Policy Mobilities and the China Model: Pairing Aid Policy in Xinjiang

Tao Song, Weidong Liu, Zhigao Liu and Yeerken Wuzhati
Additional contact information
Tao Song: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resource Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Weidong Liu: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resource Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Zhigao Liu: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resource Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Yeerken Wuzhati: Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resource Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 13, 1-17

Abstract: This paper seeks to make a contribution to on-going debates about how to conceptualize the “China model” by emphasizing the top-down regional coordination strategies of China in the context of policy mobilities. The notion of policy mobilities is a hot issue through which to analyze how successful political ideas are often mobilized, imitated, adapted, and reused in new places by various actors through learning the global “best” experiences. However, policy mobilities should be employed as a frame within a specific political-economy context and the “institutional geometries”, especially in China which is characterized by centralization of state power and impressive economic growth recently. In this paper, we argue that the case of pairing aid policy in China, in which diffused policy ideas regarding advanced development initiatives are transferred and adopted in relatively underdeveloped areas, serves as a key part of the China model to balance regional development. Drawing on a case study of pairing aid policy in Xinjiang, the paper explores the ways in which the advanced industries, cadres, and investments from 19 developed coastal provinces or cities were mobilized by the state power network: (1) Transferring cadres and technicians from developed areas to directly work in Xinjiang temporally; (2) mobilizing the industrial policy package to attract labor-intensive and resource-oriented firms located in the industrial zones of Xinjiang; and (3) mobilizing a part of fiscal investments from donating areas to expand recipients’ direct investments. By doing this, we illustrate how higher-level authority can develop more state powers to transfer regional cadres, capital, and projects from developed areas to less developed ones, as well as how mobilized policies can be entrepreneurially adopted and flexibly mutated in the context of various local conditions.

Keywords: regional sustainability; pairing aid policy; policy mobility; Xinjiang; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/13/3496/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/13/3496/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:13:p:3496-:d:242931

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().