429 Transformation of the Chinese City, 1995–2005 Geographical Perspectives and Geographers’ Contributions SHENJING HE, ZHIGANG LI, AND FULONG WU Abstract Focusing primarily on the period 1995–2005 and on research published in English, this article reviews the contributions geographers have made to the field of urban China studies, which are broadly grouped around three themes: internal change and reorganization of cities; the interplay with external globalizing forces; and political and social transformations. This article also proposes research emphases for further consideration. Keywords transformation, the Chinese city, geographical perspectives Authors’ affiliation Shenjing He is a research fellow at the School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Wales, UK. Zhigang Li is a lecturer in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. Fulong Wu is (chair) Professor of East Asian Planning and Development in the School of City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, Wales, UK. China, once a developing country with a predominant rural society, is wit- nessing a revival of urbanism. Not only are Chinese cities becoming the dynamic centers of physical and social changes, they are also the destination of capital flow and base for regional competition. Geographers have explored a wide range of topics in urban China research and examined different facets of urban transformation. However, a thorough understanding of China’s urban transformation is yet to be developed as the growth of this field is uneven, with some topics receiving much more attention than others. 1 Not discounting some excellent reviews, 2 our focus is on more recent progress in urban geography in the period 1995–2005. We concentrate on publications in English, and only consider the work of geographers or publications in geo- graphical journals. We also include a few books published by geographers, which have been the cornerstones of urban studies in China. We systemati- cally searched the literature in the Web of Science (using the Social Science Citation Index), and employed keywords such as “Chinese cities,” “Chinese china INFORMATION Copyright © 2006, Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi. Vol XX (3) 429–456 [DOI: 10.1177/0920203X06070033] at University of Hong Kong Libraries on February 22, 2015 cin.sagepub.com Downloaded from