Cities in China: Recipes for Economic Development in the Reform Era (review)

Political and economic studies at the national level have been the mainstream of contemporary research on China. Regional studies, however, are considered a serious but complementary research topic illustrating the dominant national trends. Many published works, such as those of Ezra Vogel on Guangzhou (1989), Lynn White on Shanghai (1978), George Crane on Special Economic Zones (1990), Victor Sit on the Pearl River Delta (1984) and Beijing (1995), Stewart MacPherson and Joseph Cheng on South China (1996), Reginald Kwok and Alvin So on Guangdong and Hong Kong (1995), and Yue-man Yeung's recent series on Guangdong (Yeung and Chu 1994), Fujian (Yeung and Chu 2000), and Shanghai (Yeung and Sung 1996), have examined specific regions or cities. Since the start of the Economic Reform in 1978, the market economy and administrative decentralization have expanded, leading to greater regional differences and diversity. Localities have emerged as the locations of, and competitors for, growth.

Increasing attention is drawn to the multifarious forms of development in China. During the latter half of the 1990s, comparative regional studies emerged as an important and major field for investigating China. Among the subnational comparative studies, such as those of Roger Chan, Tien-tung Hsueh, and Chiu-ming Luk on economic development (1996), Si-ming Li and Wing-shing Tang on polity and economy (2000), David Goodman on provincial reform (1997), Peter Cheung, Jae Ho Chung, and Zhimin Lin on provincial strategies (1998), and Hans Hendrischke and Chongyi Feng on political economy (1999), the present volume is a welcome addition to the expanding series on regional studies.

In view of the intensification of marketization and decentralization, the hypothesis of this book is that local governments are now crucial in regional economic development. A series of "open" sub-provincial cities have been designated by the central government since the 1980s, allowing selective localities greater autonomy and resources for development. Given more flexibility and liberty to develop policies, local governments have instigated a variety of developmental strategies with different economic effects. As a result, regional divergence in urban development has become the norm in the Chinese spatial economy. In this book, three sets of factors are selected for testing the hypothesis. The first category, local endowments, has two components: (1) location, which includes transportation, and (2) history, which refers to ethnic, cultural, political, and economic traditions and trends. The second category is concerned with administrative arrangements and designated policies handed down from above, with revenue-sharing arrangements and preferential provisions being the key indicators. Personnel appointments, administrative reorganization, and local legislative power are the areas to examine in order to estimate the level of resources and administrative authority available to the cities. The third category refers to the locally initiated preconditions for development, such as the establishment of new institutions, industrial policies, and international and inter-regional networks.

The first chapter, by the editor, lays out the hypothesis, criteria, and methodology, and is followed by seven chapters of comparative urban analyses, each comprising a pair of cities. There are no unified criteria for city selection, as the choice of city pairing has been left to the chapter contributors to justify. Four chapters compare the relative success of the samples, which are Guangzhou and Tianjin, Xiamen and Fuzhou, Chengdu and Chongqing, and Zhangjiagang and Nantong. The remaining three chapters review similar successful cases and identify their shared factors; these cases consist of Hangzhou and Wenzhou, Qingdao and Dalian, and Nanhai and Panyu. Of the seven cases, five pairs are from the same province, and two, Guangdong and Tianjin and Qingdao and Dalian, are from different provinces.

Peter Cheung selects two metropolises in the coastal region. Tianjin, a provincial-level city, has a larger population, a better-educated workforce, and a stronger technological and industrial base compared to Guangzhou, a sub-provincial-level city. Both cities are former treaty ports and key trading centers. Guangzhou was behind...