A new roadmap for Yangtze River Delta

The State Council, the country's cabinet, recently issued a guideline on further pushing for the reform and opening-up in the Yangtze River Delta region and promoting its economic and social development. The move demonstrates the country's efforts to explore a new coordinated development model in the region. This comes in the context of great changes that the international economic environment is undergoing and of deepening of domestic reforms in various aspects. It also shows the government is determined to improve the overall economic quality of the delta, the country's economic powerhouse, and raise its international competitiveness.

An analysis of changes in China's development strategy and its emphasis on the development of different regions will clearly find the shift in the country's focus in regional development. Its substantial efforts to boost development of the Pearl River Delta region in the 1980s, the Yangtze River Delta region in the 1990s and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei belt in the early 21st century promoted the evolution of the coastal regions-first development pattern.

The country's strategy for a balanced regional development was mainly marked by its policy to rejuvenate the northeastern region, promote western development, re-emergence of the central region and set up a comprehensive experimental zone along the southwestern Chengdu and Chongqing region.