Chinese strategies of experimental governance. The underlying forces influencing urban restructuring in the Pearl River Delta

• The party-state allows conceded informality as pragmatic means to deal with change.
• Experimental governance is targeted at finding new ways for development and for solving problems.
• Conceded informality relies on flexible conceptual frameworks and strategies.
• Three olds redevelopment is a pioneer approach experimenting in the realm of urban regeneration.
• China’s experimental governance is not a phenomenon of reform and opening up, it is much older.

Pragmatic Chinese ideological slogans like “groping for stones crossing the river”, “no matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat, as long as it catches mice it’s a good cat” became guiding principles for a multitude of experimental approaches to new developments in the realms of Chinese economic, political, socio-cultural, and physical urban transformation since the beginning of reform and opening up in the late 1970s. Today, these concepts find their daily expression in so-called conceded informality. This paper illuminates the characteristics of nowadays typical, Chinese decision- and policy-making processes in the field of urban restructuring, with a focus on the informal and experimental aspects of flexible conceptual frameworks.