Changing Spatial Elements in Chinese Socio-economic Five-year Plans ― From Project Layout to Spatial Planning

As a legacy of the socialist state with central planning, Five-Year Planning (FYP) is very important in regulating socio-economic and spatial development even in post-reform China. This book tries to fill the research gap between examining the role of FYP and how spatial elements in the FYP mechanism have operated and transformed in spatial regulatory practices in transitional China. By building a conceptual framework and studying two empirical cases at different spatial scales, with the help of both qualitative and quantitative methods, it helps to understand various stakeholders, institutions and planning administrations, mechanisms of articulating spatial planning into the FYP system and the effectiveness of spatial planning in solving place-specific governance issues in urban and regional China.

Lei Wang is assistant professor in the Key Laboratory of Watershed Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hallsworth research fellow in Manchester Urban Institute, The University of Manchester. He earned his PhD from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include spatial development in China and its sustainable challenges in the process of rapid urbanization and industrialization. His research analysis tends to use eastern China as the empirical test bed as it is relatively more developed to allow meaningful analysis of the dynamic process of change. Recently, he focuses on planning system evolution and regional spatial restructuring from high-speed railway development in China. In last 5 years, he has published 20 academic papers in both Chinese and English.