Prospects for diminishing regional disparities

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    Abstract

    In the three decades since Deng Xiaoping declared that China’s economic development would necessarily involve some people becoming rich before others, inequalities have risen steadily across (and within) China’s provinces and regions. To some extent, this outcome has been the natural consequence of market forces in a large developing economy in which the numerous historical and geographical advantages of the eastern region ensured that industrialisation would occur there ahead of the rest of the country. Deng’s Open Door Policy and, later, the Coastal Development Strategy, compounded these advantages with a range of preferential policies that explicitly promoted the development of the eastern region above all else. Yet Deng insisted that there would be ‘no polarisation of rich and poor’ in the longer term and that people elsewhere simply needed a little patience, referring to the ‘two great situations’ in which coastal provinces would be given advantages during the early reform years but would subsequently be expected to subordinate their interests to interior areas (Deng 1987).
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationChina: The Next Twenty Years of Reform and Development
    EditorsRoss Garnaut, Jane Golley & Ligang Song
    Place of PublicationCanberra
    PublisherANU ePress
    Pages127-150
    Volume1
    Edition1
    ISBN (Print)9781921666285
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2010

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