Engaging with theory and comparative research, the specific aim of this special issue is to contribute to scholarship engaging with state rescaling theory in non-Western societies as well as to on-going debates about the changing scalar dimensions of urban and regional development. It does so by examining scalar dynamics on the basis of empirical case studies in China and India, including fieldwork-based research. The starting point of the papers is the observation that subnational states assume distinctly more significant roles than in the past for regulating economic activities and shaping economic governance. Processes of state restructuring currently underway in each country are reconfiguring the spatial deployment of the state, or state territoriality, a development that has attracted considerably less academic attention than changing state-market relations. This introductory article sets out the special issue's theoretical and empirical objectives. It provides a review of existing literature, analysing the various modalities of scalar restructuring and situating them in relation to each national context. In particular, ‘rescaling’ and ‘decentralisation’ processes are carefully distinguished, in order to sharpen the focus of the debate and facilitate comparison between the Chinese and Indian cases. Finally, the specific aspects of state restructuring analysed in this set of papers are discussed with regard to the literature, to underscore their contribution. The papers cover a range of policy domains and instruments pertaining to both economic development and social welfare. Using scale-sensitive methods, they map changing geographies of both state space and socio-economic relations and discuss them in relation to each country's unique development trajectory.