HERITAGIZATION AS AN AUTHORITARIAN URBAN PRACTICE IN CHINA: Insights from Lijiang

Introduction

Historic heritage preservation has become part and parcel of the regeneration of Chinese cities. By co-opting history and culture as profitable and marketable assets, able to increase the value of historic buildings, heritagization has been contributing to the transformation of historic neighbourhoods into new places for middle-class consumption. As a type or process of gentrification, this form of urban transformation is relatively new in the Chinese context, having emerged as the antithesis of the large-scale demolitions that have characterized the country since the end of the Maoist period. However, despite renewed attention being paid to the historic built environment and its preservation over the last 40 years, heritagization has itself become a synonym for urban regeneration and beautification. In the process, the past is selected and negotiated to serve the purposes of the present (Zhu and Maags, 2020).

In this essay I look at the heritagization process and its authoritarian traits. As a process of gentrification, heritagization is a state-led process facilitated by the national government's mandates to urban administrations which delineate the urban development agenda for cities and regions at large. In addition, aspects of state rescaling, history and culture have legitimized the transformation of historic neighbourhoods and reshaped people's lives. Despite this being a process which has been witnessed around the world, and despite heritage increasingly being considered as a technology of government and governance, there is still a need to understand more precisely how heritagization acts as a process of gentrification in China and to uncover the practices adopted at different scales that ultimately foster and legitimize state-led gentrification. In this sense, a practice perspective (Glasius, 2018) enables us not only to deepen our understanding of state-society relations within an authoritarian context, but also how this relationship is negotiated through the exercise of power and how authoritarianism unfolds and is resisted within the everyday.

Based on an analysis of the Old Town of Lijiang—a classic case when it comes to heritage preservation in China—heritagization is here considered as an authoritarian urban practice (Jenss and Schuetze, 2021) which allows for the emergence of territorially unbounded ‘mode(s) of governing people’ (Gurol et al., 2023: 7) in an attempt to facilitate capital accumulation. Critical heritage scholars have analysed the heritagization process, stressing how the heritage discourse—initially utilized by transnational bodies like UNESCO but then appropriated and adapted at the national, regional and sub-regional levels—has been deployed to legitimize the preservation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. It does so by validating ‘a set of practices and performances which populate both popular and expert constructions about heritage’ (Smith, 2006: 11). This ‘authorized heritage discourse’ tends to legitimize the role of governments and experts in the preservation process, while residents’ views and opinions are often sidelined (Zhu and Maags, 2020). Consequently, heritage preservation should be seen as a process of gentrification marked by authoritarian practices and ultimately leading to the disempowerment of citizens’ voices while facilitating capital accumulation and the fetishization of culture.

In this scenario, the opening up of Chinese markets has clearly not led to less state intervention but, rather, its transformation. It is a process crafted by the complex interaction between the local and national state; between local administrations with their own economic and promotion-seeking ambitions and the national government pressuring them to implement national mandates. From preventing contestation and sabotaging accountability (Zhu and Maags, 2020), via disabling the voices of those affected by the regeneration process, to open coercion (see again Jenss and Schuetze, 2021), the practices implemented by different state actors have shown how authoritarianism unfolds within them, becoming more or less evident depending on the context and the circumstances.

When it comes to heritagization, those affected by the process across spaces are precisely ‘people over whom a political actor or their representatives exert control by means of secrecy, disinformation and disabling voices’ (Glasius, 2018: 517). In this regard, the case of Lijiang tells a story of the transformation of a once rural village into a place/space for the enjoyment of the middle classes, while slowly pushing out the original inhabitants to make space for the new population to come. This process does not align with the forms of forced displacement discussed by Lees et al. (2016) with regards to urban redevelopment processes, which have been extensively debated; rather, it is a more subtle process—but one equally able to disempower citizens’ voices.

