Reexamine regional models of China's economic growth: Toward an integrated analytical framework

Abstract

Based on a selective review of studies of regional development models in China, this article develops an integrated analytical framework, which includes two dimensions. First, a static dimension that integrates national institutions with regional specific structural and informal institutional factors, specifically historical legacies, how they interact with each other to shape local actors' incentives, constraints and strategies of survival, therefore explain different regional models. Second, it includes a dynamic dimension that explores the historical evolution of regional models, with a focus on the coevolution or mutual transformation of different institutions with feedback effects.China's rapid economic growth in the last forty years is considered an economic miracle, and it was achieved when China faces dual task of industrialization and marketization. Across a large body of literature, 1 scholars have provided a variety of theories to explain this occurrence, some of which use Western models, while others try to build new theories based on China experiences specifically. This article focuses selectively on regional development models, their origins, and their evolution (convergence or divergence), and argues in favor of an integrated analytical framework (Tang 2015) for analyzing China's regional economic development.Based on a comprehensive review of both classic and the newest research findings, this article builds off of approaches focused on the new regionalism of China's political economy (Rithmire, 2014), while departing from them. The integrated analytical framework has two dimensions. First, the static dimension integrates national institutions with regional specific structural and informal institutional factors (specifically historical legacies). It describes how they interact with each other to shape local actors' incentives, constraints, and strategies of survival, and therefore explains different regional models. Second, the dynamic dimension explores the historical evolution of regional models, how the development outcomes change the national and subnational level (informal) institutions, with a focus on the coevolution or mutual transformation of different institutions with feedback effects (or both, such as Whiting, 2001). I illustrate the complex relationships between these institutions in Figure 1.

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