The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration can only be realized through competition
Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission disclosed that the relevant planning for the integration of China's capital Beijing and its two neighboring provincial areas of Tianjin and Hebei is drawing up, and would announce it as soon as possible; from the recent speeches of the state leaders, we may also find that the top-level design pays great attention to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration.
Why there should be the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration?
It’s because that city clusters can play the role as an engine for the economic development in a region. According to the data provided by The State New-Type Urbanization Planning (2014-2020), the three major city clusters of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, with the area occupying 2.8% of the land area, 18% of the whole country’s population has gathered in these areas, creating 36% of the gross domestic product, and they have become the major platforms for driving the fast economic growth in our country and participating in the international economic cooperation and competitions.
In the Planning, the “city clusters” is mentioned for altogether 50 times, and we can see the government’s great hope in the city clusters for driving the regional economic development. But compared with the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta city clusters, the integration degree for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei is still rather low. As the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta city clusters, there are many featured cities that we are very familiar with--up to now, the top ten counties of the national top 100 counties in economic power are all from city clusters of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, but in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, except several cities like Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan, the development of other cities is poor. Even in a rather long period, the public still uses the name of “the poverty belt around Beijing” to refer to this area.
On August 17, 2005, it’s firstly put forward in an investigation report of Asian Development Bank that around Beijing and Tianjin, the two international metropolises, there are 3,798 poor villages and 32 poor counties in Hebei surrounding the cities. The poverty population is 2.726 million with the annual average income of less than 625 yuan per capita. In March, 2012, in the first blue book on Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei —— The Development Report (2012) on the Regional Integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei which is taken charge of by the Capital University of Economics and Business, it is pointed out that “the poverty belt around Beijing” not only fails to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor with the surrounding suburban counties of Beijing, on the contrary, the poverty belt falls behind even more.
Just for this reason, whether local governments or the central government, they all pay great attention to the integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. Recently, Chinese president Xi Jinping called for more coordinated development of regions around Beijing and stressed the importance to building the economic zone surrounding China's capital.
Why is there “the poverty belt around Beijing?”
Why the common prosperity can be realized in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta city clusters, but for Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, “the poverty belt around Beijing” appears? In order to further promote the integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, we need to know the answer.
Taking the Yangtze River Delta city cluster as an example, for the reason why today’s achievements can be realized in these cities, one very important point is the technical spillover effect from Shanghai. At the initial stage of reform and opening-up, the township enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang lacked technical talents, but the state-owned factories in Shanghai were full of technicians, and the staff were seriously idle, so some of them went to work for the township enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in the afternoon at weekends, and returned to their original factories in Shanghai on Monday. They are called as “Sunday engineers.” According to the statistics, this group reached its peak with more than 20,000 persons. Therefore, provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang have taken advantages of Shanghai’s intelligence and technical skill resources.
For the reason why the “Sunday engineers” is mentioned today, it’s because that the regional economic integration must be established on the foundation of mutual benefits. If there are no mutual benefits, then the prosperity of one city may take the impoverishment of other regions as price. The fact that we must consider is that in a rather long period, there are not much connections between Hebei and Beijing in economy. One very simple example is that though Hebei is closer to Beijing than Shandong province in the sense of geographical location, but there are more vegetables provided from Shandong to Beijing, not from Hebei.
Competition is the key for promoting the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration
For how to promote the integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei in the future, currently the most popular prescription is the same administrative division. In my opinion, it does not make much sense for promoting the integration, for it overestimates the roles of administrative powers on the economic development. Though in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei areas, “the poverty belt” brought by the administrative division exists, in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, we can find another interesting phenomenon, i.e. in the two provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, for the districts and counties neighboring to Shanghai, the economic development level of these Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions is much higher than that of the suburban counties of Shanghai, and the FDI absorbed by Suzhou city is far beyond that absorbed by Shanghai.
More importantly, if we only try to find a solution for “the grand unification” in an administrative division, we can never understand the internal logic of the economic development. Even if Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are unified as one region in the administrative division, but within the region, the differences will also exist--the differences among districts and counties and villages and towns. If the provincial level administrative divisions are no longer set in China, then the regional disparity will not exist? It is obvious that it’s even more impossible.
Just in this sense, what needs to be done for the current integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei is exactly to break down the constraints of administrative divisions. If we only think about breaking down the administrative barriers, then it’s equivalent to that we admit the decisive roles of administrative divisions on the economic development--but not that the market plays the final decisive roles. What we especially need to pay attention to is that under the fierce GDP competitions between provinces, the economic development of Jiangsu and Zhejiang is drove by their competitions with Shanghai.
In order to realize the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration, the key lies in the efforts of Hebei itself, and it should not just wait for Beijing’s relocating less important industries to it. For the reason why the GDP of Kunshan is the highest as No.1 in county level cities now, it is the result of the efforts jointly made by Kunshan government and the public there, and it does not rely on the favors from Shanghai.
Published on China Times | 2014-4-3
