New Sectors, New Spaces, and China's Evolving State–Firm Relations

Abstract:Studies of state–firm relations in China have tended to adopt either a state-centric or a firm-centric approach to the research of state–firm relations, leading to a focus on the unidirectional causality from the state to the firm, or vice versa. Moreover, these studies have primarily focused on state–firm relations in traditional manufacturing sectors in a handful of fast-growing cities and regions, leaving a research gap on the interplay between state and business actors in emerging industries and some of the new state spaces of economic development. This special feature presents four articles which examine how state–firm relations unfold in these new sectors and spaces. Their findings show support for a dialectical approach which attends to how the state and the firm co-determine and co-constitute each other's interests and actions.