Regional development and uneven financialization of urban infrastructure under state entrepreneurialism in China

Abstract The rapid financialization of urban infrastructure has raised widespread concerns. Existing research shows how global institutional investors and financial intermediaries transform urban infrastructure into marketable financial products, exacerbating inequalities in infrastructure access. Despite the well-established literature on state entrepreneurialism and financialization in China’s regional transformation, it remains unclear how the state’s use of infrastructure financing contributes to meso-level spatial strategies and policy objectives. Previous studies covering such “state-led (de-)financialization” often rely on localized cases rather than large-scale quantitative assessments. This paper addresses these gaps by proposing a multi-layer state-finance-infrastructure nexus for understanding how central and local governments mobilize financing tools to shape uneven urban development. Using China as a case study and drawing on new national-scale data, we compare the geographical distribution of infrastructure investments between local state-led and central state-led financing modes. Our findings illustrate how the central state strategically privileges select city-regions with particular types of financial investments to achieve its economic, welfare, and geopolitical targets, advancing discussions on financialization and infrastructure while contributing to understandings of regional development and state entrepreneurialism. By offering robust empirical evidence through a big-data quantitative model, this paper deepens insights into the state-driven logic underlying the uneven (de-) financialization of urban infrastructure.