As a strategic choice in the context of a specific environment, the policy of China’s development zones started more than 20 years ago. They have obtained great economic achievements, accompanying with a series of problems. The thesis selects the national Economic and Technological Development Zones (ETDZs) as the main topics.
China’s ETDZs have developed respectively from the oversea modes of the Export Processing Zones (EPZs) and the Science Park(SPs), absorbing their mature experience, and brought out some distinct characteristics of China. The two modes have different theoretical foundations, including the theory of international division of labor for the EPZs and the theory of innovation for the SPs.
The impetuses for the development zone's evolution can be divided into 3 types including external environment, its own endowment and local government motive. The Different performances of the 3 impetuses lead to rich diversities and enormous regional differences of the development zones. In this thesis, the ETDZs are classified with kinds of Patterns from the study of detailed cases. The characteristics of development zones’ operation in industry development, space development, society development and administrative institution are also summarized.
The thesis argues that the policy- driven operation is the key to the different performances of the development zones. From the perspective of the public policy, the development zones have achieved some of the prospective results, but also have resulted in policy failure to a certain extent.
In chapter 2,through the investigation and research of the status quo of the national Economic and Technological Development Zones in several areas which contains the GRDP size, the total industrial production value, the industrial added value, the foreign investment scale, the import and export scale and the tax. In chapter 3,the major policies and features of Economic and Technological Development Zone are addressed. In chapter 4,using the case study of the Economic and Technological Development Zone to classify the ETDZs according to their practical nature.