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Concepts of regionalization and regionalism have dominated discussions of

emerging global orders. With the rise of the European Union, scholars have
begun to look for similar multilaterally negotiated regional organizations in
the Asia-Pacific region. However, the search for regional forms in East Asia
that may approximate the eu seems to set us up for the disappointing admis-
sion that regionalism and intergovernmental collaborations in East Asia are
weak and fraught with political obstacles. Some have identified asean + 3
(the members of the Association of South East Asian Nations plus China,
Japan, and South Korea) as the major regional configuration in East Asia
today, with the goal of ‘‘enmeshing’’ China in a ‘‘soft regime’’ of economic
integration.∞ Such claims of a rising East Asian regional order seem dubious,
more a vision shaped by politicians’ rhetoric than an actually existing institu-
tional structure. Indeed, the search for broad comparative ideal-types of re-
gionalization in Europe, North America, and East Asia often uses Western
modes of regionalization as the normative model, so that regional forms in
East Asia are found to be lacking and defective. Alternately, one imagines that
analysts in search of typologies may contrast the eu or the North American
Free Trade Agreement (nafta) with Asian regional configurations, drawing
up a set of oppositions such as multilateralism versus universalism, or the
protection of civil rights versus compromises on them.
My analytical approach challenges such assumptions based on binary
typologies. The eu is after all a unique experiment in transstatal rule that
emerged out of specific historical experiences and institutions to meet con-
temporary global challenges. One would expect that significant regional
alignments in East Asia would be rather di√erent and distinctive, emerging
out of the particular interactions between market calculations and diverse
political entities. Regionalization in East Asia seems to take multiple forms,
organized at di√erent scales and based on limited groupings of sites or na-
98 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

tions. Kenichi Ohmae first noted the rise of cross-border regional economies
that link di√erent sites and populations in the Asia-Pacific.≤ This perspective
gives primacy to the role of economic systems and practices in shaping an
emergent form of East Asian regionalization that overlaps nation-state struc-

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tures. Others have pointed to Greater China—an alignment of China, Hong
Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia—as a
regional configuration emerging from cross-border trade.
My approach, in contrast to Ohmae’s, gives primacy not to economic ac-
tivities per se but to state strategies—informed by neoliberal logic—that pro-
duce conditions of possibility for such proliferating cross-border networks.
Thus, unlike the eu, which was forged through multilateral negotiations, I
argue that the regional space informally called Greater China is the outcome
of the administrative strategies of a single state, China, in pursuit of greater
cross-border trade. Flexible Chinese state practices, I argue, deploy zoning
technologies for integrating distinct political entities such as Hong Kong and
Macao, and even Taiwan and Singapore, into an economic axis. Furthermore,
although zoning technologies are ostensibly about increasing foreign invest-
ments and market activities, they create the political spaces and conditions
of variegated sovereignty aligned on an axis of trade, industrialization, and
knowledge exchange. This China-dominated archipelago challenges wide-
spread assumptions that economic and political forms of integration develop
in di√erent spheres. Greater China, I argue, is the spatial production of a
state-driven scheme to integrate disarticulated political entities economically
as a detour to eventual political integration.
This chapter begins with a rethinking of sovereignty not as a container
concept but rather as a political order produced by an assemblage of admin-
istrative strategies. Contrary to claims that globalization engenders an ‘‘un-
bundling’’ of sovereign powers, I focus on specific state strategies that are
designed to respond e√ectively to the challenges of global markets. Neo-
liberal logic, I argue, is influencing the way political reason relates to crises
through the redemarcation of political space within and beyond the national
territory. The political exception is increasingly deployed by many Asian
states not to deny civil rights but to create regulation spaces of political
economic experimentation. I also discuss the adoption of zoning technolo-
gies by the Chinese government for a creative respatialization of the national
territory and for the realignment of mainland enclaves with various Chinese-
dominated political entities overseas. China’s Special Economic Zones (sezs)
and Special Administrative Regions (sars) are the outcomes of a distinctive
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 99

reterritorialization of the national space to develop sites of capitalist growth,

but they also foster conditions of possibility for a potential political absorp-
tion of Taiwan. The zoning modality may have influence on the Korean
peninsula as well.

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Rethinking Sovereignty

Scholarship on sovereignty is still dominated by e√orts to match specific

nation-states to ideal-types of political orders: the Westphalian, liberal, or
antiutopian models. Such views stem from adhering too closely to the Webe-
rian model of the modern liberal state, that is, that these states rest on a
bureaucratic administrative order which holds a legitimate and legal monop-
oly on the use of power.≥ This formulation has been recast in rigid terms by
Anthony Giddens, who maintains that ‘‘the modern-nation state is a power-
container whose administrative purview corresponds exactly to its territorial
delimitation.’’∂ These views continue to be productive and relevant as particu-
lar expressions or problems of sovereignty. Indeed, the 2003 U.S. attack on
Iraq is a useful reminder of the military power behind U.S. sovereignty. In
East Asia, the container model of national sovereignty∑ has shaped the model
of that Asian developmental state as epitomized by Japan and, until recently,
South Korea, whereby government-business collaborations pursue structural
change as a form of legitimation or as a national project.∏ Ironically, the
original ‘‘developmental state’’ was the Soviet Union, which undertook the
overall development of the country as an overriding national project. This
socialist developmental model shaped China’s modus operandi until the late
1970s. The developmental state is now synonymous with the new Asian capi-
talist powerhouses of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. This Northeast Asian
state-directed capitalism is widely assumed to be the Asian model of state
form, when in actuality the specific forms and articulations between state
authorities and capitalist actors are rather diverse in terms of the institutions
involved. For instance, there are striking di√erences in developmental state
action between Northeast and Southeast Asian nations when it comes to
state-business ties.π
It seems fruitful therefore to open up another line of inquiry, one that
treats the state not as a political singularity but as an ever shifting assemblage
of planning, operations, and tactics increasingly informed by neoliberal rea-
son to combat neoliberal forces in the world at large. Thus while Asian states
have been formally categorized by the Western media as ‘‘socialist,’’ ‘‘authori-
100 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

tarian,’’ and ‘‘social democratic,’’ they can be highly variable and pragmatic in
practice, responding swiftly and opportunistically to dynamic market condi-
tions. In the previous chapter, I used the term ‘‘graduated sovereignty’’ to
identify the rescaling of state power across the national landscape and the

