Professor Fulong Wu gave his keynote speech ‘Governing China’s urban development and governance: state entrepreneurialism’. He firstly critically reviewed the concept of ‘governance’ against the background of urban entrepreneurialism in a neoliberal era. He compared the different experiences in the Global North and the Global South and then demonstrated the theorisation of state entrepreneurialism based on the Chinese context. The state has been playing the key role in leading urban development in China, and the financialising characteristics reflected by that the state actively extracts value from the built environment by financial instruments are increasingly evident. Future research and policy making need to pay more attention to the role of the state in urban development.