China's Regional Economic Development and Its Policy Implications (out of stock)

China's Regional Economic Development and Its Policy Implications In this paper, an attempt is made to give an overall and comprehensive analysis of the historical evolution of China's regional economic development and its policy implication. Compared to the East region, the development of the Middle and West lagged far behind in their standing during the 1950s. Since the First Five-year Plan, particularly in the period of the 1960s until the beginning of the 1970s, the deterioration of Sino-American and Sino-USSR relations entailed the consequent political economy of the Mao Zedong's, the effect of which placed an emphasis on the Third Line reconstruction (secluded strategic locations). As a result, the economic development of the Middle and West were able to make big progress. However, after 1979 with the economic reforms and opening policy and their objective of raising economic efficiency and people's livelihood, the East has again enjoyed priority in development. Regarding the policy implication of regional development, this paper takes the position that the development of the East, Middle and West is in the best interest of the national economy. An unbalanced regional development adopted in the short run is to achieve a balanced regional development in the long run. The trickle-down effect must eventually be in operation from the beneficiary region to other regions. Thus, the prerequisites for establishing a regional competitive order are to eliminate the unequal treatment and discriminatory measures affecting different regions, to spread equally across regions enterprise autonomy, to establish a non-distorted regional price structure, to dismantle the blockade of the interregional flow of technology, labour, capital, raw materials and production means, and to overcome the bottlenecks in regional transportation, communications and other related social infrastructures. This paper further discusses the comparative advantages of the East, Middle and West and points out five growth cores and four possible regional development patterns: a processing-oriented type, a resource-oriented type, a resource-processing mixed type and a specific type for Hainan and Tibet.