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City‐regional development is a key lens to understand the interplay between geo‐economics and geopolitics (re)shaping multiscale geographic processes. We advance this thesis by foregrounding the state–finance–infrastructure nexus underpinning contemporary city‐regional development. We argue that unpacking this nexus is important for understanding how the co‐constitution of crisis‐driven state restructurings and state‐mediated geographic processes arises as a solution to pressing crises emerging from the current conjuncture. In this conjuncture, the financial sector and the city‐region are the focal points of state regulation for addressing multidimensional and multiscale crises. We substantiate this argument by tracing how and why the Chinese central state restructured the municipal financing policy to prompt the rapid transformation of Chengdu from a less‐developed city in Western China to an emerging gateway city on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since the mid‐2010s. We contribute an inward and material approach to understanding the geostrategy by shifting the attention from the broad‐level abstraction of external geopolitical/geo‐economic goals to (1) the material processes in which the geostrategy unfolds through internal institutional restructurings and territorial reorganisation and (2) how the BRI‐related infrastructure projects are enacted for addressing social, political and economic requisites at the (sub)national scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chengdu, located at the western edge of the Sichuan Basin, is the provincial capital of Sichuan Province. The fertile and well-watered basin has given the city a long and splendid history, which has left significant and lasting imprints on its urban form, landscape and cultural life. In the planned economy period, Chengdu serviced as the economic, cultural, logistical and technological center for southwest China, and built a competitive and broad industrial base which now helps the city maintain its leading position in the region. In 2007, Chengdu was assigned as one of two pioneer cities in coordinating urban–rural development. This paper introduces the urban development of Chengdu as a historical city, summarizes the city’s economic growth, urban spatial transformation and infrastructure construction as a major city in western China, and discusses its recent efforts in coordinating urban–rural development as a pioneering city in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the role of post-1999 'Develop the West' policies in promoting accelerated economic development in Chengdu and Chongqing, the two largest, spatially proximate metropolitan centers of western China. Differences between these two cities test theories regarding utilization of characteristics that flow from a place's location, history, political-economy, and cultural resources. Chengdu serves as the traditional capital of Sichuan province. The mountainous setting of Chongqing relegated it to a military-industrial complex dominated by state-owned enterprises. Its new autonomous status and completion of the Three Gorges Dam will solidify the city as the western edge of the Yangtze. It is argued that geographically reinforced historical cultural patterns form the basis of systemic problems. A key difference between the two cities lies in their different utilization of university research, a proxy for openness to information fueling change. Statistics and interviews accumulated in both cities flesh out this comparative examination of two major geographical bases for economic dynamism in west China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]