Transforming Guizhou: Urbanization in an ethnic region in southwest China

China's frontier urbanization is not a delayed variant of the country's rapid urban transformation, but a spatial strategy of governance rooted in colonial logics. Focusing on Guizhou, this paper conceptualizes frontier urbanization as structured by three interlinked mechanisms: administrative reclassification (“paper urbanization”), ex-situ labour migration, and state-led resettlement. Drawing on historical records and disaggregated census data, we show how these mechanisms incorporate ethnic minorities into urban systems through differential inclusion, where access to services and employment remains conditional, stratified, and socially and spatially segmented. Guizhou's urbanization reveals stark spatial and ethnic disparities, characterised by structural inequalities: statistical urbanization that often obscures marginalization of ethnic minorities, and ex-situ urbanization that embeds them in precarious labour markets outside their home province. The paper argues that frontier urbanization constitutes an ongoing civilizing project that manages ethnic difference through stratified integration, reinforcing uneven geographies of inclusion and exclusion across China's ethnic frontier. It advances a China-specific articulation of frontier and ethnic urbanization by linking internal colonialism, settler-colonial restructuring, and socialist/post-reform governance.