Socialist urbanism and cultural infrastructure facilities in China: Cities of the Pearl River Delta and the Guangzhou cultural infrastructure facilities plan, 2003–07
The construction of “cultural infrastructure facilities” (wenhua jichu sheshi) in China – auditoria, exhibition halls, libraries, museums, performance centers – for state administration of culture and information originated in the 1950s with Sino-Soviet exchange and has continued throughout the reform era. However, scholarship on urban development in China, embedded in discourses of capitalism and modern planning, generally does not recognize this category of infrastructure construction by contemporary city governments. To address the lacunae, this article analyzes the history of cultural infrastructure facilities in socialist urbanism, their transfer to the People’s Republic of China from the Soviet Union, the conditions of socialist realism, and the continuity of cultural infrastructure construction since the 1980s. Evidence from the Guangzhou Cultural Infrastructure Facilities Projects Plan (2003 – 07) and cultural facilities sites in the new city center projects of Shenzhen, Shunde, and Dongguan demonstrate how the party-state prioritizes the planning and construction of cultural infrastructure facilities. Contemporary architectural designs for new cultural buildings represent the international aesthetic of reform while cultural facilities continue to house and display party-sanctioned culture and information for the people.
ALA (American Library Association). (2007). Previous Winners of the AIA/ALA Library Buildings Award Program: Shunde Library for the City Construction and Development Center of Shunde District, Foshan, China, by P&T Architects and Engineers Ltd. ALA Library Leadership and Management Association. Available from: h t t p s : / / w w w . ala.org/news/news/pressreleases2007/april2007/ aiaalalibrarybuilding [Last accessed: 2024 Sep 27].
Bernstein, T. P. (2010). Introduction: The complexities of learning from the Soviet Union. In: TP Bernstein and HY Li (eds.). China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present. Lanham: Lexington Books, pp. 1-23.
Bray, D. (2005). Social Space and Governance in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Brown, J. (2012). City Versus Countryside in Mao’s China: Negotiating the Divide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cartier, C. (2002). Transnational urbanism in the reform-era Chinese city: Landscapes from Shenzhen. Urban Studies, 39(9):1513-1532. https://doi.org/10.1080/00420980220151637
Cartier, C. (2018). Zone analog: The state-market problematic and territorial economies in China. Critical Sociology, 44(3):455-470. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920517712367
Cartier, C. (2020). China Made: 区/區 Qu: Area, Region, Zone. Available from: https://chinamadeproject.net/%e5%8c%ba- %e5%8d%80-qu [Last accessed: 2024 Sep 27].
Cartier, C. (2024). “There are no cities in China” and the paradox of urban theory. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 65 (6–7): 816–833. https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2022.2047750
Chan, H. H. L. (2019). The Transformation of Shunde City: Pioneer of China’s Greater Bay Area. Singapore: World Scientific.
Chan, K. W., & Wei, Y. (2019). Two systems in one country: The origin, functions, and mechanisms of the rural-urban dual system in China. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 60(4):422-454. https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2019.1669203
Clark, K. (2003). Socialist realism and the sacralizing of space. In: EA Dobrenko and E Naiman (eds.). The Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, pp. 3-18.
Cook, P. (2013). The confidence of space. In: JH DeHoff (ed.). Reconnecting Cultures: The Architecture of Rocco Design. London: Artifice, pp. 14-15.
Ding, G. H. (2019). Guangzhou opera house: Building a gated public space. In CQL Xue (ed.). Grand Theater Urbanism: Chinese Cities in the 21st Century. Singapore: Springer Nature, pp. 55-74.
Ding, G. H. (2021). Embodied ‘emancipation’: Architects, technocrats, and the shaping of the Canton Fair in 1970s China. The Journal of Architecture, 26(7):969-999. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2021.1976248
Ding, G. H. (2023). Constructing geographical and architectural imaginations: The China-aided assembly buildings in Africa, 1960s-1970s. Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, 5(1):15-21. https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.200
Dobrenko, E. A. (2007). Political Economy of Socialist Realism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Fan, K. S. (2011). A classicist architecture for Utopia: The Soviet contacts. In: JW Cody, NS Steinhardt and T Atkin (eds.). Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 91-126.
Fisher, J. C. (1962). Planning the city of socialist man. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 28(4):251-265.
Frampton, K. (2013). Beneath the radar: Rocco Yim and the new Chinese architecture. In: JH DeHoff (ed.). Reconnecting Cultures: The Architecture of Rocco Design. London: Artifice, pp. 10-13.
Gao, J. Z. (2004). The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949-1954. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Government of Guangzhou. (2004). 关于加快广州文化基础设施建设的意见 (Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Cultural Infrastructure in Guangzhou). Suifa No. 12. Available from: https://www.gz.gov.cn/zwgk/gongbao/2004/8/ content/post_9035781.html [Last accessed on 2024 Oct 30].
Guangzhou’s Infrastructure Construction Aims at World Class. (广州基础设施建设瞄准世界级) (2002). 景观中国网 (Landscape China Network). Available from: http://www. landscape.cn/news/5425.html [Last accessed: 2024 Sep 27].
Guo, M. Q., & Sun, R. F. (eds). (2006). 中国文化设施建设与经营管理研究 (Construction and Management of Cultural Facilities in China). Beijing: China Wenlian Press.
Guo, M. Q., Zhang, E. H., & Sun, R. F. (eds.). (2004). 中国新时期优秀文化设施图典 (China’s New Outstanding Cultural Facilities Illustrated). Beijing: Art and Culture Press.
