「広東政策」から「華南政策」へ

『珠江デルタ地区改革発展計画綱要』に見るグローバル化による「開放」のパラダイム転換について

抄録

Under China’s open-door policy, its southern regions, including the province of Guangdong and the city of Hong Kong, have been playing a crucial role as a gateway to the market economies in the West on one hand and China’s abundant resources on the other. The most notable rationale behind the development of southern China is the fact that Guangdong and Hong Kong are politically, economically, and socially different entities. The two can cooperate but never be integrated.
However, the relationship seems to have changed since 1997, when the United Kingdom returned Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China, and globalization has now altered the power balance between capitalism and socialism, and center and region. The relationship between Guangdong and Hong Kong has become much more reciprocal, and even total integration of the two seems to be in sight.
This paper aims to illustrate the background of and rationale behind such change, and refers to this as the formation of the ‘Southern China policy.’
The Southern China policy, formalized in the ‘The Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta (2008–2020)’ and adopted at the Standing Committee of the State Council in December 2008, is considered to have been formulated through the merger of three policy streams. The first is Beijing’s physical and moral support for the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region), which was, together with Guangdong, hit severely by the 1997 Asian economic crisis. The second is the policy to construct a harmonious society, newly initiated by Hu Jintao, Chinese Communist Party general secretary, who took office at the end of 2002. And the third is Guangdong’s attempt to upgrade its industries and restructure its economic and social structure, which started afresh in 2004, three years after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization.
The rationale behind the formation of the Southern China policy or ‘The Outline’ is considered to be a similar to that termed ‘neo-liberalism’ or‘ neo-conservatism’ initiated a few decades ago in some Western countries in the face of globalization. This rationale calls for the restoration of a strong nation based on a strong society.
This is a complete reversal of the role that southern China has been playing since 1978. What China is aiming for with its Southern China policy is ‘to utilize to counter’, rather than ‘to utilize to catch up with’, as used to be the case, the outside world in order to make the country more stable and resilient politically, economically, and socially.