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Shanghai’s 2035 future imagined: a paradigm for a high-end society?

! 16 Outubro 201916 Outubro 2019 " atsblogueBy Virginie Arantes

Created in 1949 under leader Mao Zedong, the People’s Republic of China experienced the fastestsustained economic expansion in world history under China’s Communist Party. Opposing Westerncountries and modernization theories, the one-party system has been dominating the state andsociety and reinforced its grip on power with Xi Jinping’s election. The Party-state is determined toput China at a world stage and to create an ecological civilization, a “New Green Era”, putting anend to the previous industrial civilisation.

Since the 1950s, to respond to the challenges of rapid economic development, master plans are usedto diffuse the central-local government policy directives. Important guides to the rationaldevelopment of a province or a city, they act as relevant instruments to study the Party’s strategies indemographic, economic and social objectives.

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A photo of Shanghai’s iconic Pudong Skyline, Shanghai, 2016. Source: Virginie Arantes

A showcase of China’s economic success, Shanghai is the world most populous city. Shanghai 2035(http://www.shanghai.gov.cn/newshanghai/xxgkfj/2035004.pdf) is the City released State Council-approved master plan for the years 2017-2035. The goals are ambitious, with promises about airquality and an inspiring narrative about the metropole becoming a world centre for finance, tradeand technological innovation. The unique ‘East meets West’ speech-making is used in the envision of“an admirable city of innovation, humanity and sustainability as well as a modern socialistinternational metropolis with world influence.”.

‘Head of the dragon’ of China’s economy, Shanghai is said to be the city most likely to surpass SiliconValley, ahead of Tokyo, London and New York (KPMG report (https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/it/pdf/2018/04/The-Changing-Landscape-of-Disruptive-Technologies.pdf)). Thedevelopment of innovation hubs, favourable government policies and incentives, accelerators, techparks, corporate investment and so on, influence the city’s perception to the outside world. InShanghai 2035, innovation is regarded as the city’s “national mission and historical responsibility ofguiding the region to in-depth participation in the international competition.”. The Metropole isadvanced as a role model for China and as a paradigm of sustainable development for othermegacities.

The Shanghai 2035 exhibition offers visitors a glimpse into the city’s growth over the past century and itsdevelopment plans in future. Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, August 2018. Source: Virginie

Arantes

Though, to reach such goals, Shanghai needs to focus on several metrics: tackling pollution problems,


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increasing green spaces, increase forest coverage, develop more public surveys, increase the weightof the cultural sectors, along with many others. These rather “positive” stances are displayed amongother less “popular” targets, such as more “bottom-line control” and population size ceiling. In aquest to manage the “big city disease”, Shanghai is capping its population at 25 million. The currentpopulation is estimated at 24 million. The citizens are also expected to be “law-abiding, credible andwell-mannered” and the city to “Strictly follow central government’s requirement”.

Shanghai 2035 plan to become an ‘excellent global city’. Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center,August 2018. Source: Virginie Arantes

Towards sustainability or a “selective” city development?

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Considering those metrics, what strikes me most is the way these rather unpopular measures arepresented to the public. Particularly, the way this envisioned future mixes increasing concerns amongChina’s population for their environment with new authoritarian modes of governing. The first timethe central government announced its intention to control the size of its largest cities’ population wasin late 2013, during the Third Plenary Session of the 18 Communist Party of China CentralCommittee. At that time, they argued that it would redirect the rural population towards small tomedium-sized cities (to speed up their development). Environmental concerns were not on theagenda. Today, as Shanghai 2035 shows, population control is (re)framed as a way to mitigate thecontradiction between rapid population growth and resource and environment restrictions. Usingthis rhetoric, the state is politicizing access to cities by linking it to environmental issues.

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Municipal government propaganda posters covering a new construction site: Implement the spirit of the19th Party Congress to deepen the creation of a national civilized city. Shanghai, August 2018. Source:

Virginie Arantes

Other policies, such as eradicating illegal residences or closing illegal migrant schools, have been putin place. With the need to limit its population, foreign and low skill workers are pursued andexpelled from the country. Since April 2017, a Chinese regulation set up a classification of the workpermits in three categories (A, B, C) depending on the qualification and the skills of each foreignerworking in China. As the plan states, priority is to be given to “high-calibre talent”.


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The ‘Chinese Dream’ is a slogan used by China’s President Xi Jinping to encapsulate its vision for thecountry. Wall of an old neighbourhood being destroyed in Shanghai, August 2018. Source: Virginie Arantes

In the way Shanghai’s future is envisioned, a sustainable development narrative is at its core. Yet, it isbeing used as an encompassing notion to instrumentally mobilise and legitimise a variety ofplanning practices, such as smart urbanism, space coordination or, as I’ve been trying todemonstrate, how and for whom cities are developed. Environmental protection has become a usefulway to create pragmatism and erase ideological debates and antagonism. This politicisation of theEnvironment is important because it warns of the many risks associated with questions related tosocial justice. In the end, the story is always the same: the metropole aims to achieve economicgrowth, a “global city” status, security from threats and (finally) environmental sustainability. In thisurban machinery, the market economy and globalisation are seen as irreversible facts. Let’s hope thecoexistence of high living standards, illiberal politics and efficient state capitalism with a stable one-party dominant rule will not become the rule. For that, more questions need to be asked to assess thecosts such inequality would have on cities development. Maybe then, new better-imagined futuresare likely to emerge.

Virginie, PhD at the ULB (Université libre de Bruxelles) in Brussels, Belgium. Her research focuses on the riseof environmental social activism and its relevance to contemporary Chinese politics. She is interested insociopolitical issues, democratization and the concept of “civil society” in China.

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