After a short introduction looking at the relationship between heritagization, authoritarian practices and gentrification I move on to discuss the role of the state in urban (re)development in China. I then introduce the case of Lijiang and the two examples of preservation within it to be discussed, through which I show how the gradual institutionalization of heritage and the adoption of participatory-like strategies have been deployed to legitimize the gentrification of the Old Town. I argue, following other recent accounts of gentrification led by historic preservation (Cao, 2022; Zhang and Moore-Cherry, 2022), that these participatory-like strategies act as state instruments to hinder various forms of resistance, suppress dissatisfaction, and apply special treatment to certain groups in controlling the social response (Koch, 2022), thus making the heritagization process an authoritarian urban practice (Glasius, 2018).

Heritagization as a process of gentrification

Heritagization—as a socially constructed process of gentrification—has become an important approach in the field of urban planning. The relationship between these two processes is not new, although it has become the object of increased scrutiny (Herzfeld, 2010; Shin, 2010; De Cesari and Dimova, 2019; Zhu and González Martínez, 2022), shedding light on the inequalities emerging as a result of both phenomena. Heritagization contributes to the direct transformation of the built environment (as well as cultural practices) into objects of display. Often hidden behind the need to retain part of the history of a city or population, today heritagization has proliferated around the world, and as an urban revitalization strategy it has become ever more prominent.

In the West, historic heritage preservation was a major contributor to the construction of the post-industrial city from the 1970s into the 1990s. Taking, for example, the case of the UK, heritage preservation was originally initiated by conservationists and architects—associated with the ‘back to the city’ movement bolstered by the ‘revitalization’ (gentrification) of London's inner-city neighbourhoods.1 However, much has changed since these pioneer forms of heritage preservation. Indeed, like gentrification, historic preservation has become an important approach in the field of urban planning and it is increasingly interwoven with capital accumulation and the construction of space, and has evolved into a state-led and developer-led process.

The role of culture as an economic tool (Yúdice, 2003), alongside the increasing prominence of an international heritage discourse mobilized by transnational organizations like UNESCO (Smith, 2006), has encouraged the take-up of heritage preservation internationally, often conceived as being ‘able to cure a multitude of social ills’ (Yúdice, 2003; De Cesari and Dimova, 2019). In this sense, historic preservation is considered to be a neoliberal strategy that allows governments to stimulate city development (De Cesari, 2020). Hiding behind discourses on neighbourhood improvement, social cohesion and sense of place, heritagization projects transform rundown and stigmatized historic neighbourhoods into desirable places for middle-class consumption (Zhu and González Martínez, 2022), with dramatic impacts on a city's social fabric.

Strongly linked to the tourism industry, heritagization is seen both as a tool to promote urban revitalization and regeneration and as an instrument to stimulate the economy. Indeed, by capitalizing on what is known as the ‘rent gap’ (Smith, 1996), heritagization is strongly connected to an increase in property and rental prices (Herzfeld, 2015; Salerno, 2022), which often generates new opportunities for real estate speculation. In this regard, Ashworth and Tunbrige (2000) have noted that when it comes to tourism development, residential gentrification seems to be inescapable in the heritagization process. More often than not, the preservation of what is deemed to be of historical and cultural value is not accompanied by equal attention to the residents and everyday practices of those that inhabit the area, who ultimately are either priced out by the skyrocketing real estate prices or subjected to various forms of displacement (Herzfeld, 2015).

In China, in the aftermath of the Mao era, cultural heritage has become essential when it comes to the regeneration and beautification of historic neighbourhoods, thus contributing to the production of new urban spaces (Zhu and González Martínez, 2022) which are mostly for tourist consumption. As a process of gentrification, heritagization is not just a state-led process, but a machine that involves academic experts, architects and urban planners who all input into the creation of an authorized heritage discourse (Smith, 2006). This discourse drives the transformation of historic neighbourhoods, serving both national and local actors as well as elites in attaining their neoliberal ambitions.

