Reforms and interregional convergence in China, 2000-2010. Analysis of Conditioned Convergence

The Chinese economy has witnessed spectacular growth over the last few decades accompanied by its surprise irruption into the international economy. This is the result of an ambitious programme of reforms begun thirty years ago, whose epicentre has been the transformation of state intervention in the management of social needs and opening up to the exterior. The new economic model was intended to facilitate access to higher levels of income and welfare for the entire population, but territorial imbalances among Chinese provinces have increased. This article sets out to explain the main lines of this reform and to assess the results in terms of interregional economic convergence from the basis of Sala i Martin’s conditional convergence model, which allows the most favourable economic policy strategies to improve the regional economic balance.