Chinese Cities - Sciences Po - OGLM 3050 - 59127 - S2 2025/26 Clément Renaud [hi@clementrenaud.com](mailto:hi@clementrenaud.com) (use left/right keyboard arrows to navigate) --- class: inverse, center, middle ## Week 12 # 终 ## Final Session #### 28 Apr 2026 --- class: inverse, center, middle ## Character of the week # 终 [Purple Culture](https://www.purpleculture.net/dictionary-details/?word=终) / [Hanziyuan](https://hanziyuan.net/) / [CUHK dic](https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=终) --- class: inverse, middle # Chinese Cities — Final Session ### Sciences Po — Governing the Large Metropolis Clément Renaud 28 April 2026 --- # Today **8:00 — 10:00** Group presentations **10:00 — 10:15** Break (welcome Liu Ying) **10:15 — 10:45** Made in China — collective feedback **10:45 — 11:00** Design fiction — introduction **11:00 — 11:40** Workshop **11:40 — 12:00** Close --- class: inverse, middle # Group presentations ### 8:00 — 10:00 5 groups × 15 minutes End your presentation with **one open question** for the room. --- class: inverse, middle, center # Break — 15 min --- class: inverse, middle # Made in China ### What you produced --- # The objects .row[ .column[ - Hikvision CCTV camera - Ring light (LED) - Nike Air Force 1 - Hermès Lindy _pingti_ bag - Violin (Huangqiao) - Marshall Stanmore III speaker - E-cigarette (Shenzhen) ] .column[ - Zhenjiang vinegar - Shang Xia porcelain & bamboo tea set - TikTok / Douyin - Tunnel Boring Machine (CREG) - Lao Gan Ma chili sauce - "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" ] ] .footnote[ A semester of object biographies and travels through Made in China networks. ] --- # Thematic map | Theme | Objects | | ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | | **Specialised towns** | Violin, E-cigarette, Pingti, Shang Xia, Zhenjiang vinegar | | **State power & infrastructure export** | Hikvision, CREG TBM, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics | | **Cultural identity & branded disguise** | Violin, Marshall, Shang Xia, Pingti | | **Circulation, ports & diaspora** | Lao Gan Ma, Zhenjiang vinegar, Air Force 1, TikTok | | **Terroir & materiality** | Lao Gan Ma, Zhenjiang, Violin, Air Force 1, E-cigarette | | **The immaterial as object** | TikTok / Douyin, Socialism, Ring light | --- # 1. The cluster is the unit of production "Made in China" is almost always a **town phenomenon.** - **Huangqiao** — 30–40% of the world's violins - **Bao'an / Shajing** — 70–95% of China's e-cigarettes - **Baiyun / Tianhe** — pingti production, then distribution - **Shandong** — 9 of 10 biggest bottle makers in <1% of territory - **Yunnan tobacco · Tibet / Qinghai / Jiangxi lithium** --- # 2. Cultural origin flipped Chinese in capital and infrastructure — branded as somewhere else. - **Huangqiao violin** — Italian-sounding OEM names "Made in Italy". _"A cultural biography of disguise."_ - **Marshall** — London 1962 · designed in Stockholm · made in Shenzhen · HongShan Capital since 2025. - **Shang Xia** — Hermès JV (2008) → Exor (2020, €80M). Chinese craft, European envelope. --- # 3. Only China makes it Often through decades of accumulated state R&D and vertical integration, in categories the West stopped competing in. - **CREG TBM** — first Chinese TBM contract in France. Grand Paris Line 16. Clear state programs lineage - **Hikvision** — 41.88% state-owned. Exports an urban governance doctrine, not just hardware. --- # 4. Terroir — place is the product Some objects can't be moved without ceasing to be themselves. - **Lao Gan Ma** — swapped Guizhou chilies for Henan; revenue collapsed; founder destroyed 500 tons and restored the supply. - **Zhenjiang vinegar** — protected GI · 1840 origin. - **Shang Xia** — Jingdezhen kaolin · bamboo weaving by the hand of a master . - **"Socialism with Chinese Characteristics"** — embedded in the cities it shaped. --- # 5. Opacity is the discovery Read the silence itself. The absence became the argument. - **Pingti** — seller missing from Qichacha → analysis of informality. - **Zhenjiang vinegar** — couldn't trace rice / wheat → pivoted to the bottle → Shandong cluster. - **Marshall** — no factory ID → annual report → three Shenzhen subsidiaries. - **Shang Xia** — partial LinkedIn reply → treated partiality as data. --- # The most common pitfall Don't stop looking. ### Theory without a specific object is just an essay. --- class: inverse, middle # Urban Design Fiction ### 10:45 — 11:00 --- # What is design fiction? > "Design fiction is the practice of creating tangible and evocative prototypes from possible near futures, to help discover and represent the consequences of decision making." _The Manual of Design Fiction_, Near Future Laboratory, 2022 --- background-image: url(/chinese-cities/img/speculative-design-cone-of-possibilities_FINAL.webp) .footnote[ > "We need to shift from designing applications to designing **implications** — imaginary products and services that situate new developments within everyday material culture." _Speculative Everything_, Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby — Royal College of Art, 2013 ] --- # The future is mundane > "A good science fiction story should predict not the automobile but the traffic