Rebuilding Shanghai: Towards a Theory of Metabolic Systems

Re-Building Shanghai Chris Perrin Hist 640G 9098518

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According to Immanuel Walerstein, the world is composed of Cores and Peripheries. This

creates a system of economic imbalance that favours the position (and, here I will add, hegemony) of

the Core.1 Since learning about Wallerstein’s theory as an undergraduate, I had become interested in

regional imbalances and the ways the Periphery is often exploited by the Core. Being somewhat aware

of my personal surroundings, however, I noticed holes within the concept of the Core-Periphery binary.

Primarily how, when living in a ‘developed’ or ‘first world’ country, is there so much poverty in Canada?

The suggestion Anthony Hall makes in his book The American Empire and the Fourth World is that the

‘first world’ (or the Core) can maintain within itself pockets that tend to resemble more the Periphery,

rather than this overall, homogenizing notion of the Core.2 When preparing my proposal for this paper, I

suggested that a re-evaluation of Wallerstein’s theory, taking into account some of Hall’s observations,

be posited in analysing the atmospheric rise of Shanghai, and that World-Systems Analysis be retooled

to allow for regional Cores and Peripheries. Rather than simply redefining existing terms, however, I

examine the metropolitan ‘Core’ as a metabolism, and my rural/’Fourth World’ ‘Periphery’ as a

necessary aspect of a metabolic system. It is with these theoretical works in mind that I begin my move

towards describing a theory of systems based on the metabolic.

As I began my research into the context of Shanghai, I also began to understand the transition of

China from that of a nominally Communist state to, what many have called, ‘market socialism.’3

Fortunately, I also found David Harvey’s works very helpful, particularly in regards to seeing the creation

of market socialism as having developed through the lines of neoliberal economic policy. In his

examination of how spaces are developed, Harvey implicates the transition from community-based

1 Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004),

12. 2 Anthony Hall, The American Empire and the Fourth World: The Bowl With One Spoon, vol.1 (Montreal: McGill-

Queen’s University Press, 2003), 85. 3 Two good examples are: T.G. McGee, et al. China’s Urban Space: Development Under Market Socialism (New

York: Routledge, 2007), I. This is particularly interesting to this paper as it McGee et al. link market socialism to urban development. See also: James A. Dorn, ‘China’s Future: Market Socialism or Market Taoism?,’ in China in the New Millenium: Market Reforms and Social Development, James A. Dorn, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Cato Institute, 1998), 115.


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organization to a mechanism of production (in what he labels ‘capital accumulation through

dispossession’)4 as informed by neoliberalism. Harvey also explores how a cityscape of tall, glass

skyscrapers is inherently an aspects of global capitalism.5 For the purposes of describing my theory in

greater detail, and linking the idea that Shanghai, as a Metabolism, exists in relation and connection to

other Metabolisms that are all related through neoliberal economics or globalized Metabolic Pathways, I

will rely heavily on Harvey’s writing.

In biology, a metabolism is ‘*t+he chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order

to maintain life; the interconnected sequences of mostly enzyme-catalysed chemical reactions by which

a cell, tissue, organ, etc., sustains energy production, and synthesizes and breaks down complex

molecules.’6 In applying this idea of the metabolism to the creation of metabolic analysis, I have focused

the relationship on the production of energies. For the biological, the energies are those that sustain the

organic system, whereas metabolic analysis focuses more on energies, such as capital accumulation,

that are economically or socially based. With this in mind, it is possible to re-evaluate the organization of

a city, particularly Shanghai, in these biological terms. Since its opening as a Special Economic Zone,

Shanghai had developed its own gravity – its own pull that draws different elements into it, affects

them, and then releases them in different forms. As a truly global city, Shanghai is more than the sum of

its parts, it is a living, breathing system that seeks to control its own environment in a process that is

highly comparable to a biological metabolism. For the purposes of a metabolic analysis, the system – like

a metabolic system – must be explained in terms of its parts and processes, particularly in regards to

energy production, and how the metabolism ‘synthesizes and breaks down complex’ components.

Promoting this notion in regards to a city is, I am learning while writing this, not as clear cut as I hoped.

4 David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (London:

Verso, 2006), 111. I have here paraphrased a great deal of Harvey’s work. As well, this is how I have read his interpretation of space within the notion of dispossession. I will elaborate on this reading below. 5 Ibid., 89-90.

6 Metabolism, OED.


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In an effort to provide the context for this comparison (Shanghai and metabolism) I will begin a brief

historical analysis of Shanghai and its development towards being a metabolic space before elaborating

an overview of the framework that allows (and essentially constructs) a metabolic analysis.

