Reexamining the explanation of China’s spatial transformation from the perspective of new state space framework

New state space (NSS) framework is the main theoretical framework to explain urban and regional spatial transformation under the background of globalization. Researchers in China have introduced NSS to interpret China's spatial reconfiguration process in recent years. This study reviewed the background, key concepts, main ideas, and research findings of NSS in China and internationally, revealing that NSS can provide a unified perspective to analyze global spatial transformation. However, some defects of NSS would lead to serious ontological problems. First, the concepts of NSS have a tendency of generalization, meanwhile, are lack of falsifiability; second, the lack of flexibility of the framework is hard to capture multifaceted situations; third, NSS may complicate the real-world scenarios sometimes, which would go against the intention of theorization. China has unique national spatial administrative structures, governmental relationship, property right arrangement, promotion system of officials, and market economy development path, therefore NSS may run into difficulties to articulate the intricate Chinese contexts because it was proposed based on the background of Western scenarios. That is to say, there are limitations in using NSS to interpret China's spatial transformation— the differences of territorial administrative framework between China and Western countries may lead to correspondence problems of terms and concepts. Different property right arrangement could result in different dimensions of analysis in spatial restructuring. Finally, the complicated power field in China would have different internal driving forces in the process of regional and urban transformation. These problems would result in dilemmas when discussing and exploring the multiple-scalar practical situations and the underlying logic of state spatial transformation. Further, it would be difficult for Chinese academia to engage in in-depth academic exchanges with scholars from other countries, and to have their voice heard in the theoretical study of Chinese spatial transformation. The NSS might be caught in the involution of dogmatization and instrumentalization if it could not concentrate on several core topics related to the ontology of human geography. China is large and complex in territorial areas with multifarious populations, resources, environment, and so on. The special history and development contexts mean that any theories or frameworks would need to be examined in real and practical situations. Therefore, it is urgent to pay more attention to the localization of spatial transformation and governance theories and propose more universal theoretical frameworks to underpin the study of spatial transformation since 1978.