Shenhong: The anatomy of an urban investment and development company in the context of China’s state corporatist urbanism

Shanghai, like other large Chinese cities, has multiple business districts. This paper examines the construction of one of its largest, at Hongqiao in the west of the city. Its specific focus lies in the central role played by one state-owned company, Shenhong, in the financing and construction first of the Hongqiao transport hub and then of the business district that jointly make up this new development pole. The paper examines in detail Shenhong as an organization as well as the tasks it has undertaken and the funding difficulties it has confronted. It argues that Shenhong is representative of the seldom discussed state-owned urban investment and development companies that have led the urbanization of China. Finally, it anchors these companies into theoretical debates, arguing that their ubiquitous involvement in China’s property-led process of urban transformation combined with their ambivalence as state companies operating along similar lines to private enterprises means that they can be seen as central players in a form of state corporatist urbanism.