Drivers of China's Urbanisation and Property Development

The mainstream scholarship that seeks to explain China’s urban development tends to favour a macro discourse that focuses on institutional factors, such as globalisation, economic growth, and national policy reforms. These are important contributing factors, but they do not necessarily suffice to capture the complexities and interrelations of the immense magnitude of China’s urban development. In this article, I approach the endogenous factors to explain China’s urban development through the lenses of urbanisation and property development. I posit a dichotomy of institutional drivers and noninstitutional drivers. I argue that the dichotomy of institutional and noninstitutional drivers provides an integrated framework to explain China’s urban development, and fills the gap of missing non-institutional drivers in the mainstream scholarship. Discussions through this dichotomy reflect progress, identify problems and suggest further research agendas for both institutional and non-institutional drivers.