each one “bringing in different collections of knowledge, interests, motivations and goals” (original emphasis) that have an impact on final policies (ibid.). If, at the end of this process, we can observe a change in the instruments or in the goals of a policy, this result can be ascribed to “the culmination of a range of learning experiences” as well as the use “of both hard and soft lessons” (ibid.). The article also offers interesting information concerning the agents involved in the transfer and policymaking process, fundamental to understand what knowledge gets transferred and how it is finally used. In particular, following the lessons of organisational learning analysis, Dolowitz underlined the challenges of promoting knowledge utilisation when agents or institutions do not occupy positions that allow them to access policymaking. The institutional role of an agent of transfer indeed can limit the access to knowledge or the possibility to use it, therefore “the power and position of actors within the policymaking system” do matter a lot (ibid., p. 49). The article makes the example of low level bureaucrats, who are not always in the position to make policy proposals to those agents that matter in policy development and policy implementation at upper hierarchical levels. For knowledge to be used in the policy process it needs to be proposed by a “policy entrepreneur (or policy champion)”. Foreign knowledge that is “held in limbo” can also find useful application when we have a change of situation or when “a core actor who had been blocking the use of information moves (or the one with the information moves to a more favourable position or institution)”. Finally, Dolowitz also underlined the importance of the institutional settings where the policymaking system is embedded. Sometimes i­nstitutional

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constraints interfere with the desire and ability of transfer agents to introduce foreign knowledge into the local policy process, and these constraints can range from “institutional tacit knowledge constraints” to “budget constraints” or the impossibility of “having a technician in charge of urban planning”, as he has observed in his studies. Similar to this study, Dolowitz has actually analysed the transfer of German technological solutions to American cities, observing that administrative hierarchy could block the adoption of certain arrangements and technical solutions. These aspects are also captured by Claire Colomb (2007). Observing that cooperation projects provide opportunities to trigger policy change but do not “necessarily translate into actual transfer, let alone into policy impacts” (ibid., p. 350, original emphasis), she suggested putting learning at the heart of the analysis, and focus in particular on inter- and intra-­organisational learning. This operation implies “that the process of cooperation and learning” is analysed “as a dependent variable” that we need to explain, by considering both intra-organisational and inter-organisational relationships; and as “an explanatory variable” for the observed outcomes, in particular the presence (or not) of “changes in planning policies and practices” (ibid., p. 356, original emphasis). To this aim, she proposes a “bottom-up” construction of the theoretical framework by using concepts and approaches regularly used in the analysis of public policy and the sociology of public action, focusing both on learning within organisations and between organisations (ibid., p. 361). The author above all proposes a list of potential approaches, among which Peter Hall’s focus on social learning, the sociology of organisation, the sociology of innovation and diffusion, the concept of “advocacy coalitions” by Paul Sabatier, the “information theory approach” by Harold Wolman and Ed Page, among others (ibid., p. 362). The list proposed is not exhaustive, thence researchers are free to choose the approaches that will help them analyse the process of policy learning and translation and account for policy change. It is important to underline, in this respect, that policy transfer analysis per se “cannot provide a general explanatory theory of policy change, but when combined with other approaches an empirically grounded account of policy change can be developed” (Stone 2012, p. 490). In this study, the choice mainly fell on integrating Peter Hall’s approach on paradigm shifts and social learning and John Kingdon’s focus on ­agenda-setting with a more fine-grained analysis of organisational learning in state administrations. To this end, Pierre Lascoumes’ focus on ­transcodage

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(­ translation) and the insights of studies on bureaucratic organisations and of studies conducted in the tradition of organisational learning analysis were particularly helpful. As shown in Chap. 2, the combination of these theoretical approaches supported the search of elements that could explain how certain policies could emerge in a specific institutional context and how these policies have evolved. This choice also followed the principal recommendation of developing a multi-level research framework to study transfers (Dwyer and Ellison 2009; Evans 2009), while responding to the specific needs of the analysis, as illustrated in Chap. 2. 1.1.2  China in Policy Transfer Studies China and other non-Western countries have for a long time remained on the margin of policy transfer studies, as until a decade ago researchers had mostly focused on cases of transfers and diffusion among Western countries (Marsh and Sharman 2009). In recent years, this gap has started to be filled, as researchers from all over the world have multiplied case studies of policy diffusion and policy transfer beyond the West (cf. Porto de Oliveira 2017; Wood 2015; Didier et  al. 2012; Landel 2011), China included (Balme 2019; Romano 2017; Liu and Leisering 2017; Lim and Horesh 2016; Liu and Sun 2016; Zhang 2016; Zhang and Marsh 2016; de Jong 2013; Christensen et al. 2012). This opening up to other contexts to draw useful lessons for the development of political studies has been really necessary in times in which concepts, ideas and imperatives of governance circulate all over the world thanks to the work of global ‘knowledge hubs’ such as the World Bank and many other agencies. The concepts propelled by these organisations originate in very different countries, both in the so-called North and South as well as in the East and West (cf. Porto de Oliveira 2017; Lim and Horesh 2016; Didier et al. 2012), and travel in various directions, significantly transforming the directionalities of transfer and diffusion. When looking at the Chinese case, in recent years researchers have started interrogating the role of foreign knowledge in inspiring reforms in China under a policy transfer or a policy diffusion perspective, for instance in the field of social policies (Liu and Sun 2016; Zhang and Marsh 2016), of environmental policies (Balme 2019), or in that of administrative and institutional reforms (Zhang and Marsh 2016; Christensen et  al. 2008, 2012). As for the policy sector analysed by this study, it is possible to signal a pioneer article written by Martin de Jong (2013), which analysed a

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­ ino-­Dutch bilateral cooperation project in the field of sustainable urban S development from a policy transfer perspective. Focusing on the process of international cooperation and on its immediate results, which were not particularly successful for the Dutch partners, the author argued that the failure of the project has to be attributed to the characteristics of transfers in China. He argues that China has a particular “art of institutional bricolage”, which is the result of a “path-dependent view of institutional transplantation”. This art would configure what the author calls “the Chinese way” of transferring and adopting concepts from abroad. According to this view, Chinese decision-makers adopt foreign knowledge on the basis of “national self-interest”, of their political agenda and of its technical merits, rather than on the “theoretical robustness” of Western concepts and on international “economic and political ideals”. As a result, we observe cherry-picking and selectiveness, which lead to incomplete, partial transfers. Ideas are adopted only when they are not too disruptive for the existing administrative arrangements. This pattern often translates into the adoption of technical and technological solutions, while proposals that touch upon local governance structures and practices are systematically rejected. Thus, ideas such as reforming administrative usages or introducing practices like citizen participation find barren land in China, an argument also shared by Fan (2014) in her study of the Yangzhou project. De Jong (2013) also observes that this Chinese way of importing concepts from abroad is characterised by gradualism, hence by the gradual introduction of reforms rather than by a ‘one-shot’ adoption of the reform package. De Jong’s study is a precious starting point for this study, as it has the merit of pointing out at the challenges of collaboration projects in the field of urban planning. In particular, it shows that local decision-makers may have a mixed attitude towards collaboration partners and foreign knowledge, which is in turn a major cause of frustration for cooperating agencies. These difficulties were also evident in the case of Yangzhou, and clearly indicate that cooperation projects need, first of all, local ‘project owners’ in order to have some impacts. Drawing from de Jong’s study, the analysis of the case of Yangzhou contributes to build knowledge about policy transfers to China in the field of urban development and urban planning by adopting both a macro and micro perspective on the local process of policy learning. In particular, this study makes use of a ­longitudinal perspective, which looks at the ex ante and ex post situations of the cooperation project, records learning in the various phases of the

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­ rocess, and explores the dynamics of the transfer process and its impacts p in the receiving context. Although identifying exactly what was learnt and retained from the bilateral collaboration was not always possible, as transfer outcomes are hardly the result of a mono-directional flow of knowledge and of a unique source of inspiration (Jacoby 2000), this procedure allowed for an observation of what is adopted, what is rejected, what has evolved and what micro-processes lead to the results.

1.2   Yangzhou: A Case of (Difficult) Policy Learning The case of Yangzhou is particularly fruitful to explore the questions previously introduced earlier, and in particular the micro-dynamics of transfers in a Chinese city. Yangzhou is a third-tier city (prefectural-level city) of Jiangsu province, one of the richest regions in the country, situated on the eastern part of China. In 1982, the city was recognised as a “famous historical and cultural city” (lishi wenhua mingcheng – 历史文化名城) by the Chinese State Council. When a city obtains this kind of recognition, national and local authorities commit to pay special attention to its heritage and to develop policies and approaches for its protection.5 Although today the vestiges of the glorious past of Yangzhou are rare, due to the redevelopment operations conducted over the past decades, the city conserves a part of its historical quarters and several historical monuments, including an area dating back to the Ming and Qing eras, commonly referred to by the inhabitants of Yangzhou as the “old city” (lao chengqu – 老城区). Over the years, Yangzhou administration has made several attempts to protect this historic area; however, it was not able to prevent major demolitions, triggering the disappearance of some historic neighbourhoods and forcing a share of its thousands of inhabitants to move into the new areas of expansion. When this enquiry began, at the end of 2013, the local administration was carrying out a “low-carbon community” project in one neighbourhood of the old city, as part of its own strategy of renewal and protection of the traditional quarters of the city. The project was run in collaboration with a US non-profit organisation, the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC), from whose perspective the project was proceeding quite successfully, as the local government implemented many of their recommendations. The project manager suggested that this

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resulted from his past experience of having collaborated with the Yangzhou city government. Together with another expert who collaborated on the project, the manager had years earlier worked on a collaborative project run by the German cooperation agency GTZ (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit).6 The project was entitled “Eco-city Planning and Management” and focused, among other issues, on the conservation of the old city. This topic caught the city administration’s interest, giving GTZ agents the chance to provide guidance on the conservation of the old city and to realise some pilot projects. Thus, according to ISC agents, the realisation of their low-carbon community project benefitted from the Yangzhou city government’s past experience with GTZ, and in particular from the ties that had been established between these agents and a number of local officials. These elements signalled that the project run by GTZ had some kind of impact on the Yangzhou city government. Something was still going on six years after the end of the GTZ project, and this aspect made the Yangzhou case study particularly suitable for the exploration of the research questions previously introduced. In particular, by confronting early fieldwork observations with the reports issued by GTZ, it was possible to observe that local policymakers were still considering and studying many of the proposals that the foreign agency had made seven years earlier. It was also possible to observe that some of the proposals made by GTZ agents had been turned into policy documents and many concepts had been enshrined into local plans. The same low-carbon community project run by ISC could be considered a ‘spin off’ of the earlier exchanges and experiments made with the German cooperation agency; the case then signalled that there were many signs of policy learning. As a matter of fact, during the first visit to Yangzhou, in October 2013, the local officials who were interviewed were very proud to illustrate that their approach to city renewal was very different from other places in China and from those in the past. As Chap. 3 will show, old quarters were and still today are razed down and their residents relocated. Contrary to this approach, Yangzhou officials underlined that not only did the local government conserve the existing buildings and proportions, but it also allowed residents to participate in the renewal process. They explained that residents were listened to in the process of urban renewal, could decide about the fate of their own homes and could have a say in the renewal of their neighbourhood. Moreover, between 2013 and 2014 officials showed that they were preparing projects in which they tried to

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experiment with new solutions in view of developing policies to target the problems existing in the Old City. In this regard, the officials interviewed cared enough to emphasise that what they were illustrating was their approach. In other terms, even if they had the chance to collaborate for longer than five years with German and Chinese experts on the topic of eco-city planning and management, and recognised the filiation link with the cooperation project, what they were describing was the fruit of their own experiences and studies. These elements indicated that not only did the cooperation project have an impact, but also that the local government launched an autochthone process of policy learning and translation that led to original interpretations of the model proposed by the cooperation agency. As such, they signalled that in the search for answers to the questions exposed earlier, the research not only had to focus on the phase of delivery of Careful Urban Renewal by the foreign cooperation agency, but it also had to explore the local process of policy learning and translation. This required a longitudinal study focusing on the different phases of policy learning. First of all this procedure enabled a relatively long time span, running between 2000 and 2019, to be covered, and for the changes that occurred in national and local policies and approaches, starting from the situation before the project of international cooperation, to be observed. Secondly, the enquiry particularly sought to look at the “performance and persistence” (Jacoby 2000) of the new model of urban renewal in Yangzhou as a measure of the effectiveness of transfer and imitation (or translation), which eventually led to look into the challenges of policy change. Indeed, transferring and learning Careful Urban Renewal has not been an easy process. The entire project of international cooperation and the phases that followed were characterised by many difficulties, resulting in a bumpy process of policy learning. Moreover, recent fieldwork, run in 2015 and then in 2018, also revealed the relatively instable nature of the novelties introduced in Yangzhou. In a recent illustration of their activities, the officials interviewed lamented that experimenting with new policies and new measures was more difficult compared with the beginning of the decade. Although in 2016 they established new regulations for the old city, the responsibilities for policymaking and project realisation was no longer in their hands. Given this situation, they made despairing comments concerning the future of their approach and of their projects. For these officials, continuing the experimentations launched in previous years, realising new projects and refining local policies was no longer possible.

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Nevertheless, at the time of writing, a project following their approach was in its phase of completion while another was in the planning phase, and several interviewees in the city administration affirmed that the latter is to be according to the needs and will of the residents and shop owners of the area. Although the administrations running these projects were different to those encountered some years before, there seemed to be hope for the careful, resident-oriented, small-scale approach of urban renewal. These examples in particular seemed to indicate that Careful Urban Renewal, or better yet its local translation, still existed, and suggested that transfers are potentially never-ending processes, the outcomes of which are hard to predict. Indeed, during the latest fieldwork, in September 2018, the local news reported a case of demolition and forced relocation in the city, which signalled a break in the careful approach to urban renewal. New questions arose, notably about whether the local administration responsible for city planning could pursue its agenda, while establishing conclusions was rendered more difficult.

1.3   Researching the Local Process of Policy Transfer, Learning and Translation The core focus of this analysis is the process of the policy transfer, learning and translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou as well as the outcomes of that process, in particular their performance and persistence. To conduct the analysis, this research was inspired by an article written by Claire Colomb (2007), who proposed a multi-step, qualitative research approach to study and evaluate learning and policy change triggered by cooperation programmes on territorial development and spatial planning.7 The core focus of this approach is that of producing a detailed analysis of learning in its different manifestations as well as that of the factors that produce or hinder learning. Such an operation can be undertaken by both focusing on learning within organisations and between organisations, as well as on the effects of policy learning. This approach was considered particularly suitable for this study, as it shares similar focuses and questions. In particular, it responded to the objective of understanding how certain proposals for policy change suggested by foreign interventions do actually interact with local dynamics and how they intersect ongoing processes of social change. This requires looking at the various types of factors that play a role in the process of policy transfer, that constrain local actors,

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that give a context to the analysed phenomena and that produce complexity. Following these recommendations, this study was mainly carried out through process-tracing (Gerring 2004), following, in a longitudinal manner, the dynamics of the transfer process and of learning, and monitoring their impact in the receiving context. This task was undoubtedly difficult; it required resorting to various reports and publications to reconstruct the international cooperation project and its follow-up, as well as enquiries into the local process of policymaking to record policy learning and local adaptation. As the project was concluded six years before the beginning of the enquiry, many documents got lost. Some of them, retrieved in a public office that once served as a GTZ base in Yangzhou, enabled the reconstruction of several activities conducted between 2000 and 2007 as well as the identification of the interpretations that GTZ gave of the local situation. After a patient analysis of this material, it was possible to reconstruct several fragments of the initiative and to understand what represented an example of ‘good practice’ for the German cooperation agency. A literature review about the model of Careful Urban Renewal as developed in West Berlin also supported the identification of the characteristics of the object transferred. To reconstruct the project of international cooperation and find a key to interpret the archive material, the study was also supported by a series of interviews in Beijing, Berlin, Nanjing, Yangzhou and Shanghai, and via Skype with the agents that had previously collaborated on the project. These steps proved instrumental for the preparation of the interview guides that supported a second, core phase of the research, the enquiry into the local process of policy learning and policymaking. This phase mainly focused on recording the activities that took place during and after the project of international cooperation, as well as the impacts and outcomes of these activities. This operation mainly consisted in ‘a fine-grained analysis’ that tried to identify what aspects of the proposals made by the German cooperation agency were discussed and implemented and what other aspects could not be (easily) applied. It also tried to identify those local evolutions that supported or hindered the local learning and adaptation process, as well as the changes that had been introduced by the local government. It is important to note that conducting an enquiry that targets the public administration in China is not an easy task. Fieldwork access cannot be taken for granted. Investigating into these issues often required digging

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into the problems and challenges of the process of international cooperation and of the steps that followed. Borrowing Vivien Lowndes’ words, asking these questions was “dirty work”, as it required learning about “the ‘real’ rules that shape local political behaviour (informal as well as formal, invisible as well as visible)” (2005, p. 306). This dirty work required not only spending a certain amount of time on the fieldwork, but also “learning how to ask non-threatening, context-specific questions about rule configurations” (Ostrom 1999, p.  53, cited in Lowndes 2005). Several visits to Yangzhou and full transparency about the research purposes as well as about one’s own personal information were necessary to collect information about local rules, structures and relationships, the transfer process as well as its outcomes.8 The collection of information and reconstruction of the outcomes of transfer is mostly based on 53 interviews (in Chinese and in English), which do not count the repeated meetings with a number of core informants as well numerous informal chats with residents of the Old City.9 These interviews were mostly (but not exclusively) conducted with specific organisations of the Yangzhou administration. Borrowing the words of Sarah Charlton (2018, pp. 2169–2170), the study focuses on how these components of the state administration, specifically “those who conceptualise, implement, administer, evaluate and pronounce on” the outcomes of specific policies, understand the local problems, “identify deficiencies to be rectified” and try to provide answers to them. As such, the enquiry tried to “gain insights into views from the state”, by understanding how actors in these administrations understand their work, their sources of constraints, their capacities to advocate for policies and to introduce policy reforms. Therefore, the study offers a look into the local micro-dynamics of transfer and learning mostly based on local officials’ representations, understandings, and assessments of the local situation, as well as on the explanations they provide about their own choices and practices, their interactions with other actors and with institutional structures, and their codes of conduct.

1.4   Structure of the Book As developed in this chapter, the transfer of Careful Urban Renewal corresponds to a long and complex process, the characteristics of which had to be seized in a longitudinal manner. To present these aspects, the book is organised in a way that reconstructs the process of policy transfer as well

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as policy learning and translation between the years 2000 and 2019. In particular, it cares to show the situation ex ante, hence the characteristics of the local approach of urban renewal before the project of international cooperation, and then the situation during and after the project of cooperation in order to trace learning and its effects. To this end, the narrative is based on a rich amount of information, not only collected during the fieldwork, but also by employing secondary literature (e.g. existing literature in the field of urban studies focusing on China, journal articles), which provides a rich and vivid picture of the phenomena studied as well as complementary information to primary sources. The latter are then represented by interviews and official reports and policy documents, the excerpts of which are sometimes reported in English. These empirical elements are introduced after Chap. 2, which is dedicated to elaborating the theoretical and conceptual framework. The research benefitted of a double-level framework that combined a series of approaches focusing on the process of policy transfer from micro- and macro-perspectives. This expedient helped take into account the multiple rationalities, interests and objectives that had an impact on the transfer process, attributable to various levels of the state as well as to the different professional and political positions existing in diverse departments and units of different government levels. The choice of this approach followed the suggestions made by recent theoretical literature dedicated to policy transfers, encouraging researchers to explore transfers by taking into account the dimensions of learning and translation and focusing on actors and their structures of constraint. Following the methodological recommendations exposed earlier and the focuses of the theoretical framework, Chap. 3 introduces the situation before the beginning of the project of international cooperation. It depicts the plans and policies for the Old City of the Yangzhou government, as well as the practices of urban renewal applied in those years. To provide some elements about the macro-perspective, it also introduces the main structural forces that support these same practices of urban renewal, which are not only exclusive to Yangzhou, but can be found in many other ­localities in China. These forces can be ascribed to four major reforms introduced by the central government during the 1980s–1990s that considerably increased the competences of local governments in city development and pushed them to invest money and efforts in transforming substantially the aspect and life of Chinese cities.

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Chapter 4 then focuses on the project of international cooperation between GTZ and the Yangzhou government, highlighting the understanding that the German cooperation agency had of the problems existing in Yangzhou, the solutions proposed and the activities conducted with the local administration, including three pilot projects. These pilot projects represented one of the bases upon which the Yangzhou administration elaborated new policies and new plans some years after the project of international cooperation. The chapter also presents the difficulties that emerged during the preparation of the pilot projects, revealing the different positions of the local administration with respect to the protection and use of the old city of Yangzhou. These elements are presented in Chap. 5, which looks into the local process of policy learning and translation, dwelling on the challenges of the process as well as on the factors that allowed for a policy window to open. As a matter of fact, the collaboration with GTZ did not immediately translate into policy change. Other conditions had to develop before the local administration could draw lessons from their experience with the foreign agency. Once they opened, in the early 2010s, the city government witnessed an intense phase of reform of its urban renewal policies, which led to significant changes not only in the practice of urban renewal, but also in its goals. Nevertheless, this phase lasted for only a short time, as a few years later the government resumed its old practices of urban renewal, albeit temporarily. Chapter 6 illustrates these twists and turns in the policy direction, showing that after an initial phase of rejection of the new policy approach, Yangzhou returned to apply a careful approach to urban renewal. It shows that thanks to other actors at different levels of the local administration, the new plans and policies introduced in the early 2010s could find a useful application in the Old City. Moreover, thanks to the emergence of new discourses at the central government level, the local authorities in favour of a careful approach to urban renewal Yangzhou found a source of legitimation for their own ideas and policies. Nevertheless, it is not possible to talk about a real change of paradigm in urban renewal policies as reforms supporting such type of change are still missing and depend on the willingness and capacity of the central government. Finally, Chap. 7 concludes this treatise by wrapping up the story of the transfer of Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou, drawing lessons from this case and reconnecting with the questions presented in this chapter. To this

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aim, the chapter proposes a discussion of the case study in dialogue with the literature on policy transfer introduced in this chapter, in particular David Dolowitz’s (2017) recent treatise about policy transfer and policy learning, and Martin de Jong’s (2013) assessment of policy transfers in China. It shows that the case of Yangzhou can be understood as a ‘textbook case’ for showing many commonalities with the findings of the literature on policy transfers, but it also stresses a number of aspects that future analyses dedicated to policy transfer and knowledge utilisation have to consider carefully.

Notes 1. It is important to stress that Yangzhou is a prefectural-level city, thereby holding a position in the administrative ranking of Chinese cities that does not offer the same policy-making and law-making capacities of municipalities (Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, Tianjin) and of sub-provincial cities (e.g. Chengdu, Nanjing, Shenzhen). 2. These questions are: “Why do actors engage in policy transfer? Who are the key actors involved in the policy transfer process? What is transferred? From where are lessons drawn? What are the different degrees of transfer? What restricts or facilitates the policy transfer process? […] How is the process of policy transfer related to policy ‘success’ or policy ‘failure’?” (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, p. 8). 3. Diffusion studies can be considered the beginners of this tradition, which dates back to the 1960s. 4. Free translation from French. 5. Other cities that have been recognised as “famous historical and cultural cities” in that year are Beijing and Kunming. 6. Literally “society for technical cooperation”. Nowadays, it is known as GIZ – Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, literally “society for international cooperation”. 7. The research methodology originally aimed at providing a framework to evaluate the impacts of the European Union’s INTERREG programs. 8. Interviewees asked questions such as what the purpose of the research was and its commitments (Who funded the research? For whom/which country was the research? Who would have benefitted from it?), as well as some personal questions (about marriage, family relations, family habits). Answering these questions with openness and full transparency was fundamental to create a climate of trust, and even some personal relationships which allowed for a deepening of the dialogue on certain issues.

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9. This number includes the agents of international cooperation; the experts and professors that participated in the project, split between the cities of Berlin, Nanjing, Shanghai and of course Yangzhou; the representatives of various departments and agencies in the local administration; and a limited number of residents who participated in the studied renewal projects. Core informants were several locals who were very open to being interviewed, which allowed for repeated meetings at different points in time.

References Balme, R. (2019). Policy Transfers as Normative Interactions. The Case of Environmental Policy-Making in China. In L. Delcour & E. Tulmets (Eds.), Policy Transfer and Norm Circulation. Towards an Interdisciplinary and Comparative Approach. London/New York: Routledge. Bayart, J. F. (1996). L’illusion identitaire. Paris: Fayard. Charlton, S. (2018). Confounded But Complacent: Accounting for How the State Sees Responses to Its Housing Intervention in Johannesburg. The Journal of Development Studies, 54(12), 2168–2185. Christensen, T., Dong, L., & Painter, M. (2008). Administrative Reform in China’s Central Government  – How Much ‘Learning from the West’? International Review of Administrative Sciences, 74(3), 351–371. Christensen, T., Dong, L., Painter, M., & Walker, R.  M. (2012). Imitating the West? Evidence on Administrative Reform from the Upper Echelons of Chinese Provincial Government. Public Administration Review, 72(6), 798–806. Colomb, C. (2007). The Added Value of Transnational Cooperation: Towards a New Framework for Evaluating Learning and Policy Change. Planning Practice and Research, 22(3), 347–372. de Jong, M. (2013). China’s Art of Institutional Bricolage: Selectiveness and Gradualism in the Policy Transfer Style of a Nation. Policy and Society, 32(2), 89–101. de Jong, M., Wang, D., & Yu, C. (2013a). Exploring the Relevance of the Eco-­ City Concept in China: The Case of Shenzhen Sino-Dutch Low Carbon City. Journal of Urban Technology, 20(1), 95–113. de Jong, M., Yu, C., Chen, X., Wang, D., & Weijnen, M. (2013b). Developing Robust Organizational Frameworks for Sino-Foreign Ecocities: Comparing Sino-Dutch Shenzhen Low Carbon City with Other Initiatives. Journal of Cleaner Production, 57, 209–220. Delpeuch, T. (2009). Comprendre la circulation internationale des solutions d’action publique: panorama des policy transfer studies. Critique Internationale, 2(43), 153–165. Didier, S., Peyroux, E., & Morange, M. (2012). The Spreading of the City Improvement District Model in Johannesburg and Cape Town: Urban

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Regeneration and the Neoliberal Agenda in South Africa. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 36(5), 915–935. Dolowitz, D. (2017). Transfer and Learning: One Coin Two Elements. Novos Estudios, 36(1), 35–56. Dolowitz, D., & Marsh, D. (2000). Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy-Making. Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, 13(1), 5–24. Dumoulin, L., & Saurugger, S. (2010). Les Policy Transfer Studies: Analyse Critique et Perspectives. Critique International, 3(48), 9–24. Dwyer, P. J., & Ellison, N. (2009). ‘We Nicked Stuff From All Over the Place’: Policy Transfer or Muddling Through? Policy & Politics, 37(3), 389–407. Evans, M. (2009). Policy Transfer in Critical Perspective. Policy Studies, 30(3), 243–268. Fan, L. (2014). International Influence and Local Response: Understanding Community Involvement in Urban Heritage Conservation in China. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(6), 651–662. Foster, K. (2005). Chinese Public Policy Innovation and the Diffusion of Innovations: An Initial Exploration. Chinese Public Administration Review, 3(1/2), 1–13. Friedberg, E. (2005). La culture “nationale” n’est pas tout le social. Réponse à Philippe d’Iribarne. Revue Française de Sociologie, 46(1), 177–193. Gerring, J. (2004). What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good For? American Political Science Review, 98(2), 341–354. Hadjiisky, M., Pal, L., & Walker, C. (2017). The Micro-Dynamics and Macro-­ Effects of Policy Transfers: Beg, Borrow, Steal or Swallow? Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Heilmann, S. (2008). From Local Experiments to National Policy: The Origins of China’s Distinctive Policy Process. The China Journal, 59, 1–30. Jacoby, W. (2000). Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany. New York: Cornell University Press. Koop, K., & Amilhat, A. L. (2011). Introduction. Approche critique des transferts contemporains des modèles de développement territorial vers les Suds. L’Information géographique, 75(4), 6–14. Landel, P.  A. (2011). L’exportation du « développement territorial » vers le Maghreb: du transfert à la capitalisation des expériences. L’Information géographique, 75(4), 39–57. Lascoumes, P. (1996). Rendre gouvernable: de la ‘traduction’ au ‘transcodage’: l’analyse des processus de changement dans les réseaux d’action publique. In CURAPP (Ed.), La Gouvernabilité (pp. 325–338). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Lim, K. F., & Horesh, N. (2016). The “Singapore Fever” in China: Policy Mobility and Mutation. The China Quarterly, 228, 992–1017.

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Liu, T., & Leisering, L. (2017). Protecting Injured Workers: How Global Ideas of Industrial Accident Insurance Travelled to China. Journal of Chinese Governance, 2(1), 106–123. Liu, T., & Sun, L. (2016). Urban Social Assistance in China: Transnational Diffusion and National Interpretation. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 45(2), 29–51. Louargant, S., Matteudi, E., & Roux, E. (2011). L’action aménagiste au Maroc: entre héritages, permanences et bifurcations. L’Information géographique, 75(4), 15–38. Lowndes, V. (2005). Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed…: How Institutions Change (and Stay the Same) in Local Governance. Policy Studies, 26(3/4), 291–309. Marsh, D., & Sharman, J. C. (2009). Policy Diffusion and Policy Transfer. Policy Studies, 30(3), 269–288. Pal, L., & Porto de Oliveira, O. (2018). New Frontiers and Directions in Policy Transfer, Diffusion and Circulation Research: Agents, Spaces, Resistance, and Translations. Brazilian Journal of Public Administration, 52(2), 199–220. Porto de Oliveira, O. (2017). International Policy Diffusion and Participatory Budgeting. In Ambassadors of Participation, International Institutions and Transnational Networks. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Porto de Oliveira, O., & Pimenta de Faria, C. (2017). Policy Transfer, Diffusion and Circulation. Research Traditions and the State of the Discipline in Brazil. Novos Estudios, 36(3), 13–32. Rocca, J. L. (1996). La corruption et la communauté. Contre une analyse culturaliste de l’économie chinoise. Tiers-Monde, 37(147), 689–702. Rocca, J. L. (2006). La condition chinoise. La mise au travail capitaliste à l’âge des réformes (1978–2004). Paris: Karthala. Rocca, J. L. (2016). The Making of the Chinese Middle Class. Small Comfort and Great Expectations. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Romano, G. C. (2017). Organisational Learning Analysis and Transfers of “EcoCity” Concepts to China: The Example of Yangzhou. China Perspectives, (1), 37–43. Rose, R. (1993). Lesson-Drawing in Public Policy: A Guide to Learning Across Time and Space. Chatham: Chatham House Publishers. Stone, D. (2012). Transfer and Translation of Policy. Policy Studies, 33(6), 483–499. Stone, D. (2017). Understanding the Transfer of Policy Failure: Bricolage, Experimentalism and Translation. Policy & Politics, 45(1), 55–70. Teets, J., & Hurst, W. (2015). Local Governance Innovation in China: Experimentation, Diffusion, and Defiance. New York: Routledge. Wood, A. (2015). The Politics of Policy Circulation: Unpacking the Relationship Between South African and South American Cities in the Adoption of Bus Rapid Transit. Antipode, 47(4), 1062–1079.

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Zhang, Y. (2016). Theory and Practice of Policy Transfer in a Changing China. Reading: Paths International Ltd.. Zhang, Y., & Marsh, D. (2016). Learning by Doing: The Case of Administrative Policy Transfer in China. Policy Studies, 37(1), 35–52.

CHAPTER 2

A Research Framework to Capture the Complexity of Policy Transfers

The core aim of this research project is to capture the impacts that the transfer of Careful Urban Renewal had on the city of Yangzhou as well as the characteristics of the process itself, identifying the factors and forces that produced the outcomes that were observed. Its primary aim is to follow the use of this concept in Yangzhou and capture the characteristics of the process of policy learning and translation, accounting for the “micro-­processes of change” and the diversity of factors that can explain how foreign knowledge is adopted, recomposed, partially adopted, diverted, or even ignored and refused (Olivier de Sardan 1995, p.  23). To complicate the task, it must be noted that the process of policy learning and translation is still ongoing; it is uncertain to predict and therefore hard to grasp. Signs of change in practices and policies are present, but their persistence and performance (cf. Jacoby 2000) are less certain. Therefore, the analysis shall also capture this aspect of uncertainty. To fulfil these research objectives, this chapter proposes a twolevel research framework. This framework looks both at the macro-level scene setting and the micro-perspective, focusing on how foreign knowledge is actually used by local policy makers, how particular issues are pushed onto the political agenda and how “significant individuals, or groups of individuals interact to produce particular policy outcomes” (Dwyer and Ellison 2009, pp. 12–13). Its construction was inspired by an article written by Claire

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Colomb (2007) to study and evaluate learning and policy change in transnational cooperation programmes on territorial development and spatial planning. This article offers a systematisation of research in several methodological steps, which is helpful to capture learning processes and their characteristics. Moreover, it suggests a set of theoretical approaches to accompany the analysis. In the choice of approach, the construction also followed the suggestions given by the literature on policy transfers (Hadjiisky et al. 2017; Stone 2017), and in particular of some publications of French public policy analysts who have contributed to the field (e.g. Dumoulin and Saurugger 2010; Delpeuch and Vassileva 2010). As suggested by Fritz Scharpf (1978), the combination of different theoretical insights can perfect the analytical framework to describe and measure the different characteristics of the phenomena under study. This combination would provide “a more realistic framework that can capture a wider range of diverse factors” influencing the policy process and policy development (Béland and Howlett 2016, p. 226). The use of these different theoretical insights also served the purpose of developing a sort of analytical compass that distinguished a number of important aspects in the richness and fuzziness of the empirical material (cf. Bayart 2008). Following these recommendations, the choice fell on classical frames used in public policy analysis to investigate the learning process, the factors facilitating or hindering learning and translation, and the results of the process. As is illustrated in this chapter, of particular value was Peter Hall’s (1993) conceptualisation of “paradigm shift” and “social learning”. This theoretical approach was particularly helpful to conceptualise the object of transfer – Careful Urban Renewal – and to look at the policy process from a macro-perspective, identifying whether in the time frame taken into account by this study a change of paradigm of urban renewal took place. The construction of the theoretical framework also benefitted from John Kingdon’s (2003 [1984]) Multiple Stream Framework, as well as from the insights of the sociology of organisation, of the analysis of organisational learning and of the sociology of translation as understood by the French sociologist Pierre Lascoumes (1996). The combination of these theoretical approaches, focusing on local actors and their interaction with institutional structures, as well as on concrete examples of policy translation, allowed to develop a rich understanding of the characteristics of the learning and adaptation process in Yangzhou.

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2.1   How to Understand Careful Urban Renewal and the Process of Policy Change Careful Urban Renewal was the policy recipe that the German cooperation agency GTZ suggested to the Yangzhou government. Broadly understandable as a possible interpretation of sustainable urban development, its conceptualisation was a fundamental problem of the construction of the research framework. Careful Urban Renewal cannot be assimilated into a policy, to a technology or to techniques, nor even to norms and institutions. Rather, it belongs to the order of policy ideas. Its application requires adopting new approaches of urban renewal, new policies and new regulations, as well as developing a new administrative arrangement to organise the planning and execution of renewal projects. It also requires reforming the policies and practices of urban renewal. Thus, when ­constructing the research framework, it was important to identify the nature of the object transferred and adopt appropriate theoretical concepts that can capture the complexity behind the transfer and learning of this type of objects. In this study, the choice fell on Peter Hall’s (1993) concept of paradigm shift, for two main reasons. Scholars in the planning discipline qualified the development of Careful Urban Renewal in its first point of origin, the city of West Berlin, as a new planning paradigm (Loffing and Wickert 2012; Bocquet 2010). Careful Urban Renewal, an imprecise translation of the German behutsame Stadterneuerung, indeed marked an important break with the approaches of urban renewal in force in the 1950s and 1960s. These approaches were based on large-scale demolitions, on total makeovers of urban spaces, on substantial changes of land functions for the construction of car-friendly, modern cities, and on the central role of the state in the planning and execution of urban renewal (Klemek 2011; Bodenschatz 1987). Contrary to such a destructive approach, Careful Urban Renewal proposed to conserve existing buildings and the city structure and street layout, as well as to respect the current uses of the spaces, which meant avoiding undesired, top-down transformations that would have disrupted the residents’ life and completely changed the aspect and character of cities (Bernt 2003; Bodenschatz 1987). All in all, it can be said that this approach was socially oriented and environmentally friendly, and promoted the mixed use of spaces and the attention to small scales (Colomb 2012). Establishing this new planning paradigm was concomitant with the emergence of ecological concerns among planners and architects, who

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started looking for methods to conserve and reuse the existing buildings and to save materials, energy and water in the process of urban renewal (Eichstädt-Bohlig 1989; Beck 1987). These concerns ultimately led to a series of experimentations that turned West Berlin into an important laboratory for the development of a new type of urbanism (Colomb 2012). These developments were also concomitant with the establishment of a new form of government of urban renewal, which saw the involvement of new, private actors collaborating with the city government for the realisation of renewal projects (Bernt 2003). These governmental transformations significantly transformed the ways in which urban renewal was conducted in West Berlin (ibid.). In particular, they introduced “democratic” elements in decision-making that made of this experience an important “best practice” in urban planning and renewal (Bocquet 2010). Given the characterisation of Careful Urban Renewal as a new planning paradigm as well as the profound changes that this implies in the government of urban renewal, Peter Hall’s concept of paradigm shift was an appropriate theoretical tool for conceptualisation. There is also a second reason for choosing this concept. As mentioned, Careful Urban Renewal can be assimilated into the order of ideas, which are at the heart of paradigm shifts. As indicated by Hall (1993, p. 279), a change of paradigm involves an in-depth order of change that touches not only instruments and instruments settings, but also the overarching goals of a specific policy. Hence, paradigm shifts are characterised by a particular form of social learning that “involves major intellectual reorientation” and that have “a pervasive effect on the way in which many problems and programmes are viewed” (Rose 1993, pp. 25–26). Paradigm shifts especially impart a type of change that Peter Hall identifies as “third order changes”, which imply a change of policy goals. This type of change distinguishes from “first order changes” and “second order changes”, respectively changes of instruments settings and of instruments. Actually, when we look at the development and establishment of Careful Urban Renewal in West Berlin, it is possible to qualify these transformations as a case of third order change. Its establishment was characterised by a process of social learning in which the local approach of urban renewal came under attack; it also became permeable to the circulation of new ideas and to societal pressures. These new ideas and the crisis of the previous policy model of urban renewal, which took place between the 1970s and the 1980s, led to a deep change in policies and institutions.

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Moreover, very similarly to Hall’s (1993) observations in the case of the establishment of the monetarist paradigm in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s, the introduction of new practices of planning and renewal was everything but easy and linear (cf. Bernt 2003; Bodenschatz 1987). The passage to the new paradigm of renewal was fraught with conflicts and ‘U turns’. In Peter Hall’s words (1993, p. 281), such shift was completed “only when the supporters” of the new paradigm secured “positions of authority over policymaking” and became “able to rearrange the organisation and standard operating procedures of the policy process so as to institutionalise the new paradigm”. Changes in the city government, combined with the rising costs of the old model of urban renewal (in turn due to the economic crisis of the 1970s) and the protests of many citizens that opposed the demolitions and relocations, led to the development of a policy window that allowed for the experimentation of Careful Urban Renewal and, later, for its institutionalisation. This equation of Careful Urban Renewal to a new planning paradigm is very useful to analyse the impacts of its transfer to the city of Yangzhou. In particular, the use of Peter Hall’s approach responds to the aim of looking at the macro-transformations from a ‘bird’s eye’ perspective, focusing on processes and events over longer time spans. It helps verify whether, as a result of the process of policy transfer, learning and adaptation, and of other underlying processes happening at different administrative levels, a similar paradigm shift is also observable in a relatively similar time span (two decades). Such an approach enables having “a broader understanding of the prevailing socio-economic and political contexts within which debates about learning and transfer are situated” (Dwyer and Ellison 2009, p. 8). In particular, as the case studied focuses on the city level, an approach inspired by Peter Hall’s concept of paradigm shift welcomes paying attention to the macro-level scene-setting that also constitutes the context of policymaking (ibid.). Such a focus allows understanding the challenges of policymaking, avoiding “excessively rational explanations of, and expectations about, policymaking, with rational actors being regarded as the primary motors of learning and transfer” (ibid., p.  25). Moreover, this approach invites reflecting also in terms of persistence of new policy models, focusing on “the rooting of institutions and their reproduction over time” as well as on “the ways they gain legitimacy in the new society” (Jacoby 2000, p. 12). On this aspect, it shall be once more underlined that the application of Careful Urban Renewal implies a profound reorganisation of a­ dministrative

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arrangements as well as the establishment of new policies, new regulations, new working procedures, new techniques and new planning practices. It also requires the involvement of new actors in the decision-­making and policy implementation process. Thus, when analysing the outcomes of transfer, it is important to pay particular attention to whether transformations occurred in these different aspects, and whether they persist, thereby providing a measure of the quantity (was the change substantial in many crucial dimensions of a policy? Or did it concern only few aspects?), and of the quality or ‘intensity’ of the outcomes of transfer (was change just ‘cosmetic’, ‘symbolic’? Or was it in-depth?).

2.2   How to Capture the Characteristics of the Transfer and Learning Process Analysing paradigm shifts as proposed by Peter Hall focuses on the process of social learning that brings about this type of deep change, hence allowing the capture of some of the characteristics of the learning process. In particular, as mentioned, it focuses on the macro-level setting of the process of policy transfer, learning and translation taken into account by this study. However, as underlined by David Dolowitz (2017, p.  45), when linking Peter Hall’s model to the analysis of transfers, it is important to pay attention to two aspects. The first underlines that “the core of the model is about change in the behaviours and beliefs of ‘elite’ policymakers”, thus it is not about “transfer and policymaking per se”. The second aspect stresses that, for Peter Hall, policy deliberation “takes place within a realm of discourse … [where] much of it is taken for granted and unnameable to scrutiny as a whole” (Hall 1993, p.  279, as cited in Dolowitz 2017, p. 45). For Dolowitz (ibid.) “deliberations are confined to discourse”, and when we link this “to transfer, learning will most likely be constrained and most closely linked to the translation processes which surround information as it moves and works its way through the policymaking and implementation processes”. As such, this approach is not sufficient to provide a detailed analysis of the dynamics of transfers, and so nor of the characteristics of the learning and translation process. This objective demands a more detailed analysis of the transfer process along the dimensions of time and scale, insisting on some specific aspects that can capture the dynamics associated to the introduction of a specific policy. In terms of theoretical design, this step

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c­ orresponds to the identification of a micro level of the process of policy learning and translation, focusing on specific cases of policy learning and translation (e.g. the elaboration of specific policies, the establishment of specific arrangements), on the actors involved and on the characteristics of the policy process, as well as on various micro-contextual factors. To this end, this research adopted two further theoretical approaches, John Kingdon’s (2003 [1984]) Multiple Streams Framework and the sociology of translation as re-elaborated by Pierre Lascoumes (1996). With regard to choosing Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework, the focus adopted by this approach is, to a certain extent, close to Peter Hall’s, and some of their ideas resonate. Both authors look at the role of ideas in policy change. They have both underlined the important role of societal pressures when identifying a matter as a ‘policy problem’ and when considering such a problem in the political agenda. They have stressed the importance of policy failures or policy problems as a driving force for change. The combination of these two approaches thus allows the research to benefit from two complementary angles of observation. In particular, as in Peter Hall’s (1993) framework “the role of the individual in relation to ideas and paradigms is ambiguous” (Cairney and Weible 2015, p.  93), Kingdon’s focus on the role of policy entrepreneurs can compensate for this weakness in Hall’s framework. Kingdon’s framework in particular can help look at what comes before and within the process of paradigm shift, focusing on “problem definition, policy formulation, and the work of policy entrepreneurs” (Béland and Howlett 2016, p. 225). The Multiple Streams Framework therefore permits looking at the origin of policy initiatives, at the process of agenda setting and at the development of policy windows, as well as at the actors that are involved in this process. These elements add further knowledge about the characteristics of learning and transfer, which “occur in the absence of immediate or directly observable change” (Dolowitz 2017, p. 42). Kingdon’s approach in particular enables observing that learnt ideas can “stay in a stream” but “not ever be utilised by the core policymakers” (ibid.). It also helps to present what makes an idea take hold and grow and eventually develop into policies. Thus, this approach helps shift the focus to another level of analysis, that of actors and processes of agenda setting, which allows for a better understanding of the learning process. However, this approach has also its shortcomings, in particular that of having insufficiently analysed the role of structures when applied to the analysis of decision-making processes (Zohlnhöfer et al. 2016).

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Although this is not an issue of Kingdon’s study, as the latter focused on a case of agenda setting in the United States, it is problematic when the Multiple Streams Framework is applied to analyse decision-making, what is more in other contexts. Above all, if in the agenda setting component it is still possible to admit that it is “much less shaped by formal institutions” (ibid., p. 244), in the decision-making and final adoption phases of a policy these institutions play a decisive role. As the focus of this research is not only agenda setting, but also what follows, it is important to make careful considerations about the stage of decision-making, which is fundamental when considering the final adoption stage of proposals. A focus on decision-­making requires taking the role of formal political institutions into account, as they have a decisive weight in the decision-making process (ibid.). Informal practices and channels also play an important part (Hysing and Olsson 2018), particularly “the informal side of institutions, like the actual behaviour of people within organisations”, which have an important impact on the “coherence” of formal institutions and their “governing capacity” (ibid., p. 24). In order to pay attention to these crucial aspects, the research framework adds another approach that better accounts for the impact of structures on the various phases of the policymaking process as well as for the interactions of policy entrepreneurs with other actors and organisations. This is the sociology of translation, or “transcoding” (transcodage), as elaborated by Pierre Lascoumes (1994, 1996), which facilitates the observation of how knowledge is concretely used, transformed, adapted, appropriated and channelled through the process of policymaking. A perspective of analysis informed by the concept of transcoding helps shed light on the trickiness of defining policies and on the uncertainties surrounding the policymaking process. The merit of this approach, in particular, is that of having underlined the difficulties inherent to the process of knowledge utilisation and the definition of appropriate policies in complex policy fields (e.g. environmental protection, urban policy, fight against epidemics, etc.). For instance, there is no real consensus as how environmental protection shall be carried out (Lascoumes 1994). There exist many legitimate positions, backed by (more or less) legitimate reasons and policy objectives. In the process of knowledge utilisation and policy-making, actors integrate very heterogeneous data (juridical, technical, and economic) as well as policy pressures, and operate transcoding on these bases (ibid., p.  153). What comes out of this process is often “a signification” ­understandable “as a compromise between instable interests”, in turn fruit of “patchworks and of a search for consistency between very different, and

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sometimes antagonist inputs” (ibid.).1 Thus, the result of transcoding is often a compromise between different inputs and interests. Overall, the concept of transcoding helps shed light on the difficulties of defining policies, the uncertainties surrounding the decision-making process, and the compromises that actors are obliged to make. In this respect, it is important to recall that Pierre Lascoumes re-­ elaborated this concept on the basis of Michel Callon’s sociology of translation, but he re-adapted it in order to take into account the difficulties that are inherent to public action and to socio-political processes (Lascoumes 1996, p. 327). To this end, Lascoumes operated a combination of the sociology of translation with the insights of the sociology of organisation (ibid.). In this way, he reformulated the idea of “translation” with that of “transcoding” to take into account the characteristics of governmental action, and in particular “the processes of mobilisation and negotiation upon which public action is based”. There are processes of “opening and hybridisation” of existing policies, subject to the influences of actors inside and outside the state, as well as pressures of issues that become more complex and require public action to transform (Lascoumes 1996, pp. 330–331). As a result, translating (or transcoding) is a complex process, as there can be very different interpretations and representations of the same problem; competing interests also exist that impact on the process of policy translations. Mediations between these interests are often difficult to achieve, which further complicates the process of translation. The operations of transcoding also share characteristics similar to both agenda setting and implementation. Transcoding represents the preconditions of agenda setting and provides “the cognitive frames for the construction of policy problems”, “outlines projects of public action” and “legitimises in this way the undertakings” of the government (ibid., p.  335). Thence, transcoding looks at what happens before agenda setting, focusing on constructing policy problems and providing possible policy solutions. Moreover, transcoding looks at the phases of implementation, centring in particular on how the products of transcoding are formalised, evaluated and modified according to diagnostics about their operationalisation and to new emerging demands (ibid.). Pierre Lascoumes’ sociology of transcodage is thus very useful for the analysis of policy transfer, which means not only looking at how a policy model lands in a given context, but also at how such foreign knowledge is utilised and combined with other knowledge. It also considers how it performs and persists in this context and how it is adapted, modified and re-adapted in the process of policy implementation to ensure its broad application.

