The City Recycled: The Afterlives of Demolished Buildings in Postwar Beijing

This dissertation traces the afterlives of demolished buildings in post-war Beijing as a case to interrogate the changing role of waste in the political economy of development in contemporary China. In contrast to the mainstream narratives about China's post-Mao transformation, which often render waste as an "external cost" of economic development, I argue that waste has remained treated in China as a resource from the Mao to post-Mao eras. What has changed during the period of market reform, instead, is the geography of waste consumption. I establish this argument by showing a profound change of the network of institutions that removes used building materials from Beijing's demolition sites. In Mao's Beijing (1949-1978), the state was the main consumer of used building materials. Governments and state-owned enterprises in the city used the materials to accomplish production goals and to construct public urban projects. Used building materials, therefore, stayed at the urban center and contributed to the modernization of the city. In contrast, in the reform era (1978-present), villages and towns surrounding Beijing have become the center of demolition waste consumption. These peripheral villages and towns appropriate used building materials from the city to cultivate resources and to open up opportunities for growth. In focusing on the network, this study further reveals the diverse forms of businesses involved in the organization of waste work. In this respect, I show that the labor process of un-building (that is, the process of stripping a building down and of removing the resulting materials from its original location to another location) has always been a value-adding activity in China: it gives used building materials a second life. In the reform era in particular, the recovery of demolition waste constitutes a vibrant part of the urban economy. In urban areas, businesses emerge to organize the collection, sorting, and transportation of used building materials. These businesses purchase waste materials from property owners in the city, help urban governments reduce the costs of disposal, and offer a great number of jobs for the city's rural migrants