Staff Profile
Dr Kean Fan Lim
Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography
- Email: keanfan.lim@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: 0191 208 8037
- Address: Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies,
Newcastle University,
Henry Daysh Building 3.40
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
Overview
Dr. Kean Fan Lim is an economic geographer. He is primarily interested in how economic restructuring in East Asia is constituted by policy experimentation in city-regions. Specifically, Kean's research examines the extent to which the industrial, social welfare and financial policies of particular East Asian city-regions generate new developmental paths at the national scale. Kean joined the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University in the spring of 2018. Before moving to Newcastle, Kean was appointed Assistant Professor in Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham (2014-2018) after completing his doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia (2009-2014).
Kean's research is aimed at an interdisciplinary audience and has been published widely in leading academic journals within and beyond Geography. He is the co-author, with economic historian Niv Horesh, of a monograph that critically examines the geographical-historical premises of the 'China model' of development (Routledge, 2017).
In March 2019, Kean published a single-authored monograph that foregrounds the connections between state rescaling, policy experimentation and economic restructuring in post-1949 China. The book is part of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Book Series (Wiley-Blackwell).
Kean has developed an award-winning research track record in economic geography and urban and regional studies. In 2019, his research received double recognition by the Regional Studies Association (RSA) in 2019 with his nomination as Early Career Plenary Speaker at the 2019 RSA Winter Conference in London. At the same conference, he also received the RSA & Routledge Early Career Award. In 2022, Kean received the International Geographical Union's Early Career Award for "sustained research excellence in economic geography, unique ability to establish cross-disciplinary engagements, and dedication to serving his research community".
During 2017 and 2018, Kean served as an elected board member of the American Association of Geographers Economic Geography Specialty Group. He is currently Secretary of the Economic Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers. At the same time, he is an editorial advisory board member of the journal Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space (since 2017) and the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Book Series (since 2020). Within the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Kean is the convenor of the Economic Geography Research Cluster.
Current and future research: an overview
A major line of Dr. Kean Fan Lim's current research is an extension of his doctoral research conducted at the University of British Columbia (2009-2014). This multi-sited project problematises the prevalent claim that a unidirectional, epochal change (e.g. from ‘socialism’ to ‘capitalism’ or centralisation to decentralisation) has occurred in the Chinese political economy after 1978. It emphasises instead a much more deeply sedimented, path-dependent pattern of development that is marked by significant (and enduring) forms of uneven economic-geographical development.
Half of the project draws on field research on contemporary policy experimentation in "nationally strategic new areas" in Chongqing (in interior China) and the Pearl River Delta (southeastern China, adjacent to Hong Kong and Macau) to examine what and why regulatory change is happening. Working from this vantage point, the other half comprises a geographical-historical analysis of the rationale of the institutions to be reformed. In so doing, the project demonstrates the tensions of contemporary reforms with the logics of institutions inherited from earlier regimes. This project has been revised into a monograph for the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Book Series (contracted by Wiley-Blackwell and published in March 2019).
Kean recently completed another project that aims to explain the emergence of state-driven strategic coupling with transnational capital through large-scale infrastructural projects. Specific focus is given to the rationale and impacts the Europe-China Railway on shifting production networks across Eurasia. Fieldwork was conducted in Duisburg (Germany) and Chongqing (China) to ascertain if the railway has enhanced industrial agglomeration and economic performance. The project was funded by the British Academy Small Research Grant, with support from the Sino-British Fellowship Trust. (September 2016 to December 2017).
Kean is currently developing work in financial geography by conceptualising the geographical preconditions of the internationalisation of the Chinese currency - the renminbi (RMB). The goal is to understand how global offshore RMB financial hubs connect with selected territories within the Chinese mainland to drive the internationalisation process. In addition to research in China, Kean will examine how the governments of Hong Kong and Singapore are responding to challenges posed simultaneously by an increasingly volatile global economy and growing social demands for enhanced livability. These two key global city-states in East Asia offer excellent platforms to understand the socio-political conditions necessary for the reproduction of economic competitiveness in global cities.
Dr. Kean Fan Lim is a teaching member in the following undergraduate modules in 2020-2021 (semester 2):
Geo1010 - Interconnected World
Geo2099 - Economic Geography (co-Module Leader)
Geo3114 - Local and Regional Development
Please contact Kean if you are interested in undertaking postgraduate research on economic geography and city-regional development.
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Articles
- Lim KF, Limbach K. From the city of steel to Germany’s 'China City': economic restructuring, the EU–China transcontinental railway and infrastructure-led development in Duisburg. Regional Studies 2023, 57(9), 1731-1746.
- Lim KF, Su X. Making markets ‘decisive’: a firm-level evaluation of state-led development in the China–Myanmar border region. Journal of Economic Geography 2023, 23(2), 397-418.
- Su X, Lim KF. Capital accumulation, territoriality, and the reproduction of state sovereignty in China: Is this “new” state capitalism?. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 2023, 55(3), 697-715.