The Development of Shanghai

Shanghai came late as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), and therefore has a particularly

interesting history in terms of global neoliberalism, and capitalist development. While other areas of

Eastern China were opened in the early 1980s, Shanghai entered the ‘market socialist’ game at the end

of the decade, giving it the advantage of learning from previous mistakes.7 Moreover, with several years

of experience in areas like Hong Kong and Taipei, Shanghai did not suffer the slow or nervousness of

investment that previous areas had, allowing the growth of Shanghai’s Pudong region to turn, almost

over night, into a space of global capitalism. Shanghai, which had been an economic drain on China in

the 1980s, quickly turned itself around and was granted large subsidies from the government, which

encouraged foreign investment at a rate that was much higher than other SEZs.8

The transition from economic and special backwater helped to cement neoliberalism, and

capitalist development in China. With massive government funding, as well as policies that had been

developed to aid in economic growth throughout the 1980s, the draw for even larger international

funding and corporate interest was almost irresistible.9 One of the offshoots of this neoliberal

entrenchment was the hegemonic nature of the neoliberal agenda.10 Having refined policy, encouraged

foreign investment and curried the favour of multinational corporations, Shanghai became the locus for

neoliberal capitalism in China. As such, with the meteoric diversion of state investment, leading to non-

stop construction projects, a situation was created that fostered the rapid influx of international capital

7 OECD Investment Policy Reviews, China: Progress and Reform Challenges (Paris: OECD, 2003), 68.

8 Ibid., 69.

9 Wang Hui, ‘The Year 1989 and the Historical Roots of Neoliberalism in China,’ positions 12, no. 1 (2004), 24-25.

10 Ibid., 25.


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into Shanghai, paradoxically allowing for more internal funding, more construction, and more foreign

investment. Space was re-imagined and re-built, physically and intangibly, and through the 1990s and

into the new millennium Shanghai became a self-regulating system. It is within this historical context

that I begin my evaluation of Metabolic Systems Theory, as Shanghai – having changed so rapidly –

offers one of the most clear-cut examples of a metabolic capitalist space. It should also be noted,

however, that this transition from an economic backwater, as it were, to what would become one of the

more prolific centres of capitalism in China came on the back of social issues pushed by economic and

political concerns. That Shanghai was opened as a SEZ in the post-Tiananmen world cannot be forgotten.

This was a time of modulating social control, where the Central Party had re-written the social contract

so that democratic ‘freedom’ was secondary to economic reforms.11 While I do not examine the powers

of the Metabolic System on social construction, or social construction on the Metabolic System, the

neoliberal angle I have taken throughout this analysis takes – at times for granted – that the post-

Tiananmen social landscape was neoauthoritarian and, as David Harvey indicates, a facilitating aspect of

neoliberalism.12

Metabolic Systems Theory

The earth, and the bodies that populate it, are alive. Cities, being nexuses of human interaction,

can be anthropomorphised as metabolisms. But it is more than simply applying the term to a group of

structures. The city must be understood as being a system within itself, as well as a part of a larger

system. Cities pull things into themselves; people, production, energy, and capital. They are hubs where

various aspects of human society are organized, produced, and created. People move into the city to

find work, while industries, banks, and other organizations (including those that produce) move into

11

Joseph Y.S. Cheng, ‘Whither China’s Democracy? In Commemoration of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident,’ in Whither China’s Democracy: Democratization in China Since the Tiananmen Incident, Joseph Y.S. Cheng, ed. (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong, 2011), 2-4. 12

Harvey, Spaces, 34, 40.


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cities to be near the creation of capital. In biological terms, cities are Anabolistic, or constructive with

the energies they draw into themselves, as they create the means for this very attraction, as well as

transform these various aspects (people, industry, capital) into complex groupings, or matter or

energies.13 For example: The more people there are to work in industry, the more can be produced by

that industry; the greater the production, the greater the capital investment and the more capital is

produced; the greater the need for capital investment (and the ability to draw capital out of one area

and reinvest it in another), the greater the need for organization; the need for organization requires the

development of organized, vertical construction (high-rises), which in turn create a greater need for

production/construction, necessitating more people. The more complex the system anabolically

created, the more is pulled into the metabolic city from without. This anabolic process, obvious, needs

regulation, otherwise the complex systems that are created would fall into conflict, and become

unregulated. To that end, the metabolism requires a counterbalance in order to maintain control.

Periods of growth, particularly in the example of Shanghai, are often followed by periods of

reorganization and, often, destruction.14 This destruction is not inherently negative, as the city destroys

in an effort to re-imagine and re-structure itself in a process called catabolism, or destructive, altering

and changing compounds so that they might be used anabolically.15 Metabolisms, as a biological

process, attempt to achieve some form of equilibrium within their environment.16 With this in mind, the

catabolic process is not an undesirable one as it allows the metabolism to maintain balance and

regulation. This is not wholly anathema to the anabolic process as they both attempt to regulate the

same thing: the ability of the metabolic process to continue. Putting this in non-biological terms, the

13

Anabolism, OED. The biological definition of anabolism is: ‘The “ascending” process in metabolism, in which simpler substances, as nutritive matter, are transformed into more complex ones, and thus built up into the living structure of the organism; constructive metabolism.’ 14

Fulong Wu, ‘The Global and Local Dimension of Place-making: Remaking Shanghai as a World City,’ Urban Studies 37, no. 8 (2000), 13, 14. 15

Catabolism, OED. Catabolism is: ‘That phase of the metabolism of living bodies which consists in the breaking down of complex organic compounds into simpler ones; destructive metabolism.’ 16

Martin D. Brand, ‘Regulation Analysis of Energy Metabolism,’ The Journal of Experimental Biology 200 (1997), 193-194.