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Following the aim of understanding the challenges of policy learning and policy translation in the realm of governmental action, this research is also punctuated by references to works in the field of the sociology of organisation and organisational learning. Therefore, readers do not have to be puzzled if they find various references to this literature throughout the analysis. This exercise has to be understood as a strategy to reinforce the explanatory power of the framework at the micro-level of analysis. In particular, basing on the analysis of the stabilised practices and routines of organisations, the sociology of organisation stresses the difficulties of learning and of modifying public action (Muller 2005). It underlines that learning is not always a simple and linear process. In-depth, organisational changes are difficult to achieve and require that certain conditions favourable to learning be met. The sociology of organisation also informs us that introducing change often produces a great deal of conflict because many individual or organisational interests can be affected (Crozier and Friedberg 1977; Crozier 1963). As attempts at changing rules imply a redistribution of power resources among the different actors of a system, they inevitably foster winners and losers (Crozier and Friedberg 1977, p. 388). For this reason, observing a deeply conservative process that tends to strengthen the existing balances and/or imbalances of power is expected, as no actor would rationally give up on the owned power resources (ibid.). Moreover, the rigid respect of bureaucratic norms, of the hierarchy and of the rigid division of competences has the negative effect of limiting learning within bureaucratic organisations, which finally leads to an insufficient capacity of adaptation and innovation (Mayntz 1982 [1978], pp.  140– 142). Actors or organisations then need to develop special arrangements to overcome the constraints they face (ibid.) and rely on the cooperation of other actors (mostly organisations) to introduce reforms (Crozier 1963). These insights stress the importance of looking at the capacities a system has to learn and adapt new ideas, observing the articulation between the macro-structures and the micro-social strategies.

2.3   A Summary of the Research Framework To summarise the points made before, this research framework is based on a two-level frame of analysis that looks at the same processes and phenomena from macro- and micro-level perspectives. In this way, it looks at both the actors of change and the structures with which and within which they

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First level of analysis: the macro level (bird’s-eye view on the process of paradigm shift) Conceptualisation of the process and outcomes of the transfer and adaptation of Careful Urban Renewal as a paradigm shift (Hall 1993) (Other approaches are also possible)

Second level of analysis: the micro level (agency, contingencies and structures) Consideration of the actors involved in the process of policy-making and focus on how a policy idea becomes relevant for the local government (Kingdon 2003 [1984]) Focus on the aspect of policy adaptation / translation (Lascoumes 1994) Attention to the challenges and opportunities of policy learning via a focus on the sociology of organisation/organisational learning (Other approaches are also possible)

Fig. 2.1  Schema of the research framework

interact, at micro-processes of policy formation, as well as the macro-­ phenomena of change (or lack of it) and underlying reform processes (or lack of it) in which the studied processes are embedded. The framework presented here proved useful to provide a fairly accurate account of the process of policy learning, translation and transfer that this research took into consideration. To better understand the various functions of the theoretical approaches encompassed within this research framework, Fig. 2.1 summarises the elements exposed.

Note 1. Free translation from French.

References Bayart, J.  F. (2008). Comparer en France. Petit essai d’autobiographie disciplinaire. Politix, 83(3), 205–232. Beck, P. (1987). Kreuzberger Kreisläufe: Block 103 – ein Modell für umweltorientiert behutsame Stadterneuerung. Berlin: Bezirksamt Kreuzberg, Abt. Bau- u. Wohnungswesen, Bezirksstadtrat.

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Béland, D., & Howlett, M. (2016). The Role and Impact of the Multiple-Streams Approach in Comparative Policy Analysis. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 18(3), 221–227. Bernt, M. (2003). Rübergeklappt. Die “Behutsame Stadterneuerung” im Berlin der 90er Jahre. Berlin: Schelzky & Jeep. Bocquet, D. (2010). Hans Stimmann et l’urbanisme berlinois (1970–2006): un tournant conservateur de la reconstruction critique? Città e Storia, V(2), 467–487. Bodenschatz, H. (1987). Platz Frei für das Neue Berlin. In Geschichte der Stadterneuerung in der “größten Mietskasernenstadt der Welt” seit 1871. Berlin: Transit. Cairney, P., & Weible, C.  M. (2015). Comparing and Contrasting Peter Hall’s Paradigms and Ideas with the Advocacy Coalition Framework. In J. Hogan & M. Howlett (Eds.), Policy Paradigms in Theory and Practice Discourses, Ideas and Anomalies in Public Policy Dynamics (pp.  83–99). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Colomb, C. (2007). The Added Value of Transnational Cooperation: Towards a New Framework for Evaluating Learning and Policy Change. Planning Practice and Research, 22(3), 347–372. Colomb, C. (2012). Staging the New Berlin. Place Marketing and the Politics of Urban Reinvention Post-1989. London/New York: Routledge. Crozier, M. (1963). Le phénomène bureaucratique. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Crozier, M., & Friedberg, E. (1977). L’acteur et le système. Les contraintes de l’action collective. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Delpeuch, T., & Vassileva, M. (2010). Des transferts aux apprentissages: réflexions à partir des nouveaux modes de gestion du développement économique local en Bulgarie. Critique internationale, 3(48), 25–52. Dolowitz, D. (2017). Transfer and Learning: One Coin Two Elements. Novos Estudios, 36(1), 35–56. Dumoulin, L., & Saurugger, S. (2010). Les Policy Transfer Studies: Analyse Critique et Perspectives. Critique Internationale, 3(48), 9–24. Dwyer, P. J., & Ellison, N. (2009). ‘We Nicked Stuff From All Over the Place’: Policy Transfer or Muddling Through? Policy & Politics, 37(3), 389–407. Eichstädt-Bohlig, F. (1989). Zerstörung der Städte – Zerstörung der Demokratie. In R.  Nitsche (Ed.), Häuserkämpfe 1872,1920,1945,1982 (pp.  210–224). Berlin: Transit. Hadjiisky, M., Pal, L., & Walker, C. (2017). The Micro-Dynamics and Macro-­ Effects of Policy Transfers: Beg, Borrow, Steal or Swallow? Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Hall, P. (1993). Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics, 25(3), 275–296.

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Hysing, E., & Olsson, J. (2018). Green Inside Activism for Sustainable Development. Political Agency and Institutional Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jacoby, W. (2000). Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany. New York: Cornell University Press. Kingdon, J.  W. (2003 [1984]). Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (2nd ed.). New York: Longman. Klemek, C. (2011). The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal: Postwar Urbanism from New  York to Berlin. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. Lascoumes, P. (1994). L’éco-pouvoir. Environnements et politiques. Paris: La Découverte. Lascoumes, P. (1996). Rendre gouvernable: de la ‘traduction’ au ‘transcodage’: l’analyse des processus de changement dans les réseaux d’action publique. In CURAPP (Ed.), La Gouvernabilité (pp. 325–338). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Loffing, A., & Wickert, J. (2012). Paradigmenwechsel im Städtebau. Forschungsinitiative IBA 87. http://f-iba.de/paradigmenwechsel-im-stadtebau/. Accessed 15 Aug 2016. Mayntz, R. (1982 [1978]). Sociologia dell’amministrazione pubblica. Bologna: Il Mulino [Italian Translation of the Original: Soziologie des öffentlichen Verwaltung. Heidelberg: Müller Juristischer Verlag]. Muller, P. (2005). Esquisse d’une théorie du changement dans l’action publique. Structures, acteurs et cadres cognitifs. Revue française de science politique, 55(1), 155–187. Olivier de Sardan, J.  P. (1995). Anthropologie et développement. Essai en socio-­ anthropologie du changement social. Paris: Karthala. Rose, R. (1993). Lesson-Drawing in Public Policy: A Guide to Learning Across Time and Space. Chatham: Chatham House Publishers. Scharpf, F.  W. (1978). Interorganizational Policy Studies: Issues, Concepts and Perspectives. In K.  Hanf & F.  W. Scharpf (Eds.), Interorganizational Policy Making. Limits to Coordination and Central Control (pp. 345–370). London/ Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Stone, D. (2017). Understanding the Transfer of Policy Failure: Bricolage, Experimentalism and Translation. Policy & Politics, 45(1), 55–70. Zohlnhöfer, R., Herweg, N., & Huß, C. (2016). Bringing Formal Political Institutions into the Multiple Streams Framework: An Analytical Proposal for Comparative Policy Analysis. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 18(3), 243–256.

CHAPTER 3

The Chinese Paradigm of Urban Renewal in the Early 2000s

3.1   Introduction In Yangzhou, the paradigm of urban renewal was represented by an approach to the renewal that favoured the redevelopment of inner-city neighbourhoods over their conservation. This focus on redevelopment rather than conservation often forced the residents of the Old City or other parts of Yangzhou to move elsewhere, sometimes far away from their original dwelling. For simplicity purposes, this approach will be dubbed the ‘redevelopment paradigm’. Presenting this paradigm is very important for the overall analysis. Indeed, in order to capture policy learning and possibly policy change, as well as the role of foreign knowledge in inspiring reforms, research on the subject must start by exposing the situation before the transfer – in this case before the project of international cooperation. In so doing, we can consider whether the “approaches, policies and practices” observed on the fieldwork some years after the project of international cooperation “are different to what they would have been without” it (Colomb 2007, p. 364, original emphasis). To fulfil this objective, this chapter introduces the concepts and practices of urban renewal in Yangzhou in the early 2000s. As will be illustrated, these concepts and practices were not unique to Yangzhou, but can still be found all over China, showing that renewal through redevelopment represents the dominant paradigm. For this reason, this chapter introduces the redevelopment paradigm by shifting

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between scales and localities, a procedure that responds to two main objectives. The first is that of contextualising – or embedding – the case of Yangzhou in the broader Chinese setting, thus of focusing on the macro-­ level setting of the case studied, as it is representative of a more diffused phenomenon. The second, more analytical, is to offer an overview of the forces behind the development and rooting of the redevelopment paradigm. These forces still represent important challenges to the reform of the existing practices of urban renewal in China. They can be understood as the “prevailing socio-economic and political contexts” within which learning and reform (may not) take place (Dwyer and Ellison 2009, p. 8). They also constitute part of the macro-structures of constraint impacting on social agents, against which the learning capacities of the Yangzhou administration can be assessed (cf. Delpeuch and Vassileva 2010). This chapter in particular introduces a series of political developments that have occurred in China in the past decades and that still very much shape policymaking in municipal governments. Some of these developments targeted the division of competences between the central and local governments; others are represented by a number of sectoral reforms that had profound impacts on the decision-making prerogatives of local governments, on their set of priorities and on their behaviours. These reforms created the conditions for the spread of an “incurable construction fever” (Friedmann 2007) that had – and still has – significant impacts on the physical and social structures of Chinese cities. To illustrate these elements, this chapter is structured as follows. In the first part, it looks at the development plans of the Yangzhou government, and at the intentions of top local politicians. Thence, it looks at the plans that target the Old City, oriented towards promoting its touristic use and a change in population. To understand these aspects, in the second part the chapter shifts to the national level by introducing the main reforms that undergirded the establishment of the redevelopment paradigm. These reforms rushed local governments into (re-)developing what interested both inner-city areas and city outskirts. In a third part, the chapter illustrates the consequences of these reforms on the traditional neighbourhoods of contemporary China, taking stock of the various practices of urban renewal that exist in the country. Finally, by shifting scale and returning to Yangzhou, the chapter examines some of these practices and shows how the reforms and plans of the city government had a concrete impact on the space of its Old City.

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3.2   The Plans for Yangzhou Old City in the Early 2000s At the beginning of the 2000s, Yangzhou was considered a city of modest dimensions; but the city government had ambitious plans, wishing to render this modest locality of Jiangsu province an important centre of the Yangzi River delta, joining the club of the richer and more successful cities of the province, notably Nanjing, Wuxi, Changzhou and Suzhou (Yangzhou City Government 2003b). Thus, at the start of the new millennium the city had to be prepared for important transformations. The plans foresaw to realise residential, commercial and office areas in new development sites, which meant that the city had to continue the strategy established in the 1990s of “jumping outside the Old City and walking towards the West” (ibid.). Such a decision would have protected the so-called Old City (lao cheng qu – 老城区) from demolition and overcrowding, making the New City (xin cheng qu – 新城区) at the western side of Yangzhou its main administrative, commercial, residential and leisure centre. Many of these promises were kept during the mandate of Mayor Ji Jianye, who ruled Yangzhou in the 2000s. Beyond the ambitions of becoming an important centre of the Yangzi River delta, Yangzhou also planned to make the environment one of its main priorities. In 2003, the city was listed as a national pilot for eco-city construction, joining one of the initiatives of the central government to favour the experimentation of solutions for sustainable urban development. Since the early 1990s, Chinese ministries have indeed established several programmes to explore this issue, selecting batches of cities to become national pilots and submit special development plans.1 At the beginning of the 2000s, Yangzhou sent its application for the “Eco-City Development Programme” established by the then State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA, now Ministry of Environmental Protection). The city prepared an ecological concept for its development, which later obtained SEPA’s approval. In this strategy, conserving the Old City was an important priority, on the condition of changing its uses and inhabitants. 3.2.1  Mayor Ji Jianye and the Spectacular Transformation of Yangzhou Everywhere in the world top-level city authorities leave their mark on cities. Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann in the Paris of the Second Empire

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(nineteenth century) and Robert Moses in twentieth-century New York are perhaps the most famous examples, as they left unmistakable traces in the cities where they served. Chinese city leaders have managed no less, with interurban competition and the fight for high positions in the Chinese Communist Party pushing them to leave very visible marks on the urban space. Generally speaking, it is the local party secretary, the real leader of Chinese cities, who plays the role of the ‘city architect’, taking the main decisions on city development and political directions (Cabestan 2014). However, Chinese mayors can also play protagonist roles, especially when they are helped by important figures in the central government. Mayor Ji Jianye was one such case. Ji was a typical ambitious leader that radically transformed the face of the cities in which he served. He was one of the main players behind the rise of the town of Kunshan, a county-level city placed a few kilometres away from Shanghai. The town witnessed a spectacular development, “from a planned and agricultural economy to a globalised and industrialised platform”, and in the midst of the 2000s it became the number one county-level city in terms of GDP (Chien 2007, pp. 271–272). For this reason, the then Chinese President and leader of the CCP Jiang Zemin chose Ji Jianye to become the mayor of his hometown, Yangzhou. This move meant Ji skipped a step on the hierarchical ladder.2 As the party secretary of a county-level city, he would normally have first become the leader of a district in a prefectural-level city before becoming eligible for the mayoral position. Therefore, in Yangzhou, Ji could only have assumed the role of district leader. However, as President Jiang wished to give a significant boost to Yangzhou’s economy, and in this way favour the development of Middle and Northern Jiangsu, he needed a man like Ji Jianye to achieve this objective. Ji worked in Yangzhou for eight years, from 2001 to 2008, where he first served as mayor and then as party secretary. When he arrived in Yangzhou he was designated the important mission of fostering city development. To achieve this objective, he immediately started redeveloping various areas of the city as well as expanding its surface. Thanks to his zeal, the city witnessed a spectacular expansion, with its built-up area more than doubling between 2000 and 2010. According to a local expert this number increased from 55.3 km2 to 127 km2 during this time frame (Liu 2013, pp. 10–11). The 1996–2010 edition of the city master plan predicted that the city would reach a total built-up area of 70 km2 in 2010 and of 120 km2 in 2020 (Yangzhou City Government 2003b, pp.  6–12). With all evidence, the plan did not anticipate the impacts of Ji Jianye’s dedication.

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As described in an article of a Chinese weekly review, the Southern Weekly, as soon as Ji Jianye arrived, the whole city looked like a big construction site invaded by bulldozers and forklifts and by buildings painted with the character “拆” (chai), which means “to demolish” (Lü and Ju 2013).3 Already in the first three months of his mandate more than 130 streets of the inner city had been newly renovated (ibid.). Grand redevelopment operations and greenfield developments provided Yangzhou with new large roads, office and commercial buildings, shopping malls, industrial parks and residential areas. For these massive and fast construction projects, Ji Jianye was known in the press by the funny nickname “the bulldozer Mayor” (tuituji shizhang – 推土机市长). He was also known in Yangzhou by the saying “a stomp of his foot, and it’s smash smash smash; a wave of his hand, and it’s all torn down” (jiao yi duo, chai chai chai; shou yi hui, tui tui tui – 脚一跺, 拆拆拆; 手一挥, 推推推) (ibid.). Ji Jianye was also the architect of controversial projects that led to some old neighbourhoods of the inner city being demolished. It was precisely in an attempt to make him reconsider his attitude towards the Old City and his approach to planning that GTZ proposed the concept of Careful Urban Renewal. However, given how top-level leadership appreciated the results obtained by Secretary Ji in Yangzhou, he was moved to the capital city of Jiangsu, Nanjing, to serve first as mayor at the end of his mandate. There he applied the same destructive approach, and eventually concluded his career as politician. Caught by the incumbent Chinese President’s anti-­ graft campaign targeting corrupted officials and party cadres, he was dismissed in October 2013 and condemned in early 2015 to 15  years imprisonment.4 3.2.2  The Place of Yangzhou Old City in the Plans of the Early 2000s… As mentioned earlier, in the early 2000s, the development strategy of Yangzhou was summarised by the formula “jumping outside the Old City and developing towards West”, as indicated in the master plan for the years 2002–2020 (Yangzhou City Government 2003b). This plan for the Old City followed an important decision made by the city government in the late 1980s, which aimed at preventing real estate developments within the area of the inner city and concentrating urban development and residential functions in newly built quarters. By moving residents to the new developments in the Western part of the city, the government wanted to

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favour the conservation of the Old City (ibid.). In particular, the master plan anticipated reducing the population of the inner city to foster its touristic and commercial functions, choosing a path of conservation and use of old cities that was very common in other parts of China (cf. Qiu 2014; see infra). In the chapter dedicated to the city’s spatial development, the plan indicated that the area of the Old City should have developed its land use towards favouring the historical, cultural, touristic, leisure, health and educational functions while reducing the ratio of residential land use (Yangzhou City Government 2003b, Chapter 4, p. 24). Hence, among the main objectives of the local government for the Old City was the reduction of its population and the readjustment of its use in favour of tourism and commercial activities. To this aim, the city should have adopted appropriate measures to improve land use, infrastructure and the road traffic system. This objective implied making more space for transportation infrastructures, open spaces and parking spaces (Yangzhou City Government 2003b, Chapter 6, p. 5), although most of the original historical layout should have been preserved (ibid., Chapter 5, p. 27). As mentioned, the readjustment of the functions of the Old City implied strengthening its commercial and service functions, in particular through renovating some streets that in the past had served as main commercial areas, and through restoring these functions. The Old City should also have served museum functions, using its rich heritage to display the cultural and historical features of Yangzhou. These elements were also included in the Yangzhou Eco-city Construction Plan (see infra). Therefore, after an attentive reading of both plans, it is clear that the inner city should have devoted a large part of its spaces to serve touristic, leisure and cultural purposes. For these aspects, the content of the two plans recall the words of Su Xiaobo, a geographer who focused on the conservation of Lijiang, another famous old city of China. For Su (2010, p. 166), when local governments “evaluate the significance of urban conservation”, their main concern is the imperative of economic development. Within this perspective, urban conservation is considered “successful only when it propels economic development” (ibid.). Therefore, like other cities in China, the protection of Yangzhou Old City should have served the economic development of Yangzhou, a city that suffered a slow economic growth compared to the cities of Southern Jiangsu.5 The early pages of the master plan clearly pointed out these issues and established a strategic view to make Yangzhou an important city

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of eastern China by strengthening its competitiveness. In this perspective, “developing” or “exploiting” (kaifa – 开发) the Old City through fostering its touristic and commercial functions were seen as important components of the Yangzhou development strategy (Yangzhou City Government 2003b, Chapter 3). This perspective was even clearer in the Yangzhou Eco-City Construction Plan, which preconized replacing the residents of the Old City with more productive forces. 3.2.3  … and in the “Ecological Construction” of Yangzhou Like the master plan, the Yangzhou Eco-City Construction Plan presents a series of wishes for the conservation of the Old City that were instrumental to achieve the objectives of economic development. However, unlike the master plan, the Eco-City Plan is not a statutory document. Instead, it represents a more flexible planning document that shares many similarities with the so-called Urban Development Strategic Plans (UDSPs). UDSPs serve cities’ search for innovation and quick measures to respond to the challenges brought by China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which increased intercity competition (Yu 2014, p. 195). This is why they are mostly conceived as forms of “bottom-up” planning as opposed to the top-down preparation of master plans, which take a long time and require the central and provincial governments’ approval (ibid.). These plans are more flexible and make specific proposals of strategic intervention to increase the city’s competitiveness, taking into consideration the existing resources and analysing their potential in view of attracting talents and investments (ibid.). A look into the Yangzhou Eco-City Construction Plan reveals these aspects. For instance, similarly to the UDSPs, the Yangzhou Eco-City Plan also stresses the question of competitiveness and compares the city’s situation with that of more successful cities in the Jiangsu province. Moreover, the Eco-City Plan aims at promoting the city’s image.6 For instance, the foreword of the Eco-City Plan of Yangzhou stresses the main resources of the city, especially the historical ones. Yangzhou has a long history (“2500 years of history”, as the saying goes), a very good position on the river Yangzi (“near the Shanghai-Nanjing agglomeration area”) and is an important cultural and historical city with a glorious past in imperial China (Yangzhou City Government 2003a). The foreword goes on by saying that the glorious past and history of Yangzhou constituted an important driver of its modernisation, but also hindered further social development.

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For this reason, the plan recommends changing the city’s development concept, producing “new ideas and concepts for its economic development, its construction as well as its environmental protection”.7 In particular, by relying on the local population, on the local resources and on the local environmental potential, the city has to “attract foreign investments, technologies and talented people” that can favour Yangzhou’s rapid economic development (ibid.). For local authorities, this is “the only way for Yangzhou to adapt to the entry in international markets” (ibid.). Hence, it is clear through these words that this document constitutes a plan by which Yangzhou tried to answer to the pressure of economic competitiveness at the time of China’s entry into the WTO. It is thus, perhaps, in a broader place-branding perspective that Yangzhou’s “ecological construction” strategy must be understood. Natural, historical and cultural resources serve as a means of place branding, including the quasi-­ intact Old City. These aspects once more recall Su Xiaobo’s analyses (2015), who wrote about “selling heritage” as a strategy pursued by local governments to win territorial competition and to achieve economic restructuring. For instance, as stressed in Part IV of the Eco-City Plan which is dedicated to “Industrial Transformation and Eco-industry Planning”, the Old City is portrayed as an important area for the development of cultural and touristic industries. Thence, its use after renovation and upgrading constitutes an important component of Yangzhou’s overall economic strategy to foster its competitiveness. In the third chapter, which addresses the topic of “Complex ecological district planning”, there is a passage entitled “Construction of the Old City as a cultural, business and tourist district”, which explains how Yangzhou was going to meet this objective. It is written that the use of the Old City as an asset for the development of the cultural and touristic industries has to be met by promoting the Old City and its traditional architectural style and by reducing the residential population and the buildings that are for residential use (Yangzhou City Government 2003a, p. 32). Jumping to Chapter 7, there are further details about how to meet this objective, through an approach called “constructive protection” (ibid., pp. 92–94). According to the authors of the plan, all the inhabitants of the inner city that only use this area for pure residential purposes would be better off moving out and settling down in the western part of the city. Similarly, economic activities not related to cultural and tourism industries would find a better place in the New City, where economic and

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t­ echnological development zones were newly constructed. These transformations would help and support other residents to reform, develop and create new cultural and tourism industries. Moreover, in this way, the government would be able to promote the redevelopment of the inner city “piece by piece” and gradually reduce the population density. To make this possible, the whole population of the Old City had to be reduced from 120,000 inhabitants to 50,000. The question would then be to determine who was entitled to stay and who had to leave. The passage on “constructive protection” goes on by describing the various ways to promote the sustainable development of the Old City. The key to protecting the Old City is the revitalisation of its economy, enhancing the Old City’s own “hematopoietic function”. To do so, the city needed to encourage establishing the ‘right type’ of industry. The document indicates that the traditional economy of the Old City is based on small commerce, on restoration and on tourism and cultural industries, but also that this type of industry is “generally of low grade, small scale, and with low efficiency”. Hence, the plan recommends introducing incentive mechanisms to revitalise the Old City’s economy. In particular, it envisages adjusting the economic structure by expanding the scale of businesses and enhancing their quality. Improving the economic structure of the Old City should be achieved through fostering the real estate sector, seen as the real “catalyst for the transformation of the Old City”. In particular, “the Old City business estate body shall serve tourism, leisure, vacation, resort, hotel, restaurants, shops, sightseeing ateliers and cultural industries functions”. These aspects make it clear why, during an interview, a local official shared his fears that the Old City would be “transformed into a hotel”.8 As underlined by Su Xiaobo (2010, p. 166), local state discourses often reveal that urban conservation serves “to propel economic development” and not to retain the heritage value. The time range envisaged by the Eco-­ City Plan also shows that renovating the Old City would have been quite different from adopting a careful approach. Instead, it is found that the government had to try to achieve a comprehensive transformation of the Old City within five to ten years (Yangzhou City Government 2003a, p.  94). This transformation implied a “gradual relocation of low- and middle-­income residents currently using the buildings of the Old City only for residential purposes”. The emptied spaces would then have been filled by attracting businesses “having high economic efficiency” and a “high-level management” (ibid.).

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This change of population and of business would help transform the Old City “from a consumption-based to a production-oriented area” and through making it “become a big revenue producer instead of just a place for simple protection and consumption” (Yangzhou City Government 2003a, p.  94). In other terms, as denounced by Su Xiaobo (2015, p. 2877), “the city is not for people, but for profit, or for a selected group of consumers”. These words do not represent an oddity of the Yangzhou Eco-City Plan or of China more generally. When looking at the urban renewal policy applied by the West Berlin city government in the 1950s–1960s, renewal interventions were also supported by the strong conviction that the inner city was affected by a wrong use of space and by the presence of wrong people, a situation that definitely needed correction (Bodenschatz et al. 1983, p. 27). Similarly to the inner city residents of West Berlin, the right place for these wrong people was the new housing compounds constructed in the expansion areas of Yangzhou. These ideas have existed in China since the late 1980s and share many commonalities with the urban renewal paradigm of many Western countries in past decades (cf. Klemek 2011). To put the Yangzhou situation into context and better understand the bases that support this policy paradigm, the following section makes a conceptual jump to the general national context.

3.3   Shifting to the National Scale to Understand Yangzhou City Plans In order to introduce the paradigm of urban renewal still in force in China, one of its most symbolic words, chai (拆), which means “to demolish”, could be explained. This character was and still is ubiquitous on the thousands, probably millions, of buildings that have been demolished since the 1980s and that continue to be demolished, making of Chinese cities “restless urban landscapes” (Shen and Wu 2011; Lin and Wei 2002). Accompanied by the character “迁” (qian), “to move”, they are the protagonists of a large number of dramatic stories that recount forced relocations, difficult negotiations for compensation, furious protests against demolitions and relocations, and at times of sad episodes of violence (Feng 2011; Hsing 2010). These phenomena, which often find media coverage both from the Chinese and the international press, are very powerful images of the effects that the transformations launched by the Chinese government’s decision to “reform and opening up” (gaige kaifang – 改革 开放) had on urban space.

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As is commonly known, from the end of the 1970s the country introduced important reforms of its economic and administrative systems and gradually opened its doors to foreign investments. These reforms, in part still on the government agenda, profoundly changed the socio-economic structure of the country as well as the rules applied by its administration. These transformations did not become more evident than in the wealthy cities of China’s eastern regions, and in particular in the life and spaces of these cities. The reform and opening up phase welcomed housing privatisation and the establishment of a real estate sector. With the development of this sector and the support of private investments, Chinese citizens started benefitting from a large housing offer that had for a long time been precluded. These developments led to establishing a housing market, and consequently new housing types were available to an emerging “Chinese middle class” (cf. Rocca 2016). New land uses were also established, making space for office buildings, Western-style shopping malls, supermarkets, hotels and spaces for leisure (Gaubatz 1995, 1999). In short, Chinese cities, which under Mao were organised according to the needs of industrial production (Sit 2010), soon started to accommodate for a new consumer society that longed for status distinction, comfort, consumption and leisure. In particular, inner-city areas that were once occupied by factories and their surrounding workers’ compounds had to make space for high-rise buildings and skyscrapers, central business districts, gigantic shopping malls and commercial complexes, large roads, residential areas and new open spaces (Gaubatz 2008; Wu et al. 2007). The watchword for many cities in eastern China was “redevelopment” (gaizao – 改造). The same sort of thing happened to many buildings that survived the war against Japan, the civil war and the troubled history of Maoist China. Urban redevelopment thus became an important characteristic of Chinese cities in the post-reform era, and it still concerns them, to a scale and a speed that are unprecedented in world history (Lin and Wei 2002). Parallel to these developments, Chinese cities also expanded  – and sprawled  – as they needed and still need to accommodate an increasing urban population, including migrants from rural China.9 However, socio-economic transformations and demographic developments at the heart of a new, diversified housing demand cannot alone explain the rapid and dramatic transformations witnessed by Chinese cities in the reform and post-reform era. If these two aspects can be included in the basket of the macro forces that have contributed to significantly changing the face of Chinese cities, policy and institutional changes have perhaps played the lion’s share as the main drivers of urban (re-)development.

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To assess their importance and impact on the Chinese urban space, this part retraces the main changes that were introduced with the reform of the Chinese economy and administrative system and the opening up to foreign investments. In particular it will dwell on four major reforms that have each concerned a division of labour between the central and local governments, the fiscal system, the management of urban and rural land, and housing provision. These four reforms represent the most important forces to have kicked off urban expansion and urban renewal in China and are at the heart of phenomena of urban competition. Indeed, since attiring investments, talents and tourists and increasing local revenues became the most important occupations of city governments, interventions on urban space became commonplace. These interventions profoundly affected inner-city neighbourhoods, leading to the demolition of century-old historical buildings, as illustrated further on in this chapter. Some neighbourhoods were preserved for their touristic and heritage value but cleared of their residents. Others were completely demolished and reconstructed in a pseudo-­ antique style. Thence, under the redevelopment paradigm, the space left for old cities and their inhabitants shrunk considerably. 3.3.1   A New Division of Labour Between the Central Government and City Governments To account for contemporary urban renewal in China, one has to start from the transformations that occurred with the so-called reform and opening-up period. This period, which can still be considered as ongoing, is hard to characterise in just a few words. It is definitely possible to talk about dramatic transformations of China’s socio-economic structure, a deep change of economic system and economic policies, and fundamental transformations in the frames and practices of the Chinese administration. These transformations were put in place thanks to important reforms and, very crucially, thanks to a new division of labour between the central government and local governments. With this major overhaul, major decisions concerning urban development shifted in the hands of city mayors and local party secretaries (Cabestan 2014; Landry 2008). This reform represented a real ‘revolution’ for city development. In the pre-reform era, only ministries of the central government took decisions about city construction. Local administrative levels had little say in planning and construction and only had to make sure to implement the

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directives that came from above. This division of labour was also present in other ex-communist countries (cf. Delpeuch and Vassileva 2010). This situation was overturned with the decentralisation reforms. Most responsibilities for urban development shifted in the hands of city governments, which started making development plans and investment decisions for their own jurisdictions (Cabestan 2014). This shifting of responsibilities was accompanied by the establishment of a “target responsibility system”, which is a central government instrument to control the work carried out by local governments. Under this system, local governments are obliged to achieve a series of administrative targets by virtue of a contractual relationship with the central government (ibid.). The combined effects of decentralisation and the establishment of the target responsibility system had a very significant impact on Chinese cities. In particular, as the central government for a long time established GDP growth as a priority target over other objectives, local governments resorted to interventions on urban spaces (redeveloping and constructing new urban areas) to boost local growth (Zhu 2000). This recourse to (re-) development projects also made it possible for local leaders to achieve career promotion (ibid.). Therefore, the shifting of growth and urban development responsibilities in the hands of local political leaders resulted in a rush to development that pushed several mayors and party secretaries to embark on projects of redevelopment of inner-city areas and of development of new urban areas. These projects served these local leaders to produce local GDP and to secure their promotion in the ranks of the party. This decentralisation of competences to local governments was also accompanied by three other major reforms that imposed important constraints but also provided fundamental advantages to local governments. The outcomes of these reforms also represent major macro-structural factors that can explain the emergence and establishment of the redevelopment paradigm in China as well as a part of the challenges to its reform. 3.3.2  The Fiscal Reform and Its Pressure on Local Governments Together with decentralisation, perhaps the most significant reform that contributed to changing the relationship between the central government and local governments was the fiscal reform. This reform was established in three gradual steps during the 1980s and finally in 1994. The content of the various reforms and of their impact on the repartition of fiscal entrances between the central government and local governments can be

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found in several publications (e.g. Tsai 2004; Tsui and Wang 2004; Zhang 1999; Wang 1997) and are therefore not recalled here. It suffices to know that with the last step, in 1994, the Chinese government established a new system called “tax-assignment sharing” (fen shui zhi – 分税制), which led to a fundamental shift in the way revenues were shared between the central and local governments. Concretely, the reform established three categories of taxes, namely the central taxes, which are sent to the central government; the local taxes, which are retained by local administrations; and shared taxes, which assign percentages of certain taxes to both the central and local governments following specific formulas (Zhang 1999; Wang 1997). The consequence of this reform was that a large part of the fiscal resources extracted by local governments was delivered to Beijing’s central accounts. As a result, local governments were obliged to seek other resources to support local welfare expenses (Tsai 2004). Since with decentralisation a large part of the responsibilities to deliver and fund social services (education, health, welfare) was in the hands of local governments, they were under strong fiscal pressure to meet governmental targets and provide services (ibid.; Tsui and Wang 2004). As such, they had to find other ways to fund their activities. One way was to rely on the so-­ called off-budget revenues, which include “extra-budgetary funds” and “self-raised funds” or “extra-establishments funds”.10 Another way was to rely on the sale of land-use rights to real estate developers. For a large part of their expenses local governments actually relied on this source of income, whose existence is connected to two other important reforms that were introduced in the 1980s: the land reform and the housing reform. 3.3.3  The Land Reform, the Housing Reform and Their Combined Effect with the Fiscal Reform The land reform broke an important taboo that existed in the People’s Republic of China before the “reform and opening-up” period. According to the socialist principle of public land ownership, which considered any kind of land transaction unconstitutional, land was recognised as one of the most important production factors, and as such was excluded from economic transactions in China (Zhu 1999). In other terms, the central government did not exchange but allocated land to production units (the so-called danwei – 单位) to construct industrial sites, housing and other facilities (kindergartens, schools, canteens, hospitals) for their workers

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(Bray 2005). With the reform, the principle of land allocation changed completely. When the country opened up to foreign investments in the late 1970s it triggered the reform of land management. As a matter of fact, the fact that land was not allowed to be sold or transferred was a big obstacle for foreign investors to establish factory sites in China, thence they demanded the legal assignment of property rights on land (Zhu 1999). As one of the four designated “Special Economic Zones” where the Chinese government first opened up to foreign investors, in 1987 the city of Shenzhen was the first to break the ideological taboo and transfer land-­ use rights to foreign investors (ibid.). The central government approved this move and decided to enshrine it in the Constitution, which originally prohibited commercial transactions of land. With this reform, land was recognised as a special commodity and its use rights, separated from ownership, became leasable. Responsibility to lease landuse rights was attributed to city governments, which could also retain in their own coffers the sums paid by investors to acquire land-use rights. Therefore, provided with this opportunity to lease land-use rights and retain the money obtained from the sale, city governments started to transfer land to real estate developers to raise local revenues. In few decades, cities became increasingly dependent on land transfers to finance public expenditures and their daily operations. Their almost unrestrained possibility to lease land-use rights actually made land-transfer revenues their most important source of fiscal entrance (Wu and Gaubatz 2013). This boost of land-use rights transfers was also provoked by a third reform, which concerned the housing sector. Housing reforms went hand in hand with the fiscal and land reforms. They started in the late 1970s, continued all along the 1980s and concluded in 1998 (Wang and Murie 2000). The new housing policy, which introduced the principle of “housing commercialisation”, aimed at drastically reducing state intervention on housing provision (Logan et  al. 2009). This reduction was progressively achieved by limiting government subsidies on housing provision, encouraging individuals to buy housing and increasing the sources of income for companies to encourage them to provide more housing. All this provided the basis for a real estate sector to be established in China. Although some forms of welfare housing or subsidy programmes to buy housing still exist in China, it is no doubt that this reform fundamentally changed the housing provision in China, making housing an important commodity.

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The various steps of the reform in particular allowed for a real estate sector to be developed in a country where housing had been provided for a long time by state-owned enterprises as a form of welfare (Bray 2005). Housing privatisation and commercialisation also gave new impetus to housing provision, which in turn helped the country solve a nationwide housing shortage inherited from the Maoist epoch (Wu and Gaubatz 2013). However, together with the other reforms, the housing reform had very dramatic consequences on Chinese urban spaces. They especially caused an “incurable construction fever” (Friedmann 2007), which is at the heart of the redevelopment paradigm analysed here. This fever profoundly transformed the physical aspect, functions, social composition and wealth of Chinese cities. It also significantly extended their surface by spurring the development of new urban settlements. Finally, it also modified population distribution and the life of Chinese cities, moving inner-­ city inhabitants away from city centres and attracting a new, wealthier public to redeveloped areas. All in all, scholars of urban studies point at an important diversification of urban spaces and, with increasing social inequalities, at the emergence of phenomena of socio-spatial segregation and polarisation, gentrification and displacement (Lin et al. 2015; Whiting 2011; He 2007; He and Wu 2005a, b, 2009; He et al. 2009; Lin 2009; Yang and Chang 2007; Wu et  al. 2007). As illustrated in the next section, these transformations became particularly visible in what were once the old neighbourhoods of Chinese cities.

3.4   The Fate of Old Neighbourhoods Under the “Construction Fever” Old neighbourhoods or “old cities” (laocheng qu or gucheng qu – 老成区, 古城区), as Chinese people call the historical parts of their cities, and old towns represent the urban areas that were perhaps mostly affected by the transformations of the reform and opening up of China. If during Republican China and the Maoist epoch these neighbourhoods and towns had been significantly neglected and overused and had sometimes gone through demolition, in the post-Mao era many of them were erased and redeveloped. One significant transformation that marked the beginning of the fate of (many, but not all) old Chinese cities was the demolition of ancient city walls, which had already started in the Republican period (Friedmann 2007; Whitehand and Gu 2007) and had gone ahead during

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the Maoist epoch (Xie and Heath 2017). These areas were removed to leave space to construct modern roads (Zhang 2008; Friedmann 2007; Whitehand and Gu 2007) following a shared general understanding that these vestiges of the past would have only hindered the development of modern cities and of a “New China” (Zhai and Ng 2009). 3.4.1  A Little Bit of History: Old Cities During the Maoist Epoch During the Maoist epoch, the power of communist slogans left important marks on old cities. In those times, the main imperative for city governments was industrial development, which required cities to be transformed from “places of consumption” to “places of production”, as stated by Chairman Mao himself (ibid.). Industrial sites needed space, which led to many traditional buildings being demolished. Moreover, following the advice of Soviet planners, communist China remade its urban spaces according to the aesthetic canons of the epoch, which stipulate that socialist cities should have wide roads, grand public monuments, monumental buildings and large public squares (Xie and Costa 1993). These imperatives meant getting rid of the remaining city walls and gates. A very famous example of these transformations can be found in Beijing. For Tiananmen Square, the ancient city walls and gates had to be demolished (Gaubatz 2008; Whitehand and Gu 2007), while large mansions, churches, halls and offices of imperial bureaucrats were sacrificed to make place for new buildings, roads and squares (Zhai and Ng 2009). The loss of heritage was enormous (ibid.). Many of these patterns of renewal were also familiar to Yangzhou, which for similar reasons lost its city walls, gates and canals. These changes were fundamental “to transform the old city into a socialist city” and “construct new socialist cities quite distinct from those of the feudal past” (Whitehand and Gu 2007, p. 647). What remained of these old neighbourhoods was then reused to serve the housing and industrial development purposes of the Maoist city (Sit 2010). At the same time, infrastructure was significantly neglected and overburdened, as investing in city construction and development was considered an unproductive activity and a waste of resources needed for the development of industries (ibid.). As a consequence, city and housing construction in China was also limited, with the result that cities suffered important housing shortages and lacked adequate infrastructure. This led to the confiscation of old buildings and their reuse for various purposes. The once one-family-owned mansions

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that characterised Chinese cities were redistributed among several families or used as warehousing and manufacturing workshops (Xie and Heath 2017; Abramson 2006). Many old residences, once home to historical literati and wealthy merchants, were also seized by the government and used as office buildings for the administration. As the state could not provide for housing in sufficient quantities, these old neighbourhoods rapidly became overcrowded and dilapidated (Zhang 2008; Abramson 2006). The narrow living spaces of old housing obliged residents to modify buildings. Walls were damaged by opening new windows and doors and the indoor space division changed to serve new functions. New rooms were also added, often in the form of sheds, and they significantly changed the structure of buildings, damaging part of the heritage and historical buildings. Damages then became particularly severe during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Traditional urban spaces particularly felt the effects of the Red Guards’ fight against the “bourgeoisie emblems” or the “feudalisms emblems” following the campaign against the “four olds” (old thinking, old culture, old customs and old ideology) (Zhai and Ng 2009; Whitehand and Gu 2007). The Red Guards destroyed temples, churches, old gardens and old heritage buildings (Xie and Heath 2017). If some city walls, gates and large institutional buildings resisted the demolitions of the earlier decades, these landmark structures were brought down during the Cultural Revolution (Whitehand and Gu 2007). When demolitions were ‘minor’ they affected the statues and sculptures of Buddhist temples or the decoration stones and commemoration steles at the entrance doors of famous historical residences (Zhu 2016; Friedmann 2007). Yet the worst was yet to come. The effects of the Cultural Revolution were few compared to the transformations of the late 1970s and early 1980s when the reform era arrived. Opening the Chinese economy indeed led to new, significant transformations of Chinese cities. New architectural elements that largely followed international models popped up in inner cities (Gaubatz 2008), resulting in the disappearance of many old neighbourhoods. 3.4.2  Old Cities at the Time of the Reform Few old cities in China were spared the construction fever. Despite the introduction of relevant policies and regulations promoting conservation in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s,11 “destruction of the historical fabric has

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occurred at an unprecedented pace” (Whitehand and Gu 2007, p. 650). Inner cities were redeveloped by making space for the construction of large roads for car transit, high-rise buildings, shopping malls and modern residential compounds (Xu et al. 2009; Campanella 2008; Li 2006; Zhang and Fang 2004). These operations responded to local governments’ needs to boost local revenues and to promote increases in land value, in turn obtained via large-scale infrastructural and urban renewal projects (Xie and Heath 2017). This is why, for instance, Beijing lost a large part of its hutong (胡同) heritage (Meyer 2009; Zhang 2008; Abramson 1997, 2001), the system of narrow lanes and walled courtyard houses that had characterised its cityscape for such a long time. Similar transformations happened in Shanghai, where continuous redevelopments of the inner city decimated nineteenth- and early twentieth-­ century lilong (里弄) areas (Cheval 2012; He 2007; He and Wu 2005b; Yang and Chang 2007).12 Examples of this type can be found all throughout China, Yangzhou included, as the reforms described earlier ushered local governments into a harsh competition to achieve short-term economic growth and carry out grandiose urban projects by means of urban (re-)development (Wu et al. 2007). As inner-city areas are centrally located and more accessible to public services, they inevitably turned into the main targets of real estate development as well as state redevelopment operations that aimed at providing new infrastructures and new sanitary facilities (Whitehand and Gu 2007). Beyond these redevelopments, old neighbourhoods underwent other forms of transformation that had a significant impact on their aspect as well as on their functions and their very existence. As highlighted earlier on in this chapter, old cities in general have turned into touristic attractions and have been preserved with the perspective of developing and obtaining profits from commercial and touristic activities (Qiu 2014; Su 2010; Friedmann 2007). The case of Lijiang in the Yunnan province or of Pingyao in the Shanxi province are clear examples of the preservation and touristic use of old cities, though with different degrees of use and transformation.13 The strong commercial and touristic reasons behind ‘old-city preservation’ led local governments to largely stretch this concept and proceed with reconstructing old buildings and old city walls. Following the practice of “demolishing the real and constructing the fake” (chai zhen jian jia – 拆真建假) and using the so-called fake antique (fanggu – 仿古) (Qiu 2014; Ruan et  al. 2013), many old neighbourhoods were reconstructed in the form of ahistorical replicas.

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The case of Nanluoguxiang or Qianmen in Beijing (Zhang 2008), or the case of Datong in the Shanxi province, are striking examples of these phenomena. These “Disneyland-style” (Bruno 2014) ad hoc constructed old neighbourhoods are often of poor architectural value. Some copies conserve traditional construction methods and use traditional materials, but modern construction material may also be chosen. The result is often an awkward attempt at reawakening a past or fulfilling an idealised vision of the old city, as buildings are often reconstructed following a unique aesthetic canon of a specific epoch. This is, for instance, the case of the Dongguan street renewal in Yangzhou, which will be introduced a bit later on. When old buildings and neighbourhoods were preserved, many interventions concerned displacing their occupants and changing their functions or their users (Zhang and Fang 2004). Housing of particularly high architectural value, like heritage-protected units, were transformed into museums and exhibition areas. Others became the target of rich overseas and domestic investors, transforming them into luxury homes for the rich Chinese or expats (Abramson 2001). Lanes and sites with particular historical value or geographical position were revitalised or partially redeveloped and turned into commercial and touristic areas (Xie and Heath 2017). A typical example of the former is Shishahai, in Beijing, which was transformed into a “bar district” under the leadership of the local district government (Zhang 2008). As for the latter, the most famous example is the renewal of the Taipingqiao area in Shanghai, where the district government, in collaboration with a design company from Hong Kong, preserved some traditional buildings but also introduced new elements that mixed traditional features with contemporary architectural elements (Yang and Chang 2007). Beyond the transformations of the old urban fabric, it is also possible to find residual, almost untouched spaces. The old neighbourhoods are still occupied by their original inhabitants or by residents who recently moved there. It is hard to say what the fate of these areas will be, as their “preservation areas” designation does not impede radical interventions on the space, such as demolitions, relocating residents or redevelopment.14 However, regardless of their uncertain future, some of these sites were upgraded and are (momentarily) kept as residential areas for residents. Other sites are in need of restauration and renovation, in particular upgrading the infrastructure, repairing dilapidated housing and securing dangerous constructions, which affect many neighbourhoods in the old

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cities. These sites often present the typical characteristics of slums and require interventions to improve residents’ living conditions, for instance by reducing overcrowding and enhancing common spaces; by improving housing quality; and by eliminating illegal constructions that present an important risk for the safety of the neighbourhood. In Yangzhou, many old neighbourhoods shared these needs and awaited upgrading interventions. However, as indicated earlier, the government had different plans for the old city. To provide concrete examples of the practices used under this paradigm, the next section proposes to once more shift the scale and look at urban renewal in Yangzhou.

