China’s Regional Policy – How it Could Benefit from the EU Experience

Abstract

In the domain of regional policy there exist major differences between the EU and China as regards institutions, needs, policy considerations, tools and concrete measures. And yet, there are important lessons Chinese regional policy actors can learn from the EU experience. EU cohesion policy has clear boundaries, rules, institutions, and financial instruments. Cohesion policy in the EU has a longstanding and relatively stable institutional setup, and also stability in policy directions once these directions are established by the member states. A certain level of flexibility is also present. There is also a clear and stable regional demarcation regime to manage and control regional policy. Moreover designing and implementing regional policy in partnership with a broad spectrum of stakeholders (partnership), instead of applying a government dominated investment policy has important positive social and efficiency effects. This is important for China since it suffers from increasing domestic regional inequalities and contrary to large-scale regional policy measures, regional disparities tend to grow in the country while enjoying a high speed of economic growth.