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ability for the Shanghai to replace failing structures (such as the revitalization of the Bund),17 or rezone

areas that were once industrial to commercial, commercial to residential, and so on, in an effort to

continue the viability (commercial, productive, or fiscal) of an area, as well as re-distribute the

population, allows for anabolism (the re-zoning and constant construction/renewal in Pudong, for

example).18 Through catabolic destruction, the necessary pieces for anabolic production are created.

This is obvious in the way industry requires population to act as a compound of production. The logic

behind this is to avoid the accumulation of xenobiotic elements.19 Xenobiotics are those compounds

that are not useful to the metabolic process. Here they can be evaluated in one of two ways, primarily as

aspects of cities that were once useful, yet have fallen into decay. Take, for example, a former industrial

or residential sector. The buildings and facilities, sitting un-used, are harmful to the metabolism in that

they are not producing anything. The process of re-zoning, gentrification, and demolition are all

catabolic responses to the buildup of xenobiotic compounds. Re-zoning allows for the anabolic process

to begin, restructuring aspects of the city so that they are once again useful compounds within the

greater metabolism.20 Secondarily, xenobiotic compounds may be introduced into the metabolism from

without, across global metabolic pathways which I will describe in detail below. The metabolism,

however, cannot exist independently of its environment, as it is from this environment that it pulls its

compounds.

Similar to Wallerstein’s Cores and Peripheries, the components of the Metabolic System that

allow for the metabolism to function are divergent. The two main components are the Metabolism and

17

Wu, ‘The Global and Local...’, 1371 18

Ibid., 1359. 19

Xenobiotic, OED. ‘A substance foreign to the body.’ I prefer for this model, however, the definition given by Testa and Krämer as they portray xenobiotic particles as being unhealthy, or useless (‘they have no physiological role’) to the metabolic process. I will base my continued parallel on their work and not solely the OED definition. See: Bernard Testa, Stefanie D. Krämer, ‘The Biochemistry of Drug Metabolism – An Introduction,’ Chemistry & Biodiversity 3, issue 10 (2006), 1059. 20

Tim Sedo, ‘Dead-Stock Boards, Blown-Out Spots, and the Olympic Games: Global Twists and Local Turns in the Formation of China’s Skateboarding Community,’ in Cultural Autonomy: Frictions and Connections, Petra Rethmann, et al., eds. (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), 272.


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the vessels. As described above, the metabolism is the city21 while the vessel is the region from which

the metabolism draws the compounds required for anabolic and catabolic reactions. These can be

evaluated through World-Systems Analysis, where the metabolism (parallel to a Core) has a clear

economic advantage over the vessel (parallel to the Periphery). The reason that Wallerstein’s theory has

become somewhat problematic, particularly when examining the ‘Chinese’ context,22 is that China is

evaluable as both a Core and a Periphery. Rather than simply redefining aspects of Wallerstein’s theory,

re-imagining the Core/Periphery binary along metabolic lines can be a more useful analytical model,

particularly with considerations to Harvey and Hall. First, in order to better explain this, I must work

towards a better definition of this inclusive, yet opened, system.

The metabolic process occurs within cells. Although I have been using biological terms rather

loosely, doing so helps in plotting geographical boundaries that are not, nor have they ever been, fixed.

‘Geographical boundaries,’ what I will call from this point on cells, shift and change organically to suit

the need and desired production of the metabolism. In fig. 1, China is situated as is typically imagined

along geo-political lines. According to Wallerstein’s analysis, China has held various positions within his

analytic, though it is not currently what might have been called a Core, despite the Chinese working

towards financial and trade goals similar to those of the United States and the European Union.23 Again,

what is problematic with this is the internal functioning of the process. Within the Cores there have

been peripheral aspects, particularly the US, though the disparity between aspects of the EU – Western

Europe vs. Eastern Europe, or perhaps Greece today – could be assessed along similar lines.24 Returning

21

Or, were I more confident with my ability to quoin compound words, the Metabolis. 22

I use trouble quotes here in reference to the ‘Chinese’ context in that the very notion of the state system is unfortunately inadequate in placing Peripheries within Cores, or Cores within Peripheries, and whatnot. To this end, the evaluation of global capitalism along antiquated state-as-homogenous-internal-development lines with the existence of Harvey’s and Hall’s analyses would be difficult and fraught with too many problems of re-definition. 23