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di√erential scales of regulation on diverse groups of citizens and foreigners.
This view of sovereignty—not as a uniform e√ect of state rule but as
the contingent outcomes of various strategies—also informs my analysis
of China. In the transition from a centrally planned economy to capitalist
development, the Chinese state devised various strategies to address rather
specific problems of capitalist development that will also contribute to the
political imperative to reunite with breakaway territories. Strategies of reter-
ritorialization become vital not only in stimulating markets in border zones
but also in accommodating spaces of variegated governance. Obviously, the
point is not to judge sovereign power by some formulaic or container view of
sovereignty but to adjust our analytical tools to examine various instruments
and procedures of governing.

Technologies of Ruling and of Exception

A view of government as practical rationality shows that the state of sov-

ereignty or sociopolitical order is the contingent product of varied tech-
nologies that define, discipline, and regulate individual and collective life in a
nation. This formulation suggests that, first, sovereign power depends on a
network of regulatory entities that channel, correct, and scale human ac-
tivities in order to produce e√ects of social order.∫ Narrowly defined ‘‘politi-
cal’’ activities (e.g., elections, crackdowns, military actions) are merely one set
of elements shaping conditions of ruling and political normativity. A more
broadly based notion of politics includes the diverse and run-of-the-mill ac-
tivities that exercise political power beyond the state. My focus is thus on
technologies and procedures ‘‘that happen to be available, in which new ways
of governing were invented in a rather ad hoc way, as practical attempts to
think about and act upon specific problems in particular locales.’’Ω The ex-
ercise of power depends on a variety of technologies that target populations
as well as territory in order to solve problems of wealth, growth, and security.
In the second half of the twentieth century, market calculations began to
inform many areas of political rationality and action in emergent Asian coun-
tries. In the 1960s, at the behest of the World Bank, developing countries
were encouraged to create suitable sociopolitical conditions and infrastruc-
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 101

tures for linking up with the world economy. By the 1970s and 1980s, export-
industrialization programs shaped the political goals and justification of gov-
ernments throughout Northeast and Southeast Asia. The marriage of market
logic and authoritarian rule gave rise to the so-called Asian tigers—South

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Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. Neoliberal logic—
which is abstractable, mobile, and dynamic—becomes embedded in Asian
technocrats’ vision of how to reorganize society, space, and individual atti-
tudes in order to meet global competition. The economic boom went into a
tailspin with the Asian financial crisis, but state planners and entrepreneurial
citizen-subjects soon regirded themselves for conditions of freer access and
greater risk. A study of shifting technologies of ruling captures this con-
tingent and fluid nature of state sovereign practices that continually adjust
and negotiate disruptions, upheavals, and crises. Changes in governing tac-
tics are occasioned not only from the outside—by financial crisis, natural
disaster, or insurrection—but also from within state sovereignty itself.
Carl Schmitt defines ‘‘sovereignty’’ as ultimately the power to call a state
of exception to the normalized condition or the law. This bipolar formulation
of sovereignty-exception seeks to capture the dynamic quality of sovereignty
as the strategic and situational exercise of power in response to crises that
threaten the integrity of the state.∞≠ Schmitt theorizes that a state capable of
realistic response must be resolute in combating threats, and that sovereign
exception even to suspend basic rights could be justified to preserve political
unity and stability.∞∞ One need not agree with Schmitt’s political stance to find
his concept of the exception useful for analyzing contemporary state action
that deviates from standard sovereign operations and legal normativity. The
sovereign exception that I am interested in here is not the negative exception
that suspends civil rights for some but rather positive kinds of exception that
create opportunities, usually for a minority, who enjoy political accommoda-
tions and conditions not granted to the rest of the population. The positive
exception is now invoked, especially in bureaucratically centralized societies,
in order to allow privileged groups to face the challenges of globalization.
Indeed, the recent shift toward regional formations has come about
through a series of political exceptions that allow governments to rethink the
contours of sovereign power in relation to other sovereign entities. The con-
struction of the eu is predicated on a series of positive exceptions enacted by
individual governments to transfer aspects of sovereignty power to a higher
centralized authority in Brussels. This form of regionalization opens up cir-
culations of capital and labor, increasing opportunities for privileged Euro-
102 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

peans to become more competitive in global markets. John Ruggie attributes

the emerging architecture of the eu to a process of ‘‘unbundling’’ territory
and sovereignty. Governments disaggregate di√erent components of power
—fiscal policies, security measures, etc.—and give up certain controls for

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the governance of overlapping national spaces.∞≤ Similarly, Stephen Krasner
maintains that states in Eastern Europe have solved specific problems stem-
ming from conflicting claims to authority by disaggregating sovereignty
through the creation of various semiautonomous, semi-independent, and
semilegal entities.∞≥ Saskia Sassen argues that globalization has led to ‘‘a par-
tial denationalization of national territory and a partial shift of some compo-
nents of state sovereignty to other institutions, from supranational entities to
the global capital market.’’∞∂ Concepts of unbundling, disaggregation, and
denationalization describe the administrative mechanisms that created eu
regionalization, but these terms, with their assumptions of ‘‘giving up’’ parts
of sovereign power, do not quite fit the rather di√erent sovereign thinking
and practices in East Asia, even though they are also responding to the chal-
lenges of neoliberalism.
The logic of exception deployed in the construction of the Chinese axis is
marked more by a flexibility of state practices than by the unbundling or
disaggregation of powers. In 1972, the Chinese state spectacularly invoked an
exception to the normativity of socialist centralized planning. One may argue
that the introduction of market reforms was a response to the political crisis
of socialist backwardness, but a state of exception legitimized capitalist trans-
formation without jeopardizing the political legitimacy and order of the so-
cialist regime. China’s opening (kaifang) and market reform policies have
relied not on unbundling or denationalizing sovereignty but on the produc-
tion of new spaces of exception and border-crossing powers. Post-Mao state
strategies have displayed a flexibility and creativity in creating new capitalist
spaces where none existed before on the socialist mainland. By examining the
various technologies that zone land and mobilize economic resources at a
distance while accommodating political entities, we capture a dynamic pro-
cess of sovereignty often ignored in studies that assess sovereignty in terms of
broad ‘‘liberal,’’ ‘‘democratic,’’ or ‘‘authoritarian’’ labels.