3.5   Yangzhou Old City Under the Redevelopment Paradigm Yangzhou Old City is an interesting piece of traditional Chinese architecture, with its typical narrow streets, alleyways and one-storey (sometimes two-storey) traditional buildings. It covers 5.09 km2 and, as its residents use to say, it has “2500 years of history”. Yangzhou indeed has a very long history, testified by the presence of relics of the Han dynasty epoch (206 BC–220 AD) and of other important dynasties in Chinese history. It is possible to distinguish a Tang City, two Song Cities and then a Ming-­ Qing Old City (see Fig.  3.1). The relics extend out onto a surface of 18.25 km2, which has been preserved by the Yangzhou government since the 1980s and now constitutes a wide and green open space in the midst of the city. As for the so-called Old City, it corresponds to the 5.09-km2 city made of buildings that date back to the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) epochs. The main reason why the Old City conserved a part of its buildings and streets is that for a long time Yangzhou had not known the same development boom of many Chinese cities, at least not of the same magnitude. However, Yangzhou was not immune to the demolitions. Many old neighbourhoods were torn down to promote city modernisation, both in the Maoist and in the reform times, which explains why the Old City is not intact. This parenthesis nevertheless only lasted a short time. The controversies that emerged after a large road was built in the inner city in 1983, entailing several old neighbourhoods to be demolished, was the occasion to trigger a debate about the protection of the Old City. One year before, in 1982, Yangzhou was selected by the State Council to become one of

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Fig. 3.1  Plan of the entire 18.25 km2 old city of Yangzhou. The surface comprised in the ‘square’ at the bottom (right side) of the plan is the 5.09 km2 Ming-­ Qing Old City. (Courtesy of Yangzhou Urban Planning Bureau)

the 24 cities of the first batch of “famous historical cultural cities” (lishi wenhua mingcheng – 历史文化明城). Two years later, Yangzhou hosted a national conference on the topic, which revealed an important turning point to discuss protection concepts. Then, in the middle of the 1980s, the city government decided that new developments would not touch the area of the Old City.15 Important planning control measures were undertaken, which included establishing height limits for the new buildings surrounding the Old City. Then, in 1983, Yangzhou prepared its first conservation plan, which mainly focused on protecting the cultural units of the Old City and the relics of the constructions realised during different dynastic epochs. Between the 1980s and 1990s, the city government also took the important decision to relocate factories and industrial workshops outside the Old City, “returning back the land occupied by these sites to the residents of the Old City” (Yangzhou City Government 2003b). These measures,

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which had also been taken in other Chinese cities (Leaf 1998), basically had the effect of stopping redevelopments and leaving the Old City as it was – although some transformations did take place. Later, at the end of the 1990s, the government started exploring methods to revive some of the areas of the Old City. In particular, in 2002, the city government approved the Yangzhou Regulatory Detailed Control Plan for the Old City, a statutory planning document that defines the land-use functions of the Old City and divides its area into 12 protection zones. Among these 12 zones, a site called the Dongguan Historic Street Area was selected to experiment with renovation approaches. The coming paragraphs offer more detail about these projects and show that the government was committed to experiment with a variety of approaches that also included redevelopment. 3.5.1  First Experiments of Old City Conservation The Yangzhou city government’s experiments with urban conservation concerned three areas of the Dongguan Historic Street Area, respectively called Dongquan Gate, Dongguan Street and Jiaochang. As can be drawn from reports written by GTZ, the first two projects, conducted in the years 2003–2004 in Dongquan Gate and in Dongguan Street, can be considered relatively light interventions. They mostly focused on restoring prestigious buildings, remaking infrastructure and improving the living environment by renovating the street pavement and facade (GTZ 2005, p.  77). Thence, restoration mainly concentrated on old residences and gardens, and in some cases on private houses, while most other buildings remained untouched (GTZ 2003, pp. 12–13). Illegal constructions were also demolished to create open spaces. The projects were mostly entirely financed by the city government (GTZ 2005, p. 77), which turned renovated buildings into touristic attractions and established admission fees to cover the cost of the works. Two heavier interventions followed: the second renewal of Dongguan Street and the construction of Jiaochang commercial centre, conducted when GTZ promoted Careful Urban Renewal. With these projects, the government decided to experiment with other solutions. The former was entirely publicly funded, but aimed at obtaining a major return on the investment. This could be achieved on one condition: all the residents had to be relocated and their property rights seized. Then newly redeveloped properties had to be rented out. Thence, to go through with this project,

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the city government forced all residents to relocate and ordered the demolition of most buildings, which were replaced by replicas in Qing dynasty style. Similarly to other cases in China (cf. Lin 2011; Weinstein and Ren 2009), the local government operated through a state-owned construction company that acquired property rights and relocated residents. This was possible thanks to the absolute ownership the state had of urban land16 and to the Regulations on Demolitions of 2001, which gave local governments and construction companies undisputed power to seize land-use rights, justified by public interest (Weinstein and Ren 2009).17 Relocated residents were provided with new housing in new development areas, built by the same state-owned company. However, because of the important tolls on the local population and on the existing buildings, as well as the fact that residents and some officials in the administration firmly opposed the relocations and demolitions, controversy surrounded the project (cf. Chapter 5). The municipal government was nevertheless determined to follow through with its special commercial street, claiming that “every city needs one”.18 Beyond this form of government-led renovation, the Yangzhou government experimented with property-led approaches as well, involving private real estate developers. The government wished to follow the example of Xintiandi, a famous market-led redevelopment project conducted in Shanghai a few years earlier (cf. He 2007; Yang and Chang 2007). This experiment concerned Jiaochang. In 2006, the city government leased the area to a private investor and invited a Hong Kong architectural company to provide the overall design. Following its plans, the area of Jiaochang was subsequently demolished. Except for a few historical monuments, the original and traditional mixed-use neighbourhoods were completely torn down to make space for a commercial area (Cai 2011, p.  178). The project was not approved by many residents, who protested against its realisation. Contesting press outside Mainland China reported stories of violent evictions, where black squads used threats and physical violence to force residents out (Radio Free Asia 2006; Epoch Times 2006). Interviewed partners confirmed these episodes. The project never ended up seeing the light of day. After a block of buildings went up, the government stopped the project “because it was not in harmony with the surrounding area” and because “people did not appreciate it”.19

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3.5.2  The Paradigm of “State-Dominated Urban Redevelopment” The Jiaochang project was not the first of its kind. Other smaller areas in the Old City had also been demolished to make space for high-end residential buildings (GTZ 2003, p. 12). Families were compensated, while the newly constructed premises were sold at a far higher price. As a representative of the city government told a GTZ expert, “only rich people” could afford to live in the Old City (ibid.). An example of this use of space was the Changle complex, a luxury garden hotel that pooled and transformed three old architectural ensembles. Similarly to the interventions on other heritage buildings, it implied relocating sitting residents and businesses, though not always with their agreement. These elements describe a situation very well known by urban studies scholars who focus on Chinese cities in the post-reform era. As illustrated before, the local government sees land in inner cities as an important commodity to be redeveloped in order to increase cities’ attractiveness and sources of income (Wu 2015; Lin 2011; Xu et al. 2009). Transforming inner cities into spaces for consumption, developing touristic and commercial facilities and building residential buildings for well-off families aim at achieving two objectives: raising land value and increasing city incomes (Su 2010, 2015; Hsing 2010; He and Wu 2005a; b, 2009; Zhang 2008; Zhang and Fang 2004). Given the predominant role the city government has in these operations, the renowned urban studies scholar Wu Fulong (2015) has called the phenomenon “state-dominated urban redevelopment”, an expression that illustrates the paradigm in force well. In this paradigm, the city government acts through state-owned enterprises. These companies are given easier conditions to acquire the properties in redevelopment areas and proceed to doing so at a relatively low cost because land-use rights are provided for free (Liu 2013, p. 107). In these operations, the renewal of the Old City is used as a strategy for place making and place branding (Su 2015), similar to the realisation of new sites (such as CBD, eco−/low-carbon cities, etc.) and the organisation of grand events (such as the Olympic Games or the Expo) (Liu 2013). By selling heritage, local governments try to make their cities globally competitive and succeed in economic restructuring. They do so through securing “‘place-specific locational advantages’ in relation to other cities” and through selling the city for consumption (Su 2015, p. 2874, citing Brenner 1999, p. 440).

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Through a radical transformation of its spaces and its uses, this type of redevelopment targets a newly emerging consumer society and uses captivating architecture to increase the attractiveness of redevelopment areas (Liu 2013, p. 107). In this perspective, urban conservation consists in the “adaptive reuse and commercialisation” of “exotic cultural elements to attract domestic and global consumerist elites” (Zhang 2008, p.  189). Adopting traditional styles, which vary from the use of European historical architectural styles to the aesthetics of the Republic of China, makes levy on the “feelings of nostalgia” of potential consumers, and local governments proceed to ‘packaging’ these spaces to increase the commercial value of land (Liu 2013, p. 108). For this reason urban studies scholars also talk about “symbolic urban preservation” (Zhang 2008). Moreover, renewing old cities is prevalently implemented under the imperative of “expelling the poor and attracting the rich” (Liu 2013, p. 109).20 The spaces once inhabited by residents are replaced by high-end settlements or by commercial spaces and pedestrian streets, as was the case of Dongguan Street. The street has since become a “business card” for tourism in Yangzhou and a national AAAA-level scenic spot (ibid.), which indicates that the central government could also approve this type of redevelopment. These examples illustrate the redevelopment paradigm that supported the renewal policies of the Yangzhou government, a paradigm that GTZ agents thought should be replaced by more appropriate alternatives. In fact, with such a particular understanding of urban renewal, it was in large part predictable that the collaboration between GTZ and local authorities turned out to be complicated. The next chapter deals with these aspects, showing that the introduction of an alternative approach was everything but easy and linear.

3.6   Conclusion This chapter went through the key research steps of acquiring “detailed knowledge of the situation” in Yangzhou before its “involvement in the project” of international cooperation (cf. Colomb 2007, pp. 364–365). This step is of particular importance when identifying the impact of transfers. At the beginning of the 2000s, the Yangzhou government’s plans for the Old City were to exploit its touristic and commercial potential. These plans were the same as ideas and practices that existed all over China and had much to do with the power arrangements and political objectives set with the country’s reforms at the end of the 1970s. The focus of the

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c­ entral government on economic performances in the evaluation of local cadres, and the combined effects of the fiscal reform, land reform and housing reform engendered an incurable construction fever that significantly changed the aspect of Chinese cities. Under these conditions, innercity old neighbourhoods became the target of urban renewal interventions that mainly aimed at redeveloping. The logic was clear: local governments needed to raise the value of land in the inner city to be able to sell land-use rights at a high price, consequently increasing local incomes. Moreover, they needed to foster local development by intervening in urban space. By looking at these macro-transformations and the practices adopted by local governments in China, Yangzhou included, it has been possible to draw the main characteristics of the paradigm of urban renewal in force in the early 2000s. It is anticipated that this paradigm is still partially in force today. Moreover, with the help of secondary literature in the field of urban studies, it has also been possible to identify the main goals of this paradigm, ultimately qualified as “state-dominated urban redevelopment” (Wu 2015). As this chapter indicates, urban renewal strategies mostly consisted in redevelopment in the form of new and modern constructions or of replicas of old cities. Sometimes old neighbourhoods and old cities were preserved and transformed into important tourism destinations. The objectives of local governments were to sell heritage and attract an affluent public, making their cities attractive sites for investors, tourists and talents. Achieving this ultimately supports the goal of improving local economic performances. These aspects were particularly evident in the plans for the Old City of Yangzhou and in the projects that had been conducted in the early 2000s. The Yangzhou government’s vision was to redevelop the area to increase the value of land and the attractiveness of its spaces. Renewal interventions in the Old City should have relocated its ‘poor and unproductive’ population to make room for commercial and leisure activities for the well-being of tourists. This would have favoured what Gotham (2005) called “tourism gentrification”, which transforms the built environment to extract high profits. These intentions translated into a series of projects conducted in the early 2000s, which implied different degrees of intervention. These ranged from partially relocating residents to preserve the historical and cultural buildings and to intervene in the infrastructure and street facade, to massively displacing inhabitants and redeveloping entire sites. Illustrating these aspects was useful to figure out some of the challenges that emerged in carrying out the project of international cooperation as

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well as in the years that followed. It supported the search for the structural aspects that constrained the intervention of the cooperation agency and, later, the activities of local reformers. Moreover, it highlighted the strong economic motivation behind renewal interventions in Yangzhou, pointing to the essentially exploitative approach of the city government vis-à-vis the Old City. As will be presented in the coming chapters, this approach is still very much alive. This aspect points out one of the challenges of policy translation, characteristic of ‘hard-to-define’ policies such as environmental or heritage conservation. These policies are hard to define because positions favouring objectives like the exploitation of historical areas and heritage sites coexist with other visions and find legitimation among policy-­makers. This aspect should be understood, as it offers a realist understanding of the complexity that an in-depth analysis of the process of policy transfer, learning and change has to take into account.

Notes 1. For instance, in 1992 the Ministry of Construction (now Ministry of Housing and Urban and Rural Development – MoHURD) established the “National Garden City Programme”. In 2010 the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) established the “low-carbon cities programme”. 2. Elements obtained from interviews. 3. Free translation from Chinese. 4. He was charged with bribery and abuse of power, accused of having favoured some real estate developers in obtaining land-use rights, in speeding up demolition processes and in increasing their floor area ratio during his mandates in Yangzhou and Nanjing. 5. As opposed to this area of the province, Yangzhou (and other cities of northern and central Jiangsu) benefitted from less domestic and international investments. 6. As underlined by Yu Li (2014, pp. 200–201), competitiveness goes hand in hand with city marketing, reason for which the UDSPs play an important role in the whole marketing process of the city. 7. Free translation from Chinese. 8. Interview 2014. 9. Although rural migrants are not exactly considered to be the beneficiaries of the improved socio-economic conditions that came with the reform, so do not really have any impact on the high segments of the housing market (cf. Friedmann 2007), they nevertheless contributed and still contribute to urban growth and demographic pressure on city spaces.

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10. Extra-budgetary funds represent a large category of various revenues (e.g. administrative charges and business charges, funds for special purposes, etc.) and are managed and allocated by “different agencies and organisations” (Zhang 1999, p. 123). Self-raised funds include various types of fees levied by local governments, like ad hoc charges to fund specific government projects, fines, surcharges on services and profits from the activities of township and village enterprises, as well as various donations and contributions from local entrepreneurs and individual citizens (Tsai 2004; Tsui and Wang 2004). This second type of funds are at the heart of many conflicts with the population. Local governments, always in need of money and personnel in the administration, invent new arbitrary fees. Known as “predatory charges”, these fees lead to an exasperation of the relationships between the administration and urban or rural inhabitants (Tsui and Wang 2004; Zhang 1999). 11. For the complete list, see Qiu (2014). 12. Lilong are composed of narrow lanes and rows of brick houses in various styles. Mixing Western and Chinese features, a typical housing type characteristic of lilong areas and of “old Shanghai” landscapes was the shikumen (石库门), particularly visible on the structure of buildings and decorative elements. They represent typical constructions of colonial Shanghai. 13. In expert interviews as well as in literature, Lijiang is often portrayed as an example of excessive focus on the touristic use of the old city that led to the displacement of residents and to their being replaced by business activities run by non-locals (Qiu 2014; Su 2010, 2015). As for Pingyao, despite ­having dedicated its main roads to commercial-touristic functions, still ­preserves an important part of its heritage and original population within the walls of the old city (personal observations). 14. Fieldwork observations. 15. Interview 2014. 16. Urban land is exclusive property of the state, while private owners only have land-use rights. 17. The first version of the Regulations on Demolitions, promulgated in 1991, “guaranteed local governments the authority and power to issue demolition permits without seeking residents’ consent and to enforce demolition in case of disputes” (Weinstein and Ren 2009, p. 413). Their revised version of 2001 was a response to “widespread resistance against urban renewal”, making some more requirements to developers, but they did not change “the uneven power balance” (ibid.). Consultations with residents were not required and it was still possible to proceed with forced demolitions. Instead, the 2001 regulations weakened households even more, as their promulgation legitimised demolitions. Hence, developers use these regulations for forced evictions (Wu 2004, p. 458; cf. also Feng 2011).

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18. Interviews 2014. 19. Interviews 2014. 20. Free translation from Chinese.

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CHAPTER 4

Introducing a New Paradigm: The Delivery of Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou

4.1   Introduction While the administration in Yangzhou was preparing to demolish and redevelop two areas of the Old City, GTZ proposed another approach to urban renewal. Between 2004 and 2007, with the help of expert visits to Yangzhou and study trips of local officials to Germany and to other cities in China, as well as studies of the situation and needs of the Old City, GTZ suggested that the Yangzhou government experiment with the model of Careful Urban Renewal, which was developed in West Berlin 30 years earlier. This model called for a conservation of the existing spaces and structures as well as for the respect of the lifestyles and wishes of their residents. It also called for the establishment of a process of renewal – as opposed to the realisation of ‘one-shot’ redevelopment projects – which would have allowed for a gradual upgrade of the Old City and for the search of appropriate solutions for its conservation. The third requirement was to consider poor households and to support them throughout the renewal process. This fourth chapter explores this ‘delivery’ phase of Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou. It looks at the early steps of the introduction of this alternative paradigm of urban renewal, offering an analysis of the understandings of the problems of the Old City by GTZ agents as well as the different policy solutions they provided to the Yangzhou city government. This analysis corresponds to what Claire Colomb (2007, p.  359) called

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“recording learning”, which implies taking a closer look at the “actual processes of cooperation and learning” (original emphasis). This aspect will be addressed in this chapter as well as in the next. The analysis first focuses on the cooperation project, starting with the micro-dynamics of transfer at the times in which the German cooperation agency was operating in Yangzhou. To that end, the instruments and channels used by GTZ to propose Careful Urban Renewal to the Yangzhou administration are introduced here. The chapter also illustrates the concrete activities conducted by GTZ, the contents of the exchanges between the cooperation partners and the reception of knowledge, as well as the difficulties inherent in the cooperation process. To present these elements, the chapter is divided into four main parts. In the first part, it introduces the origins of the “Eco-city planning and management programme”, the initiative that involved GTZ and the Yangzhou government. In so doing, it will be possible to highlight certain elements that help retrace the micro-dynamics of transfer and in particular the phases of the design of the cooperation project and the purposes it served. In the second part, the chapter looks into the understandings that GTZ had of the Old City and of its administration, the problems it identified in the management and practices of urban renewal, and the solutions it proposed to improve them. In particular, it shows that the paradigm of urban renewal proposed by GTZ agents was very different from the redevelopment paradigm in force in China at the time. A third part looks into the concrete activities conducted by GTZ with the local planning authorities. These activities focused on the preparation of a proposal to explore alternative models of renewal, drawing from foreign experience. This proposal led to the realisation of three pilot projects, which gave the local administration the chance to experiment with new ideas. These activities were also accompanied by a comprehensive strategy for the Old City, supportive for the future preparation of policies and plans. Both the pilot projects and the comprehensive strategy represented the main outputs of the GTZ collaboration with Yangzhou. The fourth part of this chapter proposes an appraisal and/or interpretation of the cooperation project, which shows that GTZ offered a platform for some local officials to advocate for alternative approaches to urban renewal and to experiment with new policy ideas, in particular providing these officials with a channel to directly connect with the city’s main authorities and the opportunity to legitimise their ideas. In a way, GTZ played the role of

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‘facilitator’ or ‘catalyst’ for social learning that supported the local “endogenous forces of mutation” (Stone 2012) and helped opening a ‘window for policy learning’.

4.2   Origins of the GTZ “Eco-City Planning and Management Programme” On December 2000, the Chinese and German governments organised a bilateral conference, the “Sino-German Environmental Conference”, in which the two countries discussed the possibility to cooperate on issues related to environmental protection. Representatives of the city government of Yangzhou were invited to participate. As a matter of fact, a few months before the city had been selected by the Chinese government as the main beneficiary of the collaboration. Information provided through interviews and a document written by the Yangzhou administration made it possible to make a (fragmentary) reconstruction of the process that led to this decision and to the establishment of the cooperation project. The document in particular seems to imply that the cooperation concept was designed on the basis of the needs of Yangzhou. It states that in July 1999, the Jiangsu provincial office of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) issued a document requiring the city of Yangzhou to become a pilot for the whole province for the period of the 10th Five-Year Plan (1996–2000) (Yangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau 2004). A collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences was then established to prepare an eco-city plan, thereby introducing avant-garde concepts and techniques to turn Yangzhou into a pilot city for eco-city construction. During the preparation of what finally became the “Eco-city Construction Plan” (cf. Chap. 3), the city of Yangzhou proposed to establish a bilateral collaboration with Germany, renowned for its advanced practices in the field of environmental protection (Yangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau 2004). In December 1999, discussions on this issue were held between the local, provincial and central governments, in particular on the idea of collaborating with the German government to study concepts and methods for urban ecological construction. These discussions led to the publication in 2000 of an official document, with which the Yangzhou government formally required the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Commerce to start collaborating with Germany (ibid.). Then, in September 2000, the

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German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development appointed GTZ to support the Yangzhou government with its team of experts.1 An inspection team composed of GTZ experts, members of German academia and other consultants was sent to Yangzhou for 10 days to write up an appraisal of the potential fields of cooperation. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed with the then vice-Mayor of Yangzhou, and the “Eco-City Planning and Management Programme” was established. With the MoU, the two sides decided to render Yangzhou the pilot site for their bilateral collaboration. Moreover, the German government pledged 10 million marks, while the Chinese government promised 12 million yuan to support the project (ibid.). Money had to cover the project’s operations, in particular the expenses for expertise, as the programme aimed at providing technical consultancy.2 This proposal was ratified during the Sino-German Environmental Conference of December 2000, which officialised Yangzhou as the pilot city of the cooperation between the two countries. In a second meeting, held in 2001, the Chinese government and the Jiangsu province decided to add the city of Changzhou as the second pilot city of the project, and support the project with further funding. In this way, two cities of the Jiangsu province would benefit from German expertise. During the trip to Yangzhou in September 2000, the German experts indicated that the rehabilitation of the Old City could become an important topic of collaboration; this was just one of the items of the work programme they designed together with the Yangzhou authorities. The potential fields of collaboration were manifold, as the collaboration aimed at supporting the Yangzhou government to pursue its own plans for eco-­ city construction.3 For instance, the project included the idea of exploring methods for waste management, to introduce waste separation and to produce fertilisers from organic waste. Another item dealt with water pollution, for which GTZ made proposals on the topic of wastewater management and river pollution. A third item targeted car traffic and public transportation. However, in the course of the collaboration, the conservation of the Old City finally became the topic for which GTZ could provide support and carry out pilot projects. Although GTZ found interested individual learners for the other issues, it could not find ‘project owners’ or institutional partners to engage time and money in exploring the methods that the agency proposed. As such, many proposals remained on paper.

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4.3   Yangzhou Old City and Its Problems in the Eyes of GTZ Experts For both the Yangzhou government and GTZ agents, the renewal needs of the Old City were great, but the definition of the problems and of their solutions were often far apart. Between 2003 and 2006 a series of reports were written and prepared at different phases of the cooperation project that very clearly state what the experts involved in the GTZ project had observed. The reports offer an idea of their general understandings of the local situation as well as of the focal points of their observations. Reports in particular highlight what these experts considered being the renewal needs and problems of the Old City; the socio-economic characteristics and the specific needs of the population living in the Old City; and the issues that they regarded as problematic in the management of urban renewal, such as the lack of specific policies, regulations and funding, amongst other issues. Concerning the renewal needs and the problems of the Old City, it is possible to draw information from several reports, including a Situation Analysis of the Old City Yangzhou, which was written in 2006 in preparation for the policy recommendations for the Yangzhou government. This 105-page document contains a significant amount of information about the socio-economic conditions of the Old City, its spatial patterns and characteristics, and its housing and infrastructure conditions, as well as the major problems encountered in the Old City. For instance, houses in the Old City vary in their quality, some being “well maintained, some in urgent need of repair”, some having “adequate facilities and some dilapidated” (GTZ 2006a, p.  54). The Old City also suffers from a “lack of public open space, particularly in the residential areas” and from “very poor urban infrastructure and facilities”, which include “water supply and drainage systems, public sanitation, facilities for treating solid wastes, etc.” (ibid.). According to the survey conducted by GTZ agents, “over 50% of the houses need repair”, which they distinguished according to their repair needs – from houses that still have “good structure and adequate facilities” to houses “facing the risk of decay” (ibid., p.  67). In particular, houses with “poor structure and inadequate facilities”, such as sanitary facilities, space for living, sunlight exposure, ventilation and transportation access, are “tremendous in quantity” (ibid., p. 68). These houses are also located in very dense areas, and therefore are exposed to the risk of fire,

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because their core structure is made with timber (ibid.). The inadequacy of dwellings in the Old City is also due to the decaying conditions of many buildings, for which reparation needs are very great (ibid.). Similar problems – decay and inadequacy – were found in basic infrastructures, for instance in water supply, in water drainage, and in wastewater discharge pipes, too old and too small to serve the current needs of the population of the Old City. Due to the narrow streets and the presence of illegal constructions and sheds, walkability and bike transit are also very much constrained and could cause dramatic problems in case of fire (see Fig.  4.1). At the time GTZ experts were preparing their studies, in the second half of the 2000s, they spotted that the density in the Old City was very high, around 300 to 700 persons per hectare on average, but reaching 850–1000 persons per hectare in some places (ibid., p. 25); basically, the Old City was overcrowded. On the socio-economic conditions, the report confirms that the Old City is mostly inhabited by low-income households. Young families with “higher education background and higher income” moved to the New

Fig. 4.1  A narrow alleyway in Yangzhou Old City. (Credit: Image courtesy of Liu Jian)

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City, leaving only the elderly behind (ibid., p. 17). There is thus a severe problem of an ageing population. The report states that “the majority of the people remaining in the Old City area are retired, laid-off, unemployed or self-employed, or common employees of industrial or commercial enterprises” (ibid., p. 21). This population “cannot afford new houses in new districts to improve their housing conditions” (ibid.). GTZ agents spotted that 75 percent of families had (at the time) a per-capita monthly income inferior to 1200 RMB (ca. USD 154, or EUR 116) and 47 percent of families had less “than the average level in the entire Yangzhou Municipality” (ibid., p. 35).4 Incomes varied between RMB 265 (unemployment subsidy) and RMB 2500 (salary from government institution) (ibid., p.  37). In particularly difficult cases, households’ annual income ranged between RMB 3000 and RMB 6000, while their yearly consumption ranged from RMB 2600 to RMB 4600. These numbers showed that families were struggling “to meet basic needs” (ibid., p. 38).5 4.3.1  The Proposal of Careful Urban Renewal To meet the rehabilitation demands of the Old City, GTZ agents proposed the Careful Urban Renewal model, directly drawing inspiration from Berlin’s experience and proposing a “theorisation” (Strang and Meyer 1993) of this same model.6 This aspect can be observed by looking at a short 17-page document called “Sustainable Urban Conservation– Proposals for Yangzhou”, written in Chinese and German. The report was prepared in 2003 by an expert of a Berlin planning and architectural consultancy company which was one of the main protagonists of the development of Careful Urban Renewal in West Berlin. The document lists a series of proposals to promote the experimentation of this approach in Yangzhou. It notifies that the aim of GTZ assistance to the Yangzhou government was to foster the establishment of suitable organisations and mechanisms to support the sustainable conservation of the Old City. Some passages of the document are proposed here to offer information about the points of view of the German expertise. The document starts by acknowledging that “the city centre of Yangzhou still keeps a comparatively big area of traditional residential buildings”, while “(i)n other cities of China these structures have been cleared and will increasingly disappear to make space for big development projects” (GTZ 2003, p.  8).7 It acknowledges that the city government wishes to conserve a big part of these structures “as cultural heritage”, but also remarks that “concepts for

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sustainable conservation approaches, which also take into account the opinions of the inhabitants, do not exist yet” (ibid.). The report continues by indicating that the reason for the visit of the expert is that of presenting Berlin’s experience in “sustainable urban renewal”, stressing its “specific organisational, procedural and financial arrangements” as well as its “consideration of resident participation and of their socio-economic characteristics” (ibid.). It highlights that Germany has thirty years of experience in the development of strategies and instruments to conduct urban renewal, which have now “turned into a mature planning system” (ibid., p. 9). The report in particular stresses the phases that led to a change of paradigm in urban renewal in Berlin, from “surface” or “deforestation renewal” (Flächensanierung, Kahlschlagsanierung), which meant razing down entire neighbourhoods and redeveloping, to the establishment of Careful Urban Renewal (ibid., p.  11). According to the expert, the practice of urban renewal in China could be understood as “deforestation renewal”, which the report compares to the situation in West Berlin in the years that preceded the development of Careful Urban Renewal. The author spots a series of commonalities between the frames of the Yangzhou government and the frames held by the German administration in the 1970s on the subject of urban renewal. One of these common frames was the generally negative consideration given to the Old City. As in West Berlin, the traditional parts of the city were deemed poor and degraded, and were mostly inhabited by old and unemployed people (GTZ 2003, p. 11). In addition, the local renewal practice was based on large-scale demolitions, on relocations and on the conversion of urban structures and space uses. Experts noticed that only outstanding ancient residences were preserved and extensively restored as cultural heritage and as urban attractions (ibid.). The report also observed a lack of comprehensive plans for the conservation of the overall image of the Old City. This approach lacked in consideration of the context surrounding the single buildings or in the structures and the fabric of the Old City, and in particular its “social and physical fabric”.8 The report indeed noted that notwithstanding the availability of studies conducted by the local Urban Planning and Design Institute, the city lacked surveys giving a broader perspective of the social situation in the Old City (ibid., p. 14). These surveys are described as a fundamental prerequisite for renewal interventions, helpful to assess the rehabilitation needs and the possibilities to put urban renewal in place. They give a picture of the financial

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capacities of residents and of the ownership structure, as well as of residents’ attitudes vis-à-vis renewal and their ways of living (ibid.). They also serve the formulation of remediation targets and of measures needed for a gradual approach to renewal. However, the report also notes that “the assessment of the deficiencies of the Old City has led the local authorities to hold the conviction that a renewal of the old buildings was not feasible” (ibid.). It indicates that although all the officials interviewed agreed to conserve the Old City, they pointed at a series of arguments “which in their view represent insuperable obstacles to a renewal approach”, for instance: –– the high population density and the density of the building structure do not provide enough space for a conservative renewal aiming at adapting housing conditions to modern life housing and life needs; –– the city does not have the means to promote a comprehensive “Sustainable Urban Conservation”, which means that renewal must be left to the market; –– there are no state programmes to promote sustainable renewal except for the restoration of outstanding monuments; –– a renewal of the dwellings could be carried out only by the private owners; –– under the conditions of housing privatisation, it is impossible to relocate residents or to flexibly handle the construction plan and reduce the population density; –– since most owners are elderly, they have low incomes, lack other sources of income and want to buy new homes as compensation of the demolition, rendering them less motivated to repair or renovate housing; –– similarly, those who rent are less interested in staying and renovating houses because they want to move to places with better facilities (ibid.). Nevertheless, the German expert concluded that there were favourable conditions for the development of a “Chinese variant for Sustainable Urban Conservation”, such as the discretionary power in the hands of local governments, the large savings of private households and the presence of city programmes supporting home ownership (ibid., p. 15). It was therefore suggested to continue collaborating with the Yangzhou

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­ overnment to promote the adoption of Careful Urban Renewal  – or g “Sustainable Urban Conservation”, as it was dubbed in GTZ reports. Interestingly, the report also alerted to the possible difficulties of such an endeavour. The expert considered it very unlikely to “copy” practical German strategies, tools and planning systems for renovating a city because China holds “a completely different culture and completely different history” (ibid., p.  9). However, the presence of these differences was not seen as an obstacle, but rather as a starting point for a fruitful collaboration that could have contributed to reforming the renewal strategies of the city. 4.3.2  Replace Renewal Projects with a Renewal Process According to the German expert, the Yangzhou government should have developed a phased concept for the implementation of renewal (ibid., p. 17). To reach this target, GTZ offered its assistance, trying to promote “certain structural changes and also some organisational patterns” that would have helped ensure the sustainability of the process, and in this way “establish a process of on-going conservation and rehabilitation”.9 This meant in particular that what GTZ tried to launch was not the nature of a project, but rather of a process, “which might take ten years or even longer”. Thinking “in terms of projects” meant “to have a beginning and an end” in mind, while German experts wished, on the contrary, for the local planning practice to shift: from the three steps of making analysis, plan and implementation, to the guidance of a process. We tried to inject that planning, and in this case it’s not just a project, it is a process, and we have to get involved in this process, and this process is characterised by the fact that we have many actors in the project, stakeholders, including the residents. This was the basic message.10

This type of approach, which can be understood as a gradual process of urban renewal, implied that the government collaborated with developers, investors and private owners to establish specific renewal goals (GTZ 2003, p. 16). Collaboration had to be promoted by establishing a framework of resident participation, which was considered fundamental to support the process of renewal of the Old City (ibid.). The German experts suggested preserving the existing structures and functions of the Old City, including that of being a place of residence also for the poorer, more

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v­ ulnerable sections of the population. This approach in particular implied adapting the quality of housing to the needs of current residents, which also meant thinking about alternative forms of dwellings without necessarily applying standard requirements for new residential constructions (ibid.). Finally, they pointed out that adopting these principles would have benefitted to the overall image of the Old City, as it would have triggered the valorisation of its special features and of its local valuable aspects, such as the presence of good neighbourhoods, of an intact social network, of good shopping possibilities, of the centrality of locations and of the quality of its resources (ibid.). These points briefly summarise the concepts or ideas that German experts communicated to Yangzhou’s planning authorities, which centred on protecting the existing structures and residential functions as well as respecting the needs of the residents. As pointed by a German expert: “for the first time it was discovered or made public that the inner city of Yangzhou does not only consist of dilapidated buildings, but also of people living in those buildings”.11 The expert lamented the absence of any “single figure or indication or any information or data about the people living in the Old City”. Actually, the attention paid to the overall urban structure and fabric was an aspect that the German experts considered as one of their important contributions to Yangzhou. Moreover, the attention paid to the current residents and their wishes can be clearly attributed to their advocacy work, as illustrated in the coming paragraphs.

4.4   Learning and Experimenting with ‘New’ Ideas GTZ policy advocacy was concretised in various steps. A first step was constituted through the elaboration of a planning concept and a work proposal for the Old City. Between 2004 and 2005, a group of international and national experts collaborated with GTZ to carry out a survey on the situation of the Old City, which led to the publication of a document called “Sustainable Urban Conservation in Yangzhou”. This publication contains an analysis of the problems and potentials of the Old City and provides a series of recommendations for its rehabilitation. Parallel to the preparation of this proposal, a delegation of officials from different departments was invited to participate in a three-week study trip to Germany to attend lectures at the TU (Technische Universität) in Berlin on the topic of sustainable urban conservation.

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The study trip, which took place in May 2004, made it possible for these officials to learn about Careful Urban Renewal in the city where the idea for this approach had formed and to visit the sites where it was first applied, as well as visit other cities and towns in Germany to learn about the local practices of conservation and to exchange with the local administrations. After the trip, officials reported their observations to the mayor and made proposals to experiment with the German methods in Yangzhou. This chapter proposes to look at these proposals, to visualise what lessons Yangzhou officials deemed worthy of learning from Germany. 4.4.1  The Lessons Learnt in Germany The report addressed to the mayor after the visit to Germany draws a picture of urban renewal practices which were very different from the approach followed by the city of Yangzhou. Officials wrote that in Germany urban renewal insists on protecting the existing social networks as much as possible by providing the opportunity for residents to continue living in the renewed areas (Yangzhou Urban Planning Bureau 2004). Thus, they suggested that urban renewal had to be coordinated with the affected residents and proposed to explore methods to foster public participation. They also indicated that the city should explore approaches that combined conservation and renovation with the thorough study of the economic and social conditions of various areas. Officials in particular underlined that the German approach shows support towards the vulnerable segments of the population, allowing to protect the social mix and to maintain the stability of the social system. They added that this requires conducting careful procedures of public acceptation, enhancing the communication with the public and listening to people’s opinions (ibid.). A local expert who collaborated with the city government and participated in the study trip offered his understanding (and appreciation) of the German methods in an interview: The Germans very much solicit residents’ opinions; they send a lot of questionnaires and use a lot of ways to ask residents what they want. And everyone’s voice can be heard. In China, when we consult people we listen to a representative of a group of people, because there are too many people here. We can only listen to representatives, we cannot hear everyone’s voice. But, to be honest, we shall listen to everybody. This is what we learned in Germany.12

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The expert also underlined how the focus on residents’ needs led the German approach to develop a strong connection between urban renewal and social welfare issues, in particular by responding to the problem of housing provisions for those who cannot afford to buy or rent at market prices: Actually they repaired the old buildings …, and in this way they provided housing, and it was very cheap, it was low-cost housing, it aimed at attracting young people to come to live there. … In China a lot of people can’t afford a flat, but there is very little cheap housing. In Germany there was a large number of houses, and especially in Berlin, where no one lived, and after the renovation they finally decided what to do with them. They felt that hosting people in need was a good idea, so they transformed them into social housing and then gave it to young people with low incomes, and to migrants.

Another aspect that the report to the mayor and the local expert underlined was the adhesion of the German methods of conservation and renovation to sustainable development, present “in all the aspects of social life” (Yangzhou Urban Planning Bureau 2004).13 The interviewed expert in particular described the construction practices used in Germany, which as opposed to China take into account the question of durability: Germans used to say that what they want is a durability of 30 years, so when they do one thing, they want this thing to be durable for 30 years. But in China now many things do not even reach 5 years. This is waste.

On this aspect, officials also noted in the report that in the conservation and renovation of buildings, the use of new materials as well as of energy-­ saving techniques and clean energy sources was already widespread (Yangzhou Urban Planning Bureau 2004). They underlined how German buildings use all sorts of greening to improve climatic conditions as well as low-tech measures aiming at increasing soil permeability and simultaneously reducing heat in summer and the demand of piped water. Finally, they wrote that the development of strategies of sustainable urban development in Germany requires paying attention to several aspects. These aspects include establishing reasonable objectives for the development and renovation of urban spaces; correctly using the limited financial resources; extending city conservation to all the areas of the city; and improving

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infrastructure to give residents better conditions and to encourage more people to return to living in existing built structures (ibid.). A final aspect underlined by the report was the governance of urban renewal. Officials wrote that notwithstanding the low number of staff in German public administration, their work is very efficient because they are supported by “intermediary organisations” (ibid.). For instance, it is up to these organisations to conduct surveys in renewal areas, collect residents’ opinions, make design plans, and bridge between the government and the residents. This situation was different from China, where officials who participated in the visit to Germany underlined that coordination among departments and residents’ organisations was missing (GTZ 2005). Officials also noted how German cities dispose of a complete set of policies and legal instruments for urban conservation and urban renewal, which provide legal guarantee and financial support to local processes of urban renewal. Again, the situation in China was quite the opposite, as officials highlighted that the documents in force at the time were too “unclear, vague and superficial”, and not developed enough to cover the range of needs and problems encountered in urban renewal (ibid.). As will be shown in the next chapter, these elements represented important components of the reflections that emerged from the collaboration with GTZ.  Some members of the administration deemed these aspects worthy of attention, and for this reason made specific proposals to the city leadership. These officials in particular asked GTZ agents to help them present the mayor with some policy proposals, useful to amend and supplement the local operational framework. As it was unthinkable for them to make such a proposal by themselves because the administrative hierarchy does not really allow for it, they proposed GTZ use its direct channels of exchange with the mayor to support them to explore new policy directions and in this way deepen their collaboration on these topics (ibid.). 4.4.2  The Proposal to the Mayor Despite the colourful characteristics of Mayor Ji Jianye, which portray him as someone who is prone to preferring demolition and redevelopment operations (cf. Chap. 3), he did not remain insensible to the idea of collaborating with GTZ. Rather, he showed a certain degree of openness and invited the German experts to provide ideas for the existing plans for the Old City as well as to conduct studies on some areas that he wished to renovate (GTZ 2004). He also invited GTZ to prepare a renewal proposal

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based on the assessment of the needs of the selected areas, offering its experts the chance to apply their ideas in Yangzhou (ibid.). The previously cited 2004 report that the officials addressed to the mayor after this visit to Germany already contains the basic elements of this proposal, in particular dedicating some parts to depicting what local officials considered problematic in the local practice of urban renewal and offering some ideas for improvement. The report suggested improving the conditions of the existing buildings in a step-by-step manner, avoiding “pulling down all the old houses within the renewal areas of the Old City” (Yangzhou Urban Planning Bureau 2004). Such a gradual approach would have helped solve the problem of a large number of dangerous constructions and would have guaranteed the safety of the existing spaces. The document also suggested attracting young people in the Old City in order to “strengthen its energy” and preserve the social system. To this end, the government should have developed encouragement measures based on the establishment of quotas for people to return to the Old City as well as of controls on the rents of refurbished houses, which for a certain time limit excessive increases (ibid.). Moreover, to respond to these problems and to residents’ needs, the report proposed to include public participation in the process of Old City conservation and the establishment of “a complete communication system” (ibid.). To try out these ideas, officials suggested deepening the collaboration with Germany, which would have helped the government “learn and introduce advanced management approaches and technical achievements from Germany” and “improve the level of urban conservation” (ibid.). In particular they suggested realising pilot projects to learn from the application of the German methods, and potentially extend it to other areas (ibid.). In the officials’ minds, such projects would have guaranteed the successful implementation of the protection of the Old City in Yangzhou because they would have provided the administration with the opportunity to accumulate experience and to set up a model of conservation based on Yangzhou’s specific characteristics (ibid). Moreover, officials proposed to introduce new methods in the management of the Old City as well as a new set of policies to solve the existing problems. To this end, they suggested establishing a special department in charge of implementing the renewal of pilot sites, pooling together the competences of the Urban Planning Bureau and of other departments.

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This proposal strongly advocated for interdepartmental coordination to carefully treat each step of the process (ibid.). The special department, the report indicates, should have clear functions and responsibilities and should be led by a director appointed by the municipal government. The report also suggests that such a department should conduct accurate surveys on the land use within the planned area, on housing rights for the vulnerable sectors of the population and on the state of municipal infrastructures. It was also suggested that the special department should be able to share relevant planning documents with other departments, and have the chance to consult and coordinate with them. Finally, the report proposed that such an office should carry on with the supervision activities during the implementation of the project and should guarantee the handling of problems in time. To this end, providing staff from different professional fields was recommended. If the experience was successful, the report would then recommend referring to such experience in order to establish a suitable mechanism for the management of the Old City (ibid.). As for policy proposals, officials made recommendations on three specific aspects, proposing the city government adopt relevant policies and measures to tackle the problems existing in Yangzhou Old City. A first set of policies addressed the question of property rights, an issue that revealed complicated when Careful Urban Renewal was applied in the districts of East Berlin after the reunification (cf. Bernt 2003). At the time of the GTZ project (and at the time of writing), housing ownership in Yangzhou shared the same features of other Chinese cities and of cities in former socialist countries (cf. Wu 2004; Abramson 2001). Half of the properties in Yangzhou Old City belonged to private owners and the other half belonged to the state. Public houses, in turn, were distinguished between the so-called zhi guan gongfang (直管公房), managed by the Housing Management Bureau, a department of the city government, and the houses owned and managed by state companies, called zi guan gongfang (自管公房). This aspect is problematic for urban renewal, as it is difficult to determine who is responsible for paying for interventions. In particular, houses that belong to state companies (often referred to as danwei) that at some point ceased to exist are difficult to renovate, as there is no longer an owner responsible for the renovations. As for the buildings owned by the municipality and managed by the Housing Management Bureau, the zhi guan gongfang, the department in charge of public housing has always claimed that the money obtained from rent is insufficient to repair houses

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and that the annual budget provided by the city government to carry out maintenance duties can only cover part of a renovation.14 For these reasons, one of the joint proposals made by GTZ and the authors of the report was to privatise houses, a move that should have encouraged turned-into-owners tenants to renew their houses. The report to the mayor also suggested adopting policies to solve other complicated situations in terms of property rights that characterise many buildings in the Old City. For instance, officials underlined the presence of multiple types of ownership within a same housing unit and the uncertain ownership rights of many private houses.15 Renovation is complicated in these cases as well, as the de facto residents need to obtain the consensus of all those (or the danwei) who own the house. If one family member vetoes, or if the danwei vetoes, it is hard to proceed with renovation. These situations are very common in the Old City and are described by the public administration as problems that do not find an easy solution, which is why it is important to explore various policy options and differentiated approaches that facilitate handling the various cases.16 Another proposal to the mayor focused on the preparation of “more reasonable financial policies” to fund urban renewal (Yangzhou Urban Planning Bureau 2004). Officials suggested studying solutions to deal with the question of funding and the control of housing prices and rent. As for the first topic, they proposed to look at the German model, where the costs of urban renewal are shared between the federal government, the Land government, the local government and individuals (ibid.) and suggested that private owners should pay a part of the costs if they wish to move back into their house following the renovations. They also proposed to establish an organisation that would buy all property rights in case residents do not wish to stay in the Old City, on the condition of obtaining “strong financial support from the government” (ibid.) in advance. As for rent control, officials wrote that “under the conditions of a market economy”, the government could only partially regulate house prices (ibid.). Acknowledging that “one of the objectives of urban conservation and utilisation is to maintain the original social network”, officials suggested establishing related protection measures (ibid.). In particular, in the case where the residents currently living in the accommodation are unable to afford the price of the houses after renewal, they proposed that the government concede them the right of use for a definite time period and then take back houses at the end of a contract. “This kind of approach”, they wrote, can “effectively release the conflicts during urban conservation and

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utilisation” (ibid.). To this end, officials also suggested introducing public participation “to a certain degree” (ibid.). They acknowledged that “conservation needs the recognition and support from the public”, but also that there is a “difference with Germany” in terms of social environment, in the level of economic development and in the capacity of the public to participate (ibid.). These differences required the government to adopt specific measures to solicit public ideas while improving the information provided to the public as well as the approaches adopted. Such activities would have helped enhance the public’s understanding towards urban conservation. Officials also suggested that “the communication approaches and styles” used by the German local governments were “worth being learnt and taken as a reference” (ibid.). However, the question of public participation was a difficult topic of discussion. In general, the officials who participated in the study trip to Germany did not oppose the idea, but there was a general acknowledgement that participation would have been a difficult subject of discussion with administration. An extract of the interviews conducted by GTZ after the visit reported that in the officials’ view “people’s education is not so good” and that “compared to German people’s consciousness, Chinese people’s is much less pronounced” (GTZ 2005). Furthermore, notwithstanding the presence of regulations requiring public participation, officials admitted that the practice was not so encouraged, as it was rather common not to consult residents. These doubts were confirmed by facts and became particularly clear in the process of preparation of the pilot projects. 4.4.3   The Difficult Preparation of the Pilot Projects The study visit to Germany led to a new phase the collaboration between GTZ and Yangzhou’s planning authorities. In this new phase, GTZ agents and city officials started preparatory work to run a series of pilot projects in the Old City. In particular, GTZ agents conducted a survey of officials’ opinions vis-à-vis resident participation. The result of this survey showed that many officials considered it unnecessary to let residents participate, as they believed they themselves represented the people, and in virtue of this role they were already aware of the latter’s need. During the fieldwork an official indicated that the general discourses and frames of those years (the early 2000s) considered relocation as a solution to the poor conditions of housing in the Old City.17 According to this view, this housing approach

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provides better life conditions, more floor space and all sorts of comforts. Thence, to solve the problems of the Old City residents, it was sufficient to relocate them in newly constructed housing just outside the Old City. This is generally true if we compare the basic qualities of new flats with the current state of houses in the Old City, which are often overcrowded, decaying and deprived of basic facilities. Without a doubt these houses require modernisation and to provide more space for living.18 However, as GTZ personnel could spot when interviewing residents, their wishes did not always match the representations held by the administration. The picture of their requirements was understandably very composite. It also became clear that the consequence of the government’s ‘care’ through relocation was to segregate the weaker segments of the population in areas far from the inner city and deprive them of a precious resource existing in the Old City: their social networks (GTZ 2006b).19 Thus, as the surveys conducted by GTZ personnel revealed, the assumptions officials made about residents’ needs did not entirely match the answers provided by the respondents. Actually, had GTZ not cooperated with the Yangzhou government, it is likely very few people in the administration would have known the point of view of the Old City residents. In this respect, the contribution GTZ made to Yangzhou was not negligible, as it gave residents the chance to be ‘seen’ in the planning process. By conducting surveys, GTZ agents acknowledged that many did not wish to leave the Old City, its neighbourhoods and existing security networks. They also acknowledged that the residents’ opinions about life in the Old City varied. For instance, people benefitting of “large or high-quality house” and those that “took advantage of their current houses to perform various business operation” were in general against demolitions (GTZ 2006f, p. 48). GTZ agents also discovered that some families had already renovated their houses and expressed their appreciation for the lifestyle offered by the Old City, while other families required simple improvements to have better housing conditions. International agents also met families asking for relocation, their spaces being too small or the quality of housing being too poor. However, among these same families, some expressed their desire to remain in the Old City. Indeed, relocation does not always mean ‘elsewhere’, especially to outside the Old City, because people appreciate the neighbourhood and its lifestyle, as well as the proximity and social networks. Instead, they wished the government could proceed with repairing or reconstructing houses in the same area to accommodate them (ibid.).

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From this brief picture it became clear that ‘one-size-fits-all’ solutions, which meant mass relocations in the newly built compounds of the city, did not reveal the best answer to the situation of Old City residents. Carrying out early pilot projects gave the city of Yangzhou a first opportunity to experiment with new schemes that would take into account residents’ needs and foster their participation in the renewal process. However, conducting surveys among residents, searching for potential participants for the pilot projects, and obtaining support from other government officials revealed to be difficult for international agents. A large part of residents did not have enough financial resources to pay for self-renovation and also feared sudden decisions of the government to redevelop the area, which meant accepting the demolition of their house and relocating elsewhere. For this reason they preferred not to invest in their housing and adopted a “wait-and-see” attitude (ibid.). Eventually, GTZ agents managed to find volunteers and carry out some interventions on some buildings. These experiences later convinced other families to participate in the initiative. However, the survey of opinions among the residents of the Old City was not enough to convince the local government to carry out the pilot projects. Actually, a part of the local administration did not accept GTZ ideas; in fact, several voices opposed them, and even put in danger the possibility to conduct the projects. The mayor himself also felt a stranger to the ideas of foreign agents despite initially supporting their proposal to cooperate on the topic of urban renewal. He was quickly disappointed when he acknowledged that urban renewal in the GTZ agents’ eyes meant Careful Urban Renewal, thus a slow process of urban upgrading. “He wanted us to do something quickly, in a few months, like in Dongguan Street”, and he wanted “to see something”, but he was disappointed to find out that in two years of cooperation GTZ could “only” produce reports, studies and researches.20 These different perspectives made it difficult to obtain further support for pilot projects. The situation eventually changed when Yangzhou applied for the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour. It also changed when a new mayor was appointed, which gave GTZ experts an important resource at hand to negotiate with the recalcitrant officials. As a matter of fact, Ji Jianye became party secretary of Yangzhou, while the position of mayor was covered by a new party cadre, Ms Wang Yanwen. Ms Wang became mayor of Yangzhou in 2005, and was seemingly more open to GTZ ideas and also more willing to test them. Mayor Wang also asked GTZ to help the city candidate for the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour Award.