Wallerstein, 8, 55. 24

Anthony Hall, The American Empire and the Fourth World: The Bowl With One Spoon, vol.1 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 85. Particularly in regards to how Aboriginals in North America, whose various economic relationships (and business decisions) have been based ‘dramatically on the degree of desperation


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to the Chinese example, the rural regions of the ‘state’ can be evaluated as a peripheral pocket.25 Being

a centre of production, Shanghai, as with Beijing,26 draws migrant workers into the metabolism from the

external vessels where it harnesses the energy of these workers in the anabolic process of production.27

This, in a very physical sense, shows how the more energy is created, the more the system will attempt

to control its environment and continue the productive process. Returning for a moment to the

geographical model, fig. 1 shows the idea of the cell, with indications showing the metabolism and the

vessel within the cell. This map shows how abstract the system is, with vessels being of varying size and

in different locations. China28 is filled with a variety of cells, each drawing upon similar vessels in order

to produce energy.

induced by Third World poverty in the heartland of First World prosperity.’ For economic problems within the EU, which could (were my focus European) be considered something of a burgeoning peripheral problem (as it does not specifically fit within the Fourth World framework). See: Jorn Madslein, ‘Why Greece’s Problems Matter,’ BBC Online, 11 February 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8510295.stm (Accessed: 23 April 2012). 25

Shenggen Fan, Linxiu Zhang, Xiaobo Zhang, Growth, Inequality, and Poverty in Rural China: The Role of Public Investments (Washington: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2002). 15, 29, 44. 26

CRI, ‘Migrant Population of Beijing Exceeds 7 Million,’ China.org.cn, July 6, 2011, http://www.china.org.cn/china/2011-07/06/content_22930666.htm (accessed 27 March 2012). 27

Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Shi Lu, ‘Migrant Workers in Shanghai,’ China Perspectives, http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/456 (accessed 23 April 2012). 28

If the name still has meaning.


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Figure 1: Shanghai Cell, showing Metabolism, Vessels, and Anabolic Pathways

29

As each metabolism hopes to control its environment in a way that makes it sustainable for

metabolic processes, it comes into competition with other cells that draw from the same vessels.

Beijing, for example, also has quite the migrant population and, despite the vast rural areas from which

to draw, most assuredly comes into competition with Shanghai. In fig. 2, I have tried to express how this

competition would be represented geographically. The process is, inherently, competitive and each

metabolism within each overlapping cell works to control the environment in a way that best helps the

different internal processes, making Wallerstein’s theory inadequate to understand the Chinese

29

Map taken from Wikipedia, open source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:China_administrative_claimed_included.svg (accessed 24 April 2012), modified by author. The sizes and shapes of the vessels and the provinces in which the vessels are depicted I picked at random and are not based on any statistical data.


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context.30 Moreover, World-System Analysis fails in this same way to illuminate more intricate ideas of

global capital relations and integrations.

Figure 2: Anabolic Competition between Shanghai & Beijing

The ways in which cells work to control their environment are legion, yet are not particularly concerned

with actual geographical control. Having downplayed the notion of the nation-state, I here also

downplay the use of military and physical force in the way metabolisms control vessels. Although

physical and military force have been used done at times, the primary concern of the metabolism is to

increase anabolic and/or catabolic conversion of components, and the use of force is normally reserved

for xenobiotic principles and groups.31 Here, in the competition for the resources of the vessels, policy,

30

This, to draw a genealogical line, was created through the very process of urbanization, especially with the transition from ‘*m+anagerialism’ to ‘entrepreneurialism’ as described in David Harvey, ‘Flexible Accumulation through Urbanization: Reflections on ‘Post-Modernism’ in the American City,’ Antipode 19, no. 3 (1987), 246. 31

The Tiananmen Square event of 1989 greatly impacted both Beijing and Shanghai in the way each metabolism was able to regulate social movements (people) within themselves. To rely on violence as an example of regulation is, unfortunately, rather unhelpful, though it can result (and often does) from a buildup of xenobiotic aspects such as the social discontent evident in the Tiananmen Square ‘incident.’


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promotion, infrastructure, increased (and heavily modified) production, and regulation all come into

play in drawing specifically human energy into the metabolism.32 By temporarily removing regulations

that once held back migrants from a region, or by instituting a catabolic destruction of a dilapidated or

unused building, employment is not only created, it is made desirable. Although this is but a small

example, the idea of competition between cells is sound. This explanation accounts for why there are so

few metabolisms (or Cores) and so many vessels (or peripheries) within any given geographical region.