Zoning Technologies

A school of thought now reconceptualizing the relationship between politics

and technology holds that the circulation of technical practices and standards
create ‘‘technological zones,’’ or overlapping political spaces of technological
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 103

normativity.∞∑ One example is the eu, a region of multiple technological

zones of uniform standardization, say, for the protection of intellectual prop-
erty, or for the preparation of food for human consumption. My approach to
zoning technologies, however, is about a slightly di√erent phenomenon, or a

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more extreme form of zoning practice that creates spatially fixed and distinc-
tive enclaves. ‘‘Zoning technologies’’ refers to political plans that rezone
the national territory. The technologies of governing are the instrumental-
ization of a form of market-driven rationality that demarcates spaces, usually
nonadjacent to each other, in order to capitalize on specific locational ad-
vantages of economic flows, activities, and linkages. By deploying zoning
strategies, sovereign states can create or accommodate islands of distinct
governing regimes within the broader landscape of normalized rule. The
political outcome is an archipelago of enclaves, the sum of which is a form of
variegated sovereignty.
Economic enclaves are not a new phenomenon, having their origins in
Western colonial practices that created special treaty ports and customs areas
in dominated lands, including China. In Asia, the first modern free trade zone
(or epz, Export-Processing Zone) in Asia was established in Kaoshiung, Tai-
wan, in the mid-1960s. Under the promptings of the United Nations In-
dustrial Development Organization and the World Bank, export-processing
zones subsequently proliferated throughout Asia, as well as in Latin America
and in the Middle East. The epz is a combination of old customs areas and
export-oriented manufacturing. Thus epzs combine tax-free holidays with
other incentives for foreign investors to set up factories that produce export
goods, train low-skill workers, and facilitate technology transfer.∞∏ The epz
strategy succeeded export-substitution industrialization in developing coun-
tries, driven by the pursuit of foreign exchange earnings. In the initial decades
of export-industrialization, epzs were given a free hand to exploit abundant
low-wage workers, most of whom were female. From South Korea to the
Philippines to Malaysia, union organization among zone workers was rou-
tinely harassed by the police. These export zones were the sites of sustained
labor struggles to combat industrial oppression and to raise wages; these
zone-based struggles resulted in gradually improved living conditions for the
new industrial workers in the Asian tiger economies.∞π Within two decades,
the labor and technological gains in epzs consolidated the industrial founda-
tion of ‘‘authoritarian developmental states’’ such as South Korea, Taiwan,
Singapore, and Malaysia. Larger transnational zones (so-called growth tri-
angles) have been set up in Southeast Asia. In short, created by an act of
exception, the free trade or export-processing zone ‘‘is like a country within a
104 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

country,’’∞∫ a technology that over time spreads its industrial, labor, and social
gains throughout the nation.

Rezoning China

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Learning from economic enclaves elsewhere in Asia, China has developed
distinctive zoning technologies that create the forms for alignment of the
mainland with overseas Chinese–dominated polities in an archipelago of
variegated sovereignty. By invoking the exception, the Chinese state is creat-
ing far-flung economic and political zones that are marked o√ from the nor-
mativity established elsewhere in the planned socialist environment.

Economic Zones : The open policy called for the establishment of new ‘‘Hong
Kongs’’ along the Chinese border to facilitate contact with foreign Chinese
capitalist communities. Deng Xiaoping considered sezs to be both an eco-
nomic bridge and a political window on the outside world. Di√erent kinds of
zones were established in several steps throughout the 1980s and 1990s (see
table 1).∞Ω The first decade saw the creation of major border sezs, ‘‘open’’
coastal cities: Shenzhen adjacent to Hong Kong; Zhuhai across from Macao;
Xiamen across the strait from Taiwan; and Shantou and Hainan, which have
strong traditional connections to Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.
Once market development in the coastal sites gained momentum, dozens of
free trade zones, special economic and high-tech industrial enclaves, as well as
tourist sites were located in interior cities to attract foreign exchange and
accelerate inland development.
Four goals dictated political conditions in these zones: to attract and
utilize foreign capital; to forge joint ventures and partnerships between main-
landers and foreigners; to produce wholly export-oriented goods; and to let
market conditions (i.e., not politics) drive economic activity.≤≠ To realize the
fourth goal, special managerial systems and labor service companies allow
more flexible labor contracts and costs and impose less bureaucratic red tape
than elsewhere in China. As some scholars have noted, sezs have evolved into
a unique system not only for export-oriented industrialization but also for
spearheading the transformation of socialist China into a market economy.≤∞
There are important aspects to sezs that go beyond the conventional
functions of epzs elsewhere in East Asia. The location of sezs in Guangdong
and Fujian Provinces shows the government’s interest in attracting investors
from neighboring Chinese polities. Article 1 of the Regulations on Special
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 105

Table 1. Major Forms of Zoning in China

major border zones

1980s Special Economic Zones (sezs)