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This demand resulted in the organisation of a workshop with representatives of UN Habitat and of the government as well as officials of the public administration. During this workshop, held in May 2006, the planning authorities clearly stated that the government’s wish was to relocate the residents of the Old City, demolish old buildings, which had no architectural value, and construct new buildings in traditional style.21 These ideas were to be implemented in the Dongguan Street project (cf. Chap. 3), which was going to be launched the same year. After these words had been pronounced, the UN Habitat representative responsible for the evaluation of Yangzhou performance declared that he had “no more role to play”.22 He stated that if those words really expressed the way in which Yangzhou conceived the upgrading of the Old City, obtaining the prize for the “remarkable achievements in preserving the Old City and improving the residential environment” (Zhu et  al. 2007) would not have been possible. This reply immediately worried government officials, as it meant that the possibility to obtain the Scroll of Honour was vanishing. So they started listening to the proposals of GTZ and agreed to carry out the pilot projects. However, there was always hesitation on the topic of resident participation. Even the officials in favour of GTZ proposals expressed their reserve, claiming that their decision-making capacity was limited because they lacked the mandate of the mayor to experiment with public participation.23 Thus, they invited GTZ agents to directly discuss with the new mayor. Eventually, the two sides compromised on a small pilot area with a restricted action plan and a limited level of involvement. 4.4.4  Pilot Projects and Policy Recommendations Carrying out the pilot projects represented a crucial phase of the collaboration between the Yangzhou government and GTZ, a phase in which local authorities could get familiarised with Careful Urban Renewal. Pilot projects enabled testing resident participation for the first time and in a very controlled manner. Residents were encouraged to participate in the planning and renewal of their own neighbourhood, exploring community planning activities for the first time. Conducting these pilot projects also led to the design of some policy proposals to encourage self-help renovations. Financial support was provided to encourage residents to renovate their houses based on their own wishes (GTZ 2006b). GTZ in particular carried out three pilot projects between 2006 and 2007, each one

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e­xperimenting with a different approach while responding to the core aims of improving residents’ habitat and promoting their participation. The focus of these projects was to improve infrastructures, repair the structures and envelopes of houses, and use energy-saving and other ecological measures in buildings (ibid.). A significant element supporting the realisation of the pilot projects, GTZ availed itself of the collaboration of famous Chinese academics in architecture and urban planning as well as of Yangzhou experts, and promoted the study of the experiences of other Chinese cities.24 This expedient helped legitimise the experimentation of new models in Yangzhou, as it made it possible for city leaders and planning authorities to corroborate the validity of foreign proposals. The experiments conducted in other cities and the endorsement of renowned Chinese experts indeed functioned as supporting arguments for GTZ (and for the officials that went to Germany) to advocate for the application of these new methods in Yangzhou.25 The earliest pilot project proposed to renovate few houses as an example, financed through a joint collaboration between GTZ and Cities Alliance (GTZ 2006c).26 This pilot project in particular aimed at providing policy guidance, financial schemes and technical guidelines for the renovation of private houses (GTZ 2006b, d). GTZ agents noticed that in absence of clear guidelines, houses were renovated by the application of elements that did not match the typical architectural features of the Old City. The project thus supported the preparation of a “Financial Scheme for the Conservation and Rehabilitation of Shuangdong District” in Yangzhou and of “Technical Guidelines” for the same pilot area (GTZ 2006b, d),27 which were later used as a basis for policy development in Yangzhou. To run the project, GTZ provided technical support and financial aid up to 100,000 RMB (GTZ 2006b). GTZ agents organised several meetings with house owners to learn about their wishes and prepare the general design concept, and local experts in traditional architecture were also consulted for recommendations (GTZ 2006c). Interventions were encouraged by a pilot subsidy scheme prepared by GTZ, which helped households cover up to 30 percent of their expenses with an upper limit of RMB 25,000. GTZ also proposed a subsidy scheme to encourage the use of energy-saving material, covering 50 percent of the costs (ibid., p. 195), but as far as it could be understood no owner required their application.28 Another important experiment proposed by GTZ was community planning, perhaps the most recognised contribution of GTZ to Yangzhou, as is cited by specialised literature (Sun 2017). The government selected a

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pilot area in Wenhua Lane in the Shuangdong district, which was considered “representative of all the problems that are typical of historical areas in the Old City” (Zhu and Goethert 2009, p. 87). Families could renovate their houses and were given the chance to improve their neighbourhood through experimenting with participatory planning methods. To this aim, GTZ agents invited an expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to experiment with the method of “CAP (community action planning) workshops”. According to its proponent, this method encourages residents to participate in planning activities and in the improvement of their neighbourhood through becoming “investment partners” of the rehabilitation process (ibid., p. 90). In particular, in the view of its proponent, CAP has to function as a “catalyst” that links “the community, the government and other stakeholders” in the process of neighbourhood upgrading (ibid.). During this process, participants try to reach “a comprehensive understanding of the planning and construction issues”, decide together about the “priorities for action”, and include the views of all the stakeholders (ibid.). Furthermore, CAP is also mentioned to engage residents in implementing and financing renewal, collaborating with the municipal government on these tasks (GTZ 2007). To provide some information about the concrete experience in Yangzhou, residents were invited during the CAP workshops to get a better understanding of their neighbourhood by taking pictures of the lane and together identifying its problems. They were then invited to discuss the priorities of action and to express their opinions and concerns. In the meantime GTZ agents made an appraisal of the area and realised a detailed inventory of required interventions. Residents were then asked to decide, on a scale of priority, which issues needed to be tackled immediately and which issues could be reported, and were asked to establish a budget to implement these measures. The intervention finally concerned improving public space and greening, as well as providing urban furniture, and it was guided by the residents themselves (ibid.) (see Fig. 4.2). Residents hired a local professional to carry out main construction works and a local artist to decorate the facades. They also decided to appoint someone responsible for controlling the project and the funding resources (Zhu and Goethert 2009, p. 91). In fact, as stated in some studies about this experience, the small financial resources provided by GTZ to carry out the project gave the chance to considerably improve the quality of the area and to increase residents’ awareness about the possibility to conduct joint action at community level

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Fig. 4.2  Wenhua Lane after the refurbishment. (Personal archive)

and autonomous action in historical conservation (Cai 2011; Zhu and Goethert 2009). Moreover, thanks to the project, it is reported that residents themselves defined appropriate standards for renovation (Zhu and Goethert 2009). Finally, Yangzhou also had, for the first time, the chance to apply ecological measures to traditional buildings, exploring techniques to adapt energy-saving measures to the specific architectural features of traditional buildings. This pilot project was carried out through the construction of an office building on the ruins of an old warehouse (GTZ 2007). Co-financed by GTZ and a local state-owned construction company, money covered the remediation and modernisation of the warehouse, which was finally transformed into a typical courtyard building (Cai 2011). The building was used as an office and expo area by GTZ until 2010, dedicated to exhibiting different types of energy saving measures to be selectively used in housing renovation.29 GTZ agents hoped that families would have considered introducing some of these measures according to their financial capacities. Nevertheless, this idea was not received with enthusiasm, as households considered that construction costs would have increased significantly (ibid.).30 Fieldwork enquiries in the pilot area indicated that residents considered ecological measures unnecessary. Some explained how the conversion of their old cement walls into traditional brick walls already changed

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indoor temperatures in summer. Other families did not agree with the application of insulation, as this would have required demolishing and reconstructing walls, and reducing floor area.31 As for other more complex technologies, residents answered that they were already satisfied with simple renovations, their habits being different from the ones imagined by foreigners. Facing Yangzhou’s cold winters, cooperation agents proposed to introduce more comfort by providing, for instance, energy-saving heating appliances. However, in this part of China, which is historically not provided with heating systems, residents are used to managing with what they have, wearing more clothes and drinking hot water during the day, as they explained. Sometimes houses were provided with air conditioning (as elsewhere in this part of China), offering some comfort. But residents indicated that the traditional materials of old houses already offer a barrier against extreme temperatures, and they are very comfortable according to their own standards and habits. If we consider the very poor housing conditions before the pilot project, it is possible to understand that there were other urgent problems, like damp walls and leaking roofs. Hence, residents preferred to invest their limited amounts of savings in finding definitive solutions to these problems.

4.5   Appraising the Outcomes of International Cooperation The pilot projects in Yangzhou constituted an opportunity to learn about the needs of the Old City, making the local administration understand which type of measures were needed to encourage resident participation and solve the different problems affecting the inner city. Moreover, the reports prepared by GTZ agents for the pilot projects provided some policy recommendations to the local government. For instance, GTZ suggested encouraging the participation of low-income households in renovation to improve their life conditions by establishing special subsidies (GTZ 2006c). GTZ hoped the government could allow these households to remain in the Old City (if they so wished) and improve their housing conditions by providing easy access to loans through the form of micro-­ credits. Together with other fundamental topics of intervention, these points were integrated in the “Yangzhou Urban Upgrading Strategy”, another initiative jointly financed by GTZ and Cities Alliance.

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The Upgrading Strategy is a comprehensive action plan running until 2020 that advocated for the extension of the experiences collected in the pilot areas to the rest of the Old City. Published in November 2007 in English and Chinese, this strategy was offered to local decision-makers and experts. GTZ hoped the strategy would serve as a “guiding document for the gradual upgrading” of the Old City on the basis of the socio-­ economic needs of the present population and of a comprehensive and realistic vision that would permit, in the middle term, the “sustainable urban renewal” of the inner city (GTZ 2007). Thus, it aimed at providing an overall concept for the Old City to be integrated into the city’s plans and policies for urban renewal (ibid.), allowing for the establishment of measures and policies. Participatory approaches, new funding and subsidies schemes, the establishment of “relevant policies for the renovation of public and private houses and the control of the construction quality” (GTZ 2007) were important elements of the publication. Institutional responsibilities and management approaches, area-specific priorities for upgrading, financing requirements and implementation schedules were also included. GTZ agents expected that through the adoption of this strategy residents could be allowed “to contribute to the modernisation of their living environment and to benefit from the growing economic vitality of these restored areas” (ibid.). In particular, they anticipated that the residents of the Old City would become the heart of the renewal process. They also hoped that a vast majority of residents in the Old City could be able to remain, possibly within their own neighbourhoods, and participate in housing upgrading. If the strategy had been applied as such, GTZ foresaw that 80 percent of the existing population could remain in the Old City (GTZ 2008). Finally, they also expected the Yangzhou city government to make a firm and long-term commitment to the sustainable conservation of the Old City. In their view, this would have permitted the city to establish itself as a model for other places in China and its approach to be diffused to other cities (GTZ 2007). However, their hopes for these important changes to take place were very low, as their final assessment about the collaboration with Yangzhou was not entirely positive. They rather believed that the project only impacted on technical aspects, while the question of resident participation, of the protection of current residents and of developing new organisations for the management of the Old City remained marginal, as exemplified by this interview abstract:

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What they were quickly adopting were all the technical aspects of the project; this was very easy to adopt, so what to do and how to repair and how to bring in the infrastructure and how to improve the situation for the people living in those areas. What is much more difficult and where the project failed, I would say, because it didn’t have enough time, was to import certain structural changes and also some organisational patterns that would help ensure sustainability, so to establish a process of ongoing conservation and rehabilitation.32

The question of time, pointed out by this extract, was of paramount importance for international agents. This interviewee underlined the need to provide more time to the cooperation project, renewing the partnership with Yangzhou for another few years to let GTZ deepen the collaboration. In particular, GTZ wished to help establish some organisational bases to launch a self-sustained local process of conservation and renewal. In their recommendations to the local government, GTZ agents suggested establishing new work patterns to involve the private sector and residents and to promote the development of non-profit organisations capable of bridging between residents and the municipal government. This idea found supporters among the officials who collaborated with GTZ, who wished to obtain more support for reforms, profiting of GTZ agents’ capacity to directly interact with the mayor.33 However, this possibility was excluded by GTZ headquarters, and the project was phased out.34 Eventually, another project dedicated to the theme of sustainable urban development took over. The approach that was used, the focus that was adopted and the cities that were targeted were not the same as those in the Eco-city Planning and Management Programme, but it offered an opportunity to continue collaborating with Yangzhou in 2010. This chance allowed GTZ to offer another set of policy recommendations for public housing to the Yangzhou government (cf. Chap. 5), but by then the focus of the German cooperation agency was already elsewhere. 4.5.1  Did the Project Really Fail? As mentioned, the assessments of the cooperation agents about the work conducted in Yangzhou were quite mixed, showing appreciation for some achievements while regretting the fact that their work could not inspire deeper changes in the management of urban renewal. Nevertheless, although collaborations may produce successful results, one has to be

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c­ onscious that these results do not “necessarily translate into actual transfer, let alone into identifiable policy impacts” (Colomb 2007, p.  350, original emphasis). For actual transfers to take place other conditions may be satisfied. Therefore, all things considered, GTZ agents could not hope for more, as the type of changes they wished to inspire in the organisation and management of urban renewal in Yangzhou definitely take more time and are difficult to achieve. The concepts of “social learning” and “third order change” as defined by Peter Hall (1993) or the sociology of organisational learning very clearly alert about the difficulties and the conditions required for these types of change to take place. Nevertheless, a close look at GTZ’s achievements, conducted via the confrontation of its material and via interviews conducted in Yangzhou six years after the end of the project, proves that its contribution went beyond the transmission of technical knowledge, having helped build more important capacities for the Yangzhou government to foster learning. In a way, GTZ played the role of ‘facilitator’ or ‘catalyst’ for social learning, opening up a ‘window for policy learning’ for the local administration. Hall (1993, p. 278) defines social learning “as a deliberate attempt to adjust the goals or techniques of policy in response to past experience and new information”. As a result of such a process of social learning there might be some policy changes (ibid.). Although at the end of the collaboration GTZ did not really trigger policy changes in Yangzhou, its work facilitated social learning in the local administration. Drawing from the works of Peter Hall and of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön (1978), as well as of other specialists in organisational learning, Leann Brown (2006, p. 25) has identified four main prior conditions that facilitate learning: the presence of a “culture congenial to learning”; the presence of “an existing knowledge base”; the presence of “specific competencies and processes of acquiring, articulating and enhancing knowledge”; and the presence of “decentralised, flexible organizational structures and procedures that encourage self-examination and openness to negative feedback and innovation”. Actually, it can be seen that GTZ functioned as a decentralised, flexible organisational structure for the production and transmission of knowledge, working closely with the local administration. It also played the role of “intermediary” in the sense provided by Pierre Lascoumes (1996), which allowed interactions among different networks (city administration, foreign expertise, domestic expertise) to take place. As such, it also provided chances for “softening up” (Kingdon 2003 [1984]), to convince local policy makers about the validity of alternative

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ways to understand and implement urban renewal. Besides, it could play this role because it found that some officials were open to new ideas and had a stock of knowledge that made them particularly receptive to GTZ proposals. 4.5.2  GTZ as an Intermediary Organisation for the Production and Transmission of Knowledge GTZ played an important role in Yangzhou, for its capacity to transmit knowledge to the local administration, to produce new information, and for its chance to work side by side with the local government. For instance, this chapter has previously presented how the agency advocated for policy change and for new projects to be carried out through directly searching for the support of local party leaders, bypassing the standard customary norms that regulate officials’ conduct. As clearly emerged from a report written by GTZ and confirmed by some officials in Yangzhou, proposals to the mayor to experiment with Careful Urban Renewal were made through the intermediary of GTZ. The report to the mayor after the study trip to Germany suggests that the officials who participated were probably convinced of the validity of the German model, but they would never have dared to address the mayor directly to convince him to experiment with new ideas. As will be shown in the upcoming chapters, hierarchy is undoubtedly a factor that must be kept in mind for the analysis of policy learning in China – albeit this aspect is not exclusive to this country. For this reason, GTZ somehow facilitated learning by connecting two ‘worlds’ together, the politicians and the administrators, which would normally follow a series of customary rules to interact. But there is more than just helping bypass hierarchical rules. Another important aspect that made GTZ a catalyst for social learning was the full-time presence of its personnel in Yangzhou and its daily work in contact with the local administration. As a matter of fact, GTZ was offered an office both in the Environmental Protection Bureau and in the Urban Planning Bureau of the city. This model of organisation, which can be understood as flexible and decentralised, was very much appreciated by the local authorities because it was supportive for exchange and learning. GTZ agents and local officials had the chance to exchange regularly, support each other and solve in a relatively short time the problems that emerged in daily work. Moreover, the particular composition of the GTZ team and the way in which it mobilised expertise made it possible for the agency to conduct a

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series of activities that were hardly undertaken by the planning authorities – and also very costly. Though the composition of the team slightly changed with time, the GTZ personnel in Yangzhou constituted a fixed team of professionals in various fields, both Chinese and German, and a team of Chinese and foreign experts from the academia who were invited to support the work of the personnel in loco on a regular basis. Thanks to the funding granted by both the German and Chinese governments, as well as funding obtained from Cities Alliance for carrying out the pilot projects and the Urban Upgrading Strategy, GTZ could also mobilise external expertise (from academia, international organisations and consultancy, both foreign and Chinese) for the preparation of studies and reports and the carrying out of pilot projects. As for the personnel in loco, which included two Yangzhou residents, it was composed of translators and experts in architecture as well as in urban and ecological planning. The field of expertise of both the German and Chinese personnel allowed to develop a common understanding with some officials in Yangzhou. In particular, among the Chinese personnel, three agents wrote their PhD thesis abroad on the planning practices in Germany and elsewhere, and made comparisons with the Chinese situation. A fourth member studied in Berlin and wrote a master’s thesis on the German experience of Careful Urban Renewal. GTZ agents and the team of experts collaborating with them conducted thorough analyses of the country, province and city regulations on city planning, on urban conservation, on resident participation and on relocation and compensation mechanisms, etc. They also conducted a thorough inquiry into the social, economic and technical conditions of the Old City, discussing with residents in the planning phase, and organising resident participation and the implementation of pilot projects. In this respect, GTZ played two important roles in Yangzhou. First of all, by using this organisation of work, it made the Yangzhou government experiment with a new organisational model: relying on third parties for the conduction of several tasks. GTZ suggested applying this model to improve the management of the Old City on the basis of the consolidated experience of Berlin with Careful Urban Renewal (cf. Bernt 2003). Secondly, through the funding of the project, GTZ offered the Yangzhou government specialist expertise (almost) free of charge, and produced several studies and reports that are normally offered by consultancy cabinets at very high prices.35 They pooled knowledge and ideas from different sources, for instance by studying similar experiences in other Chinese

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c­ ities, which somehow facilitated a legitimisation of their proposals in the eyes of local politicians and administrators.36 Moreover, GTZ offered Yangzhou officials the chance to visit the places where Careful Urban Renewal was first elaborated and applied, to exchange with experts and administrations abroad, as well as to experiment with new knowledge on the ground. To promote experimentation, it proceeded with a diagnosis of local problems and tried to identify the fields of action to which it could have brought support. Thus GTZ played an important role in terms of translating foreign knowledge, working as an “intermediary”, as conceptualised by Pierre Lascoumes (1996). Citing Michel Callon (1986), Pierre Lascoumes (1996, pp. 334–337) tells us that “translation is a process before being a result”.37 This process corresponds to a “meaning-making activity that links together autonomous actors” and happens through “transactions between heterogeneous perspectives”. Policy or community networks are particularly active in this type of activity, and in these networks the role of “intermediaries (texts, instruments, techniques, humans and competences, money) in heterogeneous contexts” is particularly important; intermediaries allow interactions to happen. Intermediaries permit “the entering in contact of networks until then autonomous”. This interaction may trigger the process of translation, which corresponds to “confronting, piecing together, integrating and putting in circulation information” by using various modalities, such as “collecting together scattered information (social, technical, economic and normative), realising expertise reports, mediating between crisis situations, organisation of colloquia, etc.”. Then follows a moment in which new questions, new problems and new projects of public action are developed on the basis of the information and knowledge produced. Moreover, for a specific issue to find answers in public action and trigger political decisions, it has to be reformulated into a policy problem. For this reformulation to take place, the actors involved in translation have to produce specific knowledge about the issue, and when proposing specific policy solutions and actions, they have to mobilise knowledge and find legitimation to their proposals (ibid.). With its pooling of expertise, its diagnoses, its possibility to reach out to the top city leadership and to various departments which did not use to collaborate regularly, as well as its possession of important resources appealing to the local government, GTZ worked as an intermediary organisation that contributed in launching a discussion on existing practices and policies, as well as experiments

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with new ideas. It opened a ‘window for policy learning’, offering a channel to local administrators to advocate for change and convince the city leadership to test new ideas on the ground. It supported policy advocacy with information and studies, and by reaching out to renowned experts in China who could help plead the cause. In this respect, it can be pointed out that, also in this case, the “process of legitimation matters greatly” and thanks to it “local advocates can boost the status of what might otherwise appear an uncomfortable foreign practice” (Jacoby 2000, p.  212). Moreover, “organisations that can provide local information and resources offer obvious benefits over national elites (…) forced to bear costs without such assistance” (ibid.). As pointed out by some interviewees, GTZ provided a “platform” that helped people who did not normally communicate with each other to meet and exchange, and also supported the testing of certain ideas on the ground for the first time.38 Moreover, thanks to the resources it could mobilise, GTZ made it possible to carry out pilot projects and prepare policy proposals. In this respect, the administration took small risks and did not employ much of its resources for the implementation of projects or to obtain studies and reports. As seen earlier, the intermediary activity of GTZ was also conducted in a very particular way. To conduct the pilot projects GTZ needed the agreement of both the city leaders and the departments connected to urban renewal and conservation. However, many important officials of these departments opposed GTZ’s ideas. They concentrated their efforts on the Dongguan Street project, which followed another approach. But for a city that wishes to become a tourist destination and attract investments and talents to foster its economic development in a context of interurban competition, the acquisition of international awards constitutes an important asset for place branding (Su 2015). Moreover, it also gives important credit to the city leader who makes this possible, enhancing his or her possibilities to climb the ladder of the Communist Party. Some GTZ reports and memos of exchange with the mayor showed that the Yangzhou government asked GTZ to help the city apply to the UNESCO’s World Heritage List as well as to the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour Award. GTZ managed to give the city a chance to apply to UN Habitat, the representatives of which came to visit Yangzhou and evaluate their local efforts in urban renewal. As introduced earlier, the risk of losing the Scroll of Honour Award after some officials displayed their intentions for the Old City, which can be summarised with the formula ‘demolish old

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buildings, relocate residents and construct replicas’, made the local authorities worry, and for this reason they consented to experiment with GTZ proposals. Through this means of ‘coercion’ – as obtaining the award was conditional on applying the procedures proposed by GTZ – and by using its capacities to reach out to international organisations, the foreign agency encouraged social learning and translation. In this respect, its activity can be also understood as that of “softening up” (Kingdon 2003 [1984], pp. 128–130), which comprises both the delivery of knowledge through studies, study trips, meetings and the sponsoring of well-known Chinese experts, and the realisation of pilot projects. Softening up refers to attempts at convincing policy communities and the public of the validity of a proposal. Policy communities “tend to be inertia-bound and resistant to major changes”, while the general public needs to get “used to new ideas”, so that it is necessary to build acceptance for a proposal. Softening up is thus fundamental for certain ideas to be “taken seriously” and avoid to fall into irrelevance. A way to ensure acceptance is to make tests, what Kingdon calls “floating trial balloons”. Via trial balloons, a policy entrepreneur “tests the water and gauges the state of receptivity to an idea”. Moreover, a fundamental aspect of this activity of softening up is the fact that the actors involved speak a “common language”, which means sharing “common outlooks, orientations, and ways of thinking” (ibid., p. 119). 4.5.3  Yangzhou’s “Endogenous Forces of Mutation” and Local Stock of Knowledge As an intermediary organisation and facilitator for social learning, GTZ played an important role in triggering certain latent forces, or certain “endogenous forces of mutation” (Stone 2012) to engage with policy experimentation. These forces were represented by a small number of officials who were very sympathetic to the proposals made by the agency – shortly, they spoke a “common language” as understood by John Kingdon (2003 [1984]). A series of interviews conducted in Yangzhou in 2014 revealed that there existed signs of what Leann Brown (2006) calls an “existing knowledge base” and expertise that made possible for these officials to welcome foreign proposals. Some interviewees indeed indicated that they were already aware of the concepts and methods proposed by GTZ because they had had the chance to travel abroad and learn about them, and/or because they had already circulated in China before the

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project of international cooperation started.39 Some ideas or approaches were also part of their personal knowledge, acquired via their own studies or professional experience. Thus, similarly to what was observed by policy transfer literature, also in Yangzhou it was possible to spot “a deeper and prior process of learning” (Stone 2000, p. 59) that facilitated the transmission of ideas and advices. However, officials also admitted that they had few or no chances to experiment with those ideas in Yangzhou or were not aware of concrete methods to apply them. Most of the time they were a minority within the administration, as the dominant paradigm was that of demolishing and redeveloping. A local official in particular indicated having had the chance to learn about many ideas proposed by GTZ in previous study trips abroad, but the position the person held in the administrative hierarchy was not high enough to make policy proposals. The same was stressed by another official, who said that “you cannot teach your superiors”. Therefore, borrowing once more Leann Brown’s terms, a “culture congenial to learning” was missing – or had few chances to manifest.40This official praised the ideas proposed by GTZ because it gave the opportunity for the directors of departments of the administration (juzhang – 局长) to get in touch with concepts and ideas that the official could not really suggest. For this official it was “better if the juzhang understand by themselves, get convinced by themselves”, while the possibilities left for lower-ranking officials to make policy proposals depend on the openness of their superiors. Interviewees said that they have to be patient and capable of enduring certain situations in the hope of finding an “active” (jiji de  – 积极的) juzhang who encourages policy studies and policy proposals – shortly, who produce situations (a ‘culture’) congenial to learning. The directors of departments who collaborated with GTZ were urban planners, architects, engineers and experts in cultural heritage. They had expertise in the field in which Careful Urban Renewal belongs. They themselves attended training and travelled abroad to update their knowledge. By collaborating with GTZ, they opened a window for policy learning, producing favourable conditions for reflecting on existing practices and experimenting with alternative concepts and practices. However, as Renate Mayntz (1982 [1978], p. 135) elaborated in her sociology of public administration, the directors of departments in general do not dispose of technical or specialist competences to direct the activities of their subordinates. This aspect was also found in Yangzhou and is connected to the particular way in which juzhang are selected by the political leadership.

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These elements will be treated in detail in Chap. 6. To provide a short example connected to the facts presented in this chapter, it can be pointed out that one of the reasons why GTZ did not make any major breakthrough in the other fields of policy and technical advice of the Eco-City Planning and Management Programme was because there were no interested directors of departments. Although GTZ found engaged learners lower level officials, the interest of these individuals was not enough to make learning go beyond the individual level and have an impact on the organisation.

4.6   Conclusion By focusing on the activities adopted by GTZ in order to propose Careful Urban Renewal as well as on the reception by the local administration, this chapter showed how policy proposals were supported or, on the contrary, were opposed by the administration in Yangzhou. The chapter insisted on the presence of different understandings in regard to the practices and objectives of urban renewal. Moreover, it highlighted some of the challenges of the transfer of Careful Urban Renewal, which represented a ‘new’ concept delivered in a context where urban renewal responded to different goals. However, despite the difficulties encountered in the process of cooperation, the initiative run by GTZ was fruitful. Not only did it propose an alternative approach to urban renewal, it also provided the Yangzhou administration with opportunities to experiment with and observe its feasibility on the ground. In particular, GTZ support was very important to test, for the first time, policy ideas that had already been circulating in China for a long time but that could not easily find any application. To further advocate for the adoption of this model, GTZ developed the “Yangzhou Urban Upgrading Strategy”, which represents a compendium of its policy recommendations. The next chapter will present how these recommendations were important components of the “policy stream” (Kingdon 2003 [1984]) that fed into the local process of agenda setting and policy learning. They constituted the raw material upon which the Yangzhou administration elaborated its own policies and plans, integrating new knowledge with what was already known or what existed already. Therefore, despite the small hopes of GTZ agents to trigger a deep change of local practices, their collaboration with Yangzhou had an important impact. As pointed out by Pierre Lascoumes (1996, p. 335), for a policy

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problem to be considered as such and enter the policy agenda, and for a reorientation of public action to take place, these have to be preceded by a phase of construction of the same policy problem, by a phase of design of possible actions and by a legitimation of reform operations. GTZ operated as an intermediary organisation and made it possible for these translation operations to take place in collaboration with the local administration by offering supporting knowledge and legitimation to policy ideas that had already circulated locally. For the sake of drawing the characteristics of the micro-dynamics of transfer, this chapter was already able to underline some important aspects pertaining to the transfer process in the case of this Chinese city. One of these aspects was the importance of finding ‘project owners’, and in particular individuals who were willing to and capable of engaging in the exploration of new ideas and new practices. Thus, similarly to what has been observed by the literature on policy transfer, transfer works when there is “indigenous support” (Jacoby 2000) and where there are “endogenous forces of mutation” (Stone 2012), otherwise it “degenerates into irrelevancy” (Jacoby 2000, p. 213). As introduced earlier in the chapter, the “Eco-city planning and management programme” encompassed several topics on which GTZ proposed policy and technical solutions. These topics had been selected and requested by the Yangzhou administration, as project design took place in collaboration with the local government. However, despite GTZ being able to find some interested interlocutors, the latter were not in any measure of persuading their superiors to deepen the collaboration with GTZ. Only for the item “Sustainable Urban Conservation” did this possibility become available and lead to carrying out the pilot projects. This possibility in particular was opened because in the case of Old City conservation the interlocutors were officials within the administration that held important hierarchic positions as well as expertise in the field. Although GTZ needed other resources to convince the administration, it definitely found project owners covering important positions in the administration, speaking their same professional language, and willing to invest time and money to experiment with its proposals. Thus, a second aspect to be underlined in the micro-dynamics of transfer is the local hierarchy and the position of local administrators within this hierarchy. As also pointed out by David Dolowitz (2017), institutional hierarchies matter, as they can constrain policy learning and policy transfer. In Yangzhou this aspect was further demonstrated by the fact that covering a

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leadership position in the administration was not sufficient for officials to openly talk to political leaders and make policy proposals. GTZ had to plead the cause and demonstrate the city leaders that its proposals were valid. To do so, it also reached out to some renowned Chinese experts to support its advocacy work and also brought proof that similar approaches were also being applied in other Chinese cities. These moves further encouraged the local officials who supported GTZ while legitimising the model in the eyes of local decision-makers. These elements also represent important aspects of the micro-dynamics of transfer and learning. They underline the importance of legitimation in transfer processes (Jacoby 2000), as foreign knowledge often needs to find local advocates capable of making it more palatable to local publics and local decision-makers. Moreover, thanks to the use of its resources, GTZ permitted local officials to obtain valuable information almost free of charge – something that can represent an incentive for local elites, as they can reduce the risks and the costs related to acquiring and experimenting with new knowledge (ibid.).

Notes 1. Interview 2014. 2. Interviews 2014. 3. Interview 2014. 4. In late 2006, USD 1 could be exchanged for RMB 7.8 and EUR 1 was exchanged against RMB 10.3. 5. Income mainly comes from salaries from government institutions or enterprises, from pensions, from unemployment subsidies (many workers finding themselves without job with the closure of many public enterprises), and from earnings obtained by the provision of services (tourism, catering, etc.), from business operations, and from owned assets (rent and interest from capital) (GTZ 2006f, p. 36). 6. For Strang and Meyer “theorisation” is an important facilitator of diffusion, as the translation of specific practices into “general models” has the capacity to “facilitate meaningful communication and influence between weakly related actors, and between theorists and adopters” (1993, p. 493). As such, “(t)heoretical accounts of practices simplify and abstract their properties and specify and explain the outcomes they produce. Such accounts make it easier to perceive and communicate about the practice” (p.  497). Therefore, theorisation “facilitates communication between strangers by providing a language that does not presume directly shared experience” (p. 499).

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7. Author’s free translation from German. 8. Interview 2014. The points raised by German experts find resonance in the works of Chinese scholars too. For instance Wu Liangyong’s (1999, pp. 58–59) work on Beijing’s inner city old neighbourhoods noticed very similar issues. 9. Interview 2014. 10. Interview 2014. 11. Ibid. 12. Interview 2014. 13. Free translation from Chinese. 14. Interview 2015. 15. As a matter of fact, beyond overcrowding, traditional houses present a situation of mixed property, with private-owned and public-owned rooms coexisting within a same unit. In this type of situation renovation is complicated because interventions on the private part can be hindered by the lack of support of the danwei owning the public part. In other cases, private owners could not afford a renovation, while the public part was repaired by the danwei. 16. Interview 2014. 17. Interview 2014. 18. However, newly constructed social housing is less valuable compared to the traditional houses in the Old City. The latter, once renovated, significantly increase in value. A local expert pointed to the fact that the standard of relocation housing is very low and that these buildings (especially the ones constructed recently) are very far from the city centre (Interview 2014). The expert also indicated that construction materials are of low quality and construction work is generally very poor. 19. As observed by Den Hartog (2010, p. 376), the compensation (material and financial) obtained through relocating residents elsewhere does not always match the loss of the social network and the fact that people are “forced to strike new roots”. 20. Interview 2014. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Interviews 2014. 24. GTZ accompanied officials on their visit to the cities of Suzhou, Wuzheng and Shaoxing to learn about their approaches to Old City renewal (GTZ 2006e). 25. Interview 2013. 26. Cities Alliance is a partnership of several national and international aid agencies and organisations, such as the French Development Agency, the same GTZ, UN Habitat, the United Nations Development Programme,

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the World Bank, etc. Its main mission is to fight urban poverty, especially ­dealing with slums upgrading. It finances several programmes through grants, while at the same time working on policy advocacy and information sharing. 27. Shuangdong district is the district where Dongguan Street, Dongquan Gate and the pilot areas are located. 28. Enquiries conducted in the pilot area, November 2015. 29. Later, the building was meant to serve as a community centre, but at the time of our enquiry the local publically owned construction company that participated in its construction was occupying its spaces. 30. Interviewees could not provide precise figures, but enquiries indicated that at that time (circa 14  years ago) energy-saving materials were expensive and unaffordable for the average households in the Old City. Currently, as these materials are more diffused, and as the central and provincial governments issued regulations and codes imposing the application of certain measures on newly constructed buildings (commercial and office buildings), these costs have reduced. 31. Not only is the investment for insulation and energy-saving measures still very costly for families, but regular insulation would also make them lose floor area. As pointed out by an interviewee: “Now the walls are already 24-cm thick, if they use insulation they become 36  cm. People want to maximise their interests, so it is impossible for them to waste surface for the sake of insulation. […] In the Old City an inch of soil is an inch of gold!” (Interview 2014). 32. Interview 2014. 33. Interview 2014; Interview 2015. 34. As a matter of fact, starting in the 2000s the German government and other donor countries reconsidered their cooperation approach with China. The economic capacities of China made unjustifiable in front of Western public opinions to provide development aid to China. Following this decision, projects funded through development aid could not be longer conducted. 35. Both the German and the Chinese governments provided matching funds for the realisation of the collaboration project, which had to cover the costs for the provision of expertise, material, etc. 36. Interview 2013. 37. Free translation from French. 38. Interviews 2014. 39. Interviews 2014. 40. This expression refers to the presence of organisational norms (e.g. openness, fairness, trust, etc.) that can produce an “administrative culture” conducive to learning in an organisation (Brown and Kenney 2006).

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References Abramson, D.  B. (2001). Beijing’s Preservation Policy and the Fate of the Siheyuan. Traditional Design and Settlement Review, 13(1), 7–22. Bernt, M. (2003). Rübergeklappt. Die “Behutsame Stadterneuerung” im Berlin der 90er Jahre. Berlin: Schelzky & Jeep. Brown, L. (2006). Learning Food Security in the European Union. In M.  L. Brown, M. Kenney, & M. Zarkin (Eds.), Organizational Learning in the Global Context (pp. 21–40). Burlington: Ashgate. Brown, L., & Kenney, M. (2006). Organizational Learning: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations. In M.  L. Brown, M.  Kenney, & M.  Zarkin (Eds.), Organizational Learning in the Global Context (pp.  1–17). Burlington: Ashgate. Cai, L. (2011). Strategien der Stadterneuerung in China am Fallbeispiel Yangzhou. Doctoral Thesis in Engineering. Berlin: Technische Universität Berlin. Colomb, C. (2007). The Added Value of Transnational Cooperation: Towards a New Framework for Evaluating Learning and Policy Change. Planning Practice and Research, 22(3), 347–372. Den Hartog, H. (2010). Shanghai New Towns. Searching for Community and Identity in a Sprawling Metropolis. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Dolowitz, D. (2017). Transfer and Learning: One Coin Two Elements. Novos Estudios, 36(1), 35–56. GTZ. (2003, December). Sustainable Urban Conservation  – Proposals for Yangzhou. Resource document. Yangzhou/Changzhou: GTZ. GTZ. (2004, May 16). Memo on the Discussion with the Mayor Ji. Yangzhou: GTZ. GTZ. (2005). (Document Without Title) Interviews to Yangzhou Officials After the Visit to Germany. Resource Document, 2–22 May 2004. GTZ. (2006a). Yangzhou Urban Upgrading Strategy. Conservation and Management of Historic & Cultural Heritage. Resource Document. Yangzhou: GTZ. GTZ. (2006b, June 28). Cooperation Protocol on the Sino-German House Renovation Pilot Project in Shuangdong District, Yangzhou. Resource Document. Yangzhou: GTZ. GTZ. (2006c, August). Cities Alliance Project Urban Upgrading Strategy. Pilot Project of House Renovation in Yangzhou’s Old City. Resource Document. Yangzhou: GTZ. GTZ. (2006d, September). Cost Estimation and Financing Plan of the Modernisation of Substandard Houses in the Old City of Yangzhou. Resource Document. Yangzhou: GTZ. GTZ. (2006e). Urban Conservation and Upgrading. Experience Exchange Report. Resource Document. Yangzhou. GTZ. (2006f). Urban Upgrading Strategy Yangzhou. Situation Analysis of the Old City Yangzhou. Resource Document. Yangzhou: GTZ.

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GTZ. (2007, December). Grant Completion Report – Urban Upgrading Strategy Yangzhou. Resource Document. Yangzhou: GTZ. GTZ. (2008, May 31). Completion Report on CA Project Yangzhou. Resource Document. Yangzhou. Hall, P. (1993). Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics, 25(3), 275–296. Jacoby, W. (2000). Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany. New York: Cornell University Press. Kingdon, J.  W. (2003 [1984]). Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (2nd ed.). New York: Longman. Lascoumes, P. (1996). Rendre gouvernable: de la ‘traduction’ au ‘transcodage’: l’analyse des processus de changement dans les réseaux d’action publique. In CURAPP (Ed.), La Gouvernabilité (pp. 325–338). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Mayntz, R. (1982 [1978]). Sociologia dell’amministrazione pubblica. Bologna: Il Mulino [Italian Translation of the Original: Soziologie des öffentlichen Verwaltung. Heidelberg: Müller Juristischer Verlag]. Stone, D. (2000). Non-Governmental Policy Transfer: The Strategies of Independent Policy Institutes. Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, 13(1), 45–62. Stone, D. (2012). Transfer and Translation of Policy. Policy Studies, 33(6), 483–499. Strang, D., & Meyer, J. W. (1993). Institutional Conditions for Diffusion. Theory and Society, 22(4), 487–511. Su, X. (2015). Urban Entrepreneurialism and the Commodification of Heritage in China. Urban Studies, 52(15), 2874–2889. Sun, L. (2017). Shequ canyu zhengzhi. Beijing lishi jiequ shequ canyu renju huanjing zhengzhi yingxiang yinsu yanjiu. Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press. Wu, L. (1999). Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing. A Project in the Ju’er Hutong Neighbourhood. Vancouver: UBC Press. Wu, F. (2004). Residential Relocation Under Market-Oriented Redevelopment: The Process and Outcomes in Urban China. Geoforum, 35(4), 453–470. Yangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau. (2004). Zhong De ‘shengtai chengshi guihua yu guanli’ jishu hezuo xiangmu qingkuang huibao. Resource Document. Yangzhou. Yangzhou Urban Planning Bureau. (2004, June). Fu De peixun baogao. Guanyu Zhong De zhengfu jishu hezuo zhuanti “kechixu de chengshi baohu”. Resource Document. Yangzhou. Zhu, L., & Goethert, R. (2009). Upgrading Historical Cities by Integrated and Innovative Solutions. Municipal Engineer, 162(2), 87–94. Zhu, L., Herrle, P., & Nebel, S. (2007). Yangzhou Urban Upgrading Strategy. Nanjing: Phoenix Science Press.

CHAPTER 5

Towards the Establishment of a New Urban Renewal Paradigm

5.1   Introduction The collaboration between GTZ and the Yangzhou city government was overall quite fruitful. It enabled carrying out pilot projects and elaborating a set of policy proposals handed to the city government. These proposals were meant to support the local government in establishing new plans and policies for the Old City. GTZ agents hoped that the Yangzhou city government would have learnt from the experience and translated that into new policies and practices of urban renewal. However, at the end of the cooperation project, this change did not exactly take place. Instead, the city government went ahead with the renewal of Dongguan Street, a project whose plans and methods were very different to the concept of Careful Urban Renewal (cf. Chap. 3). Thus, as observed by policy transfer literature, collaborations may produce successful results, but these results do not necessarily bring to policy change (Colomb 2007). For change to take place, other conditions must be satisfied. In order to verify whether these conditions appear and whether an autochthone learning process takes place, it is important to conduct observations some years after the conclusion of international projects. “Indigenisation” of policy proposals normally takes place “over the long term” (Stone 2012, p. 489). This chapter therefore brings us to the years after the departure of GTZ, precisely between 2008 and 2014, to observe whether the delivery of Careful Urban Renewal had any impact in Yangzhou.

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As will be shown, these years proved to be crucial for the beginning of a process of reform of urban renewal policies in Yangzhou, as the city government launched an autochthone process of policy learning which led to a significant reconsideration of the local approach. This reconsideration led to a change in the local paradigm of urban renewal that was drawn up in policy documents, relevant planning documents and local regulations. The preparation of these documents was also accompanied by a series of renewal projects that marked a rupture with past practices. These projects paid attention to the wishes of local residents and to the existing built structures, and tried to introduce forms of citizen participation. Hence, it was possible to spot the presence of lesson drawing, which led to a change in the local practices and goals of urban renewal. As mentioned, such a process did not occur immediately after GTZ’s departure and as a direct consequence of the project of international cooperation. A series of conditions had to be established for a policy window to open, and therefore for the Yangzhou government to start reflecting upon its urban renewal policies. To illustrate these aspects, this chapter is divided into two main parts and a third, final discussion part. The first part is dedicated to the process that led to questioning the redevelopment paradigm of urban renewal as well as to consider the policy proposals made by GTZ. It shows that the old paradigm came into question after the renewal of Dongguan Street and other projects, which spurred criticism on behalf of experts, provoked protests among residents and increased the local government’s debt. It also came into question due to certain important changes within the administration, which allowed some officials in favour of Careful Urban Renewal to obtain important management positions. These officials launched a new phase of policy study which proposed a change of approach. The second part deals with the outcomes of this phase of policy study. It shows that many of the lessons learnt in the collaboration with GTZ were integrated into the local practice, plans and administrative arrangements. Nevertheless, Yangzhou officials also pointed out that what they illustrated was their approach, their own policies and their own projects, tailored to the local situation and needs. GTZ was only one of the sources of inspiration, as other cities in China also experimented with new approaches and the central government set new rules to carry out (re-) development projects in the entire country. Thus, imitation was accompanied by translation and hybridisation. The third part discusses these aspects in further detail by reconnecting theory with empirical observations, focusing in particular on the characteristic of the process of policy learning

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in the local administration as well as of some of the outcomes of the local learning process.

5.2   Towards the Opening of a Window to Review Urban Renewal Policies Without problems emerging in the practice of urban renewal, the Yangzhou administration would probably not have rethought its own policies in this field of public action. Leaders in the administration had to see with their own eyes that there were issues with the model of urban renewal pursued until that time. The second renewal of Dongguan Street – together with other projects  – gave them the opportunity to do so. It made it clear that government-led, large-scale renewal projects that implied demolitions and relocations were not socially or economically sustainable options. The cost of forcing people to move elsewhere was too high for the local government, while results of their efforts took too long to appear. These aspects became evident to some individuals in the administration, while the city government started to enquire into the effects of its renewal projects. The stage for a new discussion of the local approach of urban renewal was gradually opening. 5.2.1  The Emergence of Problems in the Local Approach of Urban Renewal After carrying out a series of projects, which were criticised by local experts and affected residents, the local approach of urban renewal was questioned. Among these projects, the second renewal of Dongguan Street opened the eyes of many officials within the Yangzhou administration. Carried out between 2006 and 2007, the project was counter to the idea of conserving the existing buildings and their residents. Most houses were demolished, with the exception of a few heritage units protected by the government  – but these were also significantly transformed by renewal interventions. Residents were forced to relocate elsewhere, and for this reason many of them protested against the government’s decision. However, the administration wanted this project to go ahead at all costs, forcing demolitions and relocations. Its main idea was to promote redevelopment in order to generate income. Dongguan Street was not new to renovations, but the project

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that concerned the street was a simple upgrading intervention (cf. Chap. 3). In this operation, the government funded the remaking of infrastructures and the improvement of building facades, but the configuration of the street and the mixed use of the neighbourhood was not modified. Following this first project, some people in the administration expressed their dissatisfaction with the results of the renewal, which had absorbed public money without bringing any substantial returns on the investment.1 This situation had to be ‘corrected’ by fostering the development of commercial activities, in particular of those that would have attracted tourism, which is why the administration decided to proceed with the redevelopment of Dongguan Street, led and funded by the city government. However, a few years later, the administration acknowledged that the project had failed to produce the anticipated results. Namely, when the first effects of the renewal of Dongguan Street became clear, it was understood that the investment made in buying the properties and in redeveloping would not have easily produced the expected returns: the investment was significant, and at the beginning there were no earnings, because once it had been finished it was not so popular. At that time they [the local public-owned company that carried out the project on behalf of the government, YFCC] rented out housing, asked people to come, that is, you come, pay rent and use their houses. At the beginning people did not have to pay rent. Later, the rent they earned was relatively low.2

This situation motivated the government to reconsider the urban renewal costs, as the following words of an official clearly illustrate: In the Dongguan Street model the government has invested a lot, but it is not sure that it will be successful. We had to spend a lot of money, but the government cannot afford to spend that much. ... A project like that of Dongguan Street is not easy to carry out either. It needs a lot of determination. We had to move so many residents out. We took their properties and this cost us a lot. ... Therefore, you can do projects like that of Dongguan Street only on a few sites of the city. Only in one or two places, but it cannot be done everywhere.3

Dongguan Street made the local state-owned company, the Yangzhou Famous City Company (YFCC), bear noteworthy costs, while its financial situation was deteriorating. This aspect emerged during a short project of international cooperation run in 2009, which revealed two things: (1)

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government-paid urban renewal was not a very feasible option, and (2) funding practices had to change. It is worth explaining these to understand the situation better. The collaboration project between GTZ, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and other international agencies run under the broader framework of the Cities Development Initiatives in Asia (CDIA). The project aimed at supporting the local government to find alternative financial sources for urban renewal, as the financing channels for renewal projects started to change, forcing local governments to learn about new procedures to obtain bank loans or attract investors.4 As pointed out by interviewees, scholarly works and the press, the central government was changing its views vis-à-vis urban development projects. Acknowledging that the high speed of construction was creating important damages to public finances, the State Council and China’s Central Bank started reducing the possibilities of financing real estate projects (Cabestan 2014).5 For this reason, in those years state-owned banks were no longer granting loans with easy conditions and started asking for feasibility studies.6 The CDIA project was designed to support the local government in these new conditions by helping to explore options to fund the renewal of the Old City. To this end, a team of German and Chinese consultants started collaborating with the Yangzhou government to provide a cost assessment for renewal projects. The main output of their collaboration was a pre-feasibility study upon which the government could prepare detailed feasibility studies to ask ADB or other banks for financial support. The CDIA experts also proposed a series of alternatives for funding, for instance by encouraging the local public construction company to mortgage land assets in order to obtain loans. The discussion of these alternatives, however, turned out to be an important occasion for foreign consultants to discover YFCC’s handsome debt situation as well as to understand that the financing methods they wanted to promote were difficult to apply. An analysis of the (incomplete) figures and documents of YFCC revealed to foreign consultants that its debt was three times larger than its assets.7 As indicated by a manager of the company, this debt is still a reality today, a situation that cannot easily be solved: we cannot have a balance in our revenue and returns on investments in the long term. And we cannot only think about YFCC; we have to consider the development of the whole tourism industry in Yangzhou as well as the company’s contribution to the city from the perspective of tourism d ­ evelopment.

