Urban state venturism as state entrepreneurialism: Conceptualizing the risk-taking dynamics of industrial upgrading in Hefei, China

This article examines the rationale and emergent effects of state-led venture capital (SVC) investments as an urban developmental tool to pursue industrial upgrading. Building on the concept of urban state venturism, the article introduces a new framework to examine how state institutions in Hefei, the capital city of Anhui province in central China, became SVC investors in private firms with high growth potential. Juxtaposing published interviews by key state actors with 25 interviews with venture capital industry professionals and analysts, the Hefei case study highlights urban state venturism as a contextualized extension of Chinese state entrepreneurialism. This extension is characterized by a “high risk, high gain” approach to urban development in China that is increasingly prominent in the face of growth limitations in existing industrial pathways. The analysis complements emergent studies that accentuate the constitutive role of state entrepreneurialism in driving urban development and advances a large body of work on Chinese state actors’ use of market tools to achieve their respective political objectives.