On capitalism's cusp: Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. Area Development and Policy Annual Lecture with Jamie Peck, Mia Bennett, David Meyer and others

Type: Virtual Panel
Theme:
Sponsor Groups: Economic Geography Specialty Group
Organizers: Michael Dunford
Chairs: Weidong Liu

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Description

This session explores systemic differences within (and around) processes of capitalist development, emphasizing on lines of sight that cut across the metaphorical fault line dividing 'free-market' Hong Kong from the 'state capitalism' or socialist market economy of mainland China. It presents a critique of persistent currents in macroeconomic theorizing founded on fire-and-water distinctions between states and markets, positioned in binary terms as zero-sum relations and sources of mutual antagonism. Against this dichotomous perspective, an alternative approach is outlined, premised on conjuncturally sited investigations of reconfigured capitalisms, recombinant economic forms, and emergent modes of regional restructuring. The ambitious scheme to construct a Greater Bay Area in China’s Pearl River Delta, with its remit to transcend those 'two systems' differences which have long separated Hong Kong and Macao from the mainland, is taken as a case in point. The scheme entails the construction of a new political-economic scale, not just as a tool of government, but as a newly imagined developmental horizon, as a space of social action, and as a zone for experimentation in state-facilitated marketcraft.

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Agenda

Type	Details	Minutes
Panelist	Jamie Peck University of British Columbia	15
Panelist	Mia Bennett	15
Panelist	David Meyer Washington University in St. Louis	15
Panelist	Eric Sheppard UCLA	15
Panelist	Michael Dunford University of Sussex	15