Northern North America is also a good example. Due to a wide and diverse geography, ‘Canada’ (to

continue with the geo-political name-calling) has various metabolic regions, some of which are in

competition with each other (Toronto competes with Montreal). Others, however, cannot be evaluated

along nationalist lines. Winnipeg, for example, competes with St. Paul and Minneapolis and Vancouver

with Seattle.33

Within each of these cells it is the metabolism, and not the vessels, that controls the production

of energy. This is evidenced by the draw, the power, and the desire of the metropolis that is impressed

in the vessel, such as the rural regions. There are several areas where the above theory is, however,

lacking, specifically in how cells react to environmental changes, international influence and production,

as well as the processes known in biology as regulation and control. Due to space requirements, I have

chosen to examine how international influence is mitigated within Metabolic Systems Theory, and hope

to develop the environmental and regulatory issues at a later date. The idea that Metabolic Systems

Theory is applicable as a means of analysis is, however, developed enough above to continue with

32

Roulleau-Berger, Lu, 2, 4. See also: Harvey, Spaces, 49. I would, had I more time, like to argue for the appearance and employment of cultural economics as an aspect of this competition. By examining aspects of cultural promotion (say, Beijing and its Olympic drive, or Shanghai as representing the future of China), an economy of cultural capital is created that can be consumed and re-produced, creating something of its own cultural metabolism. 33

I use these as simple examples and have no intention in this paper to develop the problem of North America any further.


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broader implications, and more global interactions, while at the same time expanding on the Shanghai

example more specifically.

Metabolic Pathways: Global Context of Metabolic Systems

Shanghai, as a space of global capitalism, receives an increasing amount of foreign investment

and interest. The ways that these manifest are both catabolic and anabolic. With increased funding,

development has increased (such as the Pudong area),34 necessitating the influx of migrant workers into

the metabolism and increasing the rate of production both physically (in the construction of new

buildings, including residential areas), and more abstractly (in the production of information and capital

accumulation).35 That the anabolic process36 here began not specifically internal to the process does not

mean that the process is dependent upon external stimuli. Metabolisms exist in relation to, and concert

with, other metabolisms. They make up the processes that sustain life within an organism. To this end, I

will define the organism that is being sustained along David Harvey’s lines of global capitalism, meaning

that global capitalism is the organism these metabolisms sustain. Internal investment, primary within

the metabolism, has the added effect of attracting external investment.37 Once the internal mechanisms

are strong enough, the metabolism begins to draw in components from other metabolisms along

metabolic pathways. These pathways intersect and connect across global lines, pulling anabolically and

pushing catabolically aspects of investment and production/destruction around the world.

34

Sedo, 272. 35

Wu, ‘Global and Local Dimensions...’, 1364-5. 36

I will, for the most part, use anabolism as the example as it is simply more straight-forward. Where I can I will use the catabolic to also juxtapose and explain international relationships to the metabolism. 37

Wu, ‘Global and Local Dimensions...’, 1360.


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Figure 3: Metabolic Pathways through Global Space

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In the same way that cells overlap and contend for the resources of the vessels, competition

exists across metabolic pathways. In fig. 3 a very arbitrary interpretation of how different metabolisms

(and their cells) are connected is depicted. The purpose of this illustration is simply to show the ways in

which differing cells, in different regions of the world, have the ability to interact and exchange along

the pathways, granting different, distant metabolisms access to what they produce. Not to dwell on the

global issues too much, I will summarize this section while leaving it opened to further investigation and

interpretation. A metabolism cannot directly access the vessel within another cell unless those cells (like

in the case of Beijing and Shanghai) overlap. To that end, what is exchanged along metabolic pathways

are the energies (that which has been produced/destroyed) of a metabolism. To build a model of this

exchange, I will elaborate on an example exploring the global interaction of metabolisms.

A special economic zone (SEZ), it was determined by the central government that Shanghai

should be ‘opened’ in the early 1990s.39 While this determination created the conditions for Shanghai to

develop fully into a metabolic system, it also provided the catalyst for internal anabolic and catabolic

38

Wikipedia, open source map, modification done by author, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/BlankMap-World-162E-flat.svg/2000px-BlankMap-World-162E-flat.svg.png (accessed 24 April 2012). 39

Jasper Becker, The Chinese: An Insider’s Look at the Issues which Affect and Shape Today’s China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 111.


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processes that saw the physical and administrational re-shaping of the city.40 As the city was

reconfigured through productive/destructive internal processes that heightened the metabolism’s need

for compounds to be drawn in (or pushed out, depending upon the needs of the city at the time) from

the vessels,41 it also created the context for the formation of metabolic pathways. Once the internal

conditions were right, the need for greater compounds increased (or was itself created), drawing in

investments from other global centres, primarily the United States.42 The process, as we have seen

above, does not inherently operate one-way, and the same conditions that drew compounds towards it

also saw the passage of energies into other metabolic systems, such as Australia.43 This process does not

necessarily work in such a triangle. The capital invested into Shanghai from the United States

(anabolically for Shanghai) could have been returned (catabolically for Shanghai) to the US in the form of

consumer goods (energies) without including Australia in the formula.

In the neoliberal context, these metabolisms transcend the notion of the nation-state, despite

the idea that central governments control and determine policy or production for the metabolism.

