Regional Development of China on the Eve of the Transition to Post-industrialization

The article shows how different approaches to regional development help accelerate and improve the efficiency of modernizing the Chinese economy. The authors’ conclusions are based on the analysis of the dynamics of indicators of industrial development and post-industrialization of China’s regions at the macro- and micro-sectoral levels, as well as official plans for territorial development. It has been established that China pursues two types of regional industrial policy. At the macro-sectoral level, policies have changed dramatically. From the beginning of the reforms, during the active phase of industrialization, which the Chinese leadership saw as a temporary stage of modernization, the development took place in the locations where it could be done as cheaply and quickly as possible, with the involvement of hundreds of millions of labor migrants. In 2010s the transition to the post-industrial prosperous society required the development of a system of cities as the basis of consumer demand and industry as the basis of most branches of the service sector simultaneously in all regions of the country. An information and communication space accessible to residents and businesses of all regions has been created. At the micro-sectoral level, regional policy has remained the same: each locality has a unique industrial or service specialization and is integrated into the chains of the Chinese division of labor. This is called a block economy of several thousand clusters, and each cluster has hundreds of enterprises producing a narrow range of similar products.