Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities Linking city branding to multi-level urban governance in Chinese mega- cities: A case study of Guangzhou Lin Ye a , Emma Björner b, ⁎ a Chinese Center for Public Administration Research, School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University, 135 Xingangxi Road, Guangzhou, China b Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University, Roslagsvägen 101, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden ARTICLE INFO Keywords: City branding Multi-level Urban governance Rescaling China Guangzhou ABSTRACT This article contributes to the academic discussion on city branding as a form of multi-level urban governance, by investigating city branding tied to urban policies and state strategies in Chinese mega-cities, using Guangzhou as a case study. The findings illustrate that city branding is an integrated part of multi-level urban governance, highlights how city branding is interlinked with national, regional and local levels, and exemplifies how city branding strategies and practices are utilized to formulate and implement growth-driven urban policy in China, shedding light on multi-level perspectives in city branding, in China and more generally. 1. Introduction In the globalization era, the branding of cities has become a vital tool to stimulate urban development around the world (Anttiroiko, 2015). Moreover, as cities play increasingly important roles – eco- nomically, socially and politically – governance of cities matters (Guo & Cheng, 2012). The (re)scaling of governance has meant shifts from power concentrated at national and state levels towards power con- centrated at regional, metropolitan and city levels (e.g. Vogel, 2010). The experiences of different places however vary, and the neoliberal regime of institutional governance should, in the words of Ong (2007), be viewed as a constantly moving mobile technology. In a Western context, the neoliberal turn in urban governance (Greenberg, 2008; Hackworth, 2007), the introduction of market-based reforms such as New Public Management (Eshuis, Braun, & Klijn, 2013), and the rise of ‘the entrepreneurial city’ (Hall & Hubbard, 1998) are all related to the growth of city branding. For decades now, city officials have ‘looked to and adopted private-sector strategies, including marketing-led strategies of urban development’ (Braun, Eshuis, & Klijn, 2014, p. 64). City branding has been conceptualised as a form of urban govern- ance in the sense that it can be used strategically to stimulate and direct urban development and growth; applied to manage perceptions about places, and utilized to formulate unique city identities (Eshuis & Edwards, 2012; Van Ham, 2008). Extant city branding literature, nevertheless, still has ample gaps with regards to the political and in- stitutional aspects of city branding (Vuignier, 2015) and there has, for example, been calls for illustrations depicting connections between city branding and urban governance (Oguztimur & Akturan, 2016). There has also been calls for studies investigating city branding from a multi- level perspective (Syssner, 2010), and for research conceptualizing city branding as a form of urban governance strategy. As a country with a centralized system of government and strong state interventions in urban policymaking, China represents a new ground for studying city branding and its relevance to urban govern- ance. The Chinese experience diverges from the Anglo-American ideal- type of neoliberalism, with its unique combination of under-regulated markets and authoritarian state (Rossi & Vanolo, 2012), and current urban policymaking in China has been strongly tied to metropolitan and regional development, in response to the pressure of globalization and competition in the global economy (Ye, 2013, 2014). It is thus im- portant to investigate how a rapidly urbanizing country like China utilizes city branding as a major urban governance strategy to stimulate urban development. This study aims at contributing to this discussion, and investigates city branding as a form of urban governance, from a multi-level perspective, in the context of Chinese mega-cities and using the city of Guangzhou as a case study. The article is organized into the following parts. The first part de- velops the theoretical framework of this research and centres on city branding and multi-level governance. Materials and methods are then introduced, and the case study of Guangzhou is utilized to analyse a typical mega-city in China. The findings and discussion focus primarily on how city branding is manifested through multi-level urban govern- ance, before conclusions are drawn. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.10.018 Received 30 January 2017; Received in revised form 14 October 2017; Accepted 22 October 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: ebj@sbs.su.se (E. Björner). Cities 80 (2018) 29–37 Available online 08 January 2018 0264-2751/ © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T