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Different Institutions, Distinctive Trajectories? Revisiting Maritime Industrial Development Areas with Cases on China's Liaoning Coast
Author(s) -
Wang Haizhuang,
Chen Tiantian,
Ma Huiwen
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
growth and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.657
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1468-2257
pISSN - 0017-4815
DOI - 10.1111/grow.12230
Subject(s) - lagging , china , dilemma , geography , developing country , politics , socioeconomic status , economic geography , economic growth , socioeconomic development , regional science , development economics , political science , economics , sociology , population , medicine , philosophy , demography , archaeology , epistemology , pathology , law
Maritime industrial development areas (MIDAs) are spatial tools designed to accelerate economic growth in backwards coastal areas and thus alleviate regional disparities, and they have widely expanded in both developed and developing countries over the past sixty years. This paper reviews the global development of MIDAs in different historical periods and compares them with cases on China's Liaoning coast in terms of their structure, location, administration, national political‐economic climate and theoretical justification. The results indicate that although those countries have different institutional environments they seemingly once took the same path in their specific stages of development. However, the experiences of developed countries and other developing ones and the current dilemma of MIDAs in coastal Liaoning together demonstrate that MIDAs cannot achieve the policy targets anticipated by decision makers, especially during the economic transitions of China. This finding cautions backwards countries and their lagging areas, such as northeastern China, that the traditional pattern tried by the first developed countries may not be appropriate when the development tool (e.g., MIDAs) is examined in both the framework of international comparison and the socioeconomic setting of a specific country.