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… It is from this perspective that you have to look at it, including the development of YFCC. You cannot only think about the fact that YFCC does not have any income.8

In the words of this manager YFCC does not operate like a private company looking for “the largest profit and short-term effects”, but since it operates in the public interest, which is identified in the development of tourism in the city, it has to accept that reaching a return on investment may take longer. This situation is not unlike other places in China (cf. Zhang and Fang 2004), and it represents the core problem for YFCC to fund its operations, as there are no private investors willing to participate in its projects. Moreover, as the company is state owned it is hard for private investors to support its operations: take the case of Dongguan Street in which we invested more than 400 million yuan. You would need 40 years to have a return on investment, because every year we get back around 15 million yuan. I cannot afford to pay the interest back and I cannot recover my initial costs, so actually there is nobody wanting to invest. Secondly, we are a state-owned company, so it is not easy to split our shares. If a private company wants to enter then we can only make a joint-stock company, where the government gets the largest share and the company the smallest. But if it invests for an objective, it wants to make a profit! If on 400 million yuan you can only get a return on the investment in 40 years, it definitely has no interest. So given these aspects there are no private companies coming to invest.9

To better understand this situation it is important to recall the particular role played by YFCC in the funding of government-led urban projects. The company is a “financial platform” (rongzi pingtai – 融资平台),10 or what scholars also call a “local government financing vehicle” (LGFV) (Lam and Wang 2018; Liao 2014). Their fundamental role is that of obtaining money on behalf of local governments through borrowing money from banks or through issuing bonds. Hence, they operate on behalf of local governments to make investments in urban development. Their debt is the debt cumulated by the government with past operations, which has been transformed into company debt, a practice well spread all over in China (Cabestan 2014). LGFVs used to be important instruments for local governments until late 2014, when the central government made an important change in regulation and started allowing local governments to issue bonds to finance their operations (Lam and Wang 2018).

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Up until that time, China’s Budget Law and Securities Law strictly prohibited local deficits, local bonds and guarantees (Liu 2013). However, local governments still had the possibility to continue expanding their debt by exploiting loopholes and using a variety of ways. One of these ways was precisely the establishment of financial platforms under an array of different names that financed government projects through mortgaging land or government assets (ibid.). With the central government’s new rules for funding institutions, the financial situation of these platforms became complicated and forced the local administration to search for new options to fund urban renewal projects. However, it is not easy to go through with such a change in practice. In YFCC’s case, it does not have any certificate of ownership of its assets (land, developed land, real estate) to be mortgaged; hence, it is impossible to obtain credits following the new procedures.11 As a matter of fact, YFCC did not follow any regular procedure when carrying out the project. Land was directly granted without any certification, together with the instructions of carrying out projects within very short delays. Such delays are connected to the mayors’ and party secretaries’ short mandates, which need to see projects being completed very quickly before the end of their mandate to be able to present results to their superiors. The speed of carrying out a project did not allow YFCC to follow the procedures required by construction projects. Overlooking regulations was possible under the pretext that the company was carrying out projects for the government, funded by the government and on land owned by the government.12 As a result, YFCC lacked certifications of possession of its assets, which in turn impeded the company to contract mortgages. These irregularities constituted a problem for the funding of urban renewal and pushed the government and YFCC to look for alternatives. In any case, one thing was clear for both the Yangzhou government and YFCC: projects like that of Dongguan Street had to be avoided and other cheaper solutions had to be found. 5.2.2  The Local Approach Showed Signs of Failure In the years of the project run by CDIA, the need for reconsidering Yangzhou’s urban renewal approach became clear. Its financial bases became less solid, while the consequences, in particular the conflict with residents, called it into question. In a way, following Peter Hall’s (1993) theorisation, conditions for change were developing, as the policy model

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followed that so far by the administration had showed signs of failure. In fact, both the high costs of redevelopment and resident protests represented the driving forces that led the Yangzhou government to reconsider its approach to urban renewal. Namely, an official pointed out that in 2010 the Yangzhou People’s Congress, the local legislative assembly, gathered complaints from citizens and experts before assessing the project.13 The assembly recognised that the renewal model applied in Dongguan Street, which implied large-scale relocations, was not acceptable given that it created tension with residents. Moreover, it recognised that this project was too costly to be repeated in other sites of the Old City.14 In an attempt to reconstruct the discussions of those years, a good example is the intervention made by a local official at the Yangzhou People’s Political Consultative Conference (YPPCC), the second representative assembly of local governments, which gathers members from the “democratic parties” that exist in China and from various official associations. This intervention is a rare document, offering some insight into the discussions that took place in the administration after completing Dongguan Street and other projects. The author of the intervention was Meng Yao, an expert in heritage preservation working in the Yangzhou Application Office for World Cultural Heritage. Her speech at the YPPCC summarised a series of important points that later became the main targets of the new policies. The intervention also contained policy proposals that resonated with the ideas proposed by GTZ, suggesting that a “political stream” (Kingdon 2003 [1984]) supporting a new approach to urban renewal was developing within the administration. The text began with a review of the renewal projects that led to a “radical transformation” of the Old City’s landscape (Meng 2010).15 Instead of proceeding with their “careful arrangement”, renewed places were attributed a new look through emptying buildings, demolishing them and constructing new ones without respecting the form, density or materials of the original ones. Moreover, with these projects, the nature of the renewal process was also “alienated”, because it was done exclusively according to the government’s wishes to carry out “face-saving projects” and “hasty, rough, wasteful short-term projects for the occasion of various festivals” (ibid.). Renovations had to satisfy needs other than carefulness and the overall protection of the Old City, for which reason projects were carried out too quickly. Thence, the length of interventions had been ­“unreasonably

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compressed”, only three to four months from the phase of demolition to that of reaching the final product. The author continues with a thorough description of the local practices, indicating that construction work used to start suddenly, without any renovation plan, design drawing for buildings and streets, or preliminary discussion. Follow-up and oversight mechanisms were also missing. An example of such practices was a series of “wasteful” projects in Yangzhou, including the remaking of Dongguan Street. For Meng, these projects were attributed to the change in city leadership, in particular of the city mayor. Each new arrival implied overturning the predecessors’ work and conducting arbitrary renovation projects, choices that led to waste and inappropriate interventions. Meng Yao, for instance, pointed out the fact that buildings needing simple and small repairs were completely torn down, their parts disassembled and replaced by new elements and new materials. Meng also criticised the fact that real historical buildings were destroyed and reconstructed as fake antiques, leading to an enormous loss of heritage. The original configuration of streets, together with their functions and residents, were also completely changed. Buildings that had previously been residential were suddenly transformed into shops for tourists, with their original residents evicted. The result of such careless practices led to an increase in the costs of urban renewal, turning projects that could have cost some thousands of yuan into ones that ended up demanding millions of yuan for the involved parties to reap the benefits (ibid.). Meng’s critique against the local practices of urban renewal also focused on the negligence of residents’ rights. For the local expert, respecting such rights constituted the starting point for residents to participate in and contribute to the Old City’s renewal, as well as benefit from it. However, as Meng denounced, the projects conducted in the years 2000s transformed old buildings into exclusive places for only few beneficiaries. She added that these uncontrolled transformations were quite frequent in Yangzhou and concerned different sites of the Old City. For the government’s development plans, the original residents were unwelcome; hence, they were denied their right to choose their place of residence and had to endure forced evictions. Meng Yao also pointed out the very painful aspects of this treatment, as relocations often made full use of brutality. She denounced that the legal formalities for residential house demolitions were often forgotten, as were plans for resettlement, leaving people without any home at all. All these aspects caused her to legitimately doubt the

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meaning of the government’s claims of “improving the living conditions of residents” (ibid.). Similarly to the findings of GTZ experts (cf. Chap. 4), Meng Yao also acknowledged that residents have a very strong desire to improve their quality of life in the Old City. She mentioned their spontaneous acts of reconstruction, but also the fact that their “enthusiasm has not been officially protected” as there were no corresponding management plans or measures to provide legal protection and guidance to self-help refurbishments. She also revealed the fact that families living in areas not temporarily included within the scope of demolitions were not allowed to renovate their houses, leading to the further decay of dilapidated old houses. For this reason, she said, residents are “passively waiting for their collective destiny of demolition and relocation” (ibid.). She therefore urged the government to react to the situation by choosing a new course and new policies to halt these practices. To this end, she made a series of proposals to establish new policies of urban renewal, which resonated with the ones made by GTZ experts. For instance, she proposed preparing a “complete protection concept” to prevent the commercial exploitation of the Old City. In this respect, she added that policies should have been clear about whether protecting the Old City meant raising the existing city or, on the contrary, transforming it into a fake copy. To establish such a model, she argued, all sectors of society – and especially the residents of the Old City – have to be granted equal participation. The government must guarantee residents “the right to choose to remain or leave, the right to self-improvement of living conditions and the right to entrepreneurship in development” (ibid.). At the same time, this implied a change in the role of the government, shifting from that of an “all-taker” (zhong da bao da lan – 中大包大揽) to a more appropriate role of guidance. Meng went on to propose establishing “Old City Renewal Hearings” and monitoring mechanisms and called for the joint participation of experts and the public to conduct a follow-up and supervision. In this way, she stated, the government could start working on solid foundations, relying on thorough research as well as well-reflected plans for renewal. These plans, she added, also needed to have guidelines for the protection and maintenance of the Old City. They would always have to be enforced, no matter who was in charge. Furthermore, Meng suggested providing incentives to activate citizen participation in the protec-

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tion and renewal of the Old City, fostering growth and encouraging the involvement of ­non-­governmental forces. She also suggested allowing private capital to enter the Old City so as to end the city government’s monopoly in Old City renewal. For her, residents should be provided with the opportunity to benefit from the transformation of the Old City, opening up their own businesses. Inspiration could be taken from other cities in China, where local governments helped residents establish residential inns. Meng Yao was not alone in expressing criticism and in proposing ideas. Other people in the city administration were reconsidering the projects of urban renewal, among which the group of officials who collaborated with GTZ a few years earlier. Some of the criticism was based on the unanticipated consequences of certain choices as well as on the personal experiences and personal values of the administrators, a situation similar to what John Kingdon had described (2003 [1984], pp.  96–110). For instance, proponents of Dongguan Street’s second renewal believed that the project could have permitted a centralisation of resources in the government’s hands and could also have produced significant economic returns. However, once the project was underway, many acknowledged that such a centralisation would not be able to repay the government’s investments.16 Moreover, the operation also caused strong resistance from local residents, an aspect that convinced some officials that proceeding without residents’ consensus would not be the correct approach.17 As the administration started recognising these problems, attempts on behalf of the city government to carry out new projects following the old model caused a negative reaction among several officials. For instance, an interviewee reported the case of a heritage site called Songjia City, which hosted the relics of ancient Yangzhou under the Song dynasty. The government’s initial plan was to build a golf club following a very common trend in China nowadays. However, in the early 2010s, the directors of certain city departments opposed the project, which convinced the government to change its plans and open the area up to the public.18 Something was changing in the frames of the administration. Indeed, no one could have thought that any of Meng Yao’s or GTZ’s proposals would actually become true in the years that followed.

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5.3   A New Window for Policy Learning and the Development of a Local Conservation Paradigm A new window for policy learning in Yangzhou could open thanks to problems in projects of urban renewal being acknowledged and to opinions in the administration in favour of alternative approaches being voiced. However, these aspects alone were not enough to bring new policy proposals onto the local policymaking agenda. Without the political scene in Yangzhou or the division of power and competences in the administration showing any signs of change, the search for policy alternatives seemed unlikely. The opportunity came when there was a change in the city administration. Ji Jianye went to serve as mayor in Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu. And Wang Yanwen, the mayor who supported GTZ pilot projects, was appointed party secretary, a position that gave her power to change administrative arrangements as she became responsible for appointing the directors of departments and could determine administrative reshuffling. Having conservation of the Old City as a policy priority, Wang directed money and resources to establish a special office that could bring about change in the direction of urban renewal. Then, at the head of this office, she put the officials who had collaborated with GTZ a few years earlier, estimating that they had the capacities and skills to promote a reform of local practices. Sharing the perception that the old model of urban renewal was problematic, as well as probably seeing an interesting opportunity for her career, Secretary Wang called them the “imperial sword” (shangfang baojian – 上方宝剑, an expression commonly used to mean “discretionary power”) to further explore new urban renewal approaches after the GTZ experience.19 As a result of her decision, a new window for policy learning was opened, to introduce and implement new solutions and consider a new paradigm of urban renewal. What followed was indeed a fundamental moment to make studies and proposals to reform urban renewal. The main powerhouse of reforms was the Old City Office (OCO), which collaborated with other departments thanks to a new mechanism called the “Joint Meeting System for the Protection of the Old City” (JMS), also established under the aegis of Wang Yanwen. Thanks to this decision, the different departments that participated in the JMS could also participate in policy discussions by preparing reports and recommendations to underline problems, formulate their opinions and propose

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s­olutions. The JMS and the OCO thus initiated the reform of urban renewal policy in Yangzhou, and offered a platform for various members of the administration to develop a mutual understanding of the problems of the Old City and to negotiate the contents of policies for urban renewal. The results of these exchanges marked the establishment of new frames, new policies, new plans and new approaches to urban renewal, signalling the introduction of a new ‘conservation paradigm’ in Yangzhou. Changes concerned not only the instruments of urban renewal but also its goals. Urban renewal shifted its focus, abandoning the original tourism- and commercial-led orientation to embrace a new direction centred on residents’ wishes and on the original characteristics of the Old City. For this aspect, it is possible to think about the beginning of a paradigm shift in Peter Hall’s (1993) terms. The emergence of this conservation paradigm took place via a re-elaboration of the concepts proposed and experimented with GTZ, as illustrated in the coming paragraphs. Studies and policy proposals conducted by various departments, suggestions made by experts outside the administration, the experiences of other Chinese cities and the application of new directives and laws issued by the central and provincial governments also influenced developments in policy. However, the administration also had to draft policy bearing in mind local interests and the constitutional limits of policymaking at city level. 5.3.1  At the Heart of the Conservation Paradigm: The Re-Foundation of the Old City Office During the collaboration with the Yangzhou government, GTZ experts proposed establishing a special department for the Old City, one that would function as a one-stop shop by modifying the roles of an already existing organisation and by attributing it new competences. A GTZ report observed (2006, p. 21) that, at the time of the cooperation project, the precise functions of this organisation were not clarified. Its members were only working part-time and there were “no special officials with professional knowledge”. Moreover, despite its existence, the government of the Old City was split up in different departments, an arrangement that led “to separation and chaos rather than an integrated management and coherent standards” (ibid.). Hence, they suggested clarifying the departments’ division of duties and powers while enhancing the capacities of this office.

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In particular, the GTZ experts proposed establishing a “special top management” organisation for the Old City, merging the competences of the different departments having a say on the Old City (ibid., p. 24). It was to carry out administrative work and provide guidance to other actors participating in urban renewal, both internal and external to the administration. To this end, the GTZ report added that the office must recruit “excellent staff” with different “professional backgrounds” such as “planning, architecture, land, culture, society, law and economics education” and be responsible for establishing “relevant policies, regulations and heritage conservation implementation plans” (ibid.). While formulating these proposals, the GTZ experts considered that creating such an organisation would have been very difficult, if not impossible, as many departments had a stake in urban renewal (ibid.). Their assumptions were correct, as not all the attempts to attribute competences to a centralised organisation were successful. Nevertheless, an Old City Office (OCO) with coordination and implementation capacities was established in July 2009 as a special division (chu  – 处) of the Construction Bureau. This decision meant that the protection of the Old City became a matter of “in-house management” (Yangzhou Construction Bureau 2010), transforming the OCO into one of its permanent offices, the “Yangzhou City Bureau for the Protection of the Old City”. When making this decision, the Yangzhou government followed the example of other cities in China (e.g. Suzhou and Pingyao) that had developed similar offices within the main departments concerned with the protection of their historical quarters.20 This office was conceived as “the implementing agency for the protection of the Old City” and was “committed to all its aspects”, ranging from the establishment of policies, principles and measures for Old City protection to their implementation (ibid.).21 Directed by the four leaders of the Construction Bureau – the Main Director and the three vice-Directors  – the new OCO became responsible for the development of relevant policies for the Old City as well as for the realisation of renewal projects (Yangzhou Old City Office 2012). The office was also given the responsibility to conduct research on policies and approaches to improve the upgrading methods, and for this purpose it was accompanied by the creation of the Yangzhou Historic and Cultural City Research Institute, also established within the Construction Bureau (ibid.). As mentioned previously, founding the OCO proved decisive to change the face of urban renewal in Yangzhou. It was the powerhouse of reforms

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in the city. More precisely, the emergence of the conservation paradigm became possible because the OCO functioned as a powerful office endowed with discretionary power. Ms. Wang also nominated a locally recognised expert and respected official of the Urban Planning Bureau as the director of the OCO. This person was one of the officials who had supported GTZ in previous years, thus was in a position to ensure the continuation of the learning process launched a few years earlier. By granting the director of the OCO discretionary power, Secretary Wang was offering the office the chance to direct policy studies, make policy proposals and carry out renewal projects. Through this arrangement, the Yangzhou government acquired great capacities to establish policies for the conservation of the Old City. 5.3.2  The Main Features of the Conservation Paradigm: What to Protect? In order to understand whether paradigmatic changes took place – which correspond to a change of policy goals – it is important to recall some of the elements presented in Chap. 3, in particular the contents of the city master plan and of the Eco-city Construction Plan. These documents can be compared to those issued in the early 2010s as well as to the replies offered by Yangzhou officials when asked to point out the aspects that, in their eyes, were new in the local approach to urban renewal. A first aspect that immediately emerges from this analysis concerns the definition of the uses of space in the Old City. Chapter 3 showed how the old plans envisaged that the functions of the Old City would change, strengthening its tourism and leisure uses while reducing the ratio of residential land use and, with it, the population inside the Old City. These points are neither in the new edition of the master plan (2012– 2020) nor in the newly established “Yangzhou Historical and Cultural Famous City Protection Plan” that was approved in 2013 to accompany the master plan.22 The Protection Plan’s Article 43 sets forth the need to “preserve the existing residential land-use ratio and structure” in the Old City and combine it with a gradual renewal of the area (Yangzhou City Government 2013).23 Population reduction is contemplated in both plans, but numbers are different. In the Protection Plan the same article stipulates that the population size within the Old City area should be maintained within 70,000 inhabitants (the Eco-City Plan anticipated a population target of 50,000 inhabitants). These numbers can be ­compared

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to the targets established by the Upgrading Strategy prepared by GTZ, which suggested maintaining 80 per cent of the population of the Old City (Zhu et al. 2007, p. 43), which meant around 80,000 inhabitants. Officials provided some detail about why the numbers varied, explaining that the target was only indicative and that their overall aim was to increase the average living space for families, ideally so that one family could live in a one-storey house, but two families per house was also accepted.24 On this point, the OCO decided not to impose any surface standards expressed in square metres as suggested by GTZ.  Instead, it established a minimum criterion expressed in terms of the number of rooms, which meant that their policies endorsed renovations that provided for a bathroom and a kitchen on top of the existing living spaces. Considering that houses with small surfaces could also meet this requirement, the OCO wished to enable more families to benefit from their policies as a way to encourage renewal interventions.25 Indications about the uses of the space and the type of residents entitled to live in the Old City were no longer included in the new planning documents; they were instead replaced by new formulas such as “repairing old residential houses”, “improving the residential environment” and “providing” or “improving public infrastructures to support residents in the Old City”. For instance, Article 83 of the Protection Plan indicates that the residential function of historical houses must be preserved (Yangzhou City Government 2013) and that the planning process must promote residents’ wishes. As such, residents could change the use of their houses according to their needs and, if they wanted to, could find appropriate areas for relocation (ibid.). Thus, compared to the practices described earlier, when residents had no possibility to choose and were forced to relocate, the content of these documents reveals a fundamental change in thinking. Other indications concerning these aspects can be found in the “Administrative Measures for the Protection of the Old City”, issued in 2011. For instance, Article 31 underlines the importance of preserving the close neighbourhood relationships between original residents in the Old City while striking a balance with newcomers and reasonably reducing the population density. The “Temporary measures for the protection and rehabilitation of Yangzhou city historical and cultural areas”, issued during the years of the cooperation with GTZ, also present important elements. Namely, Article 10 stipulates that the rehabilitation or improvement of buildings must occur according to the “free choice to stay or leave”

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principle. OCO officials also explained that residents are given the possibility to choose whether they want to participate or not in the renovation plans: “If residents do not wish to renovate, they do not renovate, by no means do we force them to do so”.26 Still following the principle of respecting residents’ wishes, officials underlined that residents can choose the design and construction company to carry out the renovations and are given the option of self-help renovations.27 Recognising residents’ wishes can be considered one of the major achievements of international cooperation, but its origins can also be explained by developments at national level. Indeed, in the 2000s already the central government issued new laws and regulations that marked progress in the protection of residents’ rights. For instance, in 2004 the central government added the protection of private property to the Constitution (Balme 2014, p. 400). Then, in 2007, it issued a “Property Rights Law” that legally sanctioned “forced demolitions of private property” (Weinstein and Ren 2009, p. 421). The same year, the government introduced a new Urban and Rural Planning Law that included citizen participation as an important requirement to plan (re-)development projects. Moreover, in 2011, the State Council issued a new “Regulation of Property Taking and Compensation on State-Owned Land”, which replaced the very unfair 2001 “National Regulation of Urban Housing Demolition and Relocation” (Lin 2011, p. 345). This new regulation required that financial compensation be “comparable to the market price of their properties” and also anticipated that residents cannot be evicted without a court order (ibid.). These evolutions cannot, therefore, be exclusively attributed to the collaboration between the city government and GTZ. This change of approach can also be traced to the policy discourses of the city leadership. For instance, protecting the existing city professedly became a key concept in the discourses of the ex-party secretary and ex-­ mayor of Yangzhou, Ji Jianye. In his words, Yangzhou embraced a development concept that respects people’s expectations: Residents’ living conditions and habits must not be disrupted by renewal. Interventions must improve the urban environment, functions and quality, as well as residents’ quality of life. … People’s enthusiasm must be mobilised and public participation in the protection of the Old City must be encouraged in order to make people benefit from the protection and its sustainable development. (Ji 2010)28

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Chapters 3 and 4 have shown that behind Dongguan Street and other redevelopment projects there was Ji Jianye’s willingness. This sudden change of discourse perhaps suggests a wariness of the effective presence of a cognitive change among policy elites. Indeed, as soon as Ji Jianye started serving in Nanjing as mayor, he continued manifesting his predilection for demolitions (The Economist 2013). This all hints to the fact that these changes in discourse might have been symbolic, rather than a witness to a shift of paradigm. Nevertheless, the policy documents and the pilot projects, both of the early 2010s and centred on resident participation, are an undeniable reality that signals an important change in the practice of urban renewal in Yangzhou. Resident participation became the most important leitmotif of the main planning and policy documents issued in the early 2010s. For instance, Article 83 of the already cited Protection Plan stipulates that, when establishing a complete system of laws and regulations for the protection and management of the Old City, it is important to perfect the mechanisms for public participation, encourage resident participation and support non-­ governmental organisations (Yangzhou City Government 2013). The practice of urban renewal also changed in terms of the relationship with existing buildings. Official documents started emphasising the architectural “authenticity” of buildings, something that became a principle enshrined in main local policy documents. In the past, when the city started exploring methods to revive some of the areas of the Old City, these translated into the construction of copies of old buildings. This practice became the subject of criticism and correction.29 As recognised by a local official, the protection concept was not yet mature then: In those years we believed that we could protect the Old City by controlling old trees and old wells, the system of old streets and the urban layout. But in fact that was not the case. Our understanding then about destroying old buildings and reconstructing new ones in the old style was not the same as it is nowadays. Then, we believed it was the right way. Old buildings were so dilapidated that they had no supporting infrastructure, so once torn down we would reconstruct them using their traditional form. In this way we could improve both people’s living conditions and the urban style by using a technique that would not present any defects. At the time we thought that this was what conservation meant.30

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The new version of the master plan (2012–2020) recognises authenticity as an important principle of conservation. Similarly, Article 9 of the Protection Plan makes the respect of authenticity a priority, recognising that Yangzhou’s cultural heritage and historical environment are “non-­ renewable cultural resources” (Yangzhou City Government 2013). Protection shall thus guarantee the authenticity of the external features and design of cultural heritage buildings and historical buildings, as well as of their substance, construction materials, use, function and surrounding environment. The principle of authenticity can also be found in Article 58 of the Protection Plan, including the “pleasant scale” of the traditional system of roads and alleyways of the Old City. This meant that the Old City as a whole  – and not only some of its buildings  – were to be preserved. Attention to these aspects was paid by super-positioning different styles and epochs, as stated in Article 26. This recognition basically meant that standardising projects like that of Dongguan Street, where old buildings of different epochs had been replaced by replicas of old buildings in the same style, were condemned. 5.3.3  How to Protect? New Policies… and Failed Attempts The main outcomes of the reform years that followed the cooperation with GTZ are undoubtedly the new instruments and regulations of the conservation paradigm. The first important document issued at the time is represented by the previously cited “Administrative Measures for the Protection of the Old City”, in force since January 2011.31 Together with the “Opinions for the Renovation of Yangzhou Old City Traditional Houses”, issued in June 2011, these documents show a direct affiliation with the proposals made by GTZ. GTZ experts indeed put establishing regulations and standards for implementation as one of the main priorities to protect the Old City. These documents expressed “ideas, methods and skills suitable for the local characteristics” in line with existing main national and provincial laws and regulations (GTZ 2006, p. 23). In fact, the “Opinions for the Renovation of Yangzhou Old City Traditional Houses” represent a clear endorsement of the lessons learnt with GTZ. The four-page document establishes the basic principles for the renovation of private houses in the Old City. In its various sections, it is indeed possible to find requirements for the repair and refurbishment of residential houses. It is an important document as it represents an official

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recognition of the possibility for private individuals to modernise their houses. As was pointed out in Meng Yao’s speech, this right was not recognised in the past, and private initiative was punished with sanctions. With these novelties, residents were finally allowed to proceed to refurbish their homes, on the condition that they pay attention to the structural and architectural characteristics of the buildings. The Opinions also allow residents to choose construction companies by themselves or to resort to self-help, according to their financial capacities and their quality requirements, ideas that were strongly advocated by GTZ experts. Namely, the third point of the chapter, “Basic Principles”, indicates that residents renovate according to their voluntary participation and to their own decision. In this way, not only did the OCO make it possible for new private actors to participate in urban renewal, as suggested by GTZ, but it also helped residents to find companies that could guarantee the quality required in refurbishing a house and at the price they were willing to pay. To encourage residents, the Opinions establish special governmental subsidies, a novelty that can be considered the most direct legacy of the collaboration with GTZ.  Subsidies were introduced for the first time with the pilot projects run by GTZ. The OCO maintained the scheme and goals of GTZ subsidies, which were supposed to encourage the public to participate in the upgrading of the Old City by proceeding with self-renovation. Special provisions for vulnerable households were also established. Chapter 3 of the Opinions indicates that residents officially certified in “particularly difficult situations” could obtain a bigger subsidy. The policy also introduces flexibility in renovation standards, with the possibility of slightly increasing the height of buildings for residents to add lofts. Officials decided to do so to help residents improve their living conditions. By giving them the chance to fully benefit from their properties, for instance by using the ground floor to open a little shop and using the loft for residential purposes, or by renting out this extra floor, the OCO wished to help increase residents’ sources of income.32 This flexibility in terms of surface standards, and thereby of eligibility criteria for subsidies, as well as the possibility to extend the living spaces up to a certain measure represent an important recognition of the needs of low-income households. This gave them the choice of continuing to live in the Old City and/or of supporting themselves to improve their living conditions. Both measures represented steps forward compared to the past, when low-income families were encouraged (if not forced) to relocate.

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The OCO also made attempts at introducing ecological measures in residential buildings. This component was directly connected to the project run by GTZ.33 The Upgrading Strategy recommended establishing subsidies to encourage the use of environmentally friendly and energy-­ saving materials and appliances for both private and public houses (Zhu et al. 2007, p. 49). However, to date, the OCO has neither established any subsidy of this type nor given detailed guidelines about how to apply energy-saving and ecological measures in a building, despite having carried out a pilot project for a “low-carbon community” in the early 2010s (cf. Chap. 1).34 Since 2014, establishing such a subsidy policy was on the OCO’s agenda, but given the current limited relevance of this office in defining the direction and policies for urban renewal (cf. Chap. 6), the possibilities to do so were quite remote.35 Another failed attempt at policy formulation on the basis of the lessons learnt with GTZ was establishing rental limits to avoid displacing residents. This attempt did not lead anywhere because other departments needed to have agreed, and these preferred the value of houses to increase after refurbishment.36 The city government needed to further discuss the topic, but when the OCO lost its support, many policy proposals were left unattended to. Another example is the formulation of policies for the restoration of public houses, where the issue of reaching a consensus among other departments became crucial. These houses constituted roughly half of the group of buildings in the Old City, and making decisions about them revealed to be quite complicated. As a matter of fact, the development of a policy and of solutions for public houses was at the heart of a collaboration between Yangzhou government and GTZ. The project run in 2010 as a small component of another programme targeting cities, the “Sustainable Urban Development Programme”. It did not target Yangzhou, but GTZ agents could partially continue collaborating with the city by providing assistance on specific topics. This collaboration led to the “Technical guidelines for the renovation and protection of residential buildings in Yangzhou Old City” being drafted and to a study being prepared on the privatisation of public houses in the Old City. Both GTZ and OCO officials agreed on the conclusion: public houses had to be sold, preferably to the sitting tenants. This privatisation of public houses in the Old City should have fostered self-help renovation based on tenants’ wishes to improve their housing conditions. The experts involved in the project praised the approach that the Yangzhou government had been developing during that time, pursuing an upgrade

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by encouraging public participation and by paying attention to low-­ income families especially. To extend this approach to public housing, the experts proposed to proceed with the privatisation to encourage self-help renewal and to give priority to existing tenants. They also underlined another important point concerning the relocations to reduce the density of the Old City, whereby the choice had to be up to residents and not decided by the administration. During interviews, OCO officials indicated that many of the proposals made by this study were correct, but also very hard to implement, as was witnessed during a 2012–2013 pilot project.37 The OCO issued a tentative policy to solve the question of public housing and explore new models of renovation by promoting housing privatisation in the pilot area (Yangzhou Old City Office 2012). In the end, the policy did not produce any results, as only one family applied to the programme.38 An official specified that many retired officials and other former government employees live in many of the public houses and do not particularly appreciate the state withdrawal from welfare provision, still expecting the government to pay for housing repair. For this reason, the policy did not have any major breakthroughs. Notwithstanding the policy’s unsuccessful implementation, it is still interesting to look at its contents. The sale of public houses was based on the principle of giving priority to tenants willing to purchase their house, which follows the indications of the central government’s public housing reform of 1998. According to the provisional policy of the OCO, public houses should have been sold to single families occupying the space of one house, basically encouraging a return to the original housing distribution before property rights were seized during the Maoist times. As for shared dwellings (e.g. two families sharing a house), OCO officials proposed to explore the possibility of co-ownership. Their idea was to stop using the method of “suspending rights” and proceed with the relocation of residents to ‘solve’ the problems of property rights, as applied by the agencies managing public housing.39 Instead, they wanted to adopt measures that could guarantee the protection of original residents. If tenants wanted to apply to the privatisation programme, they only had to sign a contract of renovation with the OCO, promising to renovate buildings by following its requirements. Then, the government’s subsidy programme to encourage renovation was also offered to applicants. However, notwithstanding the extensive consultations conducted within the newly born JMS, this policy never came into

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existence. The reason behind that is something that officials did not wish to discuss and recommended not delving into the matter. When asked to provide an explanation, they replied that the issue was “too complicated” and hard to understand. As soon as the OCO lost relevance (cf. Chap. 6), any attempt at formulating a new policy for public housing was blocked. 5.3.4  How to Proceed? The Procedural Novelties of the Conservation Paradigm Recognising that residents can decide about their own buildings and the importance of authenticity when rehabilitating the Old City represent two of the conservation paradigm’s major principles. To guarantee that these principles were followed, the Yangzhou government established a series of new working procedures that aimed at strengthening interdepartmental coordination in decision-making. Namely, in 2010, the government established the “Joint Meeting System for the Protection of the Old City” (JMS), which has already been cited here. Its role was established in Article 5, §8 and Articles 12 and 13 of the “Administrative Measures for the Protection of the Old City” (Yangzhou City Government 2010a). At the head of the JMS is the vice-Mayor of the city and two deputy directors, the vice-secretary of the city government who is also the main director of the Construction Bureau, and the director of the OCO who is also the vice-­ director of the Construction Bureau. As for its members, the JMS is composed of the districts’ leaders and of the directors of the city’s 20 main departments and organisations related to the protection and use of the Old City (Yangzhou City Government 2010b). An official described this novelty as a new mechanism of interdepartmental coordination that permits higher conformance to laws and regulations as well as more “democratic and scientific” procedures of decision-making.40 This description recalled some of the recommendations made by GTZ to solve some problems in the governance of the Old City. Precisely in its diagnosis of urban renewal and conservation policies and practices in Yangzhou, GTZ pointed out the presence of “selfish departmentalism”, which produced uncoordinated interventions in the Old City. This was a burning issue in the eyes of Yangzhou reformers, for whom renewal interventions conducted under the aegis of a unique department and exclusively following the decisions of city leaders led to high efficiency in execution but also to rapid and “unscientific” solutions.41

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Under this old method, the city leader designated a department to carry out orders, letting it act without regard to formal procedures and regulations, which would have implied consulting other departments and getting their approval. The advantages were clear, but so were the drawbacks: actually in the previous way efficiency is higher, because the mayor and the party secretary can simply call the director of a department and tell him/her to do the job. So this person could more easily implement the requirements given by the leader. He/she could more easily get the persons needed for the implementation, without really going through the hierarchy. … But this way has problems in terms of scientific decision-making. … It is surely possible to do things more quickly and more efficiently, but it is also illegal. In terms of procedures it is illegal.42

This problem made the OCO leaders look for alternative solutions and proposed establishing an interdepartmental committee to make more “scientific” and coordinated decisions, i.e. based on thorough studies and with the support of other departments. This request was welcomed by the city leaders, who gave a carte blanche to create this mechanism. According to its proponents, the JMS made it possible to start “working together according to the procedures fixed by laws and regulations, making each department contribute to the common work by following their own responsibilities and tasks”. In particular: through the Joint Meeting we have a specific division of labour, and through these meetings we can solve the problems linked to departmental coordination. Work has become more formalised, as the tasks can be well established, and we can follow the procedures.43

The method also presents its drawbacks, namely the lower efficiency of execution, “because you need a lot of time to get the opinions and ideas of each side, to coordinate and to put together all these ideas”.44 Establishing the JMS indeed led to several rounds of discussion concerning different projects for the Old City. These meetings became an opportunity to understand the positions of different departments vis-à-vis urban renewal, including what uses they promoted and what problems they focused on. It also provided the opportunity to draw up common strategies and policies whenever an agreement could be found.

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Beyond this institution for interdepartmental coordination, the OCO also adopted new procedures and provisions to carry out the projects, namely the institution of bids to select companies, the establishment of construction workers’ training programmes, and the creation of an expert database. As for the first, the OCO started following national procedures of selection through bidding, hence it decided not to attribute the renewal projects it conducted to the company created for this purpose, YFCC.45 This novelty was led by new provisions presented by the central government, which in 2000 introduced a “Law on Public Tendering and Bidding”.46 This law imposed the procedures on projects funded by public money and on projects that were required by law to follow the procedures (e.g. infrastructural projects having an impact on public interest or public safety) (Yang 2004, p. 191). Concerning training programmes, they had already been experimented on for the first time with GTZ, and then institutionalised in 2010.47 This novelty is very important, as many interviewees pointed to the low quality of construction works.48 To cope with this problem, the OCO established a document called “Technical guidelines for the renovation and protection of residential buildings in Yangzhou Old City”, which directly draws lessons from a proposal made by GTZ. On top of that, the OCO organised training programmes, which still exist.49 Article 34 of the “Administrative Measures for the Protection of the Old City” specifies establishing construction workers’ training programmes, stipulating that construction companies operating on cultural units or historical buildings must obtain the qualified approval of the Cultural Relics Bureau or of the Construction Bureau (Yangzhou City Government 2010a). Finally, to increase the overall level of protection and accuracy in the conservation and renewal of the Old City, the OCO established an experts database, whose role was established by Article 5, §8 of the “Administrative Measures for the Protection of the Old City”. The OCO also instituted the practices of experts’ pre-project approval and post-project evaluation. These novelties are again somehow connected to proposals made by GTZ. Precisely, the German cooperation agency proposed the establishment of a “historical city conservation committee” composed of “experts in planning, architecture, land, culture, society, law and economics” (GTZ 2006, p.  24). This committee should have assessed, adjusted or erased plans for the historical districts and candidacy listing buildings and should have “put forward advice for the government” (ibid.).

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Through the new procedures established by the OCO, experts in architecture, planning, buildings operation, inter alia, are called to provide their expertise to improve planning or to avoid major mistakes when carrying out projects. Experts’ opinions are also largely solicited when preparing relevant policies and regulations. These aspects make these experts an integral part of the policymaking process, as observed by other scholars who have analysed developments in policymaking in China as well (cf. Wang 2008). Some interviewees indicated that this practice already existed before GTZ collaborated with Yangzhou, as is set by national laws. Namely, the national “Administrative measures for cities purple line”, in force since 2004, establish in several articles the importance of expert consultations in the planning process.50 In addition, the “Legislation Law” of 2000 and the revised version of the “Urban and Rural Planning Law” (2008) stipulate different forms of expert participation by soliciting their opinions (Horsley 2009). However, as opposed to the past when it was more common to invite experts from prestigious Chinese universities, planning authorities started relying more on local experts.51 An interviewee also underlined that this practice is not set in stone and very much depends on the city leadership’s wishes.52 For instance, in the recent projects established by the government, no database expert has been consulted to provide feasibility studies.53 In fact, renewal projects are no longer managed by the OCO, hence many of the policies and practices described here are not applied as they were originally designed. With the departure of secretary Wang, many of these novelties were put on the back burner, and the projects planned after 2013 showed a change of direction in urban renewal. However, it is also relatively safe to affirm that the ideas of the conservation paradigm still exist, but with modalities that no longer rely on the virtuous circle of testing, learning and formulating new policies for the Old City led by the OCO. These aspects are treated in the next chapter.

5.4   Learning at the Time of the OCO: A Case of Imitation and Translation In Yangzhou, not only was it possible to spot the presence of lesson drawing and the beginning of a paradigm shift, but through process tracing it was also possible to find a more or less direct linkage between the novelties and reforms introduced in the early 2010s and the proposals made by

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GTZ some years earlier. The picture that emerges from the analysis is that the project run by GTZ proved decisive to feed change in the frames, politics, policies and practices of renewal in Yangzhou, and suggests talking about “imitation” (Jacoby 2000). However, it is important to be clear that without certain conditions, the ideas proposed by GTZ and endorsed by local officials would not have entered the government’s decision agenda. To identify the factors that made learning possible, and in particular those that made urban renewal an important topic of the local policy agenda, this chapter has drawn from John Kingdon’s (2003 [1984]) Multiple Stream Framework. According to this framework, to have a subject on the governmental agenda and for a policy window to open, three different streams have to converge (Kingdon 2003 [1984], p. 16–17). These three different streams are called, respectively, the “policy stream”, which broadly corresponds to the availability of new policy solutions or the generation of policy proposals; the “problem stream”, which corresponds to the recognition of a policy problem “pressing on the system” and bringing “influence on the agenda”; and the “political stream”, which can be represented by “swings of national mood, vagaries of public opinion, election results, changes of administration”. This approach thus stresses the key role of timing, and particularly of the “elusive and short-lived policy windows” that policy entrepreneurs have to “take advantage of to move their issues to the forefront” (Béland 2016, p. 230, original emphasis). Moreover, with the focus on what Kingdon calls the “policy entrepreneurs”, it profiles the characteristics of the agency in the policy process and puts actors at the heart of explanations. In Yangzhou, establishing a new urban renewal paradigm on the local policy agenda did not follow a dissimilar path. Kingdon’s argument about the simultaneous emergence of a problem stream, a policy stream and a political stream for a policy window to open can be applied to the events that occurred in Yangzhou in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The development of an autochthone phase of policy learning and policymaking resulted in the combined effect of the emergence of a policy problem – urban redevelopment became too costly and lost appreciation in the administration, beyond the fact that Yangzhou inhabitants also protested against large-scale demolition projects; the availability of policy solutions – mostly deriving from those made by GTZ, but also inspired by the experiences of other cities in China; and changes in the local administration – with

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the change of party secretary, the establishment of the OCO and the appointment of an estimated local expert and official at its head. In particular, when identifying policy problems, it was possible to observe that budget constraints, and more generally the costs of urban renewal, became an important trigger to reconsider local practices. John Kingdon (2003 [1984], p. 105) called budget constraints “a special problem” because they are capable of directly constraining administrative activities and programmes and of pushing the administration to look for cheaper alternatives. This problem was accompanied by the administration acknowledging the failures of the redevelopment projects launched by the city government, which cost a great deal of public finances, produced unsatisfying results and was met with discontent. Thus, a “political stream” in favour of reform was slowly developing, in particular within the administration. This stream culminated in the decision of the party secretary Wang Yanwen to change the administration of urban renewal and appoint a local, respected official of the Urban Planning Bureau to lead. Actually, it is under the aegis and work of this official that Yangzhou could introduce new policies and practices of urban renewal. Together with the other directors of the OCO and some other department directors, these actors represented the core, local policy entrepreneurs of the new model of urban renewal. In Kingdon’s observations, policy entrepreneurs are often represented by “a particular person, or at most few persons” characterised by “sheer tenacity”, waiting for the right moment to propose a subject on the agenda and to get “into position for enactment” (ibid., pp. 180–181). In his list of characteristics, Kingdon indicated that in general policy entrepreneurs have “some claim to a hearing” and that this claim may come from an individual’s expertise, an “ability to speak for others” or “an authoritative decision-making position”. These words also apply to sketch the characteristics of policy entrepreneurs in Yangzhou. They were represented by a small number of departmental leaders who had expertise in heritage conservation, and waited for an opportunity to reform the local practices of urban renewal. The support granted by Mayor Wang Yanwen to GTZ permitted these officials to decipher the mayor’s opinions and understand whether chances to reform urban renewal policy could materialise. Then, the passage of Wang Yanwen to the post of party secretary created the conditions for these officials to promote a reform of the model of urban renewal.