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—Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, Xiamen, and Hainan Island
1990s Open Coastal Cities (14)
—Dalian, Shanghai, Wenzhou, Guangzhou, Beihai, and others

open coastal belts

—Yangtze River Delta; Pudong New Area (international investments)
—Pearl River Delta (mainly Hong Kong–based investments)
—Xiamen-Zhangzhou-Quanzhou Triangle (mainly Taiwan investments)
—Shantung Peninsula, Liadong Pen., Hebei, Guangxi

special administrative zones

—1997 Hong Kong sar
—1999 Macao sar

domestic interior zones, 1990s

—hinterland provincial cities
—15 ftzs, 32 state-level economic and technology zones
—53 high-tech industrial development zones in large and medium cities
—numerous tourist zones

Economic Zones in Guangdong Province, passed by the National People’s

Congress in 1980, proclaimed that ‘‘the special zones shall encourage foreign
citizens, overseas Chinese and compatriots from Hongkong and Macao and
their companies and enterprises (hereafter referred to as ‘investors’) to set up
factories and establish enterprises and other undertakings, with their own
investment or in joint ventures with our side, and shall, in accordance with
the law, protect their assets, the profits due them and their other lawful rights
and interests.’’≤≤ Besides gaining from overseas Chinese capital and exper-
tise,≤≥ sezs along the coast quickly lessened economic and income di√erences
between the mainland and neighboring areas with which China seeks even-
tual political unification.
sezs can also act as controlled spaces for dealing with social discontent
and labor unrest that market reforms might provoke. The economic linkages,
wealth, and capitalist experiments in sezs also have served explicit political
goals by managing the integration of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan with
mainland China. sezs are also di√erent from epzs in that they enjoy a wider
106 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

array of powers, including substantial autonomy for the local creation of

business opportunities, as well as simplified administrative regulations for
planning, banking, and insurance. These specialized areas report directly to
the central authorities in Beijing on economic and administrative matters.

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Political order within the zones and open cities promote freewheeling entre-
preneurial activities and labor exploitation to a degree not allowed in the rest
of China. Unlike state enterprise workers, who are highly organized under
the All China Federation of Trade Unions, zone workers are considered
peasants unprotected by China’s labor laws and are not entitled to social
benefits due workers elsewhere in the country.≤∂ Under the sez law, the sta√
and workers employed by enterprises in these territories are to be managed
by the enterprises according to their business requirements and, when neces-
sary, may be dismissed, after going through the procedures provided in the
labor contracts.≤∑
Not only are migrant workers exposed to the full force of market condi-
tions; they are discriminated against by zone authorities as if they were for-
eigners. Migrants must obtain a border pass, a work permit, and a temporary
resident pass to work in the sezs. In e√ect, zone workers, the majority of
whom are rural women working under highly exploitative conditions, are
systematically ignored by unionized workers in the rest of China. As rural
migrants, they are not entitled to urban citizenship and the residential rights,
education for their children, and access to various subsidies that such citizen-
ship entails.≤∏ The massive influx of the ‘‘floating population,’’ much of it
young and female, supplies the sezs with cheap labor for huge factories
producing consumer goods for the global economy.
sezs in China developed rapidly, especially after the Tiananmen crack-
down in 1989, when a tidal wave of investment from overseas Chinese com-
munities exceeded investments from Japan. By the early 1990s, sez-driven
capitalist enterprises became synonymous with building connections with
overseas Chinese. Under the banner of ‘‘Let Overseas Chinese Build Bridges,
Let Them Create Prosperity!,’’ newspaper articles reported that almost a half
million Shanghainese had overseas connections, forming ‘‘a large invisible
bridge’’ with Chinese capital from abroad.≤π In sezs, local Chinese o≈cials
set up tens of thousands of township and village enterprises (tves) that bring
together overseas Chinese capital and expertise with abundant cheap labor
and land on the mainland. These hybrid enterprises are the nodes of cross-
border production networks that strengthen Hong Kong’s role as the gate-
way to China.
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 107

The pairing of the Shenzhen sez with Hong Kong is an especially apt ex-
ample of how interactive zones across political borders act as both a hinge—
linking socialist and capitalist spaces—and as a bridge—channeling actors,
resources, and skills across zones.≤∫ Shenzhen, a village across the border of

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Hong Kong in the 1980s, has mushroomed into a Wild West frontier city with
millions of inhabitants, becoming the mainland extension for Hong Kong
business and industrial enterprises, as well as a center to screen out undesir-
able migrants for the metropolis. Tens of thousands of Hong Kong–based
factories moved into Guangdong Province, and by the 1990s the Pearl River
Delta had become an industrial extension of Hong Kong. Here Hong Kong
managers train millions of poor rural women in manufacturing ‘‘the South
China miracle.’’≤Ω Hong Kong’s goal to become ‘‘the Manhattan of Asia’’
entails using Shenzhen to filter out poor working families from the rest of
China, and as a place to dump the working poor who can no longer a√ord
Hong Kong’s stratospheric real estate prices. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s so-
phisticated and bilingual expertise in legal, financial, and business services is
crucial to linkages between the mainland and global corporations and to
translating foreign products and practices for mainland use.≥≠
In coastal cities, expatriate Chinese are well-represented in all sectors vital
to the mainland economy, especially business services, finance, manufactur-
ing, transportation, and hotel management. The formation of the Xiamen-
centered coastal belt to attract Taiwanese capital led to a frenzy of cross-strait
economic activity. sez policies give local o≈cials autonomy in forming joint
ventures with foreigners, as well as in retaining revenues at the local levels.
Taiwanese investors, capitalizing on ethnic and linguistic ties, forged inter-
personal relations ( guanxi) with local o≈cials who further eased bureaucratic
rules on tari√s.≥∞ With the formation of the Xiamen-Zhangzhou-Quanzhou
Triangle, Taiwan has solidified its status as a major industrial power, as in-
dexed by its thirty-odd intelligent industrial parks clustered around Hsinchu.
These science parks maintain important technical, economic, and personal
relationships with Silicon Valley firms, but Taiwanese industrialists have built
thousands of factories in the greater Xiamen area. Most of the products
manufactured in the Xiamen-Zhangzhou-Quanzhou Triangle are machinery,
electrical goods, metals, and textiles.
Besides the Pearl River Delta complex and the Xiamen Triangle, the Yang-
tze River Delta as an open zone seeks to turn Shanghai, with its new financial
center in Pudong, into the ‘‘dragonhead’’ of Chinese development. Shanghai
is the leading center of Chinese capitalism, with a huge Western presence in
108 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

commerce, manufacturing, and finance. In contrast to the other sezs, where

the emphasis is on low-tech processing firms and cheap labor, Shanghai and
its surroundings are to become urban jewels in the Chinese capitalist crown,
the sites of a stock market, high-technology, and business glamour. For in-