Again, operating under neoliberal economic theory, the influence of what was the centre is lessened (or,

as I suppose people I don’t vote for call it, deregulated), and, by the sheer weight and gravity of its

existence, the metabolism attempts to become self-regulating within its environment. In an effort to

limit my discussion on the global context, I will say, briefly, that my analysis of how global spaces of

capitalism/metabolic systems interact with each other along metabolic pathways, relies heavily on David

40

Wu, ‘Global and Local Dimensions...’, 9-10. 41

Products, people, etc. 42

Nyaw Mee-kau, ‘Investment Environment: Perceptions of Overseas Investors of Foreign-funded Industrial Firms,’ in Shanghai: Transformation and Modernization Under China’s Open Policy, Yue-Man Yeung, Sung Yun-wing, eds. (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996), 250-256. 43

Tingwei Zhang, ‘Urban Development as a Socialist Pro-Growth Coalition in Shanghai,’ Urban Affairs Review 37, no. 4 (March 2002), 479. See also: Allan J. Scott, ‘Cultural-Products Industries and Urban Economic Development: Prospects for Growth and Market Contestation in Global Context,’ Urban Affairs Review 39, no. 4 (March 2004) 467. And: Guang Yang, ‘Global Urban Development Metropolitan Economic Strategies Report – Shanghai’s Economic Development: Its Opportunities and Challenges in the 21

st Century,’ (Global Urban Development:

Washington DC, May 2002) 2. It should also be noted here that New York and Los Angeles were picked at random as examples. As well as: Nyaw Mee-kau, ‘Investment Environment,’ 255.


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Harvey’s Spaces of Global Capitalism and a critical interpretation of neoliberalism. If the model of

Metabolic Systems Theory is remotely applicable to examples other than Shanghai,44 then a more

structured and in-depth examination of global interaction along metabolic pathways will be possible.

Metabolic Systems through Space

Metabolic systems are highly dependent upon the spaces they exist within. These spaces are

three-fold: physical, intangible, and abstract. These spaces are linked and embody different ideas and

means all of which come to play within the metabolic processes. Stated briefly, physical spaces are those

that act upon the metabolism, and upon which the metabolism acts. The physical encompasses

geography, as well as resources (human, animal, and vegetable/mineral), and the ways these physical

things are drawn into, and pushed out of the metabolism. The intangible spaces are those that are, by

their nature, not physical, yet have the ability to facilitate movement such as the internet and other

information systems. These intangible spaces are linked physically through servers and power-systems

that can be moved and removed, yet the intangibility of their production(s) remain. Finally, the abstract

represents political and economic spaces and the ways politics and the economy affect other spaces and

the metabolic process overall. As stated, each of these spaces interacts and affects the others in a

trialectic relationship,45 and can therefore be contained in what I have been calling the environment.

When evaluating the ability and desire for a metabolism to maintain equilibrium within its environment,

these three areas of space must be examined. Here, I will be evaluating Shanghai in more abstract ways,

relying instead on generalities pertaining to global capitalist spaces, and the ways in which global

capitalism, the organism the metabolisms feed, functions within and organizes space.

44

And I believe this is entirely possible given the work of William Cronon in his examination of Chicago. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991). 45

Similar to the idea put forth by Ed Soja in that there are three areas that affect perceptions (here, control and interaction) of space. See: Derek Gregory, et al., The Dictionary of Human Geography, 5

th ed., (Chichester, UK:

Blackwell Publishing, 2009), 776.


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Throughout the above description, I have been treating the metabolic system as though it exists

solely on a horizontal level. Resources (compounds and/or components) are transported through space

from vessels to the metabolism to facilitate anabolism, or transported away from the metabolism as the

result of catabolism. The same can be said for the energies distributed globally along metabolic

pathways. For the sake of concision, I will limit my discussion of how things are transported to and from

the metabolism to my above argument that briefly details this process. Here, I would rather discuss the

use of physical space within the metabolism (city) and how the manipulation of physical space interacts

within the trialectic. Therefore, I will shift my focus from the horizontal to the vertical. According to

statistical data, as well as visual observations, Shanghai has grown since the 1970s. Literally, the city has

begun to resemble other spaces of global capitalism in the way buildings are organized along the

vertical.46 In building along the vertical axis, the Shanghai was changed from the pre-industrial to the

post-, collectivising the abstract (economic) in a way that the majority of resources are not understood.

