Greening China’s urban growth machine: The micro-politics of growth and environment protection in Wuxi, China

Abstract

This article examines the micro-politics of the Chinese state’s environmental turn and its effects on the urban growth machine. It details how several state-led attempts to fix ecological crises in Wuxi reconfigured power relations between state units and pushed local authorities to re-assess the costs of economic growth. The heightened stakes of environment protection interventions intensified tensions among subnational officials in the fragmented bureaucratic field and made it difficult to approve growth-oriented projects with potential negative environmental externalities. This article calls for a micro-level approach that goes beyond the political economy of land-centered urban growth and instead considers the complex rationalities, entangled logics, and structures of interest shaping the development and governance of Chinese cities.