Authoritarian urban practices in China

In China, while the one-party ruling system nurtures an illiberal political environment (Glasius, 2018) characterized by strong control over society and a repressive political apparatus used to maintain social and political stability, authoritarian practices also unfold in the everyday, enacted by a variety of actors who operate at different scales (Gonzalez-Vicente, 2022). In this scenario, urban growth in China over the last four decades has been strongly shaped by the political agenda of the Chinese state, which is leading the country in a significant transformation. Indeed, in the aftermath of the Opening Up reform of 1979, government officials—who were increasingly entangled in the capitalist logic—embraced Deng Xiaoping's vision of urban (re)development as one of the main engines for the (re)development of the Chinese nation, with real estate becoming a driver of China's ambitious economic growth (Zhang and Moore-Cherry, 2022).

The state's aspirations for economic growth and for greater integration into the global economy, along with the political ambitions of local governments, have all played a part in fostering what can be described as an ‘urban growth machine’ (Molotch, 2004), where the interests of national government, local state actors and urban elites concur in the extraction of surplus value generated by the commodification of land. This is both stimulated by—and indeed stimulating—the expansion of the construction and real estate sector. While we cannot ignore that much of the urban (re)development is strongly ‘linked to government's developmental agenda rather than land profitability per se’ (Wu et al., 2022: 611), urban growth coalitions in China have nonetheless, either directly or indirectly, facilitated space commodification in urban (re)development, with urban regeneration and beautification processes increasingly being mobilized around Chinese cities to capitalize on land transformation and urban restructuring.

In the midst of China's rapid urban growth, urban (re)development projects have often neglected local inhabitants’ concerns, creating new and transforming old urban spaces, not only in first-tier and second-tier cities, but also in provincial and (more recently) rural areas as well. As a result, urban (re)development projects which involve large-scale demolitions and relocations—predominantly deployed to promote capital accumulation—have long encountered resistance on the part of the population, contributing to the creation of a conflictual environment.

Authoritarian practices emerge in this scenario, stemming from the need to curb the potential discontent arising from urban transformation and also in order to facilitate the economic development and ensure the achievement of national mandates. In this sense, state-led urban revitalization projects, undertaken in coalition with developers and/or state-owned enterprises, emerge as a perfect example of the dynamics of an urban growth machine facilitated through authoritarian practices, highlighting the role of local actors in curbing resistance at the local level. Alongside top-down decision-making, the practices employed range from openly coercive to more subtle preventive practices (see Jenss and Schuetze, 2021), depending on the complex interactions between civil society, local administrations, developers and national and transnational institutions.

As Li and He (2023) show, Chinese local states enact a mixture of soft and hard strategies to prevent and manage social conflict in urban (re)development projects, resorting to urban regulation (such as the ‘performance’ of participation) and an emphasis on fiscal benefits to co-opt residents into taking an active part in the preservation process—which has tended to facilitate the silencing or even elimination of dissatisfaction (Xu and Lin, 2019). Analysis of these practices in China—where the completion of urban (re)development projects is still considered to be a political achievement—shows how, until recently, the vague urban participation processes have usually lacked genuine interaction with the residents affected.2 However, a considerable shift has been witnessed in recent years, where public participation is increasingly deployed to promote ‘harmonious’ urban development. These efforts by local governments have been described as an effective means for limiting discontent and resistance among residents (He, 2019; Cao, 2022). While such practices are not explicitly authoritarian in nature, recent accounts of urban regeneration/gentrification in Nanjing have shown that, through these strategies, the local government has ultimately achieved its urban redevelopment plan by regulating and guiding the public's behaviour and opinion (Cao, 2022)—an implicit, but more hidden form of urban authoritarianism.

A practice approach to the understanding of authoritarian urbanism allows us to uncover the authoritarian patterns deployed by different actors, going beyond the rather fixed notion of authoritarianism as a political regime. The preservation of historic heritage—deployed to ensure the gentrification of historic streets, neighbourhoods and the inner core of cities—is an interesting case for analysis, because the centrality assumed by heritage policies and planning and the reliance on heritage discourses have legitimized the transformation of the historic built environment, the facilitation of capital accumulation, and the disempowerment of residents’ opposition.

