Global cities with Chinese characteristics

• Deliberate global-city building efforts have made key Chinese cities more globally connected.
• China’s global cities have become sites of growing social polarization.
• Housing allocation is a particularly obvious area of growing urban inequality.
• Social polarization accompanying the rise of China’s global cities challenges system legitimacy.
• State policies and plans must consider inequality in relation to “social harmony.”

Global cities are relatively central nodes in a worldwide hierarchy of urban centers. In recent years several Chinese cities have begun to participate as more central players in this global network. While cities atop the global hierarchy of the world’s urban places attract wealth, glamour, and prestige, they are also said to be socially polarized to a greater degree than other cities and to attract international migrants disproportionately. The recent ascendancy of places like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou raises questions about the global city formation practices that have led to this apparent “success” and to questions about the social consequences of achieving global city status in the context of the rapidly developing transitional Chinese economy. It also raises questions about the ability and commitment of the local and national governments to deal with the concomitant challenges to social harmony.