China’s Strategies and Policies for Regional Development During the Period of the 14th Five-Year Plan

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China’s regional development strategies and policies have positively contributed to the economic transformation and upgrading in the eastern China, sound economic growth momentum in the central and western China, faster economic growth in old revolutionary areas, ethnic minority areas, border areas, and poor areas, and more coordinated development among regions. Despite its remarkable achievements, China’s coordinated regional development still faces problems such as unbalanced economic growth between the southern and northern China, great gaps in innovation capacity among regions, difficulties in ensuring equitable access to basic public services, and slow growth of Blue Economy. To pursue regional development in China, the most important task at present is to promote coordinated and high-quality regional development and create a new pattern that can help such development become better in terms of quality, efficiency, fairness, and sustainability. The shift from questing for coordinated regional development to high-quality coordinated regional development not only reflects the transformation of regional development concept but also adapts to the requirement for regional development transformation in today’s China. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, to promote high-quality coordinated regional development, China should continue to make overall planning for the four major regions and coordinate the development of belts and zones with the four major regions as the basis and the key belts and zones as the framework. It should continue to deepen and improve the “4+X” master strategy for regional development and facilitate the formation of a national system for regional development strategies. It should further improve the governance system for China’s national space, with an emphasis on creating the main framework for the development of national space that consists of three horizontal axes and three vertical axes, stretches over the eastern, central and western regions, and connects the northern region with the southern region, setting up a network of growth poles mainly supported by city clusters and metropolitan areas, and putting in place a negative list system for national space development. Besides, China should continue to accelerate the development of C-shaped open economic belts in border areas, further strengthen the opening up of inland, and spare no effort to foster the three major marine economic zones, thus working toward all-around opening up that coordinates land and marine development as well as the development of China’s coastal, border and inland areas. On that basis, China should also actively steer the northeastern region out of difficulty and help it develop vigorously, redouble efforts to cultivate advanced manufacturing centers in the central and western regions, formulate and implement support policies for relatively poor areas, and expedite the integration of modern infrastructure.