Authoritarian practices in the heritagization of the Old Town of Lijiang

The Old Town of Lijiang (also known as Dayan) is a famous World Heritage site in Yunnan province in southern China. Placed on the World Heritage List in 1997, it is considered as the ‘South Gate’ into China thanks to its strategic position along the Silk Road (Zhu and Maags, 2020). It is also the homeland of the Naxi ethnic minority. Described as ‘an excellent example of human habitat showing a harmony between man and nature’ (UNESCO),3 the site includes the main historic core of Dayan (including the Black Dragon Pool) and the residential clusters of Shuhe and Baisha (Figure 1).

Under the guidance of central government, the preservation of the Old Town started in 1986, when the city was listed as one of China's national historic and cultural cities. In this period, preservation efforts were in line with the need to promote the preservation of individual buildings and cultural relics in cities of ‘revolutionary significance’, as well as the promotion of ethnic minority groups, then stigmatized for being ‘backward, uncivilized, primitive and with [a] low cultural level’ (Chao, 2012: 9).

Lijiang, listed for its vivid urban space that reflected the harmonious co-existence between different ethnic groups and philosophies, officially started to be preserved during the 1990s, after the local government published a Conservation Plan for Lijiang Ancient Town to support the listing of Lijiang on the World Heritage List and its development as a tourist destination (Shao, 2017). With encouragement from the central government—which had been promoting the development of tourism as a market-driving force since 1993 (Airey and Chong, 2017)—the economy of Lijiang slowly shifted towards a more market-based tourist economy that was heavily reliant on the Naxi ethnic culture. The inclusion of Naxi Dongba culture on the Intangible World Heritage List in 2001 further legitimized the exploitation of Naxi culture for market consumption, transforming the Naxi themselves into the ‘living’ heritage of Lijiang.

The case of Lijiang sheds light on the authoritarian aspects of the heritagization process. Alongside changing much of the original layout in the heart of the city, the preservation process also caused the relocation of many residents, destroying the social ties that once characterized life in the Old Town (Zhu and Maags, 2020) without listening to the concerns of those affected by this transformation. In 2005, in a move designed to attract domestic and foreign investors to participate in the development of Lijiang, ownership of much of the public housing in the Old Town was transferred by the Lijiang City Government to the Lijiang Management Corporation Ltd. (a semi-private corporation owned by the government and entrusted with the management and development of the Old Town). Indeed, while the local government was relying on official heritage discourses to advocate the importance of preserving the Old Town's heritage, at the same time the Old Town was being progressively transformed.

Increasing living costs, noise and pollution were some of the changes described by residents (Su and Teo, 2009). In addition, the arrival of external investors from the 2000s onwards—who became actively involved in the Old Town's commercial activities and brought in the lifestyles of different migrants (Su et al., 2021)—generated ‘competition’ between these new residents and the Naxi population (Zhu, 2016), who ultimately preferred to rent out their houses to the immigrants and leave their former homes and community in the Old Town. Although the development of the tourism industry has greatly benefited Lijiang's local economy by increasing job opportunities and improving local services, at the same time, many Naxi residents have felt the need to relocate due to the changes that tourism has brought to their once tranquil lives. In sum, heritagization transformed the Old Town into ‘an unhomely place they no longer felt at home in’ (Su, 2012; Zhu, 2016).

Resistance within an authoritarian context

Resistance to gentrification manifests in many forms. As Lees et al. (2018) argue, when it comes to planetary gentrification, resistance can be characterized both by overt opposition as well as by invisible everyday practices, depending on the (authoritarian or otherwise) context. In the case of China, where in some cases confrontational practices tend to elicit coercive and punitive practices from local and national administrations, other forms of resistance are more likely to emerge. Forced demolition, displacement, relocation and/or compensation were among the first causes of social conflict between local governments and residents who were subjected to processes of urban redevelopment/gentrification in Chinese cities. Active forms of resistance have been witnessed in cities like Guangzhou (Shin, 2016), Shanghai (Shao, 2012) and Nanjing (Cao, 2019), with scholars questioning Chinese residents’ ‘right to the city’ in the face of property-led urban regeneration.