One of the offshoots of this is the increased segmentation of the metabolism, which helps to control

internal resources across the trialectic.47 Beyond the accumulation mentioned throughout Harvey’s

article, this process streamlines the flow of physical compounds into and out of the city while

safeguarding the heart of the metabolism. Through the process of dispossession, or the re-organization

of Shanghai’s old residential/industrial regions into service and commerce sectors, the metabolic heart is

able to restrict access to resources (or, restrict access each resource, human or environment, has to one

and other), and create a manageable environment within the metabolism.48 The limiting and creation of

boundaries are not, however, the principle goal of developing a city on the vertical, nor is limitation the

46

Wu, ‘Global and Local Dimensions...,’ 1373. See also: Mark Thornton, ‘Skyscrapers and Business Cycles,’ The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 8, no. 1 (2005), 51-52. 47

Insofar as people are concerned, cities are designed with placement in mind, affecting everything from the access to resources to the interaction and re-production of culture. For an interesting look at how worldview is interpreted within the city, see: Setha M. Low, ‘The Anthropology of Cities: Imagining and Theorizing the City,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1996), 385, 386. 48

Harvey, ‘Spaces...’ 111.


17

driving force behind skyward construction. The free flow of information, and the entire idea of the

‘vertical’ is at the heart of modern capitalism, meaning that control of the physical allows for better

control of the intangible and abstract. What this means for Shanghai is two-fold: That areas within the

bounds of the city have been re-zoned allows for the catabolic displacement of resources within the

metabolism, for example, moving migrant populations to the outskirts of the city, resulting in capital

accumulation by way of their dispossession. Secondly, the re-zoned areas are then anabolically rebuilt,

not to resemble the old city, but replaced by towering skyscrapers, resembling the vertical re-

organization of information and connection.

The very notion of capitalist exchange is centred upon the vertical. It is the axis upon which

modern (or, perhaps, post-modern) capitalism functions, how exchanges are negotiated, and how

information is processed.49 If we are to step directly into the world of information, then ‘vertical linkages

are used to coordinate activities between the top and bottom of an organization and are designed

primarily for control of the organization.’50 In this regard, the flow of information within a server is

increased when processes are linked vertically. This is manifested physically in the organization of most

server rooms in high-tech installations (see fig. 4).

49

Marco Orrù, ‘Dirigiste Capitalism in France and South Korea,’ in The Economic Organization of East Asian Capitalism, Marco Orrù , Nicole Woolsey Biggart, Gary G. Hamilton, eds., (London: Sage Press, 1997), 369. :368-382 50

Richard L. Daft, Organization Theory and Design, 10th

ed., (Mason, OH: Cengage Learning, 2010 [2007]), 94.


18

Figure 4: Random Server Room

51

The image in fig. 4 is similar to the image of fig. 5 which depicts the Pudong skyline. Both are organized

vertically and both are designed to facilitate rapid transfer of information. While linked in their vertical

orientation, the intangible is still a space that must be examined independently of the physical.

Figure 5: Pudong Skyline

52

51

Server room as promoted by Holland Shielding Systems. Image used without permission. http://www.faradaycages.com/index2.php?p=Content&id=133&nav=Server%20rooms&nav_grp=Data%20centers (accessed 26 April 2012). 52

Taken from Wikipedia, open source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shanghai_citic.jpg (accessed 26 April 2012).


19

In the comparison between a server room and Pudong, what is missing is detritus. The server room is

clean, unfettered by xenobiotic materials that have no function. Information is unmolested by useless

materials. Pudong is no different. Through dispossession, all of the xenobiotic materials have been

catabolically removed, converted anabolically into a functional space.

Information systems, and their connection through the internet or various LAN services, are

heavily incorporated in the metabolic process of the city. Information is produced, exchanged, and

traded, facilitating the metabolic processes of the city. Since 2000, the number of internet users in China

has increased exponentially, meaning that a growing number of individuals have access to this intangible

space, including in rural areas where ‘115.1 million users’ have some form of internet access.53 As

information can be shared across intangible space, then the information can be controlled (as part of

the process of achieving environmental equilibrium that the metabolism constantly seeks) and used

within anabolism (diffusion of information that might lead to a greater influx of migrants into Shanghai)

or catabolism (diffusion of information that reports a decline in jobs within the city). As suggested

above, these intangible spaces are linked to physical spaces. However, with the constant desire to back-

up and protect information, these intangible spaces remain and can be modified instantaneously

depending upon the need of the metabolism. More importantly, that these intangible spaces exist and

are understood as existing greatly affects the way physical resources such as humans interact with

information.54 These intangible networks that mirror the vessel-metabolism relationship also facilitate

the transfer and regulation of abstract spaces that are also an aspect of the metabolic process.

To explore the way the metabolism controls and regulates abstract space, some context must be

provided. I mean abstract in that the political and economic are the product of an intellectual space that

is highly influenced by context and not so exactly by logic or environmental interaction. Nevertheless,

53

China Internet Network Information Centre, China: Internet Usage Stats and Population Report, http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/cn.htm, accessed 26 April 2012. 54

Robert Pepperell, The Posthuman Condition: Consciousness Beyond the Brain (Bristol, UK: intellect, 2003), 3, 5.


