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'Leaving the soil': a (post-)socialist reading of Chinese Urbanism beyond China

Introduction and coordination by Julie Ren

Introduction: 'leaving the soil': a (post-)socialist reading of Chinese Urbanism beyond China

My interest in the editorship for the book review forums was accompanied by an agenda about reading. Simply, the agenda sought to expand the reading of certain urban geographies by certain urban geographers. Researchers everywhere seem to read about Chicago and London to gain insights about cities elsewhere and in general, reflecting longstanding epistemological critiques about the parochialism of urban studies (Robinson, 2002; Roy, 2009; Sheppard et al., 2013). But reading habits are not as institutionally constrained as grant funding, publishing, hiring or teaching, all relevant for those epistemological debates. With reading, we can choose to read indiscriminately, secretly, and unexpectedly. We can also choose to read intentionally, seeking out specific perspectives, approaches or those texts that are unfamiliar to us. Urban geography is a lively field, and the dominant canons, models, reference points are changing (Roy & Ong, 2011). Reading can perhaps serve as a quiet yet powerful catalyst for these subversive interests and curiosities.

In tandem with my reading agenda is an enduring irritation about the epistemological position of urban China. Is urban China an exceptional kind of urban, considering the extraordinary scales and speeds of its urbanization processes, its historical and cultural difference inscribed in the untranslatable and singular experience of its unique cities (Ren, 2023a)? If urban China can serve as a source of theoretical insight for cities in general, then to what extent is it relevant – for what scales, for what urban problems and contexts can it provide insights (Ren, 2024)? Conversely, how can “urban China” also be disambiguated from the dominant frameworks of theoretical explanation, largely state-centric and morphological, in order to consider the way that the lived urban experience shapes urban space (Ren, 2019)?

This forum attempts to address these questions through Fulong Wu’s book Creating Chinese Urbanism (Wu, 2022), and the rich, critical perspectives provided by commentators Slavomíra Ferenčuhová (2025), Tauri Tuvikene (2025), Elena Trubina (2025), Liviu Chelcea (2025), and Nadir Kinossian (2025). Inviting scholars of non-Chinese (post-)socialist cities to consider the question of Chinese urbanism beyond China holds an assumption about commensurability. The shared experience of and transition from socialism potentially renders Chinese urbanism legible to these experts in a specific way, across a variety of geographies. Holding this assumption, this forum asks whether there are shared areas of concern for all (post-)socialist cities? How does reading about urban China complicate or underline theories of urbanism or urban change in other (post-) socialist cities?

Creating Chinese urbanism

The intention and scope of Creating Chinese Urbanism is ambitious, even for Wu, one of the most prolific scholars of urban China. It is not short of seeking an endogenous theory of Chinese urbanism, derived from lived social worlds. For this, Wu begins with a rumination on the idea of “the soil” as a key theoretical way to think about Chinese society, attributed to sociologist Fei Xiaotong. Soil is, of course, a curious starting point for an urban scholar, a metaphor to understand societal ties that is rooted in a rather rural idea of traditionalism. Yet the book is vehemently about the question of urbanism, of urban theory and about the relationship of Chinese cities to a world of cities.

It also offers a kind of “counter-reading” to the state-centric accounts of Chinese urbanism (Tuvikene, 2025), and poses a number of provocations about the epistemological universalism of urbanism. In refocusing from the state towards social relations, the book revisits the Chicago School. It considers changing forms of social mentality, following in the lineage of Georg Simmel, and the question of facilitating a sense of collectivism in the material construction of socialist cities (Wu, 2022, pp. 39–40). Elsewhere, Wu has argued that “the history of socialism did not bring Chinese cities closer to so-called postsocialist cities” (Wu, 2016, p. 338). His research on housing transitions, for instance, showed how failed privatization efforts “creates an imperative” for the fraught return of the state (Wu, 2018, p. 1183). And here, there are some further clues about why there is a lack of convergence. From a longer historical, traditionalist argument to the contention that unlike other post-socialist economies where the “the lack of state capacities led to residents self-help,” there was a decentralization of the state towards the neighborhood scale (Wu, 2022, p. 113). Still, the socialist framing invites closer scrutiny, and perhaps also offers further insight into the particularities of Chinese urbanism.