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Another interesting aspect of the political stream in Yangzhou is represented by the role played by the directives and policies of the central government, which can be understood as elements of the large category of ‘changes in the direction of national policies’ as identified by Kingdon. In this case, the apparition of new policy documents of the State Council and other agencies of the central government, together with the pressures of its top political leaders, constituted important factors that pushed the local government to reconsider its policies and practices. In particular, the issue of local governments’ debt, which was under the spotlight of central leadership’s attention, pushed the Yangzhou government to halt certain types of projects and search for alternatives to fund renewal projects while trying to cut the cost of interventions. When this happened, alternatives were already at hand. The “Yangzhou Urban Upgrading Strategy”, the book that collected all the recommendations that GTZ made to the Yangzhou government, was perhaps the document that better represented the policy stream available to the city administration and the party secretary. It is no coincidence that the novelties introduced in the early 2010s were similar to GTZ’s policy recommendations; some were even clearly a carbon copy of the documents produced by the agency. The “Opinions for the Renovation of Yangzhou Old City Traditional Houses” are perhaps the clearest proof of that. The subsidy scheme prepared by the OCO reproduced the same proportions and recommendations as proposed by GTZ. Nevertheless, when comparing the two documents, the subsidy standard established by the Yangzhou government is far less detailed than the GTZ standard. The following interview extract explains the reason for this simplified adaptation: Why couldn’t we apply GTZ’s subsidy model? It is too detailed, far too detailed! [strong emphatic voice, the interviewee repeated “too detailed” several times] We don’t have the experience to implement the policy in that way. Who comes to monitor it? We don’t have this capacity. … Our objective was to make this policy feasible, and we needed to be able to apply it, so we made it simpler. We also needed to make this policy understandable to residents. … Many things proposed by GTZ are very complete, very ideal, but they are also difficult to implement. If it’s too ideal, it is very difficult to implement.54

This extract embodies and expresses the challenges of translation, as there are differences in the working styles and capacities of the Chinese

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administration and  of what GTZ consultants believed being possible. Standards were thus simplified to facilitate their implementation. The example of the subsidy policy is just one of many concerning the challenges of translation, connected to the local capacities to apply certain measures. The OCO had to ensure the policy was implemented and locally accepted. Given the low level of schooling of many inhabitants of the Old City and sometimes of the staff that had to implement the policy, simplifying was a necessary passage.55 This recalls the words of Pierre Lascoumes (1994, p.  44) when talking about the challenges of translation, asking whether a policy can exist without an audience and underlining that political projects are under a “risk of impasse” when their contents “are not shared by their recipients”.56 In this case, the original version of the subsidy policy was too difficult to apply, and OCO officials had to operate a translation that better suited local conditions. The question of the audience was also central in the case of the tentative policy for privatising public housing, which did not have any major breakthrough because many tenants were convinced that the state should continue providing welfare. However, challenges in policy translation – or even in policy adoption  – also came from other sources, which require looking, once more, at the characteristics of policy learning and the micro-­ dynamics of transfer. These sources were connected to the particular interests of city departments, an aspect that involves taking into consideration the role of material interests when defining policy proposal. 5.4.1  The Challenges to Policy Learning and Translation In order to identify the micro-dynamics of transfer and the characteristics of the local process of learning and translation, the processes that led to the introduction of the different novelties of the conservation paradigm (policies, organisational arrangements, regulations, etc.) are enlightening. In many ways they recall the observations made by Pierre Lascoumes (1994) in his analysis of the processes that led to the transformations of environmental policies in France, which have been qualified as processes of transcoding (translation). There is a particular characteristic of this type of policies that can also be attributed to policies for urban conservation, and more generally to policies dealing with “heterogeneous challenges” (Lascoumes 1996). These policies “concern and try to link intellectual and practical resources as well as categories of knowledge that belong to different sectors” of public action (ibid., p. 329) and are often in the hands

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of specific departments or agencies.57 As such, they essentially result in “policies of compromise, striving to combine divergent and even contradictory interests” (Lascoumes 1994, p. 18). The essence of environmental policies, for instance, “is ultimately characterised by the regulation of a fundamental tension between measures of economic and social development and the care of ecological environments” (ibid., pp. 21–22). This consideration can also be applied to the case of urban renewal and conservation. There are “controversies of values and knowledge” that make the definition of these policies “particularly delicate” (ibid., p. 32). Given the fact that different values and interests have to be reconciled, most of the time we observe a situation where the results of decisions “only partially correspond to the objectives displayed and the expected effects”, as there exist clashes of interests that the decision made cannot compose (ibid., p. 102). Because of these divergences, which are present in the policy choices that are made, the ways in which they are adjusted as well as how their conflicts are regulated represent important aspects to be analysed (ibid., p. 104). There is also another characteristic of these policies that can in general be attributed to several public policies. For Lascoumes, “no public action project” is “built on virgin land” (ibid., p.  22). Rather, “the social and political space is always organised by previous programmes on which new ones are superimposed, reorienting in part categories of thought, action and judgment, displacing or reformulating issues”. These aspects mean that transcoding or translating is primarily a recycling activity. It configures as a “conversion-adaptation” of what is “already there” in public action, “with its pre-existing data, its categories of analysis, its institutional divisions, its routinised practices” (ibid., p. 23). The example of the process that led to the OCO being established is particularly insightful and representative of these aspects. The failed attempts at attributing this office independence in decision-making clearly highlighted the limits of the reforming capacities of the officials who supported its creation, the weight of past decisions and the presence of various interests that led to a compromise. As introduced earlier, the city government resuscitated an old institution that did not really serve the purpose attributed at its creation. Instead, to borrow an expression used by Vivien Lowndes (2005), it was a “dormant institution” in the protection of the Old City. The decision the city government took in 2009 had been that of establishing a new Old City Office endowed with new powers. This office in particular was created as

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a division (chu – 处) of the Construction Bureau. This choice was made after being inspired by arrangements already existing in other cities in China, where equivalent structures to the Old City Office of Yangzhou were established as divisions of the Urban Planning Bureau or of other relevant departments. These developments can be perfectly described with the words of Diane Stone (2012, p. 486): when talking about translation, government can “learn from more than one jurisdiction at a time” and can also “take away a multiplicity of lessons”. The final result is “selective borrowing that leads to hybrids and adaptive innovation to make policy development better fit local conditions” (ibid.). The major question, then, is to know what constitutes these “local conditions”. As a matter of fact, this arrangement did not satisfy Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs. The officials embraced the idea proposed by GTZ to optimise policymaking and policy implementation by establishing an interdepartmental office endowed with a large decision-making capacity. This recommendation was included in the “Yangzhou Urban Upgrading Strategy”. It foresaw that by 2015 the office would have performed a number of important functions in the management of the Old City, such as coordinating, guiding and supervising renewal operations; advising and assisting residents willing to modernise; and issuing permits for renovations and plots redevelopment, etc. (Zhu et al. 2007, p. 46). Doing so, however, turned out to be complicated for three main reasons: the presence of legal obstacles, the presence of departmental interests, and what can be understood as the ‘code of conduct’ of the bureaucracy. The new office, instituted within the Construction Bureau, successfully covered some of these functions, while others could not be attributed to it – for instance issuing construction permits. One of the first obstacles to attributing this competence was represented by national laws, which establish a division of competences that cannot be amended at city level. This aspect points to the specificities (and particularly to the constraints) of policymaking at city level, which is dependent on the subdivision of tasks established at national level. In this particular case, national laws defined which departments were in charge of issuing construction permits, and reforms to these provisions normally occurred at national level. Decisions for issuing permits had to be taken by the directors of the departments, and this legal requirement was indicated as one of the major obstacles in the transformation of the OCO as a one-stop shop. Nevertheless, as some one-stop shops favouring the implementation of specific policies already existed in various localities in China (cf. Yang

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2004), this point was further explored by asking whether it would have been possible to realise a temporary arrangement by merging the powers of single departments into the OCO or to establish informal procedures among departments to facilitate issuing permits. The answer was affirmative, but also called into question the second reason that hindered the transformation of the OCO into a one-stop shop: departmental interests. Interviews indicated that in 2012 the OCO tested a new arrangement together with other departments responsible for issuing permits, which allowed applicants to exclusively apply at the OCO. However, six months later this experiment was halted because departments opposed to its continuation. The question was defined as “unsolvable” because of departmental interests. These interests are represented mostly by “grey incomes”, which are related to the opportunity of issuing permits.58 Issuing certificates or construction permits required corresponding emoluments to responsible officials, as also largely documented by literature (cf. Cabestan 2014; Yang 2004; Lu 2000). Therefore, it is difficult for departments to cede their competences, as they would lose vital decision-making power that serves their own interests – for instance paying the salaries of redundant personnel. This type of behaviour is not exclusive to Chinese administrations but can be seen in other countries where “organisational cultures” bending towards a “patrimonial modality for the exercise of public functions” exist (Delpeuch and Vassileva 2010, p. 33). The reason behind which departments were also opposed to the experiment continuing is referred to as the bureaucratic ‘code of conduct’. Interviews revealed that departments initially supported the search for temporary arrangements whenever existing laws and regulations hindered the realisation of renewal projects in the Old City. For instance, many construction standards established by the central government applied for new constructions and not for the buildings in the Old City, which had been built well before these standards were issued.59 As such, they have specific requirements, because existing regulations do not suit the features of the Old City. These problems require the adoption of temporary solutions that can lead to new, ad hoc sets of regulations being established, while allowing for renewal operations. The OCO thus established patterns to coordinate with the personnel of other departments to find common solutions to their problems. These forms of coordination allowed for the development of informal arrangements, which can be understood as forms

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of “useful illegality” to overcome certain barriers of administrative action (Mayntz 1982 [1978], pp. 136–137). However, the change of national leadership in 2013 reduced the opportunities for this type of flexibility and coordination. It was pointed out that the Chinese leadership’s aim at the central level was to make China a “society ruled by law” (fazhi shehui – 法治社会). This message was accompanied by stricter controls over departments’ work, and the existing regulations started to apply more rigidly.60 This reaction had the side effect of terminating the experiment with the OCO and of eventually blocking any further exploration of policies and solutions. In short, the parenthesis of useful illegality closed abruptly. This particular aspect is, again, not typical of the Chinese administration. Describing the public administration in the ex-German Democratic Republic, Gert-Joachim Glaessner (1986, p. 19) called these phenomena “spiralling enforcement inertia”. In this type of situation, subordinate offices tend to protect themselves from the monitoring of the upper level of hierarchy by applying very rigid norms. For Glaessner, they were caught in a “mentality of secondary guarantee”, which inevitably led them to avoid responding to citizens’ requests, as they hided behind instructions and rules for fear of controls (ibid.). As a matter of fact, the departments responsible for issuing permits started requiring their regulations to be strictly applied. This situation forced many residents of the Old City to renovate buildings without the government’s approval, because the requirements of regulations were sometimes impossible to meet – for reasons that go beyond the good will of residents and often involve tension among neighbours.61 Consequently, as residents were aware of the difficulties to obtain renovation permits, they did so without having received approval. This practice was considered illegal by the administration, but it was also acknowledged that nothing could be changed as departments retrenched behind over-zealous bureaucracy. As long as the OCO directed renewal in the Old City, administrators and residents systematically tried to reach a compromise or come to an informal agreement. This practice also guaranteed residents the possibility to participate in policymaking in an informal way.62 When the OCO’s leadership was brought to a halt, the management of the Old City was once again fragmented, and the fruitful phase of policy learning reached its end.

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5.4.2  The Role of Hierarchy In the examples provided by this chapter, it is possible to underline the weight of political and administrative hierarchy among the factors that impact the local process of policy learning and translation. In particular, hierarchy both facilitates and hinders policy learning and change. It pushed for learning and change when the situation of local debt became unsustainable, thence the central government forced local governments and state banks to change their conduct when it came to money lending and borrowing. However, it also blocked learning and change when the central government started paying attention to how laws and regulations were being applied. As such, when trying to identify the local conditions (Stone 2012) that in this case have an impact on policy translation, it is perhaps appropriate to stress the administration’s code of conduct and hierarchy as two important sources of constraint. To these two elements can be added, in a subordinate role, laws and regulations, which regulate the competences of local governments and the division of responsibilities among departments. Interacting with departmental interests and the individual motivations, interests and inclinations of policy entrepreneurs, each time they produce different configurations that might be conducive, or on the contrary inauspicious, to learning and to certain types of translation. A clear example where it is also possible to visualise the importance of these interactions in order to understand the micro-dynamics of learning and translation is the definition of a policy for public housing, which finally came to nothing (cf. Chap. 6). As mentioned before, this is connected to the loss of relevance of the OCO, in turn connected to the role of hierarchy. The next chapter deals precisely with these facts, while fulfilling the task of continuing to shed light upon the characteristics of the local process of policy learning and translation.

5.5   Conclusion This chapter analysed the years that followed the departure of GTZ from Yangzhou, in particular from 2008 to 2014, when the Yangzhou government reconsidered the local model of urban renewal. It is undeniable that the early 2010s were characterised by an important change in the model of urban renewal in Yangzhou, one that can be analytically described as the

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beginning of a paradigm shift according to Peter Hall’s (1993) terms. This reconsideration was in large part inspired by GTZ’s proposals, demonstrating that the project of international cooperation and the model of Careful Urban Renewal had an important impact on local practices. Yangzhou authorities drew lessons from their collaboration with GTZ and often looked back over the contents of its proposals. This chapter also presented how the proposals concerning resident participation were enshrined in the policy documents issued in the early 2010s. Concerns about social issues were also taken into account by making housing renovation regulations flexible and open to the different financial situations of households. Other novelties targeted interdepartmental coordination – a problem highlighted by GTZ – and the procedures for carrying out projects. City government officials in particular opened the door to the collaboration with local experts in preparing and evaluating projects. Moreover, they also allowed for informal practices of coordination to be developed in order to search for policy solutions whenever laws and regulations were unfitting to the situation of the Old City. By combining old practices with new procedures, and borrowing from other localities in China, local policy entrepreneurs inaugurated a new phase of policy learning that, at the end of 2013, seemed to indicate that the paradigm of urban renewal in Yangzhou was changing. This change was embodied by the new formulations present in the local policies and plans, and was expressed by the pilot projects conducted by the OCO, which reflected many of the ideas experimented with GTZ. Change in policies and practices was made possible thanks to a particular conjuncture that was conveniently illustrated using John Kingdon’s (2003 [1984]) Multiple Stream Framework. In the case of Yangzhou, the high costs of the redevelopment paradigm, the pressures of the central government to slow down urban (re-)development, the reconsiderations of the administration, the protests of the residents, and the changes within the administration all converged towards creating a policy window to reform urban renewal policies and practices. This policy window was seized by some policy entrepreneurs, a small group of officials whose ideas for a long time remained marginal but were close to the frames of GTZ experts. Allocated with decision-making power by the party secretary, these officials launched a process of reform that touched both the contents and the organisation of urban renewal in Yangzhou.

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Nevertheless, the possibility they had to push for certain reforms was limited. This chapter highlighted a series of important factors that had an impact on the local process of policy learning and translation, thence on the capacities of the policy entrepreneurs to impose their ideas as well as design policy and institutional change. First of all, with the help of the insights of Pierre Lascoumes (1994, 1996), it was possible to highlight that translation is always the result of compromise between diverging objectives, values and interests. For instance, by focusing on the example of the OCO foundation, departmental interests hindered the establishment of a one-stop shop to issue construction and renewal permissions. As shall be presented more extensively in the next chapter, departmental interests also hindered the establishment of a public housing policy. The same policies to encourage private owners to renovate their houses were the result of compromise between diverging visions, confirming the idea that environmental protection or urban conservation are policy fields where measures of economic and social development and the care of specific environments often come into conflict. The concept of translation also has the merit of underlining that policies are not defined from scratch but often end up being recycling operations of what is ‘already there’. Once more, the case of the OCO is enlightening. The office resuscitated an institutional arrangement that had already existed since the early 2000s, but played no significant role. The decision of Wang Yanwen to reuse and give new purpose to the OCO materialised through the office being established as a division of a specific department, borrowing from the experiences of other Chinese cities. As has been seen, this solution was not appreciated by Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs, who wished to establish a more powerful and independent organisation. However, this option encountered not only the opposition of various departments, which defended their own interests, but also of institutional obstacles. Laws and regulations established by the central government hindered the ambition of local policy entrepreneurs, as the issuing of permits – one of the subjects of disagreement  – belonged to specific departments. Nevertheless, the enquiry discovered that despite laws and regulations, it was not impossible to develop temporary arrangements that allowed for the search of compromise – and could support policy learning and urban renewal projects. This parenthesis of “useful illegality” (Mayntz 1982 [1978]), however, ended when departments started to care about their own interests and when the central government issued new orders, in par-

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ticular that of paying attention to how laws and regulations were being applied. Caught in a “mentality of secondary guarantee” (Gleissner 1986) and trying to defend their interests, departments stopped collaborating with the OCO in policy experiments. Thence, the process of policy learning and policy translation was significantly hindered. This aspect showed how hierarchy, the administration’s code of conduct, and departmental interests came to interact with the intentions of policy entrepreneurs, with their ideas and with their motivations. Sometimes the interaction between these factors allows for the opening of windows for policy learning. In other cases, it hinders it. These characteristics can also be found in the events reported in the following chapter. For the sake of identifying the characteristics of policy learning and, more broadly, of the policy process in the case of a Chinese administration, the case showed that Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs proved to be very eager to transpose the entire package of recommendations that GTZ left to them – resident participation included. They did not hesitate to make experiments that were not compatible with existing laws and regulations, but could boost the exploration of solutions in a hard-to-manage field of action such as Old City conservation. The reason why their efforts sometimes resulted in cherry-picking, incomplete transfers or policy failures was less connected to the characteristics of the policy proposals – for instance, a presumed incompatibility of the German model with the ‘local culture’ – or to the willingness of policy entrepreneurs. Instead, they were related to the barriers that other departments put up as a way of opposing these proposals as well as to the fact that measures had to be tested and modified throughout the process to make them suit the local conditions. These aspects are not dissimilar to what the policy transfer literature has observed, suggesting that the characteristics of the policy learning and translation in China might not be so different from other contexts. On the contrary, they are also characterised by experimentalism and uncertainty, as well as by the presence of power fragmentation that does not allow for the imposition of preferred solutions by local policy entrepreneurs.

Notes 1. Interview 2014. 2. Interview 2014. 3. Interview 2014. 4. Interviews 2013.

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5. In 2010, the aggregated local governments’ debt balance exceeded 8.3 trillion yuan and the government was at a risk of running into sovereign default. The central government thus decided to curb the irrational expenses of local governments by reinforcing controls on their spending. For the banking industry credit supervision, the China Banking Regulatory Commission established as top priority the strengthening of risk management and control over the local government’s financing platforms. This led to a suspension of loans to these platforms. 6. Interviews 2013. Already in 2004, for instance, the central government issued the Commercial Bank Real Estate Loan Risk Management Guidelines (No. 57 [2004] of the China Banking Regulatory Commission), which made specific requirements to banks before granting loans to real estate companies. Later, in 2009, it issued the Notice of the China Banking Regulatory Commission on further Strengthening the Risk Management of Mortgage Loans (No. 59 [2009] of the China Banking Regulatory Commission). This document followed another series of documents issued in 2007 and 2008: Several Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Promoting the Healthy Development of the Real Estate Market (No. 131 [2008] of the General Office of the State Council), Notice of the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission on Strengthening the Administration of Commercial Real Estate Credit (No. 359 [2007] of the People’s Bank of China) and Notice of the China Banking Regulatory Commission on further Strengthening the Management of the Credit Risks in the Real Estate Industry (No. 42 [2008] of the China Banking Regulatory Commission). These documents required banks to be strict with the pre-loan inspections and the standards for granting mortgage loans. Financial institutions had to strictly examine the qualifications of borrowers and prevent credit risks. 7. Interview 2013. 8. Interview 2014. 9. Ibid. 10. Interview 2014. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Interview 2014. 14. Ibid. 15. Free translation from Chinese. 16. Interviews 2014. 17. Interviews 2014. 18. Interview 2014. 19. Interview 2014. 20. Interviews 2014.

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21. Free translation from Chinese. 22. Although the previous version of the master plan was valid until 2020, in 2009 the city government decided to modify this document because, in the mid-2000s, the city had already reached its population growth objectives and largely surpassed its middle-term and long-term objectives for urban expansion. National provisions require this type of revision, stipulating that master plans have to go through revision once every five years (Yu 2014, p. 137). The new version of the Yangzhou master plan thus establishes new targets, taking into account the main changes that took place in the early 2000s. Compared to the previous version it also presents a different structure: it has more chapters, among which one is exclusively dedicated to the ancient parts of the city, which also include the 5.09 km2 of the Old City. 23. Free translation from Chinese. 24. Interviews 2014. 25. Ibid. 26. Interview 2014. 27. Interviews 2014. 28. Free translation from Chinese. 29. This aspect of authenticity is discussed at length by scholars who made a critical appraisal of the concepts of heritage protection that exists in China, pointing at the lack of authenticity of many past interventions (Qiu 2014; Zhang 2003). 30. Interview 2013. 31. At the end of 2011, the Yangzhou government also adopted the Measures for the Protection of the Historical Buildings of Yangzhou (Document No. 80) and the Measures for the Protection and Management of Yangzhou Cultural Heritage (Document No. 83), both in force since early 2012. In 2008 the city government also adopted the Measures for the Protection and Management of Yangzhou Old Famous Trees and their seedlings (Document No. 52). 32. Interview 2015. 33. Interview 2014. 34. Interview 2015. This pilot project should have served the purpose of designing a subsidy scheme, encouraging families to introduce different measures in house renovation (from low-tech to hi-tech) according to their financial capacities. In this way, the OCO wished to promote improvements in the quality and comfort of housing in the Old City, which was still at a very low level at the time of writing. 35. Interview 2018. 36. Interview 2014. 37. Interviews 2014, 2015.

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38. Interview 2014. 39. Interviews 2015. 40. Interview 2014. 41. Interview 2014. 42. Interview 2014. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Interview 2014. 46. Ibid. 47. Interviews 2014, 2015. 48. Interviews 2013, 2014, 2018. 49. Interview 2018. 50. The so-called purple line designates the boundaries of a “historical and cultural conservation area” as well as of areas hosting historic buildings also considered protection areas (Yu 2014, p. 139). The master plan of cities should indicate their purple lines as well as their green lines – designating protection boundaries for green areas – and blue lines – e.g. lake conservation boundaries (ibid., pp. 138–139). 51. Interview 2014. 52. Interview 2014. 53. Ibid. 54. Interview 2015. 55. Ibid. 56. Free translation from French. 57. Free translation from French. 58. Interviews 2015. 59. Interviews 2015. 60. Interviews 2014, 2015. 61. Interviews 2015. 62. Interviews 2015.

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Colomb, C. (2007). The Added Value of Transnational Cooperation: Towards a New Framework for Evaluating Learning and Policy Change. Planning Practice & Research, 22(3), 347–372. Delpeuch, T., & Vassileva, M. (2010). Des transferts aux apprentissages: réflexions à partir des nouveaux modes de gestion du développement économique local en Bulgarie. Critique internationale, 3(48), 25–52. Glaessner, G. J. (1986). Le pouvoir bureaucratique: solution des conflits en RDA. Projet de recherche “Les crises des systèmes de type soviétique”. Etude n°13. GTZ. (2006). Yangzhou Urban Upgrading Strategy. Conservation and Management of Historic & Cultural Heritage. Yangzhou: GTZ. Hall, P. (1993). Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics, 25(3), 275–296. Horsley, J. (2009). Public Participation in the People’s Republic: Developing a More Participatory Governance Model in China. Yale Law School. Available at https://www.law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/ CL-PPPP_in_the__PRC_FINAL_91609.pdf. Accessed 7 Oct 2016. Jacoby, W. (2000). Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany. New York: Cornell University Press. Ji, J. (2010, September 13). Yangzhou gucheng baohu de shijian yu tihui. Yangzhou City Party Secretary. http://wenku.baidu.com/view/34b0c328915f8 04d2b16c176.html. Accessed 19 May 2015. Kingdon, J. W. (2003 [1984]). Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, 2nd ed., New York: Longman. Lam, W.  R., & Wang, J. (2018, September). China’s Local Government Bond Market. IMF Working Paper. Washington: IMF. Lascoumes, P. (1994). L’éco-pouvoir. Environnements et politiques. Paris: La Découverte. Lascoumes, P. (1996). Rendre gouvernable: de la ‘traduction’ au ‘transcodage’: l’analyse des processus de changement dans les réseaux d’action publique. In CURAPP (Ed.), La Gouvernabilité (pp. 325–338). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Liao, F. (2014). Quench a Thirst with Poison? Local Government Financing Vehicles’ Past, Present and Future. The Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law, Columbia Law School. http://web.law.columbia.edu/parker-school/chinesestate-capitalismworkshop/papers/quench-thirst-poison-local-governmentfinancing-vehicles-pastpresent-and-future-liao-fan#_ftn1. Accessed 27 July 2015. Lin, Y. (2011). Urban Regeneration in China: Policy, Development, and Issues. Local Economy, 26(5), 337–347. Liu, Y. (2013). Difang zhengfu xingwei qudong xia de chengshi kongjian yanhua ji qi xiaoying – jiyu “lixing xuanze” de fenxi shijiao, Doctoral Thesis in Human Geography, Berlin: Nanjing University.

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Lowndes, V. (2005). Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed…: How Institutions Change (and Stay the Same) in Local Governance. Policy Studies, 26(3/4), 291–309. Lu, X. (2000). Booty Socialism, Bureaupreneurs, and the State in Transition: Organizational Corruption in China. Comparative Politics, 32(3), 273–294. Mayntz, R. (1982 [1978]). Sociologia dell’amministrazione pubblica. Bologna: Il Mulino [Italian translation of the original: Soziologie des öffentlichen Verwaltung. Heidelberg: Müller Juristischer Verlag]. Meng, Y. (2010, September 22). Guanyu Yangzhou gucheng gaizao de wenti fenxi yu duice jianyi. blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4b70440a0100meec.html. Accessed 19 May 2015. Qiu, B. (2014). Fengyu rupan: lishi wenhua minggcheng baohu 30 nian. Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press. Stone, D. (2012). Transfer and Translation of Policy. Policy Studies, 33(6), 483–499. The Economist. (2013, October 30). Bulldozed. Available at http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2013/10/politicalambition. Accessed 19 Oct 2015. Wang, S. (2008). Changing Models of China’s Policy Agenda Setting. Modern China, 34(1), 56–87. Weinstein, L., & Ren, X. (2009). The Changing Right to the City  – Urban Renewal and Housing Rights in Globalizing Shanghai and Mumbai. City & Community, 8(4), 407–432. Yang, D. (2004). Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Yangzhou City Government. (2010a, November 24). Yangzhou gucheng baohu guanli banfa. Resource Document. Yangzhou. Yangzhou City Government. (2010b, June 29). Shi zhengfu guanyu jianli Yangzhou gucheng baohu lianxi huiyi zhidu de tongzhi, Yangzhou City Government Official Document [2010], No. 25. Yangzhou City Government. (2013). Yangzhou lishi wenhua mingcheng baohu guihua. Resource Document. Yangzhou. Yangzhou Construction Bureau. (2010, December 1). Yangzhou gucheng chuantong minju baohu gengxin. Resource Document. Yangzhou. Yangzhou Old City Office. (2012, September). Guanyu Yangzhou gucheng baohu gongzuo qingkuang de huibao. Resource Document. Yangzhou. Yu, L. (2014). Chinese City and Regional Planning Systems. Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate Publishing. Zhang, L. (2003). La naissance du concept de patrimoine en Chine. XIXe-XXe siècles. Paris: Editions Recherches/Ipraus. Zhang, Y., & Fang, K. (2004). Is History Repeating Itself? From Urban Renewal in the United States to Inner-City Redevelopment in China. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 23(3), 286–298. Zhu, L., Herrle, P., & Nebel, S. (2007). Yangzhou Urban Upgrading Strategy. Nanjing: Phoenix Science Press.

CHAPTER 6

Neither Careful Nor Destructive: Is Urban Renewal in Transition?

6.1   Introduction In 2013 the fruitful phase of experimentation launched by Secretary Wang with her support of the OCO’s work concluded when she left Yangzhou at the end of her mandate. The new city leadership had other plans, and did not share her same focus on the Old City. The OCO consequently lost the political support of the mayor and the party secretary, while the budget for the Old City’s conservation and upgrading decreased. The new city leadership also attributed the competences for urban renewal to the city districts, which in turn shifted their tasks to the lowest levels of the city administration, the street offices (jiedao – 街道). The OCO was deprived of its decision-making power, of the possibility to conduct new projects and of the capacity to explore new solutions and develop new policies. This marked the beginning of a new phase for urban renewal in Yangzhou, which deviated from the conservation paradigm. Indeed, in 2014 a district government wished to promote the total remake of a small lane in the Old City by widening it, thereby changing its functions and population. Moreover, between 2014 and 2015, the city mayor was keen to carry out two renovation projects that did not follow any of the principles of the conservation paradigm. Fieldwork observations indicated that the approaches pursued by the city and the district governments were closer to the redevelopment paradigm, which promoted large-scale demolitions and relocations. Nonetheless, in the end, these projects were halted and the sites identified for renewal remained © The Author(s) 2020 G. C. Romano, Changing Urban Renewal Policies in China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36008-5_6

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intact, as was still possible to observe in September 2018. In the meantime, projects that followed the plans that OCO had established in 2013, whose realisation initially seemed to be doomed due to the lack of interest on behalf of the city leadership, resurged in early 2018 and steadily went ahead. With these facts in hand, it is nevertheless not easy to draw conclusions about the transfer of Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou. Transformations are ongoing, and the observations do not hint at clear-cut answers. It is probably possible to talk about “an experimental process in constant policy motion turning between innovation and reaction, compliance and invention” (Stone 2017, p.  12). The fieldwork in particular seemed to reveal that the conservation paradigm had not disappeared, but the conditions had significantly changed for its application and for the pursuit of the policy-learning process that enabled it to be introduced. When there was a change in the city leadership the OCO lost importance, as the decision-­ making power concerning the Old City shifted to other agencies of the local administration. Some of these agencies somehow followed the OCO’s model, whereas others pursued their own development objectives and developed a distinctive approach to urban renewal. To present these elements, this chapter is divided as follows. The first part introduces the transformations that occurred between 2014 and 2016, when the conservation paradigm became less important. Old practices returned to coexist together with timid attempts at conserving the lessons drawn from the translation of Careful Urban Renewal, resulting in inconsistencies in the local urban renewal approach. The second part introduces the situation of 2018. Fieldwork observations of April and September that year indicated that the conservation paradigm was still ‘alive’. The mayor’s and the city district’s projects were paused, as resident protests made it impossible to carry them out. On the contrary, renewal projects that paid careful attention to the existing uses of the space and wishes of residents went forward. Within the space of a few years, Yangzhou witnessed another shift in the policy direction of the conservation paradigm. However, how long that shift lasts remains to be seen. The uncertainty that surrounds the policy process and the complexities of the outcomes and of the policy-transfer and policy-learning process that produced those outcomes constitute a rich supply of information to look into the micro-dynamics of transfer and to identify the characteristics of the policy process in the context of a Chinese city. The last part of the chapter will address these aspects and will highlight the specific ­interactions

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between the hierarchy of the Chinese state and of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the code of conduct of the administration, departmental interests and the role of individual actors. This analysis shows that the complex hierarchical structure of the Chinese state and of the CCP is the most important factor which, at different occasions, opens and closes the windows for policy learning and experimentation. This major factor goes hand in hand with the presence (or not) of individuals at the local level, who are capable of launching a learning process, of introducing reforms and of seizing the opportunities offered by the opening of such windows.

6.2   The ‘Missing’ Conservation Paradigm At the end of 2014, the conservation paradigm established by the OCO came into question. The new city leadership, which took office when Secretary Wang left, had different plans for the Old City. Its first decision was to shift the competence of the upgrading of the Old City to the city districts. In this way, the OCO lost its own competences in planning and deciding on renewal projects. However, for a while this situation did not really modify its de facto role in guiding urban renewal in the Old City. Indeed, between 2014 and 2015 and on two sites of the Old City, the street offices, which correspond to administrative subdivisions of district governments, were running projects that stayed relatively faithful to the conservation paradigm. Both projects had been designed by the OCO as experiments to explore ways to foster urban conservation and resident participation in renewal processes. They also embodied some of the proposals made by GTZ to revitalise the economy of the Old City, allowing small family businesses to develop. The street offices indeed followed many of the OCO’s proposals. By coordinating with the director and officials of the OCO, they encouraged the development of family inns and small businesses. Their purpose was to help residents renovate their houses and use them to obtain an income (for instance by opening small family-run inns), thereby contributing to the overall improvement of the area. They also encouraged families owning empty houses in the Old City to rent them out, and offered them support to search for tenants. However, at the end of 2015, the hopes for the projects to continue were very low. Officials indicated that city leadership “had no interest” in Old City conservation projects and that its focus was elsewhere, namely on developing new areas at the borders of Yangzhou.1 This lack of interest meant that the budget to support renewal

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projects was significantly reduced, and that money had to be provided by district governments. Moreover, the city government made a decisive U-turn in its urban renewal approach, this time towards practices that the administration had tried to eliminate a few years earlier. 6.2.1  The U-Turn of the City Government and the Aims of the District Governments When the OCO was still in charge of plans and policies for the Old City it had made studies to renew some sites. It had established that these areas had to be conserved, except for few sites that would have been redeveloped to significantly improve the attractiveness and services of the areas. Several opinions circulated among the OCO’s officials, some of them in favour of conserving even illegal housing to help residents in need. Others argued for demolitions, as the buildings had no architectural value and could have made space for new developments. The discussions that occurred within the OCO presented similar features as the situations described by Pierre Lascoumes (1994) when he wrote about the difficulties of defining the contents and objectives of environmental policies. As a matter of fact, it is also hard to provide clear-cut definitions of what conservation means and what its purposes are. However, with the change in city leadership, the initiative for urban renewal was taken out of the OCO’s hands, which then lost importance in the planning and carrying out of renewal projects.2 District governments now had these competences. However, the mayor maintained the option of carrying out a couple of projects that, in his eyes, would have supported the tourism industry in Yangzhou. The party secretary also had a project in the Old City. These projects represented a clear U-turn compared to the policies that Wang Yanwen approved when she was in office. The projects sought by the mayor pushed for a return to the old, redevelopment-oriented model of renewal based on the relocation of residents and the change of land-use functions. On one site, he wished to redevelop a characteristic canal area by demolishing housing on both banks and developing new touristic premises, following the example of San Antonio in the United States. To this end, he hired a famous international architectural and planning company to provide the plans. To carry out this project, the government needed to relocate all of the residents. Moreover, the canal had to be widened, which meant demolishing ­housing also on the streets parallel to the canal. This idea was so absurd that an official called the plan “a joke”.3

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As for the second project, the area had to be redeveloped by replacing the existing buildings with new commercial premises. The project also envisaged an underground parking space being built and an ancient gate being restored, the relics of which were buried underground. These operations once more required large-scale demolitions, in particular for the parking space, which had to reach dimensions that the planning authorities considered to be utterly unsuitable for the scale of the site.4 For this reason, officials tried to convince the mayor to think of alternative, less-­ disruptive solutions, proposing to limit the scale of demolitions and develop a parking space of more modest dimensions, in accordance with the traffic capacity of the area. However, throughout 2015 and 2016 it seemed that the mayor was not going to change his mind. Instead, negotiations with residents about relocation and compensation had already started, to the dismay of the officials who had to face residents’ complaints and deal with their understandable refusal. Elsewhere, on another site of the Old City, a project of renovation had suddenly started in July 2015, at the end of the penultimate fieldwork. The modalities for carrying it out and the sharp contrast with the OCO’s initial intentions were a further indicator that the conservation paradigm and its practices had been set aside. As a matter of fact, in 2014 the OCO reflected on a reasonable way to proceed with a gradual renewal of the street and buildings of this site.5 Its officials wished to encourage shop owners to renovate buildings and to pay for the renewal, following the model established a few years earlier. In July 2015 it was confirmed that the plans had not changed.6 However, a few days after the interview the site was closed to traffic and renewal suddenly took off. Officials said that plans had been abandoned and that a department was given the difficult task of realising the renewal in just a few months, without any plans on how to carry it out. The project was the party secretary’s idea. As he was preparing to leave in order to take a more important position, the project had to be finalised with a very short period of time (regardless of whether the government had funds to do so or not). Not far from this site, the government of a district was making plans to renew another, very unlike the OCO’s approach. With economic development at the top of their priorities, the leaders of the district wished to widen a traditional alley and demolish old houses on either side to make space for a modern commercial street. It would connect the traditional parts of the Old City with a leisure area constructed at the beginning of the 2000s. This redevelopment project also had to favour the tourism

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industry, which became a top priority for the conservation of historical buildings and cultural units in the area. This vision clearly diverged from the policies established by the OCO, evoking once more the situations described by Pierre Lascoumes (1994) when describing the conflicts of ideas, values and interests that exist behind translating – in this case, when it comes to defining heritage conservation and the use of heritage. There exist substantial divergences in the city and district administrations of Yangzhou, on the use of historical and heritage buildings. Some of these divergences are connected to the methods of conservation and of the operation of buildings, whilst others are related to the way in which the concept of ‘administering’ is conceived by different organs of the local government. For some administrations, historical and heritage buildings represent public goods that have to be opened to the public. For others, they represent assets that departments or local governments can dispose of. Behaving like entrepreneurs, these parts of the administration consider that what is under their management belongs to them as assets (cf. Duckett 1998). For this reason, they consider it appropriate to make the most lucrative use of these goods. This question also explains why it was hard for the OCO to define a policy for public housing in the Old City, as pointed out in Chap. 5. In fact, the case of public housing is perhaps the best example to epitomise the difficulties of translation and of learning and changing urban renewal policies in Yangzhou with regard to the differentiated approaches that administrative organs have vis-à-vis public goods. 6.2.2  The Saga of Public Housing Chapter 5 showed that, under the aegis of the OCO, the city government tried to develop a policy to foster self-help renewal in public housing. GTZ also participated in this endeavour, dedicating a component of its “Sustainable Urban Development Programme”  – another bilateral collaboration project with China to provide consultancy to cities – to prepare a study for public housing. GTZ collaborated with scholars of the Sun Yat-Sen University and of the South-China University of Technology who prepared a series of policy recommendations suggesting the privatisation of public housing by encouraging sitting tenants to buy and renovate houses. The OCO followed these recommendations and prepared a ­tentative policy for a pilot project where it wished to encourage both private owners and tenants of public housing to participate in renewal. To say

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something more about this policy, it was the product of transcoding, and in particular of recycling (Lascoumes 1996), as it was largely built upon the model of the 1998 housing reform. This choice was not optimal for some officials, as the 1998 reform had been criticised for its unfairness (cf. Logan et al. 2009). However, several months of discussion were not sufficient to make all the departments and agencies involved agree on a different approach. As has already been presented, the policy was not able to encourage tenants to buy housing, as only a family could apply to privatisation. This question recalls the problem of the audience of a policy (Lascoumes 1994), as transfers, and more broadly new policy projects, have to be confronted with the public targeted and with the society where they are promoted (cf. Jacoby 2000). To design an appropriate policy, the OCO should have had the chance to proceed via trial and error, experimenting with an approach, learning lessons from it and making corrections accordingly. However, this opportunity never arose. The agencies in charge of managing the public housing firmly opposed any attempt to sell ‘their assets’. Establishing the potential policy for the pilot project was possible thanks to Secretary Wang. In fact, it was precisely because these agencies were reluctant to take any decision at all that the secretary gave the OCO the responsibility of drafting the policy. The draft was then discussed several times. On each occasion items were eliminated and re-discussed, and departments engaged in continuous debates.7 Some of them tried to delay the approval process by bringing several modifications to the draft. Details about the discussions were not provided, but some fragmentary reconstructions allowed the understanding that several interests were hindering any attempt at reform. To explain the situation, the case of public housing was equated to the reform of state companies in energy, fruit of a difficult reorganisation of national energy ministries into distinct companies. The problem was defined by officials “liyi bumenhua” (利益部门化), an expression for which an exact translation is not possible to find, but judging from this interview extract it can be understood as a form of what Max Weber used to call “patrimonial officialdom” (Lu 2000): they passed from managing houses on behalf of the government to owning them, … this is liyi bumenhua. So why is it so difficult to proceed with the reform? … There is no way to change this, you cannot reform it. … Many governments wanted to proceed with reform, but once they made proposals

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to departments they could not go ahead with them precisely for these reasons. They do not tell you anything else but put a lot of difficulties in front of you, they tell you that these are the problems left over by the reform of public enterprises, … they tell you “you solve them”. You stay out immediately.8

The problem that was at the heart of the agencies was that of maintaining their personnel, a situation very well known by the sociology of public administration. Certain organisations put survival as their final scope of action and fight to obtain financial resources and personnel to conserve their tasks (Mayntz 1982 [1978], p. 153). These strategies, called “bureaucratic politics”, aim at increasing budget allocations to support the activities of an office, and also tend to make this office grow. In Yangzhou, these agencies “relies on rent to feed their people”.9 It was explained that “if they sell these houses, what are they going to eat?”, and for this reason they oppose to privatisation.10 These aspects became particularly evident with the departure of Secretary Wang. The new party secretary decided for a change of the entire direction of the agencies, attributing the posts of director and vice directors to new officials. This choice meant that all the discussions and negotiations had to start from scratch. However, as soon as the dialogue started, the new directors did not show openness to the proposals of the OCO. Rather, the agencies continued their own business, every year asking for a budget to repair the housing stock under their management – for which they could not provide a concrete amount, e.g. about the average costs of repair and the houses built every year. Furthermore, as the new city leadership stopped supporting the OCO, the question of renovating public houses was left exclusively in the hands of the agencies that, similarly to other cities in China (cf. Wu 2004; Li and Siu 2001; Duckett 1998), used their own method to solve the problem of crowded and dilapidated public houses: “relocating tenants elsewhere in other public houses, modernising the old buildings and then auctioning tenancy rights”.11 Several interviews also indicated that the agencies renovate houses following high-level standards, a policy that does not favour the return of the original residents. As elsewhere in China, tenancy rights are auctioned at very high prices (cf. Su 2015), unaffordable for many tenants of the Old City. This ‘saga’ of public housing is still ongoing. As a matter of fact, today public housing is still a concern for many projects in the Old City. Despite the fact that three years later the city administration witnessed another

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change in leadership, which gave new impetus to a return of the conservation paradigm, public housing remains a subject of disagreement between different understandings of urban conservation. The responsible agencies do not accept compromise, resulting in many projects, including public housing, having to be abandoned or put aside unless the city leadership intervenes and takes a final decision.

6.3   A Return of the Conservation Paradigm Three years after having registered these facts and events, the situation in Yangzhou changed again. The features of this new situation seemed to suggest a return of the conservation paradigm. During the last fieldwork from April to September 2018, the two sites designated for redevelopment by the mayor were left intact. The narrow, traditional lane that one of the district governments wanted to demolish was also left intact. Voices indicated that the projects did not benefit from the support of the party secretary.12 Moreover, they were strongly opposed by residents, who protested. For one of the redevelopment sites some residents wrote a letter to the administration in virtue of the institute of “letters and visits”, which allows citizens to address the administration in case governmental decisions violate their rights or damage their properties (Cai 2004). Although they did not represent the majority of opinions, they asked the government to stop the project and allow people to renovate their houses according to the method adopted a few years earlier on other sites of the Old City. The method was that of the approach promoted by the OCO. However, no matter what they thought, the mayor wanted to go ahead with his project. In the end the protests reached such dimensions that it became risky for his political evaluation by upper-government echelons. Already in 2015, an official had pointed out that if the mayor did not behave more carefully he would cause revolts, and explained that forced relocations were no longer possible because the situation at the upper-­ government echelons was changing.13 This practice had to be limited to the construction of important city infrastructures. The official indicated that the attention the central government paid to redevelopment projects and to their impacts on residents had increased, reason for which they had to be careful not to provoke protests.14 For similar reasons, the project of redevelopment anticipated by the district government was also abandoned. Only the projects run by the street offices, which inherited the OCO legacy, were going ahead after a couple of years of stagnation.

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This twist happened shortly before the end of 2017, when a vice-­ director of the district government managed to make these projects start up again. This same official had previously worked in a department of the city administration in close proximity with the person who later became the director of the OCO. For one of the projects it was explained that the street office managed to obtain funding to support infrastructural renewal from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the powerful national agency at the head of many issues connected to economic development.15 Moreover, it was underlined that the project received the endorsement of the director of the provincial branch of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development (MoHURD), which particularly appreciated the gradual method of renewal as well as the fact that residents and other interested citizens could participate in upgrading the area. With such important endorsements, the project could thus be carried out. Some houses went through renovation, some shops improved their interiors, and some empty houses were transformed into artists’ ateliers, teahouses and family-run inns. Infrastructural works were completed. The street office had also opened a neighbourhood library, and with the support of the district government it managed to obtain a small piece of land to create an open space for residents. With the help of the local neighbourhood committee and the residents, the area also added some greenery, which improved its general look. In a similar fashion, the other street office went ahead with its projects. It managed to convince some families to transform their properties into family inns, which were either run by families themselves or rented out to the street office. The latter hired a young manager to take care of these properties and welcome tourists. Tiny green corners and small leisure areas also popped up. Some spots, once factory sites or schools that had been constructed during the Maoist epoch, were reused as new offices for resident committees and as public space for residents. Considering these new developments, one could believe that OCO’s ideas had been taken out of the rubbish bin and put to good use. 6.3.1  A Triumph For the OCO? In the past three years, the OCO has gone through new changes that in theory return it to its place as the powerhouse for policymaking in the Old City. Indeed, in 2016 the office was attributed the important task of for-

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mulating the first “Yangzhou Old City Conservation Regulations” after the central government decided to grant the ability to issue regulations to prefectural-level cities. This document represents the very first set of regulations issued by the Yangzhou city government and contains a compendium and an update of the conservation approach of the local government, introducing new concepts and new targets for conservation and upgrading. The OCO also formulated a new set of “Administrative Measures for the Renewal of Private Housing”, showing once more that the office returned to play an important role in the definition of policies for the Old City. Both documents therefore seemed to indicate a return of the OCO as the major decision-maker for the Old City. However, these changes did not restore its initial role. Major decisions about projects firmly remained in the hands of district governments. The OCO kept its role of ‘consultant’ for renewal projects, but its advice was not considered to be strictly binding. This aspect is exemplified by a project that at the time of writing was still ongoing. In September 2018, a district government started a renovation project based on resident participation and on the provision of subsidies to encourage residents to renovate their houses. The initial description of the project pointed to a similarity with the pilot projects run by GTZ in the late 2000s as well as with those run by the OCO in the early 2010s. The authority responsible wished to collect residents’ opinions and requirements before planning the design. Moreover, it wished to support renewal interventions by offering subsidies to the inhabitants. A more in-depth look at the approach adopted by the district, however, revealed that the operational principles established a few years earlier by the OCO had been newly interpreted. For these reasons, the OCO did not agree with its modalities of operation.16 Officials believed that the money spent on subsidies was too high compared to what they had previously established, estimating that “residents have to pay themselves” and that the government “cannot spend all that public money on private houses”.17 They also pointed out that the project was not made to encourage residents to participate, but rather to please the upper levels of the Party through making a project for the inhabitants of the Old City. It is undoubtedly still too early to judge this project or the district government’s intentions; this will have to wait a few years. Nonetheless, the project represents an opportunity to test new approaches and draw lessons from it. Indeed, OCO officials themselves admitted, already three years earlier, that few households had applied to their subsidy programme, established according to the GTZ model.18

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They recognised that the subsidy standard had to be corrected and better reflect the financial capacities of the residents and the increased costs of material and construction works.19 Conversing with residents about this aspect, the question of considering the audience of a policy in the process of policy translation was once again evident. For some residents, applying for subsidies was more trouble than it was worth. The technical requirements of the OCO were deemed too costly or inconvenient, while the subsidy offered was not high enough to encourage residents to follow them.20 Therefore, it was not uncommon to hear that people had preferred to renovate without applying for the subsidy.21 This aspect is once more representative of the complexities of translating. For a policy characterised by controversies and uncertainty, making decisions is not an easy task (Lascoumes 1994, p. 32). Therefore, advancing on the basis of trial and error represents one of the inevitable passages of building collective action in a specific field (ibid.). In this case, the controversies were mainly represented by the different starting points of the OCO and of the residents. If the main objective of the OCO is to protect the fengmao (风貌) of the Old City – an expression that indicates the style and architectural features of the Old City – many residents simply wish to make their houses more comfortable while saving money on renovations. For this reason, many considered the OCO’s requirements to be excessive, expensive to carry out or even not suitable to their needs, as protecting the fengmao sometimes refused the use of more modern and comfortable solutions. These questions invite the idea of being careful not to take as absolute truth the approach adopted by the OCO as well as its points of view on specific topics. The definition of new urban renewal policies clearly also had to do with the context in which these policies had to be applied, in particular because their implementation depended on the participation of citizens. In this respect, Wade Jacoby (2000, pp. 11–12) underlined the importance of reflecting on the categories of “performance” and “persistence” to evaluate whether transfers are indeed effective, looking at the outcomes of specific policies in the new setting, their acceptation, as well as the ways in which these policies and/or institutions “gain legitimacy in the new society”. When trying to draw some conclusions as to whether the transfer of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou has been effective, the facts observed at the end of the fieldwork seem to indicate that this approach persists and is gaining legitimacy (see further), albeit some of its features (e.g. the subsidy standard, the way in which resident participation is practiced, etc.) are

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changing. As for the question of performance, it does not only concern the acceptation or rejection of various components of the administration, as well as the ways in which they appropriate this approach, but also the acceptation and appropriation by the targeted population. When observed from this perspective, the assessment of the transfer is less positive, or at least it is clear that there is still a long way to go. Reforming public housing is an example of where a lot of work still needs to be done, and probably depends also on the intervention of other government levels and accompanying measures to solve the problem of unemployment, as the fictitious job availability in the public administration currently contributes to absorbing it. As previously mentioned regarding private housing, OCO officials lamented that their subsidy programme did not have much success, as few people came to ask for their support. Indeed, in June 2015, only 185 houses (out of thousands) participated in the programme.22 Despite information campaigns launched with the help of resident committees encouraged residents to apply for the subsidy programme, the policy required further experimentations, re-elaborations and adjustments to become interesting for a larger public. This is no surprise; once new policy models interact with the local context and once they try to root in this new setting, experimentations, adjustments and “continuous metamorphoses” (Stone 2017, p. 10), which correspond to the very essence of policy translation, are expected. For these specific features, translation can be equated with policy implementation, understood “as a space for adjustments, for negotiations among interests”, the dynamics of which are often very difficult to anticipate (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2009, p.  40).23 As such, implementation can also be seen as a moment of change in the definition of the targeted problems, because new dimensions, initially unknown, may emerge; “in the positions and claims of concerned actors”, as there emerge a complexity of positions and a need of adjustments; “in the operational ways”, requiring the modification of procedures and criteria (ibid.). These words can also encompass the characteristics of policy transfer and translation, and apply very well to the situations observed in this case study. For instance, translating  – or implementing  – Careful Urban Renewal meant dealing with an audience that did not always consider the policies designed by the OCO suitable for their needs. This aspect forced the administration to review its approach and consider a change in procedure or criteria. Translating  – or implementing  – Careful Urban Renewal also meant finding adjustments with different positions in the

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administration, making compromises and discovering the presence of different interests and points of view on urban renewal and Old City conservation. Finally, translating  – or implementing  – Careful Urban Renewal also meant bringing new focus to the initial attention paid to preserving the fengmao and buildings. In this respect, it is worth highlighting that when carrying out projects and drafting policies, the OCO started to take into consideration the poverty of the inhabitants of the Old City as well as the questions of unemployment and of affordable housing. Although it could not make any significant steps forward in these directions, the implementation of its policies allowed the officials of the OCO to learn about other problems of the Old City and to reflect upon possible solutions. When analysing the characteristics of policy implementation, and particularly when observing incoherencies, corrections, voids, failed attempts, etc., Pierre Lascoumes and Patrick Le Galès (ibid.) recommend fighting the temptation of “reintroducing a normative point of view” and of “disqualifying certain sequences, certain actors or certain outcomes”. As a matter of fact, the policy implementation process is often characterised by a “more or less coherent project” that “might give birth to scattered appropriations” that can be “followed by moments of refocusing, which are in turn discussed and reoriented” (ibid.). For this reason and for the sake of understanding the characteristics of the policy process, judgments will be put to one side. Instead, it is worthwhile looking at “what inheritances, what systems of action, what actors, what competing aims, what changing configurations of resources and constraints” produce them (ibid.). This demands an effort of contextualising phenomena both in time and in space (ibid., p.  38). The remainder of this chapter follows these recommendations, considering the factors that produced these specific outcomes in the transfer and translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou.

