A new model of village urbanization? Coordinative governance of state-village relations in Guangzhou City, China.

China's ongoing urbanization has profoundly reshaped local governance with an increasing emphasis on reducing urban-rural inequalities through public investment in the rural areas in order to enhance the wellbeing of villagers. Drawing from more than one decade of intensive field research in a peri-urban area of Guangzhou, our study elucidates how the process of village urbanization has developed into a tri-partite partnership between the local state, the village organizations and the villagers in village asset management and welfare provision. This collaborative model presents an alternative approach to the top-down, state-led urbanization model which has notoriously led to landless villagers and economic dispossession in village urbanization. It also differs from the bottom-up, village corporatist model which tends to oppose integrated urban-rural development. This study attempts to conceptualize the delicate interdependency of the local state, the village collectives and villagers. Our findings offer new insights into the restructuring of state-village relations and explain its implications for community capacity building in periurban China. • Top-down, state-led approach or bottom-up, village corporatist model cannot fully explain China's rural urbanization. • A new coordinate approach driven by a tri-partite partnership is emerging from urban transition of rural villages. • Interdependency of the local state, the collectives and the villagers is a key success factor in China's urbanization. • Top-down local state interventions and bottom-up initiatives complementary rather than substitutes. • Seeking a power balance and enhancing self-governance are essential for the continual success of the coordinative approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]