1. Projects

Mobility in China: A Chinese View of 50 Years of Acceleration

Finished research

In 50 years, daily commutes, travel and migration in China have multiplied, lengthened and accelerated at a spectacular speed. A Franco-Chinese team of researchers and artists decided to explore how city dwellers feel about these changes using images as a catalyst for memories, emotions, associations of ideas and reflections. It would appear that this increase in mobility is closely associated with the imaginary of modernity and generates ambivalent feelings, ranging from enthusiasm for change to nostalgia and anxiety.

Research participants

Researchers

  • Jérémie Descamps
  • Thomas Sauvin
  • Zhang Chun
  • Zhou Le
  • Wang Gongxin
  • Marie Terrieux
  • Vincent Kaufmann
  • Stéphanie Vincent
  • Emmanuel Ravalet
  • Dominique Desjeux
Jérémie Descamps

Jérémie Descamps

Sinologue-urbaniste

Jérémie Descamps is a graduate of the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations as well as of the Paris School of Urban Planning and spent 17 years of his life in China. He is the founder of Sinapolis, a research and design office, and of the modumag.com magazine. He is also Associate Lecturer at the National School of Architecture of Strasbourg and a member of the scientific and educational committee of the Chair for Innovative Metropolitan Mobilities. He also obtained a PhD by accreditation of prior experiential learning at INSA Lyon and the Lyon Urban School (under the supervision of Michel Lussault and Jean-Yves Toussaint).

Thomas Sauvin

Thomas Sauvin

Collectionneur

Thomas Sauvin is a collector and a French artist based in Paris and Beijing specializing in Chinese vernacular photography. His archive database, Silvermine, gathers negative photos destined for destruction, retracing changes in post-Socialist China. He exhibits this treasure of memory in arts festivals around the world.

Zhang Chun

Zhang Chun

Géographe

With a PhD in human geography, Zhang Chun is a professor at the School of Architecture and Design of the University of Transports in Beijing (Jiaotong University). She focuses on urban and regional development, issues of urban access and renovation projects.

Zhou Le

Zhou Le

Sociologue

A graduate of the University of Paris-Dauphine, Zhou Le is a sociologist specialising in organisations, action and sustainable development. She has worked as a project coordinator with foreign NGOs in China and as a consultant for international agencies.

Wang Gongxin

Wang Gongxin

Vidéaste

Wang Gongxin is a contemporary Chinese artist specialising in video arts and new media. At the interface of Chinese and Western culture, his work attempts to understand the relationship between generations as well as to explore the boundary between the real and the unreal.

Marie Terrieux

Marie Terrieux

Productrice culturelle

Marie Terrieux is an exhibition curator and cultural producer who specializes in contemporary Chinese and Vietnamese art. She graduated from the University of Provence and EHESS with a double diploma in art history and ethnology. She worked 12 years in Beijing and organized and curated numerous exhibitions of Chinese and international artists. Since 2017, she has been in charge of the François Schneider Foundation, dedicated to water, art and education, located in a natural environment in the heart of Alsace.

Vincent Kaufmann

Vincent Kaufmann

Sociologue

Vincent Kaufmann, a Swiss sociologist, is one of the pioneers of mobility and inventor of the concept of motility. He is director of LaSUR at the EPFL, General Secretary of CEAT and professor of sociology and mobility analyses. He is the Mobile Lives Forum’s scientific director.

Stéphanie Vincent

Stéphanie Vincent

Sociologist

Stéphanie Vincent holds a doctorate in sociology and is a lecturer in urban planning and development at the Institut d'Urbanisme de Lyon (Université Lumière Lyon 2) and a member of LAET. Her work focuses on mobility practices at the interface between life trajectories and spatial planning. Since September 2023, she has held a junior chair in fundamental research at the IUF, where she is developing work on mobilitarian socialization, i.e. the way in which dispositions to the use of modes of transport are acquired, transmitted and transformed under the effect of the parameters of gender, social origin and living spaces.

Emmanuel Ravalet

Emmanuel Ravalet

Socio-économiste

Emmanuel Ravalet is an engineer and a doctor in Economics, and had PhD in Urban Studies. He works at the Institute of Geography and Sustainability of Lausanne University and at Mobil'Homme, where he is a founding partner. His research focuses on work-related mobility, energy consumption, new mobility services and local economic development.

Dominique Desjeux

Dominique Desjeux

Anthropologist

Dominique Desjeux is an anthropologist, sociologist and Professor emeritus at the Sorbonne (University of Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité). He has published numerous works on cultural and social anthropology. Now an international consultant, he coordinates the professional socio-anthropological network anthropik. [www.argonautes.fr](www.argonautes.fr).

 

I. The research question

Mobility in China has been revolutionized in the past 50 years. Major public investments in transportation infrastructure, the country's economic boom, urbanization and the relaxing of state control over daily commuting, migration and travel have led to a dramatic rise in the latter, changing people’s relationship to time, place and one another. In other words, Chinese lifestyles have been turned upside down..

Urbanist-sinologist Jérémie Descamps, director of Sinapolis, a research and study office on Chinese cities, felt this mobility revolution had played a key role in how city dwellers are embracing modernity.
A research project was launched with a triple objective:

  • To understand the impact of the mobility revolution on Chinese city dwellers’ lifestyles and how these changes are experienced.
  • To gather the Chinese’s perspectives on the current situation and their aspirations for the future.
  • To understand the links that unite the changes in mobilities and the imaginary of modernity in China.



