Wenzhou City Competitiveness

Wenzhou is one of the first 14 Chinese coastal cities opening to the outside world. Since 1978, Wenzhou's economic and social development has been expanding rapidly, and has formed a particular regional development model, although it was Lack of sufficient natural resources and its industrial base was also very weak. With its economic miracle, Wenzhou plays an exemplary role and has a deep and far-reaching influence on China's reform of economic system and the process of development. But with the development and progress of the market information change and economic globalization, there are emerging some challenging voice to the Wenzhou model in the field of economics, and news about the decline of Wenzhou economy are easy to see on many newspapers and magazines. In 2006, the GDP of Wenzhou amount to 184.3 billion, the growth rate is 13.3% and stand in the last position but two in Zhejiang province. Where is the road of Wenzhou's future development? How could the local government continuing promote and keep the vitality of Wenzhou model with innovation? How to understand and promote competitive advantage of Wenzhou economy? These are all the urgent and important research subject-matters for Wenzhou, not only because they are matters of wenzhou's development, but also because they supply enlightenment and lessons for other places in China.This dissertation tries to research and evaluate the city-competitiveness of Wenzhou. First, it compares and analyzes the theory of city-competitiveness and other theories of city-Competitive Advantage, and select the theory of city-competitiveness from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as the main analysis tool for this dissertation. Second, this dissertation makes an lateral comparison analysis between Wenzhou and the other 13 Chinese coastal cities opening to the outside world. It follows the analytical frame of Bowstring Theory of CAS, and comprehensively applies qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis to spread out analysis from following aspects: production factors, local position and environment, government functions, industrial structure, competition among enterprises. Based on the analysis of such five aspects, this dissertation proposes some policy proposals to improving the city-competition of Wenzhou, such as breaking factors restriction, strengthening the construction of infrastructure, optimizing and upgrading the industrial structure, improving public administration,deepening of reform, opening wider to the outside world, introducing domestic and foreign capital technology and talents.