While the heritagization process in Lijiang prevented the large-scale demolitions and forced displacements that have characterized much of urban (re)development in China, the reconstruction of the Old Town following the 1996 earthquake nonetheless caused dissatisfaction among the residents (Su, 2010), whose daily lives were changed by its gradual transformation to fit the expectations and desires of middle-class tourists and by the recreation of historic buildings (ibid.). While many residents used gentrification ‘as a defence against economic precariousness’ (Arkaraprasertkul, 2018: 3) and left the Old Town, several of those who stayed lamented the commercialization and socio-spatial transformation of the historic core. However, most of these complaints were dismissed by the local actors whose vision of Lijiang as a global tourist destination was the only one accepted.

Despite this, and contrary to the high number of disputes recorded in major cities—where a networked organization of homeowners was identified in economically advanced cities from the early 2000s (Yip, 2019)—in Lijiang, many of those who did not leave the Old Town resorted to a heterogeneity of indirect practices and small acts of resistance to counter their own gentrification-induced displacement. Indeed, pressured by both capital accumulation and the touristic gaze, residents have developed different tactics to withstand displacement. It is in this context that Su (2012) highlights the increasing role of ‘home’ as a space of resistance, where residents can find ‘comfort and conviviality’ (ibid) in a now commercialized and noisy Lijiang. Similarly, he notes how residents who have left Dayan tend to avoid returning to the Old Town, finding it an ‘unhomely’ place because ‘what is sold there is nothing relevant to my daily life’ (ibid.: 36).

Whilst some chose to become ‘the living heritage’ of Lijiang, hence contributing to (and benefiting from) its heritagization, for others the discomfort generated by the heritagization of their Old Town ultimately led them to leave their homes. In this sense, the testimonies offered by former residents can be considered a clear manifestation of the phenomenological displacement7 that has affected some of the Old Town's residents and the pressures that ultimately drove them to leave their homes. Su (2012) describes the disappointment of former residents when they see how their former homes have lost their original living atmosphere; a similar experience is recounted by some of Zhu's (2016) interviewees too.

Everyday resistance practices are variegated, especially in authoritarian contexts where open resistance risks the freedom of individuals (Lees et al., 2018). In Lijiang, acts of direct resistance are often hindered by the local authorities. Given that the heritagization process began during the 1990s, it is difficult to trace back which practices were enacted by the residents in coping with the changes to the Old Town. Nevertheless, more recent accounts of direct resistance are visible.

In 2016, for example, the police started a formal investigation to identify who initiated a one-day protest of local shop owners against the increasing cost of the ‘ancient city maintenance fee’ imposed on tourists (Li, 2016). This fee had already been the subject of dissatisfaction among guesthouse owners since 2008 (Su, 2015), who questioned how the money raised from the maintenance fee was used. The dissent against the fee also generated some turmoil on social media, with more than 20 posts on Weibo, Toutiao and Zhihu debating the issue. Nonetheless, the coercive measures employed by the government—which apparently ‘coerced’ business owners to take part in its investigation to track down those who had instigated the protest—once again left the state authorities as the loudest voice in the Old Town. As Verdini (2015) has pointed out, the incipient nature of civil society in China can often severely hinder it in counterbalancing the power of local government.

The heritagization of Dayan and, even more so, the preservation of Naxi culture has contributed to legitimizing the transformation of the Old Town. Leveraging the protection of Dongba culture and the creation of ‘Naxi land’ has contributed to generating consensus among the residents who, in some cases, have even leveraged the discourse of heritage for their own benefit (Zhu and Maags, 2020). By engaging local residents in various cultural activities8 and organizing consultation meetings, the local government contributes to enhancing the community's cultural identity and confidence. Likewise, by showcasing their projects and their potential economic return, local government works to enlist public approval (Li et al., 2020)—especially from those able to benefit from the project.

In addition, as Li et al. (2020) have further explained, community representatives are often involved in the consultation process. Although their role ought to be one of mediator between the government and civil society, in reality their own (usually economic) interests lie more with the government's expectations than with the interests of the wider population and they therefore contribute to persuading residents to comply with the government's plans.

