Medical reterritorialisation: the spatial interests of healthcare, financialisation and hospitals in a city-region

This paper examines hospital-led city-regionalism and its role in transforming territorial orders within China’s institutional framework. Focusing on the corporatisation of the former Suqian People’s Hospital, it problematises medical reterritorialisation as a spatial strategy, examines the formation of a pro-market coalition among hospitals, a pharmaceutical company and local governments, and highlights their control and spatial interests in a city-region. Findings suggest that medical territorialisation serves as an instrument to address the politics of healthcare and the pursuit of accumulation, and is spatially embodied through the extended territorial control enabled by financialisation and the reorganisation of human and medical resource flows.