The Role Of Local Government In Sub-regional Cooperation

The study of this paper centers on the case studies of regional research. Since ancient times,China’s border areas had been the most stringent line of defense against external aggression.The border areas should be the forefront of convergence-the active and frequent tradingareas with foreign exchanges. But Most of the time, due to preventing enemies externallyand lack of attention internally for it’s far away place from the central government, theboarder areas became the "old, edge, poor" places.However, since the reform and opening up, especially President Jiang Zemin put forwardthe policy of "good neighbor diplomacy", China’s border areas take full advantage of theunique geographical advantage, becoming the hot spots that participate in the foreign tradeand economic exchanges in the region, presenting vigorous development vitality, and alsocontributing to balance the state’s regional economic development. What’s more important,the development of this border region is not a personal act, nor does it the spontaneous actof local forces, in addition to the benefits from fundamental changes in international anddomestic environment, the local government’s unique support, as the official governmentrepresentatives–the central government and local governments jointly promote thedevelopment.China is a typical unitary state that the local government is subordinate to the centralgovernment. Local governments’ participation in cross-border cooperation regionally iscarried out under the authorization and encouragement of the central government. Sincethe reform and opening up, to focus on economic construction and mobilize the vitality oflocal development fully, China has taken a series of decentralization reforms in thepolitical and economic system, which entitles the local governments, departments andenterprises more certain economic development privileges. It’s a key institutionalprecondition of the local government to participate in the sub-regional cooperation in theglobalization era. This is also the starting point of the paper.On the other hand, the author notes that, whether in the field of global governance, or fieldof sub-regional cooperation, international regime gradually developed into the approach ofgovernance and cooperation that States generally accepted and widely used. China’sparticipation in the cooperation with neighboring countries established a series ofinstitutional arrangements, the local government as a specific foothold and undertaker ofcountries participate in regional cooperation, also plays an important role in institutionalarrangements. Over the past ten years, especially since the Asian financial crisis, ASEANcountries have deeply felt the importance of enhancing regional cooperation in East Asia.Meanwhile, China has always pursued the good-neighborly and friendly foreign policywith neighboring countries, thus China and ASEAN countries reached commonunderstanding on diplomacy, and their cooperation conducted in a full swing way. Benefitfrom this, with the geographical advantage and the economic, industrial complementary,Guangxi and the ASEAN sub-regional cooperation obtains rapid development. Guangxi became one of the remarkable member among China’s western provinces in cooperationwith foreign countries. As a large country with long state boundary, and many neighboringcountries, there exists a lot of provinces in China like Guangxi can participate insub-regional cooperation, such as the border with North Korea, Russia, relying on theTumen River “the Tumen River area Development Project”;“Urumqi Fair”, mainly forCentral Asia and Eastern European countries in the past, just recently upgraded to theAsia-Europe Expo; Another example of active participation is Yunnan’s “Greater MekongSub-regional cooperation initiatives”. However, compared to the sudden emergence inrecent years of Guangxi and the ASEAN sub-regional cooperation, these areas’ geographicadvantage is not inferior to the former at all. However, these provinces (autonomousregions) in the past ten years, the sub-regional cooperation in the region seemed stagnateand the pace of cooperation slowed down. The reasons for this phenomenon must havecome from external reasons as international environment, national strategic planning, but Ithink what’s more important is to seize the opportunity timely, industriously explore andseek common interests, and actively promote the construction of a variety of cooperationsystem, to achieve the local development and regional prosperity.What are the significances of local governments in the development of a country’s foreignrelations? What are the functions of local governments in the sub-regional cooperation?What’s the role of local governments in the institutional arrangements for cooperation?What kinds of experience and laws on local governments participating in thegood-neighborly friendship and diplomacy with neighboring countries, and promotingregional, sub-regional economic development, can be extracted from the case of Guangxi’sparticipation in the sub-regional cooperation with ASEAN countries, The paper willattempt to explore some points which are worthwhile.