Published : 23/09/2025
Since Chiat started the Reform and Opening-up in 1978, the country's economic development has attracted worldwide attention, but disparities between different regions still exist. Therefore, it is necessary to promote "coordinated regional development", which mainly aims to narrowing the gap between different regions.
This article introduces China's four major strategies to promote coordinated regional development, as well as some new problems and challenges.
What is "Coordinated Regional Development"?
If you live in China, you must have heard of the name of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in recent years, and the GBA, along with the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze River Delta, have jointly become the "three major power sources" for China's high-quality development.
From the perspective of "the nation as a whole", the development strategy for the Greater Bay Area, along with the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region (京津冀協同發展), the strategy for integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta (長三角一體化發展戰略), and other strategies, are all part of the national "Major Regional Strategies" (區域重大戰略), complementing a series of other strategies to jointly promote coordinated regional development.
What is China's "Coordinated Regional Development"?
China is vast in territory and has a large population, and the geographical conditions, natural resources, and levels of economic development in different regions are not balanced. Although since the Reform and Opening-up started, China's economic development has attracted worldwide attention, development gaps between different regions still exist.
Therefore, in simple terms, promoting coordinated regional development is about narrowing the gaps between different regions to make the level of development more balanced.
Specifically, this includes: achieving equal access to basic public services, ensuring a relatively balanced level of infrastructure accessibility, and ensuring that the basic living standards of the people are broadly comparable, and so on.
Read more: What are the achievements of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project?
4 major strategies for promoting coordinated regional development
How can the coordinated development of all regions be achieved?
The state specifically promotes this through four major strategies: Coordinated Regional Development Strategy (區域協調發展戰略), Major Regional Development Strategies (區域重大戰略), Functional Zoning Strategy (主體功能區戰略), and the New Urbanisation Strategy (新型城鎮化戰略). The following will primarily introduce the first two strategies.
Firstly, regarding the "Coordinated Regional Development Strategy", it covers the entire national territory.
Its purpose is to leverage the comparative advantages of each region and narrow the gaps between them. It primarily includes the "four major sections": the large-scale development of the western region, the full revitalisation of the northeast, the rise of the central region, and the trailblazing development of the eastern region.
Taking the large-scale development of the western region as an example, from 1999 to 2023, the region's GDP increased from 1.6 trillion RMB to 26.9 trillion RMB, with its share of the national total rising from 17.7% to 21.5%; the relative gap in per capita regional GDP compared to the eastern region has also narrowed significantly.
Secondly, regarding the "Major Regional Development Strategy", this is a national strategy targeting specific regions, established to revolve around different development goals or to solve a major problem.
The Greater Bay Area development strategy belongs to this category. It also includes the previously mentioned strategies, such as the strategy of coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, the development strategy of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and the strategy for integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta.
Among these, the fundamental starting point of the strategy of coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region's is to address Beijing's "big city diseases", making it a problem-oriented development strategy.
Coordinated regional development facing new problems?
In recent years, China's work on coordinated regional development has continued to advance.
The report to the 20th National Congress of the CPC stated, "Promote coordinated regional development. We will thoroughly implement the coordinated regional development strategy, major regional strategies, the functional zoning strategy, and the new urbanisation strategy. We will improve the distribution of major productive forces and develop a regional economic layout and a territorial space system that complement each other's strengths and promote high-quality development."
In September 2023, to further coordinate this work, China also specially established the Central Leading Group for Coordinated Regional Development to systematically coordinate major policies among the various strategies from a higher level, and with a strategic and comprehensive perspective.
However, in recent years, some new problems worthy of attention have also emerged in the process of promoting coordinated regional development.
Firstly, the trend of divergence in regional economic development is apparent.
Regions such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta have already begun to embark on a path of high-quality development, while some northern provinces have experienced slowing growth, causing the national economic centre of gravity to shift further south.
The pattern of regional economic growth has changed from "fast in the east, slow in the west" to a north-south gap of "fast in the south, slow in the north".
Secondly, there has been a change in development dynamics, with a noticeable trend of the economy and population agglomerating in large cities and city clusters.
Furthermore, some regions face significant difficulties in development; for instance, the northeast and northwest regions are developing at a relatively slow pace.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, China's regional economy has gradually shifted from unbalanced development to a relatively balanced stage; faced with new influencing factors and an external environment, promoting coordinated regional development also requires adapting to new situations and devising new ideas.
Read more: Another of China's mega projects: What is the "Eastern Data, Western Computing" project?