Large-scale urban development projects have become the main vehicle by which targeted interventions for place- and scale-specific state initiatives unfold, triggering a series of processes that are associated with the rescaling of state space. This study aims to understand the place-specific conditions, pathways and strategies whereby states’ spatial and scalar restructuring takes place in urban development projects (UDPs) within China’s political economic contexts, and in turn how UDPs act as critical lenses for viewing the changing nature of state spatial strategy in China, through a case study of the Lingang New Town in Shanghai. The major findings are: UDPs in China function as tools not just for land value extraction but also for scale-making to cater to the state’s pursuits of place-specific competitiveness in the global economy; the restructuring of the state apparatus and regulatory frameworks is driven by place-specific tensions and crises triggered by earlier rounds of state rescaling; the state chose state-agents rather than market-agents to reinforce its power, and thus the state space expands through development of UDPs; through developing UDPs, China’s spatial strategies have explicitly and officially engaged with the discourse of globalisation while implicitly engaging with geographically variegated practices of neoliberalisation. At the theoretical level, this article facilitates an investigation of how China’s state spatial strategy, characterised by geographically and chronologically variegated engagement with neoliberalism, is actualised through UDPs. It also demonstrates how, despite being a socialist polity, pragmatic market measures and downscaling are taken as transient measures in times of need. 大规模的城市发展项目已成为针对特定地点和规模的国家计划进行有针对性的干预的主要手段，从而引发了一系列与国家空间调整相关的过程。通过上海临港新城的案例研究，本研究旨在了解特定地点的某些条件、途径和策略，这些条件、途径和策略构成了在中国的政治经济背景下在城市发展项目（UDP）中进行国家空间和标量重组的媒介。在此基础上，本研究探讨如何将UDP作为一个关键透镜，用来观察不断变化的中国国家空间战略的面貌。主要结论是：中国的UDP不仅是土地价值提取的工具，而且是规模发展的工具，可以满足国家对全球经济中特定地点竞争力的追求。国家机构和监管框架的重组是由前几轮国家规模调整引发的特定地区的紧张局势和危机驱动的；国家选择了国家机器而不是市场力量来增强其权力，因此国家空间通过UDP的开发来扩展。通过开发UDP，中国的空间战略已明确并正式参与了全球化的讨论，同时隐含了新自由主义在地理上多样化的实践。在理论层面，本文有助于研究以地理和时间上多样化参与新自由主义为特征的中国国家空间战略如何通过UDP得以实现。它还表明，尽管中国是社会主义政体，但务实的市场措施和降尺度措施如何作为临时措施在需要时被采用。