For those who are concerned with the global problems of uneven development and the unequal distribution of resources and opportunities between urban and rural areas (and the layers of zones in between), Mark Baker’s research on the history of the city of Zhengzhou and its surrounding region in China is yet another melancholy tale of how intractable those problems are. Driven by the imperative to “modernize” the country, different generations of Chinese political leaders of various stripes, from the early twentieth century to the present day, have tried—and are still trying—to re-shape the socioeconomic geography of the Zhengzhou region. Simply put, constrained by limited resources, the authorities over the last hundred years have felt the need to focus on developing selected locales and neglecting others to move the country forward. This strategy has created, or at the very least accentuated, what Baker calls a “spatial politics” of inequality, with sharp and stark differences in terms of income, wealth, social capital, and access to services across space (3). More often than not, cities, such as Zhengzhou, have been deemed the engine for economic growth and hence privileged in the competition for resources, often at the expense of their rural hinterlands. Is there a ready solution to this perennial problem, which haunts China and many other parts the world?

That “the fate of individuals depends on where they are as well as who they are [italics original]” (3) is, of course, not a new revelation. However, the recent histories and urban geographies of cities in central China (Zhengzhou is located in the province of Henan), which are far removed from the coastal areas, have received relatively little attention in English-language writings. Baker’s detailed—at times perhaps a little too detailed—examination of an inland city and its connections, or lack thereof, to its hinterland and the wider region is thus a welcome addition to the literature. It offers readers a rare glimpse through time of not only how messy or indeed arbitrary the process of city-making could be, but also its impact on different levels of society. Baker also insists that, while spatial politics and inequality are a global phenomenon, in the case of China the role of the state is critical, as “[s]uccessive Chinese states have played a stronger role in constructing the distribution of resources than in many nation-states” (14).

Regarding the role of the state, Baker has a stronger case in the second half of the book, which covers the period since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Although spatial inequality was evident in the pre-1949 era, most of the time the state in those earlier years lacked the decisive capability to shape the socioeconomic landscape in accordance with its will, as demonstrated by Baker’s own research. Indeed, despite all the rumblings about “urban planning” by the authorities since at least the 1920s, the rather chaotic and haphazard nature of Zhengzhou’s development, initially prompted by the advent of railroads in the early twentieth century, is itself a testament to the limited capacity of the various pre-1949 governments. That is not to say, as Baker is keen to point out, that state policies had no effect on the region. The Nationalist government’s preference for Kaifeng over Zhengzhou, for instance, had clearly negative effects on the fortunes of the latter for a time. The militarization of society, often sponsored by the state, also took its toll. Overall, though, it appears that a multitude of other factors—ecology, technology, market forces, social resistance—were at least as important as state policies in determining the trajectory of the Zhengzhou region in the first half of the twentieth century.

Baker’s central argument does come alive, however, with the founding of the PRC. As one of the eighteen “focus cities” of the first Five-Year Plan in the 1950s, Zhengzhou was the beneficiary of an unprecedented amount of resources from the state. Then, in 1958, came the Great Leap Forward. In perhaps the most compelling chapter of the book, using the Great Leap and its aftermath as an example, Baker vividly highlights a key theme that runs through the entire book—the state’s impulse to bridge the gap in the living conditions between the urban and the rural population was real, but other imperatives invariably sidelined the lofty goal and dictated the continual exploitation or neglect of the countryside. Zhengzhou was the first city in the PRC to establish communes for its urban residents along with the wave of communalization in the rural areas. As early as 1959, however, it was evident to many within the government leadership that the country “did not have resources for simultaneous rural and urban growth, for radical equalization and industrial takeoff [italics original]” (174). The goal of equalization of the urban and the rural areas had to be sacrificed, with rural residents paying a disproportionately heavy price for the decision.

Zhengzhou has enjoyed impressive development and prospered in the post-Mao years. Including its metropolitan areas, its population has grown from around 2.5 million at the beginning of the twenty-first century to more than 10 million in 2019 (247). There has been talk of a “New Socialist Countryside,” and investments in many rural areas both within the Zhengzhou region and elsewhere in the country have indeed increased. Yet, spatial inequality remains. In fact, as Baker notes with reference to the vexing issue of the household registration system that segregates those with legal urban residence status from those without, “Zhengzhou’s drive to megacity status leveraged rather than overturned this deeply unequal spatial politics” (258). While Baker acknowledges that there are other forces at work, he seems to put the onus of enacting any real changes squarely on the Chinese state. According to Baker, there was a moment in the recent history of Zhengzhou that offers us a reminder of the possibility of change. In the early years of the “reform and opening” period that began in 1978, “[r]ural-urban inequality around Zhengzhou reached a historic low in 1983, with per capita incomes for urban residents just 51 percent higher than their rural counterparts” (224). Baker laments that this narrowing trend in the inequality gap, which became noticeable around 1980, suffered a reversal after 1983. He calls it “a reform road not taken” (214), suggesting that the state made a deliberate choice to go in another direction. Perhaps that was the case, although based on Baker’s description of what happened in subsequent years, it is not entirely clear how that historic low could have been sustained. Still, one would be hard pressed to disagree with Baker’s conclusion that the political will to strive for a fairer society will be a key factor in determining the future of the Zhengzhou region, the whole PRC, and beyond.