Hirata, K. (2023). Mao’s steeltown: Industrial city, colonial legacies, and local political economy in early communist China. Journal of Urban History, 49(1):85-110. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144221994329
Hoffman, D. L. (2003). Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hou, L. (2018). Building for Oil: Daqing and the Formation of the Chinese Socialist State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
Hu, X. (2021). Reorienting architecture for a socialistic state: The transformation of China’s architectural profession in the 1950s. International Journal of Design in Society, 15(1):105-117.
Hung, C. T. (2011). Mao’s New World: Political Culture in the Early People’s Republic, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Kotkin, S. (1996). The search for the socialist city. Russian History, 23(1-4):231-261.
Li, Q. (2019). China’s Development Under a Differential Urbanization Model. Germany: Springer Nature Singapore.
Li, Y. (2014). Building friendship: Soviet influence, socialist modernity and Chinese cityscape in the 1950s. Quarterly Journal of Chinese Studies, 2(3):48-66.
Li, Y. (2018). China’s Soviet Dream: Propaganda, Culture, and Popular Imagination. New York: Routledge.
Liu, Z., Chen, H., Yin, H., Liao, Y., Yin, L., Zhang, X., et al. (2011). 林树森: 广州是我一生中最重要的城市 (Lin Shusen: Guangzhou is the Most Important City in My Life). 新快报 (New Express). Available from: h t t p s : / / web.archive.org/web/20140424130318/http://gz.house.163. com/11/0308/07/6ujvupha00873c6d.html [Last accessed: 2024 Sep 27].
Lu, D. F. (2006). Remaking Chinese Urban Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949-2005. New York: Routledge.
Lu, X. D. (2019). Development of theaters and the city in Beijing: The 1950s and post-1980s. In: CQL Xue (ed.). Grand Theater Urbanism: Chinese Cities in the 21st Century. Singapore: Springer Nature, pp. 1-30.
Maki, F. (2013). Globalisation and floating modernism. In: JH DeHoff (ed.). Reconnecting Cultures: The Architecture of Rocco Design. London: Artifice, pp. 8-9.
Müller, M. (2019). Goodbye, postsocialism! Europe-Asia Studies, 71(4):533-550. https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2019.1578337
Oakes, T. (2020). Heritage, ritual space, and contested urbanization in Southern China. In: M Rowlands, SL Wang and YJ Zhu (eds.). Heritage and Religion in East Asia. New York: Routledge, pp. 105-124.
P&T Group. (2008). P & T Group: 140 Years of Architecture in Asia. Mulgrave, VIC: Images Publishing Group.
Parkins, M. F. (1953). City Planning in Soviet Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reiner, T. A., & Wilson, R. H. (1979). Planning and decision-making in the Soviet city: Rent, land, and urban form. In: RA French and FEI Hamilton (eds.). The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy. Chichester, UK: John Wiley, pp. 49-71.
Rocco Design Architects. (n.d.) Guangdong Museum. Available from: https://www.rocco.hk/?lang=en&view=projects,all& p=guangdong-museum [Last accessed: 2024 Sep 27].
Roskam, C. (2015). Non-aligned architecture: China’s designs on and in Ghana and Guinea, 1955-92. Architectural History, 58:261-291. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0066622X00002653
Senelick, L., & Ostrovsky, S. (eds.). (2014). The Soviet Theater: A Documentary History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Shin, H. B. (2014). Urban spatial restructuring, event-led development and scalar politics. Urban Studies, 51(14):2961-2978. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098013515031
Sit, V. F. S. (1996). Soviet influence on urban planning in Beijing, 1949-1991. The Town Planning Review, 67(4):457-484.
Sun, C. (2019). City and cultural center shift – performance space in Shenzhen. In: CQL Xue (ed.). Grand Theater Urbanism: Chinese Cities in the 21st Century. Singapore: Springer Nature, pp. 75-104.
Sun, C., & Xue, C. Q. L. (2020). Shennan Road and the modernization of Shenzhen architecture. Frontiers of Architectural Research, 9(2):437-449. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2019.11.002
Swartz, L. M. (1989). “Raising the cultural level” at the Hangzhou Children’s Palace. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 23(1):125-139. https://doi.org/10.2307/3332892
Tian, L., & Shen, T. (2011). Evaluation of plan implementation in the transitional China: A case of Guangzhou city master plan. Cities, 28(1):11-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2010.07.002
U.S. Department of State. (1951). Communist Offenses Against the Integrity of Education, Science, and Culture. Washington, DC: Office of Intelligence Research.
Wakeman, R. (2014). Was there an ideal socialist city? Socialist new towns as modern dreamscapes. In: JM Diefendorf and J Ward (eds.). Transnationalism and the German City. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 105-124.
Wang, J. (2011). Beijing Record: A Physical and Political History of Modern Beijing. Singapore: World Scientific.
White, P. M. (1979). Soviet Urban and Regional Planning. London: Mansell.
Wu, F. L. (2022). Creating Chinese Urbanism: Urban Revolution and Governance Changes. London: UCL Press.
Xu, J., & Yeh, A. (2005). City repositioning and competitiveness building in regional development: New development strategies in Guangzhou, China. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(2):283-308. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2005.00585x
Xue, C. Q. L., & Ding, G. (2018). A History of Design Institutes in China: From Mao to Market. London: Routledge.
Zarecor, K. E. (2018). What was so socialist about the socialist city? Second World urbanity in Europe. Journal of Urban History, 44(1):95-117. https://doi.org/10.1177/009614421771022
Zhu, T. (2011). Building big, with no regret. AA Files, 63:104-110.