Experiencing China’s verticality and exposing abstractions in altitude

The following contribution explores some of the author’s experiences of living in three of China’s coastal cities, introducing the origins of the ideas that led to his PhD project that examined the Chinese state in both historical and spatial terms and interrogated how state space continues to be imagined as something tangible and real. It reveals some of the difficulties of doing research on a subject which seems to be obvious, but is yet so little explored, writes Marijn Nieuwenhuis.