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stance, Western business schools and U.S. managers in Shanghai are seeking
to transform white-collar Chinese workers into global corporate players.
Meanwhile, Singaporean technocrats have been recruited to build Silicon
Valley–style industrial parks in Suzhou and Wuxi. Singapore authorities act
as both middlemen and guides in creating a new kind of industrial zone
where conditions of doing business, living, and working adhere to certain
technical standards. The goal is to transform Suzhou Township into a world-
class industrial city with landscaped, tree-lined boulevards, an international
school, and a strict balance between industrial and residential areas.≥≤ How-
ever, the implementation of Singapore’s technocratic practices and norms—
in building codes, water treatment, tra≈c controls, and so on—has been
frustrated by the weakness of Chinese administrative and regulatory bodies
overseeing the enclaves. Suzhou authorities learned the business benefits of
zoning and started building competing industrial zones that lure foreign
businesses with lower rents and free advertisements. Nevertheless, the auton-
omy given to business and administrative activities in these zones has engen-
dered dense transnational business networks and more comfortable living
conditions than can be found elsewhere in China.
Thanks to sezs and open cities, sizable professional and business classes
have emerged on the mainland, with growing connections to overseas Chi-
nese locations. Free trade zones in Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong ex-
change personnel, knowledge, and technology with sezs in China. Singa-
pore, and to a lesser extent Hong Kong, have been recruiting thousands of
students, professors, and scientists from the mainland to work in universities
and science parks in these cities (see chap. 8). Thousands of mainland Chinese
travel to Southeast Asia to learn English, in the hope of eventually testing into
universities in the West. The two-way flows of professional and business
classes between China and overseas Chinese communities have created com-
plex networks that amount to a de facto transborder integration of the social-
ist mainland with overseas Chinese capitalist citadels at the scientific, busi-
ness, and personal levels. In short, the coastal zone authorities and open cities
are spaces of exception to the centrally planned socialist economy. They enjoy
autonomy in all economic and administrative matters in order to attract
foreign investment and create jobs for millions of migrant workers and city
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 109

Table 2. Exceptions to the Centrally Planned Socialist System

i. economic zones: Special Economic Zones, Open Coastal Cities, Open

Coastal Belts

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Powers and Privileges: Autonomy in all economic and administrative matters; ex-
emptions from socialist central planning and regulation of investment and labor
issues; market conditions determine wages and work conditions

ii. administrative zones: Hong Kong sar, Macao sar

Powers and Privileges: Mini-constitution or basic law for full-fledged capitalist
activities; independent judiciary, executive and legislative Councils; democratic
elections of all o≈cials, except the chief executive; and freedom of speech
(exemptions from mainland socialist laws governing national security are being
politically contested)

Source: ‘‘Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,’’ www.china.org.cn/english/feature/38096.htm.

dwellers. Released from socialist practices governing labor, market condi-

tions are allowed to determine wages and work conditions. Economic dyna-
mism has greatly intensified social inequalities among the populations within
zones, as well as between the coastal areas and Chinese society at large. Zone
autonomy creates conditions of total market freedom but without the demo-
cratic rights that were demanded in Hong Kong on the eve of its return to
mainland rule (see table 2).

Administrative Zones : In the mid-1990s, the ‘‘one country, two systems’’

policy created the Special Administrative Region for the reabsorption of for-
merly colonized or breakaway territorial possessions (Hong Kong, Macao,
Taiwan). Thus, while sezs were intended to intensify cross-border networks
and economic integration, and the sars are a formal accommodation of
di√erent political entities, the synergy generated between the two zoning
systems is creating a kind of regionalization that makes political unification of
China and its breakaway parts inevitable.
Great Britain and the People’s Republic of China, with minimal consulta-
tion of Hong Kong’s people, negotiated the Basic Law of the Hong Kong
Special Administrative Region (hksar), a mini-constitution that allows ‘‘a
high degree of autonomy,’’ so that the city’s capitalist system and way of life
can continue for fifty years.≥≥ Thus, the sar zoning system allows for Hong
Kong (and Macao) to return to Chinese sovereignty and yet maintain a legal
110 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

exception—specifically, a democratic way of life—to the rest of centrally

planned socialist China. Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong leaders, not main-
land o≈cials, will serve in the government. hksar fully enjoys the power of
decision over matters within its autonomous jurisdiction—executive and leg-

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islative councils, an independent judiciary, and final adjudication powers. The
democratic structure of sar governance is compromised by Beijing’s appoint-
ment of the government’s chief executive, Tung Chee Hwa (see table 2).
Thus, Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule with a newly feisty Legislative
Council intent on keeping democratic rights given to Hong Kong during the
last decade of British rule (the first free elections in 150 years of British coloni-
zation were held in 1991). Many have seen the sars model as a test case for the
eventual reunification of Taiwan with China.
The sar framework allows for experimentation with di√erent degrees of
civil rights in a vibrant capitalist setting, a milieu that acts as a laboratory for
China’s future. The strategic deployment of two zoning technologies—sezs
and open cities, on the one hand, and special administrative entities, on the
other—has produced a system of variegated sovereignty or a mix of regional
autonomy and centralized controls. As table 2 illustrates, sezs enjoy more
limited autonomous powers than do sars. sezs are technically an economic
exception to socialist central planning and enjoy autonomy mainly in market
and market-related activities in order to freely develop capitalism on the
mainland, with the help of overseas Chinese and other foreign investors.
Nevertheless, open economic areas contribute to political integration by
strengthening legal procedures and practices that support transnational eco-
nomic activities and relationships.
sars are fundamentally in a state of political exception. These administra-
tive zones possess their own mini-constitutions, independent political insti-
tutions, and judiciaries. Furthermore, a spectrum of democratic rights allows
for free elections and freedom of expression, at least for the immediate future.
In brief, then, sezs represent particular orders of economic and administra-
tive autonomy within centrally planned socialist China. sars, in contrast, are
unique orders of political autonomy within a flexible arrangement of one
country, two systems. In practical terms, sezs overlap substantially with the
spaces of sars, creating spaces of variegated sovereignty based on the synergy
between untrammeled capitalist activities and electoral democracy within the
body of socialist China. At the same time, these exceptional spaces are vital
nodes in dense networks connecting the mainland to Taiwan and Singapore,
allowing an axis of variegated sovereignty to come into being. As the Chinese
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 111

