2024 Theses Master's

Enclave Urbanism and Cross-border Governance in Hengqin Cooperation Zone

Zhou, Zekun

Located in southern China, Hengqin, as an enclave that is geographically separated from peripheral regions, acts as the cooperation zone that accommodates the cooperation between Guangdong Province and Macau SAR. Following the decision of China’s central government, this zone was designed to verify the possibility and feasibility of the integration of the socialist mode and capitalist mode in developing cities by implementing a series of experimental urban policies.

With the interaction of the top-down force of central government and the negotiation force of local governments, several cross-border policies and strategies have been applied in Hengqin, making it demonstrates both a trend of separation (re-bordering) with the prefecture-level city it once belonged to and a trend of integration (de-bordering) with Macau, which can be concluded as disintegration. Meanwhile, when authorities would like to reinforce the disintegration by balancing the structure of residents in Hengqin, challenges emerge and lead us to the rethinking of the tension between rooted socialist behavioral tradition and the complicated capitalist social structure.