jam." Frederik Pohl, 1953 The artifact is a prop, an everyday object from a possible world that makes that world concrete enough to argue with (_diegetic prototype_, Kirby). Final form often talks about the artifact: an instruction manual, a complaint letter, a customs form, etc. Replace the artifact in its context - e.g. an posted add on the street for a lost robot-cat --- class: bg-contain background-image: url(/chinese-cities/img/near-future-lab-ikea.avif) # IKEA Catalog from the Near Future .footnote[ [nearfuturelaboratory.com](https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/) ] --- class: bg-contain, inverse background-image: url(/chinese-cities/img/teacher_trainingdirt.jpg) # Teacher of Algorithms ### Repair as a future urban trade. .row[ .column[ A six-minute video set in Shanghai. _"Your smart thing not that smart?"_ The Teacher retrains misbehaving smart objects. What happens to the global supply chain _after_ the device is sold ? ] .column[] ] .footnote[ Simone Rebaudengo, 2015 ] --- class: bg-contain, inverse background-image: url(/chinese-cities/img/near-future-lab-geneva-map.avif) # Geneva Map for Autonomous Vehicles .footnote[ Near Future Laboratory, 2014 ] --- class: inverse, bg-contain background-image: url(/chinese-cities/img/superflux-mitigation-shock.jpg) # Mitigation of Shock ### Food production under climate stress in a London apartment circa 2050 .footnote[ Superflux, 2017 ] --- # Why these formats? ### Looks like a real document from its world Not a render, not a poster, not a pitch deck Familiar, concrete, circulates easily, invites #### Examples Catalog page · instruction manual · news clipping · complaint letter · customs declaration · product review · in-app ad · lost-pet poster · etc --- # "Made in China" mundane A mention on the back of an object that hides/reveals everything the object actually is — workers, factories, materials, supply chains, ideologies, cities, etc. Your biographies were **archaeology** — running the label backwards into the world. --- class: inverse, middle # Made in China — 2040 ### Workshop — 11:00 — 11:40 --- # The brief > Somewhere in China in 2040, an object is being made. ### Your group produces one artifact that proves it exists. - Pick a **place** in China — real or plausible. - Pick an **object**. - Pick a **format** — label, product page, ad, customs slip, news clipping, complaint, review. Make one piece of paper from that world. Each artefact draws on one thread from the course. The artifact must let a reader **feel** the thread without it being spelled out. --- ### The threads from the course | | Thread | Week | | --- | -------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | | 1 | **Land as finance** | [W2](/chinese-cities/weeks/land-reform/) | | 2 | **Hukou & the floating population** | [W6](/chinese-cities/weeks/migrations/) | | 3 | **Ageing & the only-child generation** | [W5](/chinese-cities/weeks/the-aging-city/) | | 4 | **Infrastructural thinking** | [W3](/chinese-cities/weeks/infrastructure-networks/) | | 5 | **Shanzhai & the manufacturing ecology** | [W4](/chinese-cities/weeks/technology-manufacturing/) | | 6 | **Mass entrepreneurship & innovation** | [W7](/chinese-cities/weeks/planning-for-innovation/) | | 7 | **Ecological civilization & risks** | [W8](/chinese-cities/weeks/governing-risk/) | | 8 | **The Chinese stack** | [W9](/chinese-cities/weeks/urban-platform/) | | 9 | **Youth cultures** | [W9](/chinese-cities/weeks/urban-platform/) | | 10 | **Export abroad** | [W10](/chinese-cities/weeks/china-abroad/) | --- # Format — choose one - A **label or stamp** — the "Made in \_\_\_" sticker itself, plus what it's stuck to - A **product page** — Taobao, Alibaba, Xiaohongshu listing - An **advertisement** — poster, banner, in-app ad - A **customs declaration** — port of entry: Marseille, Rotterdam, Lagos, Long Beach - A **news clipping** — a journalist explaining a situation involving this object - A **complaint or review** — buyer, regulator, old artisan from where it used to be made, etc --- # Three constraints ### 1. Anchor it. Name a neighborhood, a road, a port, a factory zone — even if you invent it. **Geographic specificity** is what separates a fiction from an essay. ### 2. Make it boring. It should look like a real document from 2040, not a pitch. > A Lost Robo-dog poster should look like a Lost Dog poster, not a Pixar render. — _The Manual_ ### 3. Reveal the thread, don't explain it. The artifact should make us **feel** what this place is going through — not lecture us about it. --- # The reveal Each group got **90 seconds**. Hold it up, name the place, object, format. **The room guesses the thread** before the group reveals it. --- class: inverse, middle # The reveal ### 11:40 --- class: inverse, middle # The bigger question --- # Made in China > the understudied counterpoint to consumerism. ### It silently produces the world we live in. The goal of this course was to begin describing those mechanisms — through cities, infrastructures, policies, and the objects that pass through them. ### What would a deeper inquiry look like? --- class: inverse, middle, center # Thank you Clément Renaud · Liu Ying _(guest researcher today!)_ Sciences Po — GLM 2026