leaders themselves have always indicated, ‘‘one China, two systems’’ is a tem-
porary arrangement to facilitate reunification. The overlapping economic and
administrative enclaves have created an institutional detour for incremental
but eventual political integration, as well as sites for experimentation in civil

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society outside China proper.

A Detour on the Road to Political Integration?

In June 2003, six years after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereign
control, the city and the mainland signed the Closer Economic Partnership
Arrangement as a step toward even greater economic integration. The agree-
ment gives Hong Kong–based banks and companies market access to the
mainland. Tari√s on hundreds of Hong Kong products have been removed,
giving the city’s economy an immediate boost following the outbreak of
severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars). The trade agreement is an eco-
nomic gift to sweeten the simultaneous imposition of a new national security
law to curb sedition and other crimes against the Chinese state. This state
intervention into the sar political environment triggered a demonstration on
July 1 by a half million Hong Kong residents who wanted to uphold the
policy of one country, two systems. To prodemocracy groups such as the
Human Rights Monitor, the free trade pact is a kind of payback for business
leaders in the Hong Kong government who have gone along with the steady
erosion of civil rights, especially in journalism and the media.
The new security measure, Article 23 of the Basic Law, seeks to repress
activities such as ‘‘subversion,’’ ‘‘secession,’’ and the leaking of state secrets,
crimes similar to the ‘‘counterrevolutionary activities’’ banned on the main-
land. The antisedition bill allows the police to search homes without a war-
rant, the government to ban groups already outlawed in the mainland, and
the courts to impose heavy penalties for the ‘‘theft of state secrets.’’≥∂ Adopt-
ing the measure curbs the freedoms that permit diverse viewpoints, activities,
and nonmainstream political groups to flourish in Hong Kong, thus bringing
the sar political order closer to that of the mainland.≥∑
Although much of the Western press has viewed the street protests as a
sign of democratic resistance, it is also important to situate the massive un-
rest in the context of steady economic decline since 1997. The Beijing-
appointed chief executive was widely viewed by Hong Kong residents,
rightly or wrongly, as an inept leader and a symbol of bad luck for the econ-
omy, and subsequently replaced. In addition to the financial crisis, property
112 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

prices have plummeted, salaries and budgets have been cut, and unemploy-
ment is at an all-time high. The slow response to the sars outbreak, which
killed around three thousand people in the territory, further damaged the
economy. Economic unease has been deepened by a pervasive sense that

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Shanghai is pulling ahead as China’s economic engine, and that Singapore is
displaying more e≈ciency in planning for and dealing with economic crises.
Thus, street demonstrations reflected a massive discontent over the state of
the Hong Kong economy and worries about a future further constrained by
antisedition laws. Blaming prodemocracy groups, Beijing appeared to adopt
a wait-and-see attitude and continue to uphold the ‘‘one country, two sys-
tems’’ policy, since the variegated sovereignty it accommodates seems a prac-
tical and coolheaded route to gradual political integration.
In short, special autonomous regions are testing sites for the controlled
expression of civil rights in a Chinese market context. Its sar framework has
allowed Hong Kong to remain the freest economy in the world and to experi-
ment with di√erent degrees of political freedom that test socialist worries
over national security. Hong Kong may never submit entirely to mainland
forms of political control, but it must be noted that political practices in
China proper are themselves undergoing transformation, as evidenced by the
hands-o√ reaction to the massive dissent in Hong Kong, and by the limited
response to worker demonstrations in sezs. Thus, politically speaking, both
kinds of economic and political spaces have instances of sovereign exception
that contrast sharply with the political normativity in China. The Hong Kong
demonstrations have proved not the weakness but the flexibility of the inter-
twined zoning systems, which can accommodate variations in degrees of civil
liberty across sites.
Chinese sovereignty is basically legitimized by opening channels for cross-
border trade, not by opening channels for civil rights. Problems of govern-
ment are increasingly solved through the deployment of intellectual and prac-
tical techniques that foster economic success by opening up economies rather
than political spaces. But market liberalism fostered through zoning practices
can safely accommodate pockets of agitation for civil rights, allowing the kind
of experimentation that is not easily tolerated in mainland China. New demo-
cratic forces in economic zones and in Hong Kong (and Taiwan) that have
emerged with the growth of cosmopolitan classes coexist with the normative
centralized regulation of populations in the name of national security. There is
a new alignment between national security and economic freedom, but exu-
berant political freedom can only be permitted, and occasionally challenged,
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 113

in special zones and regions. Zoning technologies seem the best technical
mechanism for creating controlled spaces of economic and political experi-
mentation that do not threaten collective and national security. The sar mech-
anism thus becomes a detour—through the development of capitalist net-

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works and the tolerance of civil rights demands—on the road to eventual
political integration. The huge protests of Hong Kong citizens against the
new internal security law did not fend o√ greater political integration, and
Hong Kong is already firmly tethered in the business, technology, and per-
sonal networks that integrate it into the Chinese axis.
Finally, it is important to note that there are strong and weak links among
the spaces of exception, open cities, and countries. The conditions secured by
the economic and political spaces foster economic and communication links
with mainland China. But even though Taiwan is not a sar, the island has
been drawn into mainland sites through Hong Kong and Macau. Beyond the
zones themselves, the mobilization of resources and expertise from a large
number of overseas sites supports a geometric increase in economic activities.
With the entry of China into the World Trade Organization (wto), the com-
mercial, technological, service, and personal links among various ethnic Chi-
nese places will only intensify across the region.

