Asian Arguments

About the Author

Title page

Copyright

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Map of China

Introduction: The Biggest Migration in Human History

1 By the Sweat of Their Brows: The People Who Built Urban China

Box 1.1 Beijing’s slum clearances

Box 1.2 School’s out

2 Passport to Purgatory: Fixing the Hukou System

Box 2.1 Down and out in Beijing

The Chongqing model: paying for the mayor’s new clothes

Box 2.2 City livin’

Box 2.3 River town scrubs up

3 Farm versus Factory: The Battle over Land

Box 3.1 Flogging the fields

Yours to sell: the great land-credit experiment

Box 3.2 The beginning of the end for traditional farming?

4 The Construction Orgy: Paving the Fields

Box 4.1 Tier what?

Box 4.2 Scrabbling to fill the city coffers: the role of local government investment companies

Chengdu and Wuhan: hinterland dynamos

Box 4.3 Riding the stimulus express

Box 4.4 Home, sweet home

5 Ghost Towns in the Desert: How China Builds Its Cities

Grey, ugly and congested: why are so many Chinese cities so horrible?

Box 5.1 Kingdom of subways

Box 5.2 Beijing: Urban squires, city paupers

Box 5.3 Hangzhou: preservation with Chinese characteristics

Box 5.4 Tianjin: scrubbing up

Box 5.5 Zhengzhou: the beauty in the beast

6 A Billion Wallets: What China’s New Urbanites Will and Won’t Buy

Box 6.1 Want not, waste not

Box 6.2 Village life

Conclusion: Civilizing the Cities

Bibliography

Sources in English

Sources in Chinese

Index