6.4   A Bumpy Way to Paradigm Shift and the Multiple Hierarchies of the Chinese Local State Much has changed since 2016. At that time it seemed as though the Careful Urban Renewal (or the ‘conservation paradigm’) was a very short parenthesis in the history of urban renewal in Yangzhou. Therefore, the conclusions of this study accompanied the observations made by scholars

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who have studied policy experimentation in China (cf. Fewsmith 2013; Florini et al. 2012), admitting that, in this case as well, the local experiment was temporary and was brought to a close with the departure of the main city leader that had supported it, and that its institutionalisation was very difficult. This conclusion was reinforced by the sense of powerlessness and frustration shared by the officials and other actors that participated in the process of policy learning and translation of Careful Urban Renewal and who considered their efforts to have been a waste of time.24 None could anticipate at the time that the situation would change again shortly thereafter, making space for a moment of refocusing and returning to discuss the principles and approaches established with the translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou. By taking a macro-level perspective, it is perhaps too early to talk about a paradigm shift in Peter Hall’s (1993) terms. What can currently be observed can better be understood as a bumpy process towards a possible paradigm shift, or a “potential shift of frames”, borrowing a formulation by Donald Schön and Martin Rein (1994). These authors distinguish between “real” and “potential” shifts of frames, underlining that the difference between the two lies in a series of reforms necessary to support the passage from a potential shift to a real shift. Namely: (t)he introduction of a new piece of legislation may signal the potential reframing of national policy … but that potential may lie dormant because other reforms, essential to the activation of that potential, are not forthcoming. (ibid., p. 35)

This passage applies very pertinently to the situation in Yangzhou, as certain reforms that would be helpful to foster a real paradigm shift are missing. Moreover, it is worth noting that these reforms should also come from the central government. The policies and directions of city governments, be they in China or elsewhere, are necessarily influenced by – and dependent on  – policies issued at upper levels: regional (provincial), national, and in the European case also at supranational level. In China, when policies and reforms at the central government level are missing, they reduce the possibilities for change to happen at local level. Conversely, when they are introduced, they are capable of pushing local leaders to act differently – depending on the importance of a given issue. For instance, in the previous chapter it was possible to see how the central government forced local governments to comply with certain policies to reduce their

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debt, which became a pressing issue in the late 2000s. Moreover, new policies and reforms have not recently been missing, and new discourses in favour of heritage protection and Old City conservation have also been diffused. For instance, in December 2013 President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang organised a City Work Conference, where major urbanisation issues were discussed. This step led to a “National New-type urbanisation Plan (2014–2020)” being issued in March 2014. The first of its kind, it targeted the problem of urbanisation and promoting the sustainable development of Chinese cities (Chen et al. 2016). According to this plan, future urbanisation should be centred on people and should become more environmentally friendly (Taylor 2015, p. 108). Moreover, it should also try to search for a “sustainable funding system” and focus on local governments’ debts (ibid). Still in December 2013, the Organisation Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China announced that the official system for assessing local leaders’ performances would abandon its central focus on GDP growth to try to direct the Chinese economy towards a more sustainable path (Xinhua 2013). According to this new policy for cadres’ assessment, local officials are required to pay attention to the use of resources, to the environment and to other issues such as employment, health and social insurance. Moreover, in an attempt at curbing local governments’ debts, with this new policy it is no longer possible for local governments to borrow money for “image” or “vanity” projects to the vantage of party leaders (ibid.). On this aspect, President Xi made a call to end “weird architectural projects”. This was actually at the heart of the Central Government City Work Conference, held in 2015 after a 37-year break since the previous one. Local officials in Yangzhou have stressed the importance of this conference for their work, as President Xi had forced the local government to reconsider its approach to urban renewal.25 President Xi in particular denounced the presence of “improper development and construction practices” that “have caused damage to urban culture” (Xi 2017).26 For Xi Jinping these practices, attributed to the blind pursuit of short-­ term political achievements, provoked development projects to become distanced from local urban characteristics and from the understanding of cultural heritage. In so doing, Chinese cities increasingly started following Western practices, while “getting farther and farther from tradition”. For this reason, the president stressed the importance of protecting the local cultural heritage and denounced the fact that “many construction behav-

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iours show ignorance and disrespect for history and culture, and do a lot of stupid things to cut with the historical context”. To counter these trends, he emphasised how important it was to expand the concept of protection, considering both ancient and modern buildings; individual buildings as well as streets and street blocks and towns; and fine, representative buildings as well as folk houses representing local customs and local characteristics. These words inspired a set of opinions issued by the State Council in February 2016 called “Several opinions on further strengthening the management of urban planning and construction”. The opinions ask for an urban architecture that is more in line with the characteristics of the surrounding environment. This dismisses the oversized, Western-like and bizarre buildings that have been constructed in recent decades in China and that, for President Xi, reflect the distorted view of local officials about how to achieve success. Concerning these aspects, it is also interesting to cite another set of opinions, the “Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Reform of Urban Law Enforcement System and Improving Urban Management” issued on 30 December 2015. These opinions stress the importance of respecting laws and regulations for urban development and urban management. With this new policy of the central government, the range of manoeuvre for local governments has significantly restrained, with as a consequence local administrations now being very careful to follow procedures.27 The effects of these messages became immediately visible in Yangzhou. During the last fieldwork, officials pointed out that the situation had become favourable for the policies and plans established by the OCO in the early 2010s to be resumed.28 They also indicated that the central government’s focus on the respect of laws and of popular willingness had become more pressing and had pushed local governments to conduct projects more carefully by consulting residents throughout the planning process.29 These recent developments seem to allude to the fact that if the central government continues to emphasise these aspects, there is hope that the new, careful approach to urban renewal established in Yangzhou at the beginning of the decade finds opportunities to develop roots and gain legitimacy among local policymakers. 6.4.1  A Possible Paradigm Shift As mentioned before, it has so far not been possible to consider these developments as signals of a paradigm shift in Peter Hall’s (1993) terms,

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but they can be seen as indicators of a probable paradigm shift in the making. In his analysis of the passage from Keynesianism to monetarism, Peter Hall formulated three main hypotheses concerning the conditions for paradigm shifts to take place. A first hypothesis was that “policy experimentation and policy failure are likely to play a key role in the movement from one paradigm to another” (ibid., p. 280). Policy failures will appear if anomalies and problems appear within the setting of a specific paradigm, and these anomalies and problems cannot be explained or solved by the same paradigm. These failures will undermine the validity of the existing paradigm and open up the search for alternatives. A paradigm shift hence implies “the accumulation of anomalies, experimentation with new forms of policy, and policy failures that precipitate a shift in the locus of authority over policy and initiate a wider contest between competing paradigms” (ibid.). As Chap. 5 presented, the speed and costs of urban (re-)development as practiced by city governments since the 1990s progressively lost legitimacy in the eyes of the central government, which started issuing policies and making calls to reduce money lending to local governments and to curb down their accumulated debt. The issue of local governments’ debt actually became a particularly acute problem following the stimulus programme launched by the central government during the 2008 financial crisis. It also called for special attention to be paid on behalf of the central government, which issued temporary policies to slow down the speed of money lending (Bloomberg 2019). Although the central government cannot adopt “a get-tough approach” on local governments’ debt, as economic development in China still heavily relies on urban development (ibid.), it is also probable that big redevelopment projects such as that of the Dongguan Street renewal or Jiaochang (cf. Chap. 3) are no longer tolerated. Officials underlined these aspects when discussing the mayor’s projects in 2014 and 2015, stressing that his ambitions had exorbitant prices and that the state-owned company in charge of the project had to scramble to find money.30 This impact of the central government’s directives, however, is not only related to the debt issue but also to the question of public acceptation, another topic of concern. As pointed out by a local official, “now you cannot do any project without residents’ consensus, you cannot move anything”, which implies that even small projects are hard to go through with without residents’ agreement if one wants to avoid being reprimanded by the upper-government echelons.31 It was not only underlined that the cen-

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tral government pays particular attention to respecting laws and regulations, as well as any move that may incite discontent, but also that residents themselves are more cognisant of their rights and of existing laws and regulations.32 Because they are better informed about their rights and about the dispositions of the central government, they force the administration to operate more carefully when it comes to renewal projects.33 Thus, pressures have both a top-down and a bottom-up origin, the latter including residents, experts and, more broadly, public opinion, who have not held back from making their voices heard in other localities of China throughout the past years (cf. Huang 2017; Gransow 2014).34 These aspects seem to suggest that Peter Hall’s second and third hypotheses about paradigm shifts can find some correspondences in the case of Yangzhou as well. In this respect, the author has written that this type of change is “rarely made on scientific grounds alone” and is more likely to involve political motives (1993, p.  280). These motives often emerge through the activism of actors outside the state bureaucracy, such as experts, the media or politicians trying to win electoral campaigns. Paradigm shifts are hence intimately connected to the circulation of new ideas and to the presence of advocates for reform. A shift in paradigm is particularly connected to the position assumed by these advocates within the “broader institutional framework” (ibid.). For paradigm shifts to occur, there must be a “shift in the locus of authority over policy” (ibid., p. 291), one that produces the organisations or institutions historically at the head of a policy to lose authority, and locates it in the hands of other organisations or institutional functions in favour of reform. With the arrival of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang at the head of the central government, the voices in favour of change of urban (re-)development approach probably found more important support than  in the previous decades. Despite the central government not lacking in laws, regulations and policies to conserve heritage and historical cities, these documents could not easily be applied at the local level (Qiu 2014). As long as the central government cared more for GDP growth than other criteria, a trend reversal was very hard to achieve, and local leaders continued to care about promoting urban (re-)development. In this respect, issuing the National New-type Urbanisation Plan (2014–2020) and resuming the Central Government City Work Conference after 37 years of silence made it very clear to local governments that the central government started to pay particular attention to urbanisation, in many of its aspects.

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Nevertheless, and this is the reason why the adjective ‘probable’ and adverb ‘probably’ have been preferred to ‘certain’ and ‘certainly’ when interpreting these developments, it is hard to say whether the position statements of central leaders and their policies correspond to a real shift of paradigm. More time is needed to assess the situation by monitoring both evolutions at the central and local levels. However, that the current economic slowdown of the country will hardly curb urban (re-)development, which still counts for an important part of China’s GDP, can be expected. The example of the “Charming Towns” plan, which aims at transforming farmers’ towns into themed developments, indicates that perhaps it is worth being wary of the messages sent by the central government (He 2019). Moreover, without a significant reform of taxation in China, it is very difficult to dampen local governments’ predilection for urban (re-) development. Urbanisation remains “the key financial lifeline for local governments” (Sorace and Hurst 2016, p. 309). This trend can only be changed if there is a major overhaul of “China’s national and local financial structure” in order “to replace the current model of capital accumulation and revenue extraction based on land requisition and real estate development”. However, this would mean “challenging many vested interests in the status quo” (ibid.), hence the possibility that such reforms would happen is very low. As a matter of fact, with the exception of some experiments, signs of a change in the Tax Sharing System introduced in 1994 (cf. Chap. 3) are not appearing, thence the reforms that Schön and Rein  (1994, p. 35) consider “essential to the activation of that potential, are not forthcoming”. Doubts also emerge regarding the question of the evaluation and promotion criteria of local leaders. As mentioned before, at the end of 2013 the central government announced new criteria that try to resize the weight of GDP growth and urban development vis-à-vis other targets. It is uncertain, however, how these criteria are used when it comes to ­deciding on a local leader. For instance, the ex-mayor of the city of Datong, whose redevelopment attitude and practices have been sharply portrayed in a documentary, was promoted to vice-mayor of the provincial capital of Shanxi, Taiyuan, in February 2013. There he continued his career, always respecting his predilection for demolitions, until he decided to resign in January 2019. Mayor Geng’s core project was represented by the attempt at reconstructing the old defensive walls of Datong, fake replicas of a past that had already disappeared decades before.

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To achieve his ambitious projects, Mayor Geng forced the demolition of not only shacks and dilapidated housing, but also of modern housing compounds, much to the chagrin of the inhabitants. The documentary portrays these aspects well and depicts the speed and pressure under which local leaders have to operate, the violation of laws and regulations, the powerlessness of residents, and the complexities of being a mayor in China. Despite the fact that he was promoted before the new evaluation policy of the Organisation Department of the Central Committee of the CCP was officially issued and before the central government’s leaders delivered their speeches on urban development and urban conservation, the lack of consequence of his actions seem to suggest that the evaluation criteria of the party evolved in ways unbeknownst to the public. This once more points to the role of hierarchy as a constraining or facilitating factor for learning as well as for rooting a practice in local institutions, recalling elements that previous chapters have already addressed. The importance of hierarchy or the support of hierarchical superiors is a classic question described by the sociology of organisation when analysing reform attempts and learning within organisations. In general, hierarchical structures impose limits on the competences of subordinates, turning bureaucratic organisations into structures that do not have the sufficient capacity to adapt and innovate (Mayntz 1982 [1978], pp. 141– 142; Crozier and Friedberg 1977). Any proposal of change can be blocked by hierarchical structures, making them fundamental obstacles for reforms. The findings of this literature are also useful to explain the case studied. More often than not, hierarchical structures have hindered policy learning, as exemplified by the many attempts of the OCO to insert certain dispositions in their regulations, to try out certain arrangements, or to go ahead with their experiments. The remainder of the chapter outlines the way in which hierarchy interacts with other elements in opening (or not) windows for policy learning, while leaving much uncertainty about the capacity of a new paradigm to perform and persist in the receiving society. 6.4.2  The Interaction of Hierarchy With Laws and Regulations Uncertainty and the lack of enduring institutions are perhaps the features that most characterise the outcomes of the transfer and translation of Careful Urban Renewal. While seemingly supported by a change of political frames of the central government, witnessed by the issuing of the National New-type urbanisation Plan and by the calls of the top leaders of

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the Party, their rooting is hard to spot. Some of their supporting reforms were included in a discipline of the party that is not easy to decipher. Moreover, bold reforms that could support a change of urban (re-)development trends remain missing. Interestingly, a policy of the central government, embodied in the “Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Reform of Urban Law Enforcement System and Improving Urban Management”, was introduced to require local governments to be more respectful of laws and regulations pertaining to urban development and urban management. Without that requirement local administrations perhaps would have continued to follow the old practice of accommodating city leaders’ wishes, which may or may not follow the legal procedures. They would have also continued finding arrangements whenever laws and regulations, codes and standards left them without detailed answers on how to deal with the complexities of the Old City (cf. Chap. 5). The points presented here already highlight some aspects pertaining to the ways in which laws and regulations interact with the hierarchy of the Chinese state and of the Chinese Communist Party. They show that the former are very dependent on the latter, which in turn refer to the relationships that exist between the local administration and the city leadership and between the local government (and its various components) and the upper echelons of the government. To illustrate this aspect, it is possible to recall the example of the downgrading of the OCO once the party secretary Wang Yanwen left Yangzhou, which closed the window for policy learning established by Secretary Wang. Although local regulations, issued in the early 2010s, stipulate that the OCO is the main organisation responsible for policies and projects in the Old City, in practice these regulations are not respected if city leaders do not wish to do so – and are not constrained to do so by upper-government levels either. Instead, a customary model of tasks attribution prevails, according to which city leaders decide to whom they will attribute their conduction project by project. This approach is something officials do not dare to question, “and even less talk about it”, but the institutional set up often “is not fixed” or does not dispose of “uniform regulations”, as explained by this interview extract: Unless the organisation in question is a statutory body, say the Urban Planning Bureau or the Construction Bureau, whose tasks and competences are established by the Urban Planning Law, the decision is taken by the city leaders. And as there are no specific laws on how to manage the Old City, the division of competences is not fixed.35

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Investigating into why the OCO lost relevance in the government of the Old City, it was possible to understand that there is no fixed statutory body for urban conservation. National laws on the protection of old buildings or old cities do not establish any specific division of competences. For instance, the “Law for the Protection of Historic Monuments and Sites” or the “Regulations for the Protection of Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages” do not specify which department should be in charge of their application, or do not sufficiently explain the division of tasks. Even if these documents were issued well before the creation of the OCO in Yangzhou, hence could not foresee the existence of this specific organisation, they leave gaps in the competences of already-existing departments. Several interlocutors indicated this non-fixity of departmental competences as the main reason behind the fragmented governance of the Old City. In particular, officials underlined that it is common practice to attribute competences to various bureaus when these have not been strictly defined by law or by the technical aspects of a task: in certain cases it is clear. For instance if we have to create a new waterway, it is definitely the Water Management Bureau, and not the Urban Planning Bureau or the Construction Bureau. […] But for urban renewal projects it is not that clear. The OCO can do it, the Construction Bureau can do it, and the district … can do it.36

The determinant element is the decision of city leaderships, attributing more or less powers and projects to departments or subordinate government echelons according to their particular work priorities.37 At the beginning of their mandate, mayors and party secretaries establish their priorities in urban development, which may shift from one government to another. This means that if under a leader urban conservation benefits from a certain level of relevance, the leaders that follow do not necessarily have to continue in the paths of their predecessors. Instead, they try to do something very different in order to be noticed by their superiors. In short, if they continued in the paths of their predecessors, their merits would not as easily be recognised.38 This setting of priorities also involves budgets dedicated to urban projects. Similarly to what Renate Mayntz observed (1982 [1978], pp. 137–138) in her sociology of public administrations, departments are in competition for the attribution of projects and budgets. This aspect is one of the reasons why officials in Yangzhou consider themselves to be “all the same” when it comes to spending public money.39

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At the end of the day it is up to the city leadership to make decisions, and as departments compete against each other, it is very hard to transform the OCO into the main body responsible for protecting the Old City, notwithstanding recognising that such an arrangement would be preferable, as highlighted in this interview extract: what you say is correct [there shall be a specialised institution that has special skills and guarantees uniformity in the management of the Old City]. It is very hard for you to understand. The thing is that we are spending the government’s money, so the government makes a design plan and it’s ok, and then anybody can do it. This is the idea, it is not that only an office is in charge of it, there is also competition. … The leader just looks at who is going to do it actively [basically who is going to do the project according to his/ her ideas in a relatively short period of time] and who is capable of better completing the project, thereby giving the project to that department. So everybody is the same, do you understand now?40

Departmental directors in general do not discuss the leadership’s decisions unless they recognise their inability to carry out the attributed tasks. In that case, buck-passing is very common.41 Attributing responsibilities to the OCO or to other departments or agencies is thus arbitrary and varies every year, and so by this token the available budget for the pursuit of the urban conservation agenda is also variable. Decision-making in this regard is up to the city government as well as to the Construction Bureau, which divides the amount of public finance allocated by the city government to its various divisions. If the OCO does not receive enough political backing from the city leadership or enough political and economic support from the Construction Bureau, then it ultimately has no say. Without competences and real financial support, as is currently the case, it has ­limited possibility to steer urban renewal and coordinate the process of policy learning that had started in Yangzhou. The majority of the decision-making power remains in the hands of district governments, even though it is clear that in recent years the OCO has been the protagonist when it has come to drafting new documents regarding the protection of the Old City. The new regulations issued in 2016 once again stressed the central role of this office in making decisions for the Old City. These can decide whether to follow the line of the OCO or their own agenda, depending on the motivations and interests of their leadership. This aspect once more underlines that formal institutions do

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not exist independently from the discretion of the public administration and of the political leadership. However, there are other reasons behind the limited relevance the OCO has nowadays, which are connected to the individual attitude of the officials and of the customs followed by the administration. 6.4.3   City Hierarchies and Their Interactions With Individuals’ Orientations, Interests and Administrative Customs Chapters 4 and 5 explained how the presence of departmental directors, who were open to new proposals and ready to experiment with new ideas, was a fundamental factor for the project run by GTZ to produce results and for Careful Urban Renewal to find space on the governmental agenda. Their particular position in the administration as well as their individual sensibility, professional trajectories and probably career motivations were important drivers for their engagement in policy learning and translation. It has been shown that without the active attitude and the competences of the now retired leaders of the OCO and of other departments, most of the achievements discussed in Chap. 5 would not have been made. These individuals took most of the policy initiatives and convinced the mayor and the party secretary to support their proposals. They prepared many policies, plans and regulations to renew the Old City, experimented with new procedures, and pushed for the experimentation and adoption of informal arrangements to foster interdepartmental coordination and to solve the different problems encountered when projects in the Old City were being carried out. Moreover, as they were attributed discretionary power they could take many policy initiatives without explicitly requesting anything of the mayor and the party secretary. They also found opportunities to adopt new practices in urban renewal projects, for instance delegating competences to actors outside the administration, who in this way could participate in policymaking and project realisation. Thanks to their position in the hierarchy, the leadership’s support and their own personal characteristics, they demonstrated a great capacity to learn and experiment with new arrangements. The case analysed particularly showed the centrality of the directors of departments, the juzhang (局长), a centrality that derives from the personal traits of these individuals but also (obviously) from the position they cover. Much of the power and ability of these directors depends on this as

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well as on their prestige and on the political relationships they developed throughout the years of their service.42 As the sociology of organisation indicated, whether one looks at cases in China or in other countries, social relations and informality are important elements in order for public administrators to carry out bureaucratic tasks (Mayntz 1982 [1978], pp. 136–137). For instance, Zhou Xueguang (2010, p.  52) observed that when officials implement their tasks, and more generally policies, they employ informal arrangements or improvisation “often based on social relations”. Local officials also purposely “develop strong social relations” to increase their “capacity in mobilising resources” to carry out their tasks (Zhou et al. 2012, p. 102). In Yangzhou, if the OCO could achieve a lot in terms of Old City conservation, they would have to be ascribed to this variety of aspect connected to the figure of departmental directors. Their prestige and social relations indeed constituted fundamental elements to guarantee a rapid and smooth implementation of projects, obtain the collaboration of other departments, and expand the capacity of officials to implement policies.43 The directors of departments can also foster a climate favourable to learning inside their organisation. For instance, they can encourage organisational learning by asking the directors of divisions (chuzhang – 处长) and other subordinate officials to make policy proposals, plan study trips, take courses, read publications and submit reports.44 Hence, the competences and attitudes of the juzhang constitute important factors for a department to engage in learning. As Chaps. 4 and 5 indicated, the directors of the OCO and of other relevant departments for planning were urban planners, architects, engineers and experts in cultural heritage. They had expertise in the field of intervention, and they themselves attended training and travelled abroad to update their knowledge. However, recalling what was observed by Renate Mayntz (1982 [1978], p. 135) ­regarding the selection of directors of departments, this type of situation might not occur so frequently. It is more likely that they do not have technical or specialist competences as they are selected based on political criteria and loyalty to politicians. To describe the type of situation that may occur in the administration according to the selection process and the individual personalities of the directors of departments, officials distinguish between “active” (jiji de – 积极的) and “passive” (beidong de – 被动的) directors of departments. This distinction was employed, for instance, to explain the achievements obtained in Old City protection as well as the lack of continuity of this

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same work. It was pointed out that departmental directors can choose between inactivity and abiding by the directives of the city leadership, and the active pursuit of their work agendas. As explained by interviewees, if departmental leaders are active, they reiterate demands of support to the city leadership, call for their attention, and make specific policy or reform proposals. They also oppose projects when they consider them to be unreasonable. Officials underlined that these attitudes very much depend on the personal characteristics of individuals, for instance whether they are patient and capable of enduring situations, whether they can talk frankly to the city leadership, and whether they dare oppose administrative fiats.45 As also observed by Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg (1977), the social and personal traits of officials can vary more or less considerably. We can find actors more willing to embrace risks and actors who are more defensive. The previously cited authors reveal that, in general, bureaucracies are characterised by dependency and a passive attitude (ibid., p.  267). Individuals who wish to escape the rules of the system can, but they take enormous risks (ibid., p. 268). They can take policy initiatives, but they are not protected by safety nets. Hence, the best strategy for individuals is to do as little as possible, turning apathy and lack of participation into two rational strategies (ibid.). By this token, bureaucrats only move when they obtain a green light from their superiors. Several interviews with officials in Yangzhou indicated that these characteristics can also be found in the local administration. In particular it was pointed out that the biggest risk directors of departments take when being too frank to city leaders was the impact on their career prospects. The attachment to the job and the immediate benefits offered by such a job to one’s own life, to one’s own family and to one’s own networks mean that the seniority of service, the prestige and the possibility of promotion are mainly at the heart of their risk calculations. These attitudes are very different from those of the juzhang who made policy learning and developing the conservation paradigm possible and who behaved in such a way that is not very common in the public administration. When talking about them, interviewees defined them as “very brave”, “outspoken”, “tough”, and of course “active”. They were considered very brave and outspoken because talking frankly or opposing the city leadership are considered bold actions. In the case of these officials, it should be added that they have a certain prestige, a certain authority in their field, and were not obliged to make specific cost and benefit calcula-

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tions about their career. In general, however, the juzhang follow a series of specific rules when they interact with the city leadership, rules that are determined by their wish to secure their position in the hierarchy and the possibility to climb its ladder. None of these calculations were at the heart of the juzhang who forged the conservation paradigm in Yangzhou, as they were close to retirement age. When these persons retired, the directors that followed had less room to manoeuvre. As the mayor and the party secretary changed, completely different plans for the Old City emerged and department directors would have needed to scramble to convince city leaders. However, these officials were not very willing to state their point of view or oppose the projects put forward by the city leaders. If they did, they could have been taking risks for their career, as indicated by this interview extract: You can refuse. This type of situation sometimes happens, but if you do not do anything, the leader can be really disappointed in you. In China it works like a company, you are the unit under me, you have to do what I say. It is the company’s decision and if you do not do it, you just cannot go up in the hierarchy. … The risk is that they can send you to a danwei that has no power. In general, you cannot go down the hierarchy, normally you always go up. … If you do not listen too much then what happens? They send you to the local People’s Congress, where you have no power at all! Or they send you to become the juzhang of a department that has no importance, for instance that of food safety.46

The interview extract shows that the cost of opposing would be the loss of power or the loss of political capital after being appointed to a position that has a similar hierarchical level but that is also considered powerless. Indeed, certain departments are considered less powerful when it comes to city decision-making. Hence, the directors of departments make calculations with regard to the position of the city leadership. If the juzhang are committed to policy experimentations in their field but both the mayor and the party secretary do not have any interest in that field, they often avoid making any proposals and keep a passive attitude, waiting for a new leadership to come and hope that new windows of opportunity open. These elements also indicate that the personal characteristics and attitudes of the city leadership are also fundamental for a local administration to start a process of learning and reform of local practices.

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To be precise, in Yangzhou the city leadership was a factor in both facilitating and hindering learning. Unfortunately, it was not possible to talk to past or present city leaders, the contacts in the administration having established the boundaries of accessible knowledge. However, it was possible to draw some elements about the traits of these leaders from the accounts of interviewees. For instance, as was shown in Chaps. 4 and 5, the crucial figure of the experimentation and emergence of the conservation paradigm in Yangzhou was the mayor-come-party secretary Wang Yanwen. Interviewees indicated that as a person she was open to dialogue, interested in the opinions of experts, and cognisant of the problems of the Old City. It is precisely with Ms. Wang’s endorsement of GTZ proposals and later with her decision to establish the OCO as the central manager of the Old City that Yangzhou could (temporarily) break with the past model of urban renewal and set a new course. Hence, whatever the OCO did in the early 2010s very much depended on the decision of “lao Wang”, as officials affectionately called her. This interview extract very clearly specifies this aspect: The situation of each city in China is different and the key is that they depend on the leadership. … Think about how the good things and the bad things we did here in the protection of the Old City entirely depended on the leadership. … If this local leader is concerned, is an educated person (you wenhua – 有文化), they give you more power, more policies and more people, they listen to your opinions and support your opinions. It can happen like it did here. We had our opinions, but it its only through the leadership’s recognition that we could use these things, so it is not that you think in one way and then you can make it possible. And now think, we have changed the leader, he does not care at all about this, you go talk to him, he does not repudiate you but he just does not support you, then you have no way.47

This interview was conducted in 2014, shortly after Wang Yanwen’s departure. Later, it was noticeable that the conservation paradigm found ways to survive thanks to the calls and policies of the central government as well as to the fact that in the fragmented administration of urban renewal are high-level officials (district leaders) who carried the legacy of the OCO. Therefore, the picture becomes a little bit more complicated if compared to what was previously described. Surely city leaders represent central actors in attributing resources to departments, hence the capacities of organisations to make policy experiments significantly depend on the

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political support they can obtain from the party secretary and/or mayor. With it, this support brings economic resources, material resources and personnel and gives the green light to policy initiatives and experiments. If this support is granted, an organisation in the administration acquires capacities to learn. Leadership can also impose recalcitrant departments to collaborate in defining policies and in how to conduct experiments. Conversely, without the city leadership’s support, windows for policy learning and policy translation are hard to open, unless resources are found elsewhere. Nevertheless, different levels of hierarchical power can also produce different outcomes, and in this specific case they allowed other actors in city development to re-appropriate the conservation paradigm. As a matter of fact, the city leadership in Yangzhou has not changed its position vis-à-vis urban renewal, despite the city having changed two mayors (but kept the party secretary). Neither of these leaders have put the Old City on the list of their priorities. Thus, if some projects in the Old City are ongoing and are more or less following the principles established by the OCO, it is thanks to other individuals who matter in policy decision. In particular, it has been observed that a new leader of the district government has allowed the conservation paradigm to re-emerge. District governments thence matter too and actually have a lot of room to manoeuvre as well as competence in city development, as they have the power to lease land-use rights and district branches of city departments at their disposal. This particular subdivision of power between the city and district governments, which delegates a wide range of responsibilities to the latter, surely creates fragmentation (cf. Hsing 2010) but also offers more opportunities to find policymakers who are willing to support certain ideas and make policy experimentations. In the recently observed projects, the approach of the OCO was taken up by the relatively young vice-director of a district, a person whose career prospects are very bright and who could successfully shift from the direction of the Urban Planning Bureau to the vice-leadership of the district. Thanks to her previous position, she managed to work very closely with the ex-director of the OCO, who gave important instructions to the persons who worked with her. Close contacts with some members of the network of this district director and observations on the fieldwork indicated that this district leader cares about the Old City. She makes frequent visits to renewal sites, contacts experts to make suitable proposals for the area, and is concerned to promote a healthy upgrading of the renewal sites.

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As she is also supported by one of the directors of the provincial branch of the Ministry of Housing and Urban and Rural Development (MoHURD) as well as by very proactive street office directors, there are chances that the conservation paradigm and its further development can have a certain continuity while she is in power. The projects run by the street offices are steadily advancing, various techniques of resident participation are experimented with, and solutions to balance the development of commerce and services for tourists and non-residents with the needs of local residents are actively searched. The ongoing discussions and experiments are worth studying, but these elements represent another research topic that is not addressed by this study. There is just a sombre note that shall be cited in conclusion to this part: departmental interests are still working against this process of translation, with modalities already fully exposed in Chap. 5 and before, in this chapter. As projects are still ongoing, it is very hard to know what the results of this phase of translation will be. However, at the conclusion of the fieldwork it was possible to understand that project carriers wanted to ask for the city government’s assistance to impose a decision on reluctant agencies, as it happened already six years ago with a pilot project of the OCO. Thence, once more, hierarchy matters. The outcomes of the talks are as of yet unknown, but surely whatever happens the solutions that will be taken will only be temporary, ad hoc. The various questions that can be ascribed to departmental interests  – from the problem of paying the salaries of many employees to that of having opportunities for rent seeking, and many others – require answers that only the central government can provide, via bold reforms of the administration and via strengthening the mechanisms to monitor and sanction certain illicit behaviour. As vast literature has demonstrated, these reforms and bold steps, in China as well as elsewhere, are very hard to make (cf. Della Porta and Vannucci 1999), but they surely represent important pieces that are missing in the process of paradigm shift. 6.4.4  Hierarchy and the Relevance of Citizens’ Protests and of Other Forms of Participation Summing up these various elements, the best formula to characterise the outcomes of the transfer, learning and translating Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou is perhaps a ‘paradigm shift in the making’. In this potential shift, some windows for policy learning and policy translation opened up

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and will probably continue to do so thanks to favourable combinations of actors in the public administration and in the city and district governments; to hierarchical commands and the presence of relevant laws, regulations and other policy documents issued by the central or provincial governments; and to contingent sources of pressure, which in the events told in this chapter were also represented by citizens protests. On this last point, it is important to open a parenthesis. Starting from Chap. 4 it has been possible to observe how citizens – with their needs and preferences – had a real impact on the process of policy learning and translation, making of them an important part of the process of transferring and rooting Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou. Chapter 5, and even more so this chapter, described how certain policies introduced by the OCO did not work as expected because a few residents wanted to participate in its initiatives. It also described how resident protests pushed the administration and the local government to respond to them, either by experimenting with new approaches for new projects (Chap. 5) or by blocking unwanted projects (this chapter). And finally, how residents were at the heart of the design of the OCO’s projects, the realisation of which is very dependent on the participation of residents. Therefore, when observing these elements, we can imagine that local citizens can be included in the list of factors that play an important role in this process of social learning and paradigm shift in the making, and that the impact of actors outside state structures can be stressed. In reality, we need to be cautious about this statement and make some due considerations. Although in Chap. 5 and earlier on in this chapter it was shown that resident protests, and more broadly the pressure of public opinion, contributed to the opening of a window to consider adding Careful Urban Renewal to the local agenda and to trigger a critique of urban renewal practices, it is hard to consider residents or citizens as ­‘integral parts’ of the local process of social learning. Surely, neither the central government nor local governments act in isolation from societal pressures. On the contrary, these are constantly being monitored, and the support of “civil society organisations” is often appreciated by the central and local governments (Teets 2013). However, in the case observed, pressures on behalf of citizens did not seem to figure as a decisive factor in the process analysed. Even if officials affirmed that they have to refine policies according to the financial capacities of residents and ask what preferences they have in housing renewal or in neighbourhood improvement,48 residents are mostly understood as being passive recipients of policies.

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Moreover, they are involved in the definition of standards for the local policies and of ideas for their neighbourhoods because the local government decided so. Government officials are not obliged to, however. Although laws and regulations in China contain specific tendencies that require citizen participation in many circumstances, in general, when they are not applied, “there is nobody that comes to sue you”, to borrow an expression used by an official when asked to talk about the existing legal tendencies in urban renewal. Moreover, mayors and party secretaries are not held responsible. Citizens are not the ones who decide about their career, at least not directly. What matters is the evaluation of provincial and above central government leaders. If upper-government echelons give orders via precise administrative fiats (for instance via the powerful hongtou wenjian – 红头文件, literally “red-headed documents”, that local leaders cannot ignore) to implement citizen participation in urban planning, local governments have to implement this imperative, some more enthusiastically than others, some more concretely and some more superficially. If, on the contrary, this attention of upper-government echelons on the topic of citizen participation and citizen satisfaction is missing or is given less relevance, nothing obliges the local government to let citizens participate or to simply listen to what they have to say when they protest. Cases of resident protests in front of demolitions are still portrayed by national and international press, especially in the case of projects of “slum clearing” currently diffused all over the country (Hancock 2019). No matter what the physical conditions of these compounds are  – whether in need of demolition or not – the practices adopted or allowed by local governments in these projects clash with the leitmotifs of the central government. These leitmotifs, such as “the person/people as principal concern (implied: of governmental action, of policies)” (yi ren wei ben – 以人为本), “put the person/people at the core” (yi ren wei zhongxin – 以人为中心) and “serve people” (fuwu laobaixing – 服务老百姓) hardly find translations in these numerous episodes of forced relocations. Thus, if observed against the understanding of Peter Hall (1993) when conceptualising social learning, considering citizens or the society at large as important constituents of the process of transfer, learning and translation narrated in this book must take these specificities into account. This does not mean that the ‘participated’ or ‘open to society’ forms of learning and translation analysed by this author or, for instance, by Wade Jacoby (2000), where the role of pressure groups and civil society associations is important in the definition of a policy, are completely absent in China.

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Literature on policymaking in China or on the activism of non-­ governmental actors has shown how governmental activity can actually be very porous to external influences (Farid 2015; Teets 2013; Wang 2008). There might also be quite different situations when considering different policy sectors. Nevertheless, the capacity of weighing of this ‘civil society’ is not comparable to its ‘equivalent’ in Western countries. When confronting the form of learning and translation analysed in Yangzhou with the conceptualisations offered by scholars about social learning and policy translation, the types of societal pressures by which politicians in democratic countries are withheld, which makes them particularly concerned about the ideas circulating in their electorates and in public opinion in general, are less relevant in this case. The case showed that the form of social learning and translation that occurred in Yangzhou was still very much business of the administration, although the latter was not insensitive to the needs of the base and did avail itself several times of external actors in the process of policy translation. However, these societal pressures, and occasionally these spaces for participation, had an impact because the administration allowed them to exist – and because the successful implementation of the policies required resident participation. By no means did officials feel obliged to make space for them – even though laws and regulations require the provision of some spaces for public participation. This aspect is demonstrated by a case described in this chapter in which residents, via protests and letters sent to the administration, asked to replace the mayor’s redevelopment project with a project that followed the idea of the OCO. Although it was impossible for the administration to agree to their request, because the mayor gave full throttle to carry out his projects, had it been possible to proceed with the mayor’s approval it would not have done it, because many officials were opposed to the idea. They estimated that the area was not worth preserving, even though the voices within the OCO and the Urban Planning Bureau were also different. Moreover, if in the end the mayor’s project was not carried out because of resident protests, this was mostly due to him being under upper-government echelons. No election in sight would have forced him to be careful to the electorate, because there is no electorate and those who decide about his career were above him on the hierarchy ladder. Thus, once more, hierarchy matters and defines the range of manoeuvre within which politicians and administrators act at different governmental levels. Hierarchy opens opportunities for learning, but also closes them very quickly.

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6.4.5  Learning Under Multiple Hierarchies To further stress this aspect, the work of William Campbell (2006) can also be referred to. Campbell focused on organisational learning within the multilevel structure of the Catholic Church. The Church represents a “dogmatic organisation” with “rigid rule structures” and a clearly identifiable hierarchy, and for Campbell these organisations “cannot learn for protracted periods of time”, as learning may put the principles valued by the same organisations at risk (ibid., p. 194). Moreover, learning in this type of organisation “seems more driven by principles and directives from above than knowledge and input from lower-level personnel” (ibid.). Finally, as dogmatic organisations value “principles (ideology)” better and are “less concerned about outcomes”, there results that “policy implementation and evaluation are inconsistent and the organisation is more likely to learn via leadership than by policy success and failure” (Campbell 2006, p. 179). Some of these observations can be applied to the case of Yangzhou. This chapter has shown how changes of city leadership, which follow the political criteria established by the central government, can substantially affect the learning process. The new city leadership, as elsewhere in China, valued most importantly the fact of leaving visible signs on the space by engaging in new development and redevelopment projects. The same was observable for the district leadership. Pursuing the principles of Careful Urban Renewal would not have allowed them to be particularly visible in the eyes of their superiors, be promoted or produce substantial increases of the local GDP. Moreover, with the departure of the leaders of the OCO, no top-level administrators dared talk in favour of a more careful approach to urban renewal. Talking directly to the mayor or the party secretary implied costs that many officials were not ready to pay, thus remaining silent and passive is the best strategy to follow. Moreover, even if officials in the OCO reflected upon what went right and what went wrong in the implementation of their policies, taking into consideration what they learnt in the interaction with the residents of the Old City, and proposing corrections, the mayor and the party secretary did not allow them to test whether those corrections were working better, and proceed via trial and error. Opportunities to learn and experiment again with new arrangements thus had to come from the upper levels, with a change of city or district leader, and even from above the city level, for instance in the form of directives of the central government or endorse-

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ments of the provincial government. It was observed that the concerns of the central government on the financial resources of local governments and their debt as well as on paying more attention to the conservation of heritage opened windows of opportunity for Careful Urban Renewal to find a place on the city or district government agenda and to be translated into policies, regulations, plans and concrete practices. In all of these examples it is possible to observe that principles and directives from above – be they above the departments at city level, above the administrative subdivisions of cities, at district level; or above the city level, at the provincial and central level – are main determinants for the opening of windows for policy learning. Recognising these aspects does not mean considering the role of local policy entrepreneurs as insignificant. Campbell recognises the importance of “middle managers” at the lower levels of an organisation, who wear “two organisational hats as a subordinate of the upper-most leadership within the organisational hierarchy and a superior for lower-level personnel” (ibid., p. 179) and who have a fundamental role “in information selection and reframing” (ibid., p. 195). However, their capacities to act and promote learning depends on their being empowered by authorities over their heads. Chapter 4 also underlined this aspect: the officials who collaborated with GTZ pointed out that many of the proposals made by foreign agents were already circulating in China, but they never had the chance to experiment with them because they were not entitled to do so. Their empowerment depended on the local political leadership willing to give officials the “imperial sword” to make policy experiments and draft new policies – as Chap. 5 presented; or on the directives sent by the central government, which are currently pushing local governments to be more careful to the local characteristics in the conduction of renewal projects, as pointed out in this chapter. Considering these aspects, the recommendation made by Chris Argyris (1999, cited in Campbell 2006, p. 179) that the analysis of organisational learning shall take into account what happens at different organisational levels and the interactions among these same levels is more than appropriate. For this reason, this study proposes to summarise the case of Yangzhou as a case of ‘learning under multiple hierarchies’, to take into account the fact that multiple levels of hierarchy play a fundamental role in opening or closing windows for policy learning. Local policy entrepreneurs – in this case administrative personnel – act according to the lines and directives imposed by their leaders (at district, city or upper levels), while taking into consideration local demands in the

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limits of what leaders concede them to do. Policy learning can take place, models coming from very far away can be translated and appropriated locally, but for this to happen it is very much dependent on the presence of proactive individuals in administrations and of spaces of action provided by the various levels of hierarchical power. Whether policy entrepreneurs can experiment or not with their ideas, and whether these ideas find opportunities for institutionalisation depends on the political leadership at different levels and on what this political leadership values most.

6.5   Conclusion This chapter looked at the most recent years of the transfer and translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou, visualising what awaited this concept once its main political supporter, the city party secretary Wang Yanwen, left Yangzhou to cover an important post in the administration of the Jiangsu province. It also looked at Careful Urban Renewal, or what Chap. 5 dubbed as the ‘conservation paradigm’, which did not live a long life. With the arrival of a new city leadership, the old redevelopment paradigm returned to dominate the local agenda, the mayor, the party secretary and the district leaders all respectively promoting projects that clearly departed from the principles, plans and policies established earlier in this decade. Thus, in 2015, all elements seemed to indicate that the transfer and translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou was nothing but a policy experiment, the fate of which was tied to that of its political supporters, as literature on policy experiments in China has widely demonstrated (Fewsmith 2013; Florini et al. 2012). No one could have expected its return. Positive signs for the OCO started to appear in the following years, with the emergence of new ­discourses at the central government level. In particular, this chapter has shown how the new messages sent by the national leaders, and the directives issued by the State Council, have forced local leaders to abandon their redevelopment plans, pressured also by the protests of residents. New administrative reorganisations then put at the top of decision-making centres – in particular at the district level – individuals willing to resume the work of the OCO, which allowed for a return of the conservation paradigm. This return was demonstrated by the fact that, in April and September 2018, the renewal projects conducted by the street offices bore the signature of the OCO. Their plans had been concocted already five years earlier by the ex-director of the OCO, one of the main policy entre-

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preneurs of the translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou, and painstakingly implemented by street offices after an initial phase of repudiation by the city and district leaders. With a change in district leadership, the providential financial support of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the political support of the provincial branch of the Ministry of Housing and Urban and Rural Development (MoHURD), upgrading works have resumed at a brisk pace. At the time of writing, the neighbourhoods interested in upgrading have significantly improved their aspect, while conserving a large part of their original population and of their vitality. In September 2018, the district government also launched a project to experiment again with subsidies to encourage households to renew their houses and participate in providing ideas for the neighbourhood. Although the OCO, in the meantime authoring new important documents for the Old City, did not agree with the line of the district, this new project can be considered a new phase for the experimentation and further translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou. Therefore, similarly to what was pointed out by Pierre Lascoumes and Patrick Le Gales (2009, p.  40) in their theoretical conceptualisation of policy implementation, the transfer and translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou can also be understood as a “more or less coherent project” that “might give birth to scattered appropriations”, which can be “followed by moments of refocusing, which are in turn discussed and reoriented”. Also drawing from literature on transfer and imitation (Jacoby 2000) and translation (Stone 2017; Lascoumes 1994, 1996), the chapter has underlined that similarly to what has been observed by this literature, there is no lavish imitation in this case either, but rather an adaptation of the foreign model, which goes through several metamorphoses and phases of trial and error. These aspects are markers of a substantially uncertain policy process that has been produced, in turn, by many factors. To identify these factors, this chapter has especially resorted to the recommendations of Pierre Lascoumes and Patrick Le Gales (2009) to analyse and understand the process of policy transfer, learning and translation. The analysis lingered on the interaction that exists between the hierarchy of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese state, and other important factors such as laws and regulations, individual attitudes, preferences and interests, administrative customs, departmental interests, and finally the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed. It has stressed the important dimension of political power in the

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opening (or closing) of opportunities for policy learning, as also evidenced by literature on organisational learning (Brown and Kenney 2006). In particular, the latter showed that because of their political power, leaders can “impose new paradigms and understandings” as well as “persuasively teach and lead organisations to embrace new ideas” (ibid., p. 17). These arguments can be perfectly applied to the case analysed, which has shown how the circulation of new discourses at the central government level and the issuing of new state directives has pushed local politicians to abandon their redevelopment projects. It is now pushing the administration to pay careful attention to a series of primary aspects for the rooting of Careful Urban Renewal in the policies of local governments – such as the application of laws and regulations, citizen participation and the preservation of neighbourhoods with their buildings and the people that inhabit them, et cetera. Although it is still too early to talk about a paradigm shift in Peter Hall’s (1993) terms, as the signs originating from the central government are contradictory and certain fundamental reforms for a paradigm shift to happen are missing, the conditions are currently favourable for a further implementation and translation of Careful Urban Renewal. For the particular features of learning and translation observed here, an equation of this case as an example of learning within a “dogmatic organisation” (Campbell 2006) seemed particularly pertinent. Indeed, it has been possible to evidence that, similarly to other dogmatic organisations, learning and translation were surely attributable to specific individuals capable of selecting information and beliefs, synthesising them and communicating them, but also of creating new approaches matching with the local principles and practices of action. However, if these or policy entrepreneurs could launch a process of policy learning and translation, it is because they have been empowered by their superiors to do so. Thus, the hierarchical principle predominates in the opening or closing of windows of opportunity for policy learning. In particular, it has been observed that the opening of windows for policy learning depended on multiple hierarchies, which encompass leaderships at different levels of the Chinese state and of the CCP. These different leaderships play an important role “in facilitating or deterring effective learning”, as “lower-level personnel usually lack the ability to implement lessons learning without the support or acquiescence of organisational leaders” (Brown 2006, p.  258). The facts analysed in this chapter thus present complex characteristics and stress the importance of many factors

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in the explanation, among which hierarchy, political power and individuals (political and administrative leaders). They show how an attentive and careful study of local situations – in this case of a city in China – can reveal a situation that can be explained only through the consideration of several dimensions. This last remark is made in resonance to some points made in Chap. 1, where it was stressed that focusing exclusively on cultural aspects does not represent the best strategy to analyse the outcomes of policy transfers – no matter the context analysed. As a matter of fact, the facts described and analysed in this chapter share many characteristics with what has been observed by scholars who focused on policy transfers and policy learning in other countries. These observations do not imply forgetting the specificities of the context and painting the situation with a broad brush. However, references to this literature has helped get rid of those theses that attribute the outcomes and characteristics of policy processes in China to a presumed traditional, unique Chinese culture, which would explain the specificity of the behaviour of Chinese public agents as well as the way in which transfers of foreign knowledge take place. On the contrary, as this case has demonstrated, processes of policy transfer, learning and translation in a Chinese city can be the result of a complex intertwining of factors which sometimes present similarities with processes in other contexts situated in other countries.

Notes 1. Interviews 2015. 2. Interviews 2015. 3. Interview 2015. 4. Interview 2015. 5. Interview 2014. 6. Interview 2015. 7. Interviews 2014, 2015. 8. Interview 2014. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Interview 2015. 12. Interviews 2018. 13. Interview 2015. 14. Ibid. 15. Interviews 2018.

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16. Interviews 2018. 17. Interview 2018. 18. Interviews 2015. 19. Interview 2015. 20. Interviews 2015, 2018. 21. Fieldwork observations. 22. Interview 2015. 23. Free translation from French. 24. Interviews 2015. 25. Interviews 2018. 26. Free translation from Chinese. 27. Interviews 2018. 28. Interviews 2018. 29. Interviews 2018. 30. Interviews 2014, 2015. 31. Interview 2018. 32. Interviews 2015, 2018. 33. Interviews 2015, 2018. 34. Interviews 2018. 35. Interview 2014. 36. Interview 2015. 37. Interview 2014. 38. Interviews 2015. 39. Interview 2014. 40. Ibid. 41. Interviews 2014, 2015. 42. Interview 2015. 43. Ibid. 44. Interviews 2014. 45. Interviews 2014. 46. Interview 2015. 47. Interview 2014. 48. Interviews 2015, 2018.