Sovereignty and Security: The Ethics of Exception

A dominant view of sovereignty and security maintains that governments

operate along the lines of ‘‘organized hypocrisy,’’ whereby states act in terms
of their own specific interests even when they violate international rules.≥∏
This notion seems to be a rough translation of Carl Schmitt’s concept of the
exception that Stephen Krasner transposes to the international arena. One
notes that the Chinese state often invokes the ethics of the exception (i.e., in
the name of collective or national security) to legitimize crackdowns on dissi-
dents, as in the Tiananmen Square incident and the banning of groups such as
the Falun Gong. That practice is, of course, not exclusive to governments in
Asia: we have witnessed the scaling back of civil rights in the United States as
part of its government’s response to the war on terrorism. But what seems
interesting in China is that such exceptions to the law are increasingly made in
settings of open economic borders and networks that heighten the tensions
between economic freedom and political repression. The exceptions have
become routine during orchestrated crises (e.g., the need for market reforms)
and during unplanned ones (the outbreak of infectious diseases); technocrats
114 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

have become increasingly adept at keeping borders open to economic ac-

tivities and networks while closing borders to political freedom, information,
and interconnection. This nexus between sovereignty and security in an open
economy therefore requires observers to go beyond a strictly military under-

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standing of security to consider how questions of national security can be
handled not only by wielding military weapons but also by signing trade
pacts. Let us consider how my point about zoning technologies as a detour
on the road to political integration suggests alternative avenues for reconcilia-
tion in divided nations.
I suggest that one path for a Taiwan-China rapprochement runs through
asean. Viewed from the lens of exception, one is surprised not so much by
the saber rattling across the strait as by the innumerable exceptions that have
allowed Taiwan to participate in zone developments and to develop networks
with sites throughout China. Politically Taiwan may be on the outs, but
economically it is a key player embedded in the economic and social fabric of
Chinese capitalist modernity. At the same time, Taiwan has sought to partici-
pate in China’s markets by inveigling itself into multilateral organizations
that have relationships with the mainland. asean is a ten-member group of
Southeast Asian nations that is increasingly repositioning itself in relation to
China and Japan. Since the 1990s, asean has used a broad conceptualization
of regional security based on building regional economic networks that can
create greater opportunities for citizens in the region. Since the financial crisis
of 1997–98, there has been greater stress on making a broader coalition called
asean + 3 (including China, Japan, and South Korea) or asean + 4 (includ-
ing them and Australia). What we see is a postimperial economic integration
of a region of more than a billion people, in thirteen or more countries, that
hopes to move in the direction of a common market and a common regional
currency within a decade. Taiwan is conspicuously absent in this lineup, but
not for want of trying. Indeed, the turn of the century was an especially tense
moment of saber rattling when outgoing Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui
announced a ‘‘two states’’ theory to replace the ‘‘one China’’ policy. Subse-
quent claims by his successor Chen Shui-bian for ‘‘state-to-state’’ relations
with China intensified the dispute. Much attention has been given to the
triangular balancing of power between China, Japan, and the United States as
a way to contain Chinese aggression against Taiwan. Meanwhile, in addition
to the U.S. security umbrella, Taiwan wants the asean Regional Forum to
provide a form of security against possible Chinese attacks.
But the asean stress on the humanization of security and common re-
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 115

gional destiny suggests another pathway for building political bridges. The
new ‘‘security culture’’≥π still operates according to the principles of con-
sensus, consultation, and limited interference in member countries’ domestic
a√airs. Norms associated with the ‘‘asean Way’’ have allowed the organiza-

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tion to bridge political di√erences and to include formerly shunned states
such as Cambodia and Myanmar. As far-flung places are drawn into ever
widening networks of securitization, asean and the Chinese axis of common
economic interests help to deflect or to circumvent political conflicts, espe-
cially between China and Taiwan. Taiwan’s formal membership in asean is
out of the question because of China’s sensitivity, but by working from the
backdoor Taiwan has already developed extensive informal economic rela-
tions with asean members such as Singapore and the Philippines. Taiwan
promotes itself as vital to peace and prosperity in East Asia and as a successful
model of transition to political democracy, market economy, and civic society,
unlike countries dominated by one-party rule. Despite its marginal position
in relation to asean + 3, Taiwan is already deeply interconnected with neigh-
boring Asian countries. Furthermore, China’s membership in the wto has
ended limits on direct travel and trade between China and Taiwan, allowing
the island to play a bigger role in providing business-oriented research to the
mainland. Conditions for a new kind of cultural rapprochement across the
strait therefore will be in place even as China becomes more integrated into
the global community.
The Chinese axis is also an imaginary line of cultural sovereignty that runs
along an ideological plane of the graduated geopolitical field. As techno-
logical and commercial networks and economic zones increasingly articulate
along a Chinese axis, we see an emerging political archipelago that suggests
the wider possibilities of an ‘‘imagined community.’’≥∫ This loose alliance
suggests a regional patterning anchored in China that is very di√erent from
Western discourses of regionalism such as the ‘‘Pacific Rim.’’≥Ω Instead, re-
gional narratives increasingly invoke ‘‘East Asia,’’ a rhetorical term that signals
the growing connections between the Sinic parts of Southeast Asia (Singa-
pore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines) with Taiwan, the Hong Kong
sar, and mainland China. For instance, overseas Chinese scholars have in-
voked a confluence of histories, languages, cultural, and kinship practices
among widely dispersed sites to define an emerging field of Sino–Southeast
Asian studies.∂≠ Despite ongoing political tensions and opposition to Beijing
leaders, ethnic Chinese in the Asia-Pacific take great cultural pride in the
emergence of China as a global actor. The imagined axis also creates an
116 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

ideological space of exception within the Asia-Pacific, marking o√ a space of

rising China-centric hegemony. The Sinocentric discourses, further enhanced
by the mainland and Hong Kong popular media, are growing even as the
People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China remain in a stando√.

