In the last two decades, China's western inland region has largely been left out of the nation's economic boom. While its 355-million population accounts for 28% and its land area for 71% of China's total, the region's share of the national GDP is under 20%. Since 1999, Beijing has implemented the West China Development Program to boost the region's growth. To study the major domestic issues and the global implications of this program, the University of Victoria's Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives organized and hosted a multidisciplinary international conference on March 6?8, 2003. This volume of papers presented at the conference offers perspectives on the issues by leading experts of diversified academic disciplines from China, Canada, the US, and other countries.

Although China is now the ‘factory of the world’, there is no reason to expect that it will always be content with manufacturing labor-intensive goods for foreign corporations. Scholars must now ask: What is the current level of innovation in China? And how can we face this challenge and renovate industrial production and innovation capacities in developed countries? This edited volume investigates the unique characteristics of Chinese innovation and regional development, China’s policy framework, and the role that transnational corporations play in China’s increasing innovation activities. This book contributes to the heated debate regarding pathways for technology progress and regional development in developing countries, and identifies the ways in which local production networks respond to different configurations of external linkages. Linking patterns of global and local production networks with the trajectories of technology development and regional development allows the authors to theorize and test whether, and how, particular configurations of production networks generate divergent long-term local productivity growth and technological development outcomes. Innovation and Regional Development in China will be of interest to geographers, economists, China specialists, development specialists, and scholars working on innovation and regional development in developing areas and transition countries.

Since the reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, Wenzhou City of China's Zhejiang Province has witnessed large-scale institutional change and rapid economic development. This book studies the institutional change and economic development in Wenzhou since China's reform and opening-up. It concludes that the most important characteristic of Wenzhou model is that the city is the first to promote industrialization and urbanization by privatization and marketization in Zhejiang. As privatization and marketization reflect reform, and industrialization and urbanization represent development, Wenzhou model promotes development through economic reform. In the early years of the reform and opening-up, the people of Wenzhou boldly faced the constraints of traditional planned economy, bravely explored the market-oriented reform and opened up a new path to regional economic development. This book also contains the stories of the people of Wenzhou.

Rapid urbanization in China in recent decades and the challenges of social and regional integration and governance have been issues of major concern. This book explores the course of urbanization and development in China over recent decades. It considers a range of issues including urbanization, changing urban and regional systems, regional integration and governance. The book pays particular attention to the economic relations between Hong Kong and mainland China and how regional development, integration and governance unfold in the Hong Kong-Pearl River Delta region.

Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China provides an overview of the changes in China’s planning system, policy, and practices using concrete examples and informative details in language that is accessible enough for the undergraduate but thoroughly grounded in a wealth of research and academic experience to support academics. It is the first accessible text on changing urban and regional planning in China under the process of transition from a centrally planned socialist economy to an emerging market in the world. Fulong Wu, a leading authority on Chinese cities and urban and regional planning, sets up the historical framework of planning in China including its foundation based on the proactive approach to economic growth, the new forms of planning, such as the ‘strategic spatial plan’ and ‘urban cluster plans’, that have emerged and stimulated rapid urban expansion and transformed compact Chinese cities into dispersed metropolises. And goes on to explain the new planning practices that began to pay attention to eco-cities, new towns and new development areas. Planning for Growth: Urban and Regional Planning in China demonstrates that planning is not necessarily an ‘enemy of growth’ and plays an important role in Chinese urbanization and economic growth. On the other hand, it also shows planning’s limitations in achieving a more sustainable and just urban future.

This study systematically examines uneven regional development in China, focusing on three central agents: the foreign investor, the state and the region. Wei's findings have important implications for theories of, and policy towards, Chinese regional development. This book is a vital resource for those with an interest in transition economies.

This book sheds light on the mega-city region development in China as a new form of urbanization which plays a crucial role in the economic development of the country. It examines the challenges faced by the mega-city regions and opens up avenues for debates and further research. Economic reform of 1978 has led to an unprecedented growth in the population and economic development of China. A large portion of this increased urban population and the corresponding economic growth has been concentrated in the mega-city regions, such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD). These three mega-city regions have less land but more people and thus higher economy, resulting in various issues and challenges faced by these regions. These challenges pertain to the socio-economic development, transport, environment, governance and development strategy, which this book explores through case studies of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Wuhan. This book also explains and analyses the economy, migration processes, transport development, environmental conditions and governance of the mega-city regions of China. With an overview of China’s rapid urbanisation and the consequent economic growth, this book provides an essential understanding of related issues in order to establish appropriate strategies and policies to sustain the process of mega-city region development.