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Hsing, Y.  T. (2010). The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Huang, D. (2017). How Do People Get Engaged in Civic Participation? A Case Study of Citizen Activism in Rebuilding Enning Road, Guangzhou. Chinese Journal of Sociology, 3(2), 237–267. Jacoby, W. (2000). Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany. New York: Cornell University Press. Lascoumes, P. (1994). L’éco-pouvoir. Environnements et politiques. Paris: La Découverte. Lascoumes, P. (1996). Rendre gouvernable: de la ‘traduction’ au ‘transcodage’: l’analyse des processus de changement dans les réseaux d’action publique. In CURAPP (Ed.), La Gouvernabilité (pp. 325–338). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Lascoumes, P., & Le Galès, P. (2009). Sociologie de l’action publique – 2e édition. Paris: Armand Colin. Li, S., & Siu, Y. (2001). Residential Mobility and Urban Restructuring Under Market Transition: A Study of Guangzhou, China. The Professional Geographer, 53(2), 219–229. Logan, J.  R., Fang, Y., & Zhang, Z. (2009). The Winners in China’s Urban Housing Reform. Housing Studies, 25(1), 101–117. Lu, X. (2000). Booty Socialism, Bureaupreneurs, and the State in Transition: Organizational Corruption in China. Comparative Politics, 32(3), 273–294. Mayntz, R. (1982 [1978]). Sociologia dell’amministrazione pubblica. Bologna: Il Mulino [Italian translation of the original: Soziologie des öffentlichen Verwaltung. Heidelberg: Müller Juristischer Verlag]. Qiu, B. (2014). Fengyu rupan: lishi wenhua minggcheng baohu 30 nian. Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press. Schön, D.  A., & Rein, M. (1994). Frame Reflection. Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies. New  York: Basic Books, Harper Collins Publisher. Sorace, C., & Hurst, W. (2016). China’s Phantom Urbanisation and the Pathology of Ghost Cities. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 46(2), 304–322. Stone, D. (2017). Understanding the Transfer of Policy Failure: Bricolage, Experimentalism and Translation. Policy & Politics, 45(1), 55–70. Su, X. (2015). Urban Entrepreneurialism and the Commodification of Heritage in China. Urban Studies, 52(15), 2874–2889. Taylor, J. R. (2015). The China Dream Is an Urban Dream: Assessing the CPC’s National New-Type Urbanisation Plan. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 20(107), 107–120. Teets, J.  C. (2013). Let Many Civil Societies Bloom: The Rise of Consultative Authoritarianism in China. The China Quarterly, 213, 19–38.

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Wang, S. (2008). Changing Models of China’s Policy Agenda Setting. Modern China, 34(1), 56–87. Wu, F. (2004). Residential Relocation Under Market-Oriented Redevelopment: The Process and Outcomes in Urban China. Geoforum, 35(4), 453–470. Xi, J. (2017, November 27). Xi Jinping zai Zhongyang chengshi gongzuo huiyi shang fabiao zhongyao jianghua. Xinhua Agency. http://www.kunlunce.com/ xjpxjp/2017-11-27/121160.html. Accessed 25 Mar 2019. Xinhua. (2013, December 10). GDP Not the Only Benchmark, But Still Important. China Daily USA. http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-12/10/content_17165245.htm. Accessed 22 Sept 2016. Zhou, X. (2010). The Institutional Logic of Collusion Among Local Governments in China. Modern China, 36(1), 46–78. Zhou, X., Yun, A., & Hong, L. (2012). The Limit of Bureaucratic Power in Organisations: The Case of the Chinese Bureaucracy. In D.  Golsorkhi & D.  Courpasson (Eds.), Rethinking Power in Organizations, Institutions and Markets (pp. 81–111). Bradford: Emerald Group Publishing.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

7.1   What Have We Learnt About the Transfer of Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou? Many things remain to be written about the sort of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou, as projects are ongoing, leaders at the different levels of the urban hierarchy (from the city to the street office) are still in place, the OCO still exists and new city regulations dedicated to protecting the Old City have been established. Moreover, as Chap. 6 presented, the incumbent President Xi Jinping has made a speech in defence of China’s traditional cities and of their traditional landscapes and against the established practices of local leaders to wipe off traces of the past to promote economic development and gain prestige. This speech  – and  its consequences – have an impact on local practices, forcing local decision-makers to think twice before undertaking redevelopment projects.1 Therefore, as it was possible to show throughout this study, something is changing, albeit not always straightforwardly. The plans and approaches through which Careful Urban Renewal was translated are somehow carried out following certain procedures embedded in laws and regulations, but this happens intermittently, following the opening or closing of windows of opportunity. It is difficult to say how long this current window will remain open, but for now the signs are positive, showing that the Yangzhou administration is willing to proceed with its experimentations. Therefore, this study has demonstrated that a model developed in a very distant and different setting like a German city can find a useful © The Author(s) 2020 G. C. Romano, Changing Urban Renewal Policies in China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36008-5_7

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a­pplication in another very distant and different setting like that of a Chinese city. As suggested by Jean-François Bayart (1996), models and policy ideas can travel anywhere in the world and can be appropriated and emulated by different policymakers who act in very different political contexts, very different administrative settings and very different societal conditions, no matter how strong the differences are that exist between a model’s place of origin and its place of reception. Models can be locally adapted and translated  – especially when they are theorised into clearly understandable messages that facilitate their communication and understanding (Strang and Meyer 1993). The results of adaptation and translation are sometimes more or less desirable ‘policy patchworks’, where transferred ideas are combined and assembled with lessons learnt elsewhere, shaped to conform to commands coming from above, and ‘trimmed’, ‘rounded’ or even ‘cut in half’ if not refused in the process of negotiation with affected interests and policy opponents. This study has also put forward the concept of ‘learning under multiple hierarchies’ to characterise the process of policy learning and policy making in Yangzhou. It has shown how the particular institutional system of the local government in China, subject to different sources of hierarchical power, has an impact on the local process of policy learning. This process is characterised by an intermittent opening and closing of ‘windows for policy learning’, in turn dependent on the political willingness (or lack of it) of different actors (individuals or organisations) situated at different levels of the hierarchy of the Chinese State and of the Chinese Communist Party. This particular configuration limits the capacities of the learning process to support paradigmatic changes, as well as to root certain approaches and certain principles in the local policy for urban renewal. Learning and change are taking place in Yangzhou, but they are characterised by uncertainties, U-turns, and by a lack of other supporting reforms that shall be introduced by other levels of the Chinese state. This characterisation of the outcomes of policy transfer and policy learning as policy patchworks, and of the local process of policy learning as learning under multiple hierarchies, are the results of the specific focus adopted by this research. Following Richard Rose (1993), the leading research question interrogated how foreign knowledge was used in another setting, asking what happens when a concept developed in one specific setting is put into effect in another, whether it finds fertile soil, and whether it is capable of performing in this second setting. Moreover, following the recent literature on policy transfers (Hadjiisky et al. 2017), the

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study also focused on identifying the micro-dynamics of policy transfer, looking at what produced certain policy outcomes and what the characteristics of the process were. In answering these questions, it was possible not only to detect some of the characteristics of the case studied, but also to draw some lessons (or clarifications) to feed our general understanding of policy transfers. These elements will be summarised next, paying particular attention to point out the lessons learnt with this study. To present them, the chapter was developed in dialogue with a recent literature on policy transfer analysis as introduced in Chap. 1, and in particular with an article written by David Dolowitz (2017). The chapter then concludes by highlighting some of the ‘Chinese specificities’ that can be drawn from this study – in response to a concern introduced in Chap. 1. To be clear, though, this research had no intention of seizing the specificities of the Chinese administration and of its culture (provided that there exists a unique one), which represent distinct objects of analysis supported by specific research questions that were not encompassed by this study. Instead, the study highlights some elements and pinpoints areas for further analysis. Nonetheless, when making these considerations, it is important to keep in mind that “no administration is monolithic and that civil servants are not homogeneous in their profile as well as in their functions” (Olivier de Sardan 2004, p. 143).2 For this reason, more refined and detailed surveys on circumscribed situations are necessary to understand the characteristics of public administrations, of policy learning and policy transfer in whatever country is analysed.

7.2   Drawing Some Lessons from This Case Study At the end of his article, in the section called Where do we go from here?, David Dolowitz (2017, p.  50) makes a series of suggestions to further improve our understanding of policy transfers. He underlines that the existing literature often overlooks the factors that explain how foreign knowledge is used and for what purposes. As was clearly pointed out in the introduction, this is very true of transfers to China, as research on the role of foreign knowledge in inspiring domestic reforms in this country has been limited (Zhang and Marsh 2016; Christensen et  al. 2008). When looking closely at the case of the transfer of Careful Urban Renewal to Yangzhou, the characteristics of the policy process and of knowledge utilisation seem to describe a ‘textbook case’ situation when compared to what

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has been written by policy transfer analysts. The case has shown that, packaged or theorised (Strang and Meyer 1993) in a series of lessons and policy solutions by the German cooperation agency GTZ, Careful Urban Renewal very slowly made its way onto the local political agenda. Together with other knowledge, it was later used to inspire the preparation of studies and policies that aim at promoting a reform of urban renewal policies and practices in Yangzhou. GTZ initially found the support of a group of engaged administrators willing to experiment with its proposals; but in order to do so, foreign agents had to wait for the ‘green light’ of local political leaders, something that could not be taken for granted (cf. Chap. 4). In the early 2000s, the mayor of Yangzhou, was very keen to promote redevelopment operations (cf. Chap. 3). Even if he initially supported GTZ agents, he was later disappointed to discover that the collaboration had only produced studies and reports. The situation changed when he became party secretary and when another political leader was appointed mayor. With the support of this new mayor and the presence of GTZ and domestic experts, the locally engaged administrators could use foreign knowledge as a “weapon”  – borrowing from Dolowitz (2017, p. 46) – to legitimise ideas and positions that were already circulating in the administration and that had already (unsuccessfully) been advocated. On this specific point, Chap. 4 pointed to the importance of covering specific positions in the administrative hierarchy, as low-level bureaucrats could hardly make policy proposals without finding interested superiors in their departments. Similarly, departmental directors could not easily advocate for policy solutions if their direct superiors – the mayor and the party secretary – had no interest in allocating time and resources to a specific issue. This point was also underlined in the chapters that followed, which stressed and specified the role of hierarchy, or better of multiple hierarchies, in fostering or hindering policy learning. Therefore, as David Dolowitz (2017) and many authors who have focused on learning and change within organisations revealed (e.g. Delpeuch and Vassileva 2010; Crozier and Friedberg 1977; Mayntz 1982 [1978]), hierarchy and power matter in the process of policy learning and knowledge utilisation. Stressing this particular aspect, Chap. 4 drew from the theorisation offered by Leann Brown (2006) when pointing out the conditions that facilitate learning in organisations, and verified whether similar conditions also appeared in Yangzhou.

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This chapter showed that, in the case of Yangzhou, it was possible to retrace these conditions, from the presence of interested local administrators and the existence of a knowledge base to the presence of “specific competencies and processes of acquiring, articulating and enhancing knowledge” and of “decentralised, flexible organisational structures and procedures that encourage self-examination and openness to negative feedback and innovation” (ibid., p.  25). In particular, the ‘duo’ GTZ-­ locally engaged administrators performed in a way that enabled establishing these conditions. The locally engaged administrators, or “endogenous forces of mutation” (Stone 2012) were surely bearers of what Leann Brown (2006) calls an “existing knowledge base”. Then, the window of opportunity opened by the mayor’s green light and the inauguration of a GTZ office within the Urban Planning Bureau of Yangzhou offered the chance to develop specific competencies of acquiring and enhancing knowledge. It also provided the opportunity to create a particular organisational structure for the Yangzhou administration to acquire knowledge and proceed to a detailed examination of the situation. Finally, this duo promoted experimenting with foreign knowledge based on which the Yangzhou administration could have decided to develop policies and change its own approach to urban renewal. However, as described by Dolowitz (2017, p. 46), if given the chance foreign knowledge makes its way into new political systems very slowly and in stages. Moreover, as pointed out by Claire Colomb (2007), it is very hard for cooperation projects to lead to actual transfers, let alone to policy change. Confirming its characteristics of a textbook case, the adoption of Careful Urban Renewal was not straightforward either, but needed a policy window to open to enter the local agenda and have an impact on local urban renewal policies. As a matter of fact, Chap. 5 described that while GTZ experimented with its model, the party secretary went ahead with the realisation of a redevelopment project whose methods were diametrically opposed to those advocated by GTZ and the locally engaged administrators. Thus, for a couple of years, foreign ideas were “held in limbo”-to take the expression used by David Dolowitz (2017, p. 49)-until a policy window opened. Chapter 5 retraced the process that led to the opening of a policy window, following John Kingdon’s Multiple Stream Framework (2003 [1984]). It showed that the establishment of a new window to further learn and adapt Careful Urban Renewal happened through a series of events and developments that were easily described by resorting to what

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Kingdon has called the “problem stream”, the “policy stream” and the “political stream”. The factors that allowed for the opening of a policy window were: (1) the administrative reshuffling and the establishment of a new organisation to protect the Old City; (2) budgetary restrictions and reproaches of the central government to control local debt; (3) project failures; (4) the emergence of debates within the administration and local ‘parliamentary’ assemblies; (5) affected residents’ protests; and (6) the presence of policy solutions at hand (GTZ proposals). Then, thanks to the convergence of these streams, the Yangzhou city government put searching for a new approach to urban renewal on its policy agenda and allowed its policy entrepreneurs, who in part were the same agents who worked on the GTZ project, to proceed with new studies and experimentation. Chapter 5 focused on identifying what happened to foreign knowledge once it passed into the hands of local policy entrepreneurs. On this point Dolowitz (2017, p. 46) writes that it is very likely that original information was transformed “in some way” to make it fit the agents’ “world view” “using the knowledge” or their “political-cultural-ideological needs”. Moreover, he writes that agents are very likely to have used this knowledge “in fairly selective ways”. Similar points can be also found in de Jong’s (2013) analysis of policy transfers to China. According to this author, Chinese decision-makers adopt foreign ideas on the basis of “national self-interest”, of their political agenda and of technical merits. This means that the “theoretical robustness” of Western concepts and international “economic and political ideals” do not really matter. As a result, we observe cherry-picking and selectiveness, which lead to incomplete, partial transfers. Surely, in the process of policy learning and policy translation, Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs used this knowledge selectively, for instance when they were dealing with local understandings and capacities in the definition of policies for the Old City. Chapter 5 proposed, for instance, the example of the translation of the standard for subsidies for private housing, which was very simplified compared to the initial proposal made by GTZ. This example demonstrates the importance of fitting local capacities with local working procedures, which may be different in depending on where a policy originates and where a policy is adopted. Local practices and local beliefs also mattered. A very banal example can be found in the ad hoc procedures that were to be discussed with residents whenever these were engaged in urban renewal projects. Due to local vernacular beliefs and to the particularly conflictual situations that

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often exist between neighbours in the Old City, local administrators had to develop specific strategies to come to agreements and proceed with urban renewal. For this reason, the official policy documents specifying the procedures of participating in housing renewal are also quite loosely worded so that the handling of these varied situations was flexible. So too were the official policy documents that regulated urban renewal, which also wanted to avoid the constraints of regulations that were too restrictive. That could have been risky for administrators if they did not act within their boundaries  – something that happens quite frequently, as many interviews revealed. When analysing the attempts made by Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs to transpose the GTZ proposals into policy documents, it was also possible to observe, as David Dolowitz (2017, p.  49) writes, that “institutional constraints” interfered with the “desire and ability” of these policy entrepreneurs “to introduce data on foreign policies into the policy process”. Chapter 5 provided the example of the creation of the Old City Office and of the difficulties in doing so according to what GTZ and the Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs had advocated. The subdivision of competences, established by law by the central government, set serious obstacles in front of the implementation of their proposal, while departmental interests hindered attempts at pursuing pilot solutions. Another example, not described in any chapter, related to the drafting of a policy for the use of historical buildings and heritage buildings. Following GTZ recommendations, local policy entrepreneurs developed new ideas that could not be embedded in local policy documents due to the fact that national law, issued almost 40 years ago, prevented it in the name of the protection of heritage. Institutional constraints sometimes functioned as triggers for learning or for the adoption of specific measures. Chapter 5 in particular presented how the injunctions of the central government to control and curb local governments’ debt forced the administration in Yangzhou to find alternative ways to fund renewal projects, while reducing their costs and ambition. These calls, which dwindled into specific temporary policies issued by the State Council and central regulatory agencies, forced local leaders to slow construction projects down and focus on less costly interventions. More recently, as introduced in Chap. 6, the local government in Yangzhou considered these calls to protect China’s traditional cities, with all their streets and particular way of life, to be an endorsement to their approach. It also considered them to be a warning in case any mayor or party s­ ecretary

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wished to make other U-turns and force the administration to carry out new disruptive redevelopment projects. In his article, David Dolowitz (ibid., p. 48) offers also a theorisation of the outcomes of policy transfers as the result of combinations of ideas and policies coming from different systems, finally resulting in a ‘new’ policy that presents some similarities with the ideas transferred. By analysing the different forces that had an impact on the policy learning and translation process as well as the different sources of inspiration for Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs, this theorisation also perfectly applies to this case. Both Chaps. 5 and 6 underlined how, in the process of defining a set of policies to reform urban renewal in Yangzhou, the local policy entrepreneurs  – who changed during the process – were inspired by different sources, be they other cities in China or in other countries. The two chapters also showed that, as various policies were discussed among Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs, other “actors and institutions” came “to the table, bringing in different collections of knowledge, interests, motivations and goals” – borrowing David Dolowitz’s words (ibid.). These different collections of knowledge, interests, motivations and goals had a significant impact on the outcomes of the policy translation process. Competing interests, in turn connected to the practices of “patrimonial officialdom” as described by many scholars (first Max Weber – cf. Bafoil 2010), put significant hurdles to establish new policies or to adopt specific administrative arrangements. These confrontations either reached a compromise or simply amounted to nothing, leaving certain policy problems unresolved – or solved, according to the ‘old fashion’ which was not particularly friendly to final users (cf. Chap. 6). Chapter 6 also illustrated that, despite stalling in the learning process, the translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou, continued to exist and, borrowing again from David Dolowitz’s words (2017, p. 48), it was “further altered and modified as new ideas (some transferred some indigenous)” started mixing with it. The decision-making power for the Old City shifted in the hands of district governments and of their subordinate administrations, the Street Offices. As these administrative organs are also bearers of other knowledge, interests, motivations and goals, their interpretations of Careful Urban Renewal do not necessarily follow the instructions of the Old City Office. However, the latter continued to act as policy advisor, and its policies and plans continued to guide, in one way or another, the projects conducted by the Street Offices. All in all, it can be said that Street Offices add new

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content to their urban renewal approach, even though it is in the form of little changes, as also observed by David Dolowitz (ibid.). They also experiment with the concepts elaborated by the OCO, which are now probably only used in a ‘symbolic fashion’, as OCO officials are not sure that the leaders of these offices share the same intentions. Nevertheless, as pointed out in Chap. 6, it is still too early to say anything about these new developments. It is also too early to determine whether the type of change being witnessed resembles third order changes. Surely, when looking at the contents of the policies, plans and arrangements introduced by the OCO, it is clear that the type of changes produced did not only touch upon instruments or their settings, but involved the goals of urban renewal. In particular, as exposed in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5, urban renewal and the conservation of the Old City shifted from its touristic and commercial focus to a conservative approach, taking into account local residents’ wishes and the characteristics of the place. The development of these ideas did not happen overnight. Rather, their origins can be retraced well back to the 1980s (and even earlier), when international ideas about the conservation of old cities entered the intellectual community in China and mixed with local knowledge and local sensibilities (cf. Qiu 2014; Zhang 2003). These ideas were translated into policy documents, laws and regulations and were occasionally experimented on in China (cf. Wu 1999). However, they never managed to develop strong roots mainly because of political developments. The case of Yangzhou in particular has shown that despite the issuing of legally binding plans and regulations for the comprehensive protection of the Old City, the new mayor did not feel obliged to follow any of those legal documents. Instead, he turned his back on them. It is only when the central government started instructing local governments to be mindful of citizen protests and of protecting old cities that local leaders in Yangzhou felt obliged to abandon their plans. And it is also only when the district government changed its leaders and obtained support of other levels of the government (provincial and central) that experiments with Careful Urban Renewal could be pursued. For this reason, as was pointed out in Chap. 6, it is not sure whether Yangzhou is on the road to a paradigm shift of urban renewal. Some reforms that would support such a change are still missing, so what is currently in place can be better dubbed as a “potential shift of frame”, borrowing from Donald Schön and Martin Rein (1994). For such a shift to become ‘real’, other reforms are needed, and from the Yangzhou government’s perspective, the central government has to

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initiate them. The reason for this is that they touch on the fundamental distribution of fiscal resources between the central government and local governments, on the role that laws and regulations play in guiding administrative work, and on other important reforms that shall regulate the behaviours of the administration and punish improper practices. Competences to decide about these issues are surely attributed to the State Council and the ministries of the central government, as well as to provincial governments, therefore the local learning process and its outcomes are highly dependent on what happens at other levels of the hierarchy of the Chinese state.

7.3   How Does This Case Contribute to Develop Further Knowledge About the Micro-Dynamics of Policy Transfers? Once more, the section called Where do we go from here? in David Dolowitz’s (2017) article proves useful for drawing lessons from the Yangzhou case. This part introduces what the case can contribute to the understanding of policy transfers – and in particular their micro-dynamics. Earlier on, the outcomes of the translation of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou were qualified as policy patchworks, stressing that these patchworks constitute more or less desirable results. As has been pointed out, transferred ideas are combined and assembled with lessons learnt elsewhere and are shaped also to follow commands from above, as was clear in the examples given earlier. Moreover, during the process of policy translation, policy proposals are either only slightly modified or are extremely so, if not refused in the process of reaching compromises with affected interests and policy opponents. In this understanding, power plays an important role, which can be attributed to vertical lines of command or allocated to other administrative actors who compete at local level. In this conceptualisation of policy patchworks, the aspects of possibility and capacity are particularly important, as policy outcomes are rarely only exclusively products of deliberate choices made in the process of policy learning. Thus, in the recent definition proposed by David Dolowitz (ibid., pp. 47–48) about policy transfers, it is perhaps feasible to further emphasise the questions of the possibility and capacity to promote certain policies. If there is something that the Yangzhou case highlights, it is precisely to pay particular attention to the possibilities and capacities that

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policy borrowers have to introduce new ideas and reform local policies, as well as to focus on the aspects of conflict and competition. As a matter of fact, what is told in this analysis clearly identifies these aspects and explains that changes, be they in policies or in administrative arrangements, were often far from assuming the form desired by local policy reformers. Rather, arrangements and compromises, whenever made, often led to the lowest common denominator, because the local government has limited competences, because it does not have enough supporting personnel and knowledge, or because certain departments and agencies at the local level blocked certain proposals. In other cases, it was not possible to bring about any substantial change, for instance when reformers tried to propose alternative approaches for the renewal of public housing, or when national laws hindered local innovation. These cases also meant that when selectiveness was observed, it did not only derive from the deliberate choices of policy entrepreneurs. Instead, it was the product of conflicts and competitive visions about the definition of policy problems and the required solutions. Or it was the product of what the local government was actually permitted to do. Dolowitz (ibid., p. 46) writes that local agents transform foreign knowledge “to fit their ‘world view’” and use this knowledge “in fairly selective ways”. What is important to specify here is that selectiveness, and probably the connection of foreign proposals with local world views, might not always be the desirable outcome for policy entrepreneurs. The interviews with Yangzhou policy entrepreneurs often showed that their intentions were much more ambitious than what they could actually achieve, and that there was no substantial incompatibility between the proposals made by GTZ and what they could have actually implemented had they had the chance. Indeed, whenever the opportunity arose, they made policy proposals that looked like ‘copy and paste’ translations of GTZ’s own proposals, for instance in the aspect of resident participation. This is based on the fact that the policy proposal produced by the OCO on the aspect of resident participation used the same formula and points as GTZ’s recommendations. Thus, to complement the definition proposed by David Dolowitz, the outcomes of transfers may not only be the result of various sources of inspiration, different learning experiences and processes involving a number of policymakers, but it could also be the lowest common denominator resulting from fights due to competing interests, goals and visions, and from the interaction with power structures. These considerations are all in the development of Dolowitz’s conceptualisation but, as this case s­ uggests,

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more emphasis should perhaps be given to them, stressing the aspects of possibility, capacity, and the challenges to transfer, learn and translate. In this respect, the conceptualisation of policy translation, as proposed by Pierre Lascoumes (1994, 1996), proved very useful and complementary to the understanding of policy transfers. In particular, it theorised the difficulties of policy translation when complex policies are developed (e.g. environmental protection policies or urban policies). These policies combine different knowledge and different competences, overlap several policy sectors and sometimes have difficulty defining their content. Conflicts exist when attributing responsibilities – as several sectors of the administration overlap – and defining policy problems and policy targets, as well as when establishing policy objectives, instruments, etc. As such, the concept of transcoding helps develop awareness about these various obstacles, in turn connected to the nature of specific policies and the intrinsic difficulties of public action. The concept offered by Pierre Lascoumes also encourages shifting the focus of analysis onto various sources of influence in the process of policy translation – and in particular in the aspect of knowledge utilisation. These encompass the role of intermediaries as well as that of the audience of policies, without whom it is not possible to ensure their introduction or implementation. As for the intermediaries, they have an important function in collecting knowledge, bridging different actors or networks that previously used to work autonomously, and “confronting, piecing together, integrating and putting in circulation information” Lascoumes (1996, pp. 334–337).3 To do so, intermediaries draw on various activities, such as “collecting together scattered information (social, technical, economic and normative), realising expertise reports, mediating between crisis situations, organisation of colloquia, etc.” Thanks to their action, a moment can follow where new questions, problems and projects of public action are developed on the basis of the information and knowledge produced. In particular, Lascoumes indicates that for a specific issue to find answers in public action and trigger political decisions, it has to be reformulated into a policy problem. For this to happen, the actors involved in the translation process have to produce specific knowledge about an issue, and when they propose specific policy solutions and actions, they have to mobilise knowledge and find legitimation to their proposals. In this respect, the activity of intermediaries is very important. Chapter 4 suggested that the activities conducted by GTZ could be understood as that

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of an intermediary, allowing for interaction among different networks (that of the city administration, of foreign expertise, of domestic expertise, etc.), and for diffusing new knowledge. To appeal to the local government, GTZ worked as an intermediary organisation using its pooling of expertise, its diagnoses, its possibility to reach out to the top city leadership and to various departments that did not often collaborate, and the important resources that it had at its disposal. As such, GTZ contributed to launching a discussion on existing practices, policies and experiments. Moreover, it offered a channel for local administrators to advocate for change and convince the city leadership to test new ideas on the ground. In this respect, it supported advocacy with information and studies and by reaching out to renowned experts in China that could help plead their cause. This contribution is not negligible, especially in countries where political and bureaucratic structures may significantly hinder the transmission of knowledge and the proposal of new policies. It is also significant when confronted with the important question of what administrations do to deal with complex issues when in-house competences are lacking and when collecting and providing information for policymaking is an expensive business. Therefore, in the basket of important actors involved in the process of policy learning, transfer and translations, special attention has to be paid to the role of intermediary organisations (if present) and to their capacity to overcome certain barriers that exist in policy learning processes. As for the audience of policies, looking at this aspect stresses the importance of actors outside the state structures for policy learning and policy translation. This acknowledgement is also found in the social learning definition provided by Peter Hall, who suggests looking beyond state structures to enhance our understanding of policy learning. Therefore, taking the recent conceptualisation that David Dolowitz (2017, p.  48) offers on policy transfers and policy learning as a starting point, it is possible to specify that in the list of “new actors and institutions” coming “to the table, bringing in different collections of knowledge, interests, motivations and goals” there is a great variety of non-state actors, including the public. Presumably, this definition already encompasses various non-state actors, very probably in the form of epistemic communities, foreign and domestic policy advisors, organisations or associations for the defence of certain interests or for policy advocacy. Nevertheless, depending on the type of policy analysed and on which specific moment in time the process of policy transfer, learning and

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t­ranslation is observed, unorganised citizens can be added to the list. These citizens who, simply by ignoring or disregarding certain policies, are able to push policymakers towards introducing corrections, perhaps operating “first order” or “second order changes” (Hall 1993) in the settings of policy instruments or in the instruments adopted to implement a policy. Despite the fact that these non-state actors do not directly sit at the policymaking table, they can launch clear signals and force those who can design policies to reconsider them if they want to ensure their implementation. Signals can also be launched via more active forms of citizen participation, either when the administration offers space for the purpose, or when citizens invite themselves via protests. In one way or another, these ‘invited’ or these ‘self-carved spaces of participation’ are also able to provide policymakers with “different collections of knowledge, interests, motivations and goals”, borrowing David Dolowitz’s (2017) words. This is especially true when their own goal is that of promoting policies, the implementation of which necessarily depends on the participation or collaboration of the wider public. These aspects were clearly visible in the case of Yangzhou, where the successful implementation of Careful Urban Renewal depended on how citizens received it. The Old City Office’s objective was to promote a long-term process of urban renewal by encouraging the residents of the Old City to participate. In this concept, residents agree to renovate their houses and participate in consultations concerning the priorities of upgrading their neighbourhoods. However, as was shown in Chaps. 5 and 6, it was actually very difficult to encourage Yangzhou residents to participate. The administrations that are currently leading urban renewal projects are experimenting with new approaches and new subsidy standards to involve residents, conscious that the standards proposed by the Old City Office are not sufficient to encourage people to renovate houses. Thus, obtaining feedback from residents is fundamental in the process of knowledge utilisation, in order to learn new lessons and operate further changes in policy to ensure its implementation. Remaining on this aspect of societal acceptance, the last part of Chap. 6 opened a parenthesis concerning the specificity of the case studied. Even if it is clear that actors outside of state structures – including common citizens – were offered participation spaces to somehow contribute to how policy proposals were shaped, it is worth stressing that this was possible because the administration had the intention to do so (and the foreign model required it for its implementation). This aspect underlines the

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importance of considering the specific conditions for policy transfers and social learning in non-democratic regimes, as the avenues offered for public opinion, citizens associations, epistemic communities, etc. to really matter in the process of policy learning and knowledge utilisation can be restrained when compared to democratic countries (Morgan 2006). This point about the ‘specific conditions’ also suggests looking at the different functions that institutions play in different political regimes, for instance, as it has been done in this particular case, the relationship between laws and administrative action. The case of Yangzhou in particular highlighted the fact that actual translations of Careful Urban Renewal into plans, regulations and policies quickly turned into ‘waste paper’ with the change of city leadership. This aspect encourages reflecting upon the continuity of the learning and translation process as well as on the persistency and rooting of certain institutions. As a matter of fact, this case has pointed out that the particular politico-administrative structures of the local government in China do not always allow for such rooting to happen. In a field like urban development, administrative fiats (from the local, central or provincial governments) are more important than laws and regulations, which means that a sudden change in policy can wreak havoc to years of effort and fighting – and to the life of many citizens. This aspect is not secondary, because it forces us to interrogate the possibilities for paradigmatic changes to happen in regimes (and in policy sectors) where “the culmination of a range of learning experiences and processes involving the utilisation of both hard and soft lessons” (Dolowitz 2017, p. 48) cannot really be taken for granted. To underline this aspect, it is possible to cite an example extracted from an evaluation of the experiences of eco-city development in China conducted by the Chinese Society for Urban Studies (CSUS). The CSUS is a national, non-profit academic organisation that involves government agencies, notably the Ministry for Housing and Urban and Rural Development (MoHURD). Noticing the presence of many problems in these experiments of eco-city development, the evaluation reported that in the past some local governments had already had opportunities to experiment with many ideas and to engage in learning processes. However, it was noted that they do not “remember” much of the lessons they had previously learnt in the direction of urban sustainability (Qiu 2012, p. 118). One of the main reasons provided for such a lack of memory was what their interviewees called “zhidu de wenti” (制度的问题), which means a problem concerning the institutional and

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political system. This aspect suggests reflecting about policy transfers, learning and translation in countries where the institutional conditions might not always support such activities.

7.4   Talking About the ‘Chinese Specificities’ This research has stressed that in the case studied, policy transfers and policy learning share many similarities with what has been observed by the literature developed on the basis of studies conducted in other countries, but that there also exist some differences. However, none of the chapters focused entirely on pointing out what was specifically different or specifically Chinese. These questions were not at the heart of this study. What has been important in this analysis was to understand what happens in the process of knowledge utilisation. This is particularly so when concepts in the field of urban development are transferred to China, whether they can find fertile land in a completely different context from where they originated, whether they ‘talk’ to local policymakers, and, when appropriate, how these have an impact on local policies and approaches. In answering these questions, this research has paid attention to following both the journey of the policy concept and its translations, as well as the process that led to the various phases and forms of learning and translation. By following these elements, this study encountered different manifestations of what can be understood as ‘local specificities’. From the relationships that local administrators maintain with their political superiors, the customs they follow when interacting with them and the favours they do to please them to the relationships that exist between subordinate officials and departmental directors and the strategies adopted to talk to a superior. From the administration’s practices of what can be broadly called “patrimonial officialdom” (Lu 2000) – often a result of the legacies of the planned economy system – to the administrators’ attitude of defence and immobility when hierarchical controls become risky for their careers. When looked at in detail, all of these elements described certain specificities of the local context. Nevertheless, for some of them at least, it was possible to find similar manifestations in the bureaucracies of other countries, making it difficult to say whether these characteristics were specific to the local administrations in China or not (cf. Friedberg 2005). To achieve this objective, future research could look at the specific practices and representations held by administrators, both in China and elsewhere, to seize the kind of particular signs and signals observed, for

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instance. It would be interesting to look into what types of attitudes and favours are deemed important to advance in one’s career, what type of words or expressions should be avoided when interacting with superiors, what unspoken rules and practices a state agent should learn once enrolled in the administration (and how they have to learn them), etc. This study has repeatedly encountered many of these particularities, but the exercise of exploring and describing their characteristics in detail was not crucial to understand the phenomena studied. These elements could instead be seized under a comparative study of the specific “administrative culture” (Schröter and Röber 1997) of China and other contexts – provided that it is possible to define a specific ‘Chinese administrative culture’ (cf. Friedberg 2005; Olivier de Sardan 2004, 2010). Analyses could also focus on the specifics of the interactions between state agents and citizens, which may present very peculiar characteristics in various contexts. Considering the specificities of the context analysed, the research has pointed out that in the consideration of citizens’ needs, preferences and requests, spaces can vary according to the central government’s and local administrators’ different ‘sensibilities’, and this variability configures particular patterns of state-society interactions. When considering local specificities, it is also possible to recall the example of the translations operated by the Yangzhou administration to the recommendations proposed by GTZ, for instance the simplified translation of the standards for subsidies for private households. The Old City Office had to simplify the German standard when preparing local standards so that local state agents and citizens could understand them. Officials explained that if the policy was too complicated, it would be very difficult to implement due to the differences between the local administration’s capacities, working practices and habits and the Old City residents’ levels of schooling and education compared to those of a German city. Another example pertaining to the aspect of translation and its interaction with local specificities, this time more to do with the role of some traditional beliefs, is the various peculiarities of the difficult negotiations that can occur between state agents and the inhabitants of the Old City. When the inhabitants of the Old City apply for permits to renovate their house, neighbours may hinder the process. According to local regulation, in order to obtain a permit to construct or renovate, a resident has to obtain their neighbours’ approval. However, neighbours sometimes oppose to projects because the renovations may “squeeze” or “repress” ( 压住  – yazhu) the beneficial forces that flow through their house. If

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renewal interventions and their outcomes impede this flow of energy, it can bring bad luck to the neighbour’s family (运气就不好了 – yunqi jiu bu hao le). For this reason, many oppose projects or ask for money or minor interventions on their own house as compensation for the trouble a renovation can create. This behaviour is related to the traditional beliefs in geomancy  – also known in Western countries by the famous Chinese expression fengshui (风水), literally meaning “wind and water”. Elements pointing to Chinese specificities can also be found in the particular formulation of policy discourses and policy documents of the central and local governments. These specificities are ascribable to the particular vocabulary of the Chinese Communist Party, and in particular to the use of rhetoric figures and other expressions in spoken and written policy documents. This book does not have the scope to allow for a fine treatise of the linguistic characteristics of the political discourse and documents of the Chinese state or of the Chinese Communist Party. Nevertheless, repeated attention and familiarity with these types of registers show that there are other specificities of contemporary China that cannot be attributed to its traditional culture (provided that it is possible to identify a unique traditional culture), but rather to the Party’s tradition. These specificities, in this example manifested by the characteristics of political discourse and by the specific formulation of policy documents, are worth examining in a circumscribed analysis of local administrative culture. As demonstrated by these examples, there is no specific, unique or traditional Chinese culture behind all these cases; there are, on the contrary, different practices, beliefs, representations or even “micro-cultures” (Hannerz 1992, cited in Olivier de Sardan 2010, p. 19) shared by specific groups in given fields and contexts. Therefore, to studies that stress the so-called “Chinese characteristics” to underline the role of China’s peculiarities and unique tradition in explaining processes and outcomes of domestic reforms, this study opposes the idea that China shall be analysed as a normal country and that we shall get rid of cultural preconceptions. Every society is characterised by “cultural heterogeneity” (Bayart 1996), and understanding “who shares with whom which practices and/or social representations is a fundamental scientific stake” (Olivier de Sardan 2010, p. 18) when reintroducing cultural aspects in explanations.4 These recommendations represent an important research agenda for the coming years. For now, though, what can be drawn from the journey of Careful Urban Renewal in Yangzhou is that this approach to urban renewal found a successful application at around 8470  km distance from its first point of

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­ rigin, the suburb of Kreuzberg in Berlin. Moreover, similarly to the origio nal in Berlin (cf. Bernt 2003), the translation of Careful Urban Renewal also travels a tortuous journey for its institutionalisation – provided that this is its final destination.

Notes 1. Among the consequences, it shall be pointed out that between 2017 and 2018, the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MoHURD) and the National Heritage Administration carried out an inspection of the localities listed in the list of historic towns and villages of the State Council. At the end of March 2019, the two authorities revealed the results of their investigation, criticising five localities for having intervened too heavily in their historic districts. They subsequently required the State Council to remove these cities from the list of historic towns and villages. In June 2019, following this same inspection, Yangzhou was highly praised by the two authorities for its efforts in the preservation of the Old City, and in particular for its gradual, resident-participated approach to urban renewal. 2. Free translation from French. 3. Free translation from French. 4. Free translation from French.

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Index1

A Adaptation, 3, 6, 17, 28, 31, 36, 145, 147, 198, 206 Administration city, 14, 16, 102, 127, 128, 145, 161, 168, 170, 217 local, 2–4, 13, 16, 20, 22n9, 52, 54, 76, 86, 94, 102, 103, 106, 109, 110, 119, 123, 143, 162, 177, 182, 187, 188, 209, 211, 217, 220–222 Advocacy, 85, 111, 217 policy, 3, 85, 106, 113n26, 217 Appropriation, 6, 173, 174, 198 Audience (of a policy), 167, 172, 216, 217 B Bayart, Jean-François, 2, 28, 206, 222 Berlin, vii, 17, 22n9, 81, 82, 85, 87, 104, 223

Budget, 91, 97, 161, 163, 168, 183, 184 constraints, 10, 144 Bureau Construction, 130, 139, 141, 148, 182–184 Urban Planning, 62, 86, 87, 89, 91, 103, 131, 144, 148, 182, 183, 190, 194, 209 Bureaucratic politics, 168 C Careful Urban Renewal, 1–21, 27–32, 45, 63, 75–111, 117, 118, 152, 162, 172–175, 181, 185, 191, 192, 195–199, 205–209, 212–214, 218, 219, 222, 223 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 44, 163, 181, 182, 198, 199, 206, 222 See also Communist Party of China

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 G. C. Romano, Changing Urban Renewal Policies in China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36008-5

241

242 

INDEX

Cities Alliance, 96, 99, 104, 112n26 Code of conduct, 148, 149, 151, 154, 163 Colomb, Claire, 10, 16, 27, 29, 30, 41, 66, 75, 102, 117, 209 Communist Party of China, 176 Cooperation agency, 12, 15, 20, 68 international, 2, 3, 12, 15, 17–20, 22n9, 41, 66, 67, 99–109, 118, 120, 133, 152 partners, 1, 76 project, 1, 10, 12, 15, 17, 45, 76, 77, 79, 101, 117, 121, 129, 209 Culture administrative, 113n40, 221, 222 Chinese, 5, 200, 222 congenial to learning, 102, 108 local, 154 micro-, 222 national, 5 organisational, 149 traditional, 222 D Danwei, 54, 90, 91, 112n15, 188 Debt local, 151, 210 local government, 118, 145, 155n5, 176, 178, 196, 211 de Jong, Martin, 2, 11, 12, 21, 210 Demolition, 13, 16, 29, 31, 43, 50, 52, 56, 58, 60, 61, 64, 68n4, 69n17, 82, 83, 88, 93, 94, 119, 125, 126, 133, 134, 143, 161, 164, 165, 180, 181, 193 District, vii, 44, 48, 51, 60, 81, 90, 97, 113n27, 139, 141, 161–166, 171, 183, 189, 190, 195–198, 223n1

government, 3, 60, 161, 163–166, 169–171, 184, 190, 192, 196, 198, 212, 213 Dolowitz, David, 4–10, 21, 21n2, 32, 33, 110, 207–215, 217–219 Dongguan Street, 60, 63, 66, 94, 95, 106, 113n27, 117–120, 122– 125, 127, 134, 135, 178 E Eco-City Construction Plan, 46, 47, 77, 131 Planning and Management Programme, 76–78, 101, 109, 110 Endogenous forces of mutation, 77, 107–110, 209 Existing knowledge base, 102, 107, 209 F Fake antique, 59, 125 Fiscal entrance, 53, 55 reform, 53–56, 67 (see also Reform of taxation) resources, 54, 214 G Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), 14, 29, 45, 75, 117, 163, 208 Government central, 19, 20, 43, 44, 52–55, 66, 67, 77, 118, 121–123, 133, 138, 141, 145, 149, 151–153, 155n5, 155n6, 169, 171, 175, 177–182, 189, 191–193, 195–197, 199, 210, 211, 213, 214, 221

 INDEX 

city, 3, 14, 20, 30, 31, 42, 43, 45, 50, 52–53, 55, 57, 62–65, 68, 75, 77, 81, 86, 90, 91, 100, 117–120, 127, 133, 137, 139, 144, 147, 156n22, 156n31, 164–166, 171, 175, 178, 184, 191, 210 local, vii, 3, 13–15, 17, 19, 42, 46, 48, 52–54, 59, 64–67, 69n10, 69n17, 83, 91, 94, 99, 101, 103, 105, 110, 117, 119, 121–124, 127, 145, 151, 155n5, 166, 171, 175–180, 182, 192, 193, 196, 199, 206, 211, 213–215, 217, 219, 222 H Hall, Peter, 30, 32, 102, 178, 193, 217, 218 Hierarchy, vii, 10, 36, 88, 103, 108, 110, 140, 150, 151, 154, 163, 174–200, 205, 206, 208, 214 Housing public, 90, 101, 138, 139, 146, 151, 153, 166–169, 173, 215 reform, 54–56, 67, 138, 167 I Imitation, 6, 15, 118, 142–151, 198 Interests, ix, 3, 14, 19, 35, 36, 64, 109, 111n5, 113n31, 122, 129, 141, 146–149, 151, 153, 154, 162, 163, 166, 167, 173, 174, 180, 184–191, 198, 206, 208, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 218 Intermediaries, 102–107, 110, 216, 217 Intermittent opening and closing, 3, 206

243

J Jacoby, Wade, 13, 15, 27, 31, 106, 110, 111, 143, 167, 172, 193, 198 Jiangsu (province), 2, 13, 43, 47, 78, 197 Jiaochang, 63–65, 178 Ji, Jianye, 43–45, 88, 94, 128, 133, 134 Juzhang (directors of departments), 108, 185–188 K Kingdon, John, 10, 28, 33, 34, 102, 107, 109, 124, 127, 143–145, 152, 209, 210 Knowledge utilisation, 6, 8, 9, 21, 34, 207, 208, 216, 218–220 L Land reform, 54–56, 67 Lascoumes, Pierre, 7, 10, 28, 33–35, 102, 105, 109, 146, 147, 153, 164, 166, 167, 172–174, 198, 216 Learning organisational, 9–11, 28, 36, 102, 186, 195, 196, 199 policy, viii, 3–6, 10, 13–17, 19–21, 27, 33, 36, 37, 41, 103, 109, 110, 118, 128, 143, 146–154, 162, 175, 181, 184, 185, 187, 192, 197, 199, 200, 206–208, 210, 212, 214, 217, 219, 220 social, 10, 28, 30, 32, 77, 102, 103, 107, 192–194, 217, 219 under multiple hierarchies, 3, 195–197, 206 windows for policy, 3, 154, 163, 181, 190, 191, 196, 199, 206

244 

INDEX

Legitimacy, 31, 172, 177, 178 Lishi wenhua mingcheng (famous historical cultural cities), 13, 62 Local government financing vehicle (LGFV), 122 Longitudinal study, 3, 15 M Mayor, 44, 45, 52, 53, 86–92, 94, 95, 101, 103, 106, 123, 125, 128, 134, 140, 144, 161, 162, 164, 165, 169, 178, 181, 183, 185, 188, 190, 193–195, 197, 208, 209, 211, 213 Meng, Yao, 124–127, 136 N Neighbourhood committee, 170 O Old buildings, 2, 57, 59, 60, 83, 87, 95, 107, 125, 134, 135, 168, 183 city, vii–ix, 13, 42, 75, 117, 161, 205 neighbourhoods, vii, 45, 56–61, 67, 112n8 Old City Office (OCO), 128–133, 136–154, 156n34, 161–174, 181–186, 189–192, 194, 195, 197, 198, 205, 211–213, 215, 218 Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre, 27, 207, 221, 222 Organisation dogmatic, 195, 199 intermediary, 88, 103–107, 110, 217

P Paradigm conservation, 128–142, 146, 161–169, 174, 187–191, 197 redevelopment, 41, 42, 52, 53, 56, 61–66, 76, 118, 152, 161, 197 shift, 10, 28–33, 129, 142, 152, 174–197, 199, 213 Party secretary, 44, 52, 53, 94, 123, 128, 133, 140, 144, 145, 152, 161, 164, 165, 168, 169, 182, 183, 185, 188–190, 193, 195, 197, 208, 209, 211 Patrimonial officialdom, 167, 212, 220 Performance and persistence, 15, 16 Pilot project, 14, 20, 76, 78, 89, 92–99, 104, 106, 107, 110, 117, 128, 134, 136–138, 152, 156n34, 166, 167, 171, 191 Plan Eco-city Construction, 47, 77, 78, 131 (see also Eco-City) master, 44–47, 131, 135, 156n22, 157n50 Urban Development Strategic Plans (UDSP), 47, 68n6 Policy entrepreneurs, 3, 9, 33, 34, 107, 143, 144, 148, 151–154, 196–199, 210–212, 215 Policy patchwork, 206, 214 Policy process, viii, 4, 7, 9, 10, 28, 31, 33, 143, 154, 162, 174, 198, 200, 207, 211 R Recommendations, 1, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 28, 85, 90, 96, 101, 109, 128, 139, 145, 148, 154, 166, 174, 196, 198, 211, 215, 221, 222 policy, 79, 95–99, 101, 109, 128, 145, 166

 INDEX 

245

Redevelopment of inner city, 41, 42, 49, 53, 59, 65 paradigm, 41, 42, 52, 53, 56, 61–66, 76, 118, 152, 161, 197 state-dominated urban, 65–67 “Reform and opening up”, 50–52, 54, 56 Reform of taxation, 180 Resident participation, 82, 84, 92, 95, 99, 100, 104, 134, 152, 154, 163, 171, 172, 191, 194, 215 Rooting, 3, 31, 42, 181, 182, 192, 199, 219

Transfers micro-dynamics, 3–13, 18, 76, 110, 111, 146, 151, 162, 207, 214–220 policy, vii, viii, 2–8, 10–12, 16–19, 21, 21n2, 27–37, 68, 108, 110, 117, 154, 162, 173, 198, 200, 206–208, 210, 212, 214–220 Translation, 6, 7, 10, 11, 15–20, 27–29, 32–37, 68, 105, 107, 110, 111n6, 118, 142–151, 153, 154, 162, 166, 167, 172–175, 181, 185, 190–194, 197–200, 206, 210, 212, 214–221, 223

S Selectiveness, 12, 210, 215 Sociology of organisational learning, 28, 36, 102 of public administration, 108, 168, 183 State Council, 61, 121, 133, 145, 155n6, 177, 197, 211, 214, 223n1 State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), 43, 77 Stone, Diane, 6, 7, 10, 28, 77, 107, 108, 110, 117, 148, 151, 162, 173, 198, 209 Street office, 161, 163, 169, 170, 191, 197, 198, 205, 212 Su, Xiaobo, 46, 48–50, 59, 65, 106, 168 Sustainable urban development, 1, 12, 29, 43, 87, 101

U UN Habitat, 95, 106, 112n26 Scroll of Honour, 94

T Tax-assignment sharing, 54 Tax Sharing System, 180 See also Tax-assignment sharing Transcodage, 7, 10, 34, 35

Y Yangzhou, vii–ix, 2, 27, 41, 75–111, 117, 161, 205–207 Urban Upgrading Strategy, 99, 104, 109, 145, 148

W Wang, Yanwen, 94, 128, 131, 142, 144, 153, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 182, 189, 197 Windows of opportunity, 163, 188, 196, 199, 205, 209 policy, 20, 31, 33, 118, 143, 152, 209, 210 for policy learning, 3, 77, 102, 106, 108, 128–142, 154, 163, 181, 182, 190, 191, 196, 199, 206 X Xi, Jinping, 176, 177, 179, 205