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Meanwhile, the economic integration between Taiwan and the mainland,
especially in Fujian Province, Shanghai, and the Yangtze Valley, is so ad-
vanced that a de facto absorption has taken place even before a formal politi-
cal integration has begun. Thus, the emergence of a Chinese axis is based on
Beijing’s very distinctive deployment of zoning technologies, which lay the
groundwork for transnational market integration, making intelligible the po-
litical and cultural goals of variegated sovereignty in formation. As tech-
nologies of ruling, zoning mechanisms become an economic detour leading
to broader political integration. It is therefore not unthinkable that the logic
of the exception and zoning technologies have shown a path toward the
reunification of divided nations.

A Modality for the Two Koreas?

North Korea is slowly emerging from its deep political freeze by building
enclaves as stepping stones to further political collaboration and perhaps even
reintegration with South Korea. During the 1980s and 1990s, North Korea
sought to copy the Chinese zoning programs by setting up free trade zones in
the northern cities near the border with Russia and China, but the Raijin-
Songbong zone has not really taken o√. Much more recently, under the cloud
of a nuclear stando√ with the United States, two new cross-border zones have
been proposed. In June 2003, North Korean and South Korean o≈cials and
businessmen broke ground for a joint industrial park in Kaesong, just north
of the Demilitarized Zone. About nine hundred South Korean businesses,
many of them in textiles and garment manufacturing, have applied for spots
in the zone, where they will enjoy cheap labor, tax cuts, and other benefits.
The South Korean government and the giant conglomerate Hyundai will
help prepare the site, including demining the land before building railway
lines to connect the two countries. A more famous special administrative
zone, modeled on Shenzhen in China, was also set up in Sinuiji on the
Chinese border, where the Yalu River enters the Yellow Sea. The Chinese
government is directly involved with business tycoons to oversee the enclave
as an alternate space of governance. New business opportunities have drawn
South Korean industrialists, who wish to see more zones in the North.
 Zoning Technologies in East Asia : 117

Thus viewed against the background of Chinese zoning practices, es-

pecially the dramatic case of Shenzhen–Hong Kong, it becomes clear that
semiautonomous zones are not only initial attempts at implementing market-
driven exceptions, they are also mechanisms for constructing the infrastruc-

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ture, industries, and administrative units for possible reunification. The
North Korean regime seems to represent a deviant sovereignty that is based
on the power to take away life rather than the securitization of the health and
well-being of the population. Biopolitical considerations only a√ect a tiny
minority, whereas the majority seems condemned to bare life. The political
elite in Pyongyang and privileged workers appear to be the only ones to enjoy
a political existence of social benefits and pleasures, while the struggle for
sheer survival is the norm for ordinary citizens. In this vast labor camp, the
logic of exception creates a zone of living that secures minimal employment
and living standards. Here, North Koreans can interact with South Koreans
and other foreigners to develop access to external sources of capital, skills, and
knowledge. These zones are places where notions of an eventual national
reunification can be practically broached and tested, thus eventually creat-
ing an alternative imagining of biopolitical governing for the rest of North
Korea, as well as suggesting a way to the eventual reunification of the two
Koreas. Because these privileged zones are established outside the archipel-
ago of labor camps, the North Korean use of the political exception is a
reversal of the Agamben opposition between civilization as normativity, and
the death camp as a zone of exception.∂∞ In theoretical discussions, the logic
of the exception has been associated with the suspension of rights and the
reduction to bare life, but in contemporary Asian situations, the sovereign
exception has created conditions for giving life, freedom, and new political
openings. The logic of the exception, for instance, has also allowed the Chi-
nese state to release dissidents from prison camps under the criteria of need
for medical treatment abroad.

Conclusion

Government is a problematizing activity that continually shifts the reasoning,

techniques, and inventions needed to create the conditions of possibility for
economic development, political stability, and regional organization. I have
suggested that we go beyond a focus on state institutions to examine how a
series of political exceptions in authoritarian and oppressive orders creates
a diversity of spaces for experimentation with political freedom and trans-
118 : Zoning Technologies in East Asia

national connections. ‘‘Market reforms’’ in mainland China have provided an

opening for greater flexibility in sovereign rule, in the astute use of the excep-
tion to construct zones that spread economic networks and foster political
integration.

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Greater China is an axis that has its beginnings in a distinctive strategy of
reterritorialization that creates zones of exception to normalized Chinese
rule, and thus a detour leading to integration with Hong Kong, Macao, and
perhaps eventually Taiwan. The axis of sovereignty and security is not de-
limited by national borders but increasingly relies on the production of a
linked geography of technoindustrial nodes that can circumvent political ob-
stacles and bridge politically divided entities. Elsewhere in mainland South-
east Asia, zoning strategies are building infrastructural-economic connec-
tions between former enemy states and economically divided regions. In the
Asia-Pacific the innovative use of the logic of the exception to configure a
series of political spaces is a dominant response to crises and a common
strategy for forging connections of trade and politics.
Finally, it seems important to caution that even though the exceptions
that facilitate Greater China have been innovative, one should not assume
that the concatenation of zones and networks is a permanent formation. New
contingencies or crises can very well bring about a di√erent disarticulation or
rearticulation of diverse elements that interact to define conditions of pos-
sibility for Chinese sovereign power and its spread of networks overseas.
Other constellations of market logic, national security, and technologies may
very well bring about other kinds of reterritorialization or remapping of
sovereignty, security, and civil liberty in the Asia-Pacific.