Urban governance in cross-border coalitions - The case of the Jiangyin Economic Development Zone in Jingjiang, China

joint industrial development zones have emerged among cities in the Yangtze River Delta region in recent years. Given that such zones involve collaboration between different authorities, this has implications for the practice of urban governance in China. This article examines these processes in relation to the Jiangyin Economic Development Zone in Jingjiang (JZJ) using debates around urban growth coalitions. Two categories of actors, different levels of local government and business sectors, are identified and their interactions in coalition-building are analysed in detail. After tracing the process of coalition formation, this paper argues that growth coalitions can form between two cities involving processes above the urban scale in a globalising era. In addition, a local government-big business coalition, similar to its Western counterparts, is dominating industrial zone construction within Chinese urban growth.