By adopting a variety of tactics, Chinese local government has been quite strategic in avoiding and dampening resistance. The deployment of consultation to facilitate local governments’ political ambitions is not new, and more recent accounts of regeneration in Nanjing have similarly shown how the shift towards more inclusive policies has contributed to bringing the local population on board, hindering conflicts at the local level that might be caused by urban redevelopment (Cao, 2022). It can be argued that the involvement of residents in the heritagization process through informing and consulting, as well as elevating heritage to a form of ‘public good’, has contributed to ‘flattening’ residents’ voices and dampening overt resistance. Despite this, dissent is still present among the population (Li et al., 2020), with residents continuing to leave the Old Town and new conflicts between the Naxi and the migrant population—the ‘new people of Lijiang’—becoming more and more visible.

Reflections and conclusion

Looking at the spatialities of heritage preservation and the role played by local state actors and heritage regulations in reproducing authoritarian urban practices (Jenss and Schuetze, 2021; Koch, 2022), the heritagization process of the Old Town of Lijiang shows how the construction and rearrangement of space as a form of ‘ordering’ has served the aim of the dominant classes to achieve competitive advantage and economic and urban development while legitimizing the transformation of Lijiang and (re)shaping people's lives in the process.

In this short essay I have argued that we cannot ignore the context in which these practices unfold, insomuch as the role of the state is ever present in China's (re)development processes. Indeed, the gradual institutionalization of historic preservation and the process of rescaling governance has had a twofold aim: on the one hand, it was used to strengthen the protection of the Old Town so as to secure its competitive advantage by capitalizing on its heritage resources; on the other, its role was to provide legitimacy to the projects and strategies undertaken by the local government, thereby regulating the residents’ behaviour. Elevating the Naxi culture to be the symbol of Lijiang and granting economic privileges to the Naxi community was likewise a strategy for building consensus.

Resistance to heritagization in Lijiang has played out through small acts in the everyday lives of residents (Su, 2012; 2015; Zhu, 2016), alongside a few examples of individual direct resistance that can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Although dissident voices existed—as shown in the case of Lion Mountain (Li, 2012), where residents demanded community relocation in the face of displacement—the interests of the local government often prevail, enabling them to achieve their urban ambitions by regulating and guiding the inhabitants’ behaviour. In this sense, a focus on authoritarian urban practices rather than on authoritarianism as a form of governance allows us to understand how resistance unfolds into the everyday, highlighting the materiality of authoritarian relations (Gonzalez-Vicente, 2022).

As the case of the heritagization of Dayan shows, heritage and culture, as a technology of governance, are deployed in an attempt to stimulate the enthusiasm of the city's residents concerning the preservation of their heritage. By creating a ‘shared goal’ to curb dissatisfaction and resistance, these practices are highly symbolic in nature because they tend to be used to generate consensus rather than empower communities, as other studies of China have also shown (Xu and Lin, 2019; Li et al., 2020; Cao, 2022; Zhang and Moore-Cherry, 2022).

Local urban restructuring has often (usually) been connected to the ambitions of the state: in the past, the state encouraged large-scale demolitions (Wu et al., 2022), but now there is a shift towards other approaches to urban redevelopment which tend to avoid large displacements, signalling a shift from ‘physical forces to soft power’ (Zhang and Moore-Cherry, 2022). In this context, governmentality strategies are used to justify the need for city redevelopment in the first place. These restructurings and redevelopments are usually categorized as capital- and profit-led urban decisions that mostly encourage economic development and the growth of the city. There may sometimes be underlying ideological or political reasons as well (Koch and Valiyev, 2015).

By resorting to discourses of harmony, beauty and civilization, the practice of heritagization has a twofold aim: at a national scale it is used to legitimize the power of the party state, which is trying to reconstruct China's imperial past and thus position itself as the legitimate successor to the great ancient dynasties—especially under the ‘Chinese rejuvenation’ programme promoted by President Xi. At the local level, as showcased by this essay through the heritagization process in Lijiang, it is used as a way for the local and national state to legitimize itself through the argument of supporting economic and national interests, while at the same time oppressing those who are affected on the ground through various means.