- Fu W, Lim KF. The Constitutive Role of State Structures in Strategic Coupling: On the Formation and Evolution of Sino-German Production Networks in Jieyang, China. Economic Geography 2022, 98(1), 25-48.
- Lim KF, Su X. Cross‐border market building for narcotics control: A Polanyian analysis of the China–Myanmar border region. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 2021, 46(4), 834-849.
- Su X, Lim KF. Opium substitution, reciprocal control and the tensions of geoeconomic integration in the China–Myanmar Border. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 2019, 51(8), 1665-1683.
- Lim KF. Strategic coupling, state capitalism, and the shifting dynamics of global production networks. Geography Compass 2018, 12(11), e12406.
- Lim KF. Researching state rescaling in China: methodological reflections. Area Development and Policy 2018, 3(2), 170-184.
- Lim KF, Horesh N. The Chongqing vs. Guangdong developmental ‘models’ in post-Mao China: Regional and historical perspectives on the dynamics of socioeconomic change. Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy 2017, 22(3), 372-395.
- Horesh N, Lim KF. The 'China model' as a complicated developmental trope. China: An International Journal 2017, 15(2), 166-176.
- Lim KF. State rescaling, policy experimentation and path dependency in post-Mao China: a dynamic analytical framework. Regional Studies 2017, 51(10), 1580-1593.
- Lim KF. On the shifting spatial logics of socioeconomic regulation in post-1949 China. Territory, Politics, Governance 2017, 5(1), 65-91.
- Horesh N, Lim KF. China: An East Asian Alternative to Neoliberalism?. The Pacific Review 2017, 30(4), 425-442.
- Lim KF, Horesh N. The “Singapore Fever” in China: Policy Mobility and Mutation. The China Quarterly 2016, 228, 992-1017.
- Lim KF. Emptying the cage, changing the birds’: State rescaling, path-dependency and the politics of economic restructuring in post-crisis Guangdong. New Political Economy 2016, 21(4), 414-435.
- Lim KF. Spatial egalitarianism as a social ‘counter movement’: on socioeconomic reforms in Chongqing. Economy and Society 2014, 43(3), 455-493.
- Lim KF. ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’: Uneven development, variegated neoliberalization and the dialectical differentiation of state spatiality. Progress in Human Geography 2014, 38(2), 221-247.
- Lim KF. What you see is (not) what you get? The Taiwan question, geo-economic realities, and the "China threat" imaginary. Antipode 2012, 44(4), 1348-1373.
- Lim KF. The point is to keep going: the global sub-prime mortgage crisis, local labour market repositioning, and the capital accumulation dynamic in Singapore. Journal of Economic Geography 2012, 12(3), 693-716.
- Lim KF. On China's growing geo-economic influence and the evolution of variegated capitalism. Geoforum 2010, 41(5), 677-688.
- Lim KF. Transnational collaborations, local competitiveness: Mapping the geographies of filmmaking in/through Hong Kong. Geografiska Annaler Series B: Human Geography 2006, 88(3), 337-357.
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Authored Books
- Lim KF. On Shifting Foundations: State Rescaling, Policy Experimentation and Economic Restructuring in post-1949 China. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019.
- Horesh N, Lim KF. An East Asian Challenge to Western Neoliberalism: Critical Perspectives on the ‘China Model’. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.
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Book Chapters
- Lim KF. Variegated neoliberalization as a function and outcome of neoauthoritarianism in China. In: Cemal Burak Tansek, ed. States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017, pp.255-273.
- Lim KF. Regulation/deregulation. In: D. Richardson, N. Castree, M. F. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu and R. A. Marston, ed. International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
- Lim KF. Labor Market. In: D. Richardson, N. Castree, M. F. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu and R. A. Marston, ed. International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
- Lim KF. International Division of Labor. In: D. Richardson, N. Castree, M. F. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu and R. A. Marston, ed. International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
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Reviews
- Lim KF. Book review: Monopsony Capitalism: Power and Production in the Twilight of the Sweatshop Age by Ashok Kumar. American Association of Geographers Review of Books 2021, 9(2), 11-13.
- Su X, Agnew J, Cox KR, Yang C, Lim KF. Reading Kean Fan Lim's On Shifting Foundations: State Rescaling, Policy Experimentation and Economic Restructuring in post-1949 China. Political Geography 2020, 83, 102244.
- Lim KF. Diaspora's Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration by Shelly Chan [Book review]. Journal of Historical Geography 2019, 66, 116-117.
- Lim KF. The Great Leveler: Capitalism and Competition in the Court of Law [Book Review of The Great Leveler by Brett Christophers]. American Association of Geographers Review of Books 2017, 5(1), 23-25.
- Lim KF. Review of Making Human Geography by Kevin Cox (Guildford Press). The Canadian Geographer 2015, 59(2), e65-e66.
- Lim KF. Review: National Capitalisms, Global Production Networks: Fashioning the Value Chain in the UK, U5A and Germany. Environment and Planning A 2011, 43(1), 252-254.