By Jia Shen, Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.201, 2019 (Total 5701)  2019-11-15

Abstract: Since the reform and opening up, the contribution of north China to domestic economy has experienced changes of four phases including decline, stable growth, slight rise and sharp decline successively, dropping 7.8 percent across the board. The long-term focus on upstream industries is the main cause for the declining economic growth of north China, which has exerted long-term adverse effects on regional innovation, opening up, structure and quality of employment and the capacity of coping with economic downturn. After 2009, north China has continued to see persistent imbalance between the revenue and the expenditure, rising risks emerging from local fiscal and financial systems and challenges in sustainable development. To promote the transformation and development of north China in the new era, the region needs to seize opportunities brought by the new regional strategies such as ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin, focus on revitalizing the manufacturing industry for high-quality development, boost advanced manufacturing industry for industrial structure adjustment and give full play to the leading role of the central cities to develop city clusters and continue to push ahead with the supply-side structural reform.

Key words: regional economy, gap between the north and the south in China, structural adjustment