The forum contributions parse the potential and the limits of learning across geographies of (post-) socialist cities; along the way, it also astutely identifies some of the silences that emerge in such a reading of this book. Ferenčuhová (2025) introduces the possibility of drawing from urban China, about the general value of reading this volume for non-area specialists. Building on this with a more specific focus on Eastern European cities, Tuvikene (2025) picks up on the transformation of work-place neighborhoods and the shared phenomenon that becoming owners does not imply self-governance. He also introduces the relevance of the concept of the “Global East” positioning Chinese urbanism along an alternative theoretical axis, which was in part also developed by the work of Trubina et al. (2020). In her contribution, Trubina (2025) deftly identifies silences on the question of the revolution raised by the book, in particular the missing engagement with the consequences of the Cultural Revolution. She poignantly and sensitively considers how Wu can bemoan a collectivist loss when that collectivism came at such a cost? Chelcea (2025) extends this critical reading about collectivism, and the theoretical purchase of reifying the implied ideas of modernity in this framing. Finally, Kinossian (2025) offers concrete arenas where this book might help disrupt conventions in scholarship on post-socialist cities: with singular temporalities of linear change, about the macropolitical determinism that shapes understandings at local scales, and the complex entanglement of authoritarianism with neoliberalism. Indeed, the forum leaves the reader a bit skeptical of established or “regular” narratives of socialist and post-socialist transformation, perhaps a valuable insight from this reading.

Following Kinossian, it seems that reading with a view to how scholars build their arguments can be a useful way to draw reflections across diverse fields (2025). And reflecting on Trubina’s questions, reading at a greater distance can be generative of curiosities about the absences in our work (2025). As editor for these two years, it has been noteworthy to me how often scholars are unwilling to comment on a book outside of their geographic area of expertise. For this bravery, I am particularly thankful to the present contributors and to forum contributors thus far who have shown themselves willing to go on a reading excursion.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Zheng Wang and Kevin Ward, whose reading eased some doubts.

References

Chelcea, L. (2025). Chinese urbanism as the lost tribe of postsocialism urban studies. Urban Geography, this issue. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2025.2511332

Ferenčuhová, S. (2025). From neighborhood detail to broader urban theory. Urban Geography, this issue. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2025.2524639

Kinossian, N. (2025). Chinese urbanism lessons for theorizing the post-socialist city. Urban Geography, this issue. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2025.2511335

Ren, J. (2019). Conclusion: Everyday cities, exceptional cases. In F. Ray, J. Ren, & B. Wissink (Eds.), The city in China: New perspectives on contemporary urbanism (pp. 231–242). Bristol University Press.

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Trubina, E. (2025). Lost collectives and silenced histories. Urban Geography, this issue. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2025.2511333

Trubina, E., Gogishvili, D., Imhof, N., & Müller, M. (2020). A part of the world or apart from the world? The postsocialist Global East in the geopolitics of knowledge. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 61(6), 636–662. https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2020.1785908

Tuvikene, T. (2025). Chinese urbanism beyond (post-) socialism. Urban Geography, this issue. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2025.2511328

Wu, F. (2016). Emerging Chinese cities: Implications for global urban studies. The Professional Geographer, 68(2), 338–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2015.1099189

Wu, F. (2018). Housing privatization and the return of the state: Changing governance in China. Urban Geography, 39(8), 1177–1194. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2018.1440126

Wu, F. (2022). Creating Chinese urbanism: Urban revolution and governance changes. UCL Press

Creating Chinese urbanism: urban revolution and governance changes, by Fulong Wu, London, UK, UCL Press, 2022, 281 pp., Available Open Access from www.uclpress.co.uk (paperback GBP34), ISBN 978-1-80008-335-6