II. An atypical investigation


First phase

Jérémie Descamps created a multidisciplinary research team to address these questions. Together, they developed an original, multi-phase method.
Geographer Zhang Chun began by retracing changes in inter- and intra-urban travel in China from the 1950s to the present.


The team then compiled an album of 82 iconic photographs that were emblematic of these changes from the iconographic collection of Thomas Sauvin, who viewed more than a million images of China. Discover the content of this evocative album here.
Sociologist Zhou Le used this album as a starting point for sociological interviews during the field survey. She went to five of China's largest cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen and Chongqing - which also happen to be key transport hubs and serve as an example for other Chinese cities. Each city has specificities, which you can discover here :


Roughly 50 city dwellers were invited to choose and comment on five to nine photographs, which activated memories, emotions, associations of ideas and thoughts on the mobility of the past, present and future. The survey thus revealed the imaginaries of modernity associated with mobility, as well as the ambivalent feelings regarding the changes.


The results of this survey inspired artist-videographer Wang Gongxin to create a piece on the theme of speed. The installation, consisting of shots – sometimes accelerated, sometimes slowed down – taken in the city and the countryside highlights the acceleration of urban lifestyles and how speed transforms our perception of reality. The web version of the work can be viewed here.
Marie Terrieux, cultural producer, sheds light on Wang Gongxin’s work in a comment:


A documentary film traces the entire process, showing how the various components were able to provide answers to the original question. By showing what went on behind the scenes during the study, it also helps highlight the difficulties that arise in multidisciplinary, transcultural projects (Franco-Chinese in this case). Finally, it shows the urban context in which the research took place through the shots taken in the various cities.



CCMMP - Images et imaginaires de la mobilité en Chine from Sinapolis on Vimeo.



Second phase

The reports produced throughout the survey were analyzed in a cross-disciplinary manner by:

  • Anthropologist Dominique Desjeux, who specializes in lifestyles and consumption, notably in China,
  • Mobil’Homme, a sociological research office specializing in mobility - and especially Vincent Kaufmann, Emmanuel Ravalet and Stéphanie Vincent.

Each proposes its interpretation of the results in light of their area of specialization.

III. The summary


A summary synthesizes Dominique Desjeux’s and Mobil'Homme’s main conclusions and also sheds light on the Chinese’s perspective through a portrait gallery that associates the texts with images. It provided an opportunity for the Mobile Lives Forum to open a series of questions on the future of mobility in China.

>



IV. Virtual exhibition


A visual approach to the project is available in the Artisticlab section.
Discover the photo album revisited by sinologist-political scientist Jean-Philippe Béjà, the works of Wang Gongxin, and Thomas Sauvin, and Léo de Boissignon’s view on the role of images in the project : http://artisticlab.forumviesmobiles.org/en/mobility-in-china.

V. Research update


Conference

On November 9, 2017, the Mobile Lives Forum organized a conference entitled Mobility in China: following in the footsteps of the West?

  • Dominique Desjeux traced 50 years of changes in Chinese society through the changes in mobility objects (train/bus tickets, bikes, cars, etc.).
  • Xavier Leherpeur, Asian film critic, shows how Chinese cinema’s depiction of mobility has gone from intimate to satirical to nostalgic from the 1970s to the present.
  • Sylvie Landriève, co-director of the Forum Vies Mobiles, focused more specifically on the current situation and the questions it raises for the future.

Watch the videos of the conference

Mobility

For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.

En savoir plus x


Associated Thematics :

Lifestyles

  • Cars / motorcycles
  • Diversity of lifestyles
  • Representations
  • Rhythms of everyday life

Policies

  • Cities & Territories

Theories

  • Art & Science
  • History
  • Methods


To cite this publication :

Jérémie Descamps et Thomas Sauvin (12 December 2017), « Mobility in China: A Chinese View of 50 Years of Acceleration », Préparer la transition mobilitaire. Consulté le 09 May 2025, URL: https://forumviesmobiles.org/en/project/2522/mobility-china-chinese-view-50-years-acceleration


Licence Creative Commons
Projects by Forum Vies Mobiles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 France License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at contact.


Other publications


History of the concept of mobility

History of the concept of mobility

Vincent Kaufmann

Slowing down: Yes, but why, what and how?

Slowing down: Yes, but why, what and how?

Jean-Yves Boulin

Mobility trajectories: a key notion for conceptualizing and shaping changes in the way people travel

Mobility trajectories: a key notion for conceptualizing and shaping changes in the way people travel

Laurent Cailly, Marie Huyghe, Nicolas Oppenchaim

Digital Nomads

Digital Nomads

Maurie Cohen, Laura Stanik

1 http://modumag.com/
2 http://owncloud.forumviesmobiles.org/index.php/s/FGtqqqkXmP64NNo
3 http://artisticlab.forumviesmobiles.org/en/mobility-in-china
4 http://owncloud.forumviesmobiles.org/index.php/s/CGLWfbDIg3syw17
5 http://owncloud.forumviesmobiles.org/index.php/s/cT3BS9DAChnFxCk
6 http://artisticlab.forumviesmobiles.org/en/mobility-in-china
7 http://owncloud.forumviesmobiles.org/index.php/s/i2sY5N29A4MGaFv
8 https://vimeo.com/141650470
9 https://vimeo.com/sinapolis
10 https://vimeo.com
11 http://owncloud.forumviesmobiles.org/index.php/s/h3VvDzZwc45ihZP
12 https://en.forumviesmobiles.org/meeting/2017/11/29/mobility-china-following-footsteps-west-12272
13 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/fr/
14 http://forumviesmobiles.org
15 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/fr/
16 http://fr.fvm.localhost/modal_forms/nojs/contact