Ren Xuefei (Michigan State University)

Urbanization is rapidly overtaking China and India, the two most populous countries in the world. The book explores how China and India govern their cities and how their different styles of governance produce inequality and exclusion. Drawing upon historical-comparative analyses and extensive fieldwork (in Beijing, Guangzhou, Wukan, Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata), the book investigates the ways that Chinese and Indian cities manage land acquisition, slum clearance, and air pollution. Ren discovers that the two countries address these issues through radically different approaches. In China, urban governance centers on territorial institutions, such as hukou and the cadre evaluation system. In India, urban governance centers on associational politics, encompassing contingent alliances formed among state actors, the private sector, and civil society groups.