This book investigates how the state intervenes in the urban system in China in the post-reform period. To do so, it constructs a conceptual framework based on the perspective of political hierarchy, suggesting that the state power is hierarchically organized in China’s urban system, leading to variations in urban government capacities among cities.  

The book reveals that the state has largely achieved the goal of its national urban system policy to “strictly control the scale of large cities” resulting in the under-development of the large cities if they are mainly...