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As the world economy shifts towards services, transnational corporations ( TNCs) in the service sector have accelerated their expansion in emerging economies. This paper examines the development and embeddedness of foreign hypermarket retailers in China. It also analyzes the spatial penetration patterns of retail TNCs, the impacts of home and host economies on their local embeddedness, and how they resolve the structural paradox between enforcing standardization and conducting localization. The expansion of retail TNCs has been influenced by the gradual liberalization policies of the Chinese government. Spatially, they expanded in two directions: from the eastern costal region to the central and western hinterland, and along China's urban hierarchy from larger cities to smaller cities. While home economies greatly influenced their initial strategies, foreign hypermarket retailers are constantly adjusting to better embed in the Chinese market and to more effectively resolve the structural paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the pursuit for global competitiveness and economic growth, Chinese cities have recorded massive urban land expansion. This article examines the effects of development policies and economic restructuring on urban land expansion in China through a case study of Nanjing, representing the rapidly growing and globalizing coastal cities in China. Wei investigate the development process and changing contents of government policies, and analyze development zones and key projects as privileged, trait making, and even path-breaking elements of the development process. We highlight the transition and paradox of the Chinese state in the urban development process, and the broad contexts underlying urban land expansion in Chinese cities. We see urban expansion in China as a process largely responding to top-down policy change and economic transition initiated by the central government. We hold that the role of the state has to be analyzed to understand urban transformation and land expansion, moving beyond local factors of accessibility and feasibility. Development-zone and project fevers, and lagging administrative reforms, however, have made Chinese cities heavy with debt and led to wasteful development, corruption, and social unrest in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]