20

the regulation of the environment by the metabolism creates a context free of human agency that

requires actors to become compounds within the reactions. They are also wholly related. Take, for

example, the desire of the Chinese government to open Shanghai as an SEZ. This process was

undertaken by the need to reform. With this ‘initial’ movement, an abstract space was created in which

the political facilitated the catabolism of the physical and the anabolism of the economic. By re-

designing Shanghai with what Wu term’s ‘inward’ investment, the physical space of Shanghai was

transformed (catabolically and then anabolically).55 More importantly, this abstract space also created

the conditions for external economic investment that drew in foreign interests along the metabolic

pathways.56 The more the internal abstract space (politics) was regulated, the more external abstract

space (economics) was created. The more these processes continued, the more they became self-

regulating and self-sustaining. The more economic investments came to Shanghai from different cells

(including regional competitors such as Beijing and Hong Kong), the more the metabolism adjusted its

internal space to accommodate the influx. Catabolically, low-income families were moved to the

periphery of the city through political mandate while the Bund, to re-create an area that would be

accommodating to foreigners, was revitalized.57 Pudong (perhaps the best representation of this

trialectic) was also re-zoned (politically) and a great deal of economic investment was poured into it,

necessitating the influx of low-income and rural migrant workers back into the core of the city. I could

continue, though I feel I have already begun to illustrate how the process, once begun, takes on a life (or

agency) of its own. The metabolism, through the trialectic of space, pulls with such extreme centripetal

and centrifugal forces that, at times, it appears that those things caught within its environment are at its

mercy.

55

Wu, ‘Global and Local...’ 7. 56

Ibid., 12. 57

Ibid., 7, 13-14.


21

Problems with Metabolic Systems Theory

The problems with the analytic I posit above are legion, and I will not be able to delve into them

too deeply, or on an individual basis. I will caveat the remainder of this paper by saying, as I have above,

that I began this thought-project with a less biological slant in mind. Nevertheless, this theory is simply

an invitation to greater and more in-depth research into the ways cities and regional systems function,

as well as their interactions through globalization and as nodes of global capitalism. I have, as is obvious,

taken certain aspects of David Harvey’s theories for granted, and operated without much context being

given to either the process by which I came to these conclusions, nor the role neoliberalism,

neoconservativism, and neoauthoritarianism (in the case of Chinese social and political control are

concerned) play in the creation and regulation of the metabolic system. I have also treated my source –

Shanghai – as something of a lifeless representation, and I fear I have not spent as much time as I would

have liked incorporating details that are wholly specific to Shanghai in my metabolic examination of it as

a living city. What little work I have done through this paper has been something of an introduction to

more a detailed analysis that, given the boundaries of this paper, might better explore and elaborate on

the way Shanghai, as a metabolism, operates. As for other spaces of global capitalism (or metabolisms,

or cities), it is my hope that this framework (for that is all this paper is) is somehow adaptable.

The historical transition of Shanghai from economic backwater to SEZ and, therefore,

metabolism, has been provided briefly, and then only to frame the context of the transition. How does

the historical context of a city give way to a metabolism? How can metabolic pathways and the

interactions of metabolisms affect each other’s creation (take the Tiananmen Incident in 1989; how did

this event further create the political conditions for the development of Shanghai’s metabolic process?).

Beyond the historical, I have ignored the sustainability of the metabolic system. Given the desire of the

system to regulate its environment, what will happen when this regulation is impossible? These

questions remain horribly (and sadly) unanswered at this juncture.


22

Finally, as a cultural historian, I feel that I have completely neglected the cultural angle while

researching and writing this paper. There is a great deal of room to explore the ways a metabolic

environment acts as a homogenising force on cultural groups both internally and globally (and, of

course, spatially). There is a great deal of debate that exists painting the opening of China as a moment

of Americanization or Westernization. I would refute this, again, along lines based on Harvey’s works,

though not here.

Conclusion

Metabolism operate within cells that are localized and connected globally. The metabolic

process seeks to regulate the environment that comprises and sustains the metabolism. While World-

Systems Analysis provides an interesting and topical framework through which to examine the

differences in ‘development’ in the world, it supposes that economic superiority is, in and of itself, an

advantage that stands in relation to places, peoples, and things that might not share such an outlook. In

looking at Shanghai as a metabolism, this idea is regionalized and unpacked, and can then be placed in

relation to other metabolic systems throughout the world. Each cell works within itself, moderating its

internal workings through control of various aspects, each of which is essential to the continued survival

of the metabolism. Moreover, the very existence of the metabolism creates the conditions for its

continued survival, affecting the vessels (or economically disadvantaged regions, to borrow from

Wallerstein) around it to increase its production of energy. In so doing, the metabolism establishes the

means, through a trialectic of space, to better regulate its internal functions, managing and re-ordering

itself in an effort to control its environment. More a framework than a fully-fledged analytic, looking at

Shanghai through this lens allows for a greater discussion on regional differences, as well as how

powerful a space of global capitalism can become within its own context.


23

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Rebuilding Shanghai: Towards a Theory of Metabolic Systems