Redai dili (Aug 2024)
How Public-Private Partnerships Drive Regional Integration: A Case Study of State-Business Cooperation in Sino-Singapore Jiashan Industrial Park
Abstract
Regional integration in the marketized socialist context has been regarded as a cross-boundary development led by governmental apparatuses, wherein administrative toolkits have been employed to consolidate coalitional benefits on different scales. Since 1980s, when an ideological transition from managerialism to urban entrepreneurism reshaped urban and regional governance, municipalities have become an active role in bargaining for local development opportunities. Based on this, the market economy objectively promotes social capital for participation in regional development agendas and capital circuits. Thus, municipalities no longer dominate capital flows with bureaucratic tactics but by diversifying development through a variety of approaches, including state-owned enterprise reform, the introduction of foreign capital, and encouragement of private enterprise operations. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) represent an important form of state-business cooperation, which generally refers to a type of multilink and process-based cooperation carried out by the public and private sectors. Existing literature discusses the different roles of these sectors in PPP projects from the perspectives of growth machines, fiscal decentralization, and institutional establishments. However, few studies on PPP projects reveal the operational mechanism at the regional scale compared to that at the urban scale, leading to research gaps in (1) how regional governments participate, (2) how regional and city governments interact, and (3) how the interests of multilevel governments and the private sector are coordinated. The study aimed to dialogue with the theory of regional integration and conceptualize PPP projects on a regional scale using an analytical framework. Additionally, it intended to summarize the research basis of urban PPP projects, discuss the formation mechanism of PPP models and government-enterprise cooperation against the background of regional integration, and systematically describe the path of multiregional integration under the market economy system. Sino-Singapore Jiashan Industrial Park was identified for the empirical case study. The study methods included semi-structured interviews and in-depth text analyses. As of August 2023, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted, and interviewees included officials of the industrial park, heads of relevant departments, and residents living adjacent to the park. Based on the interview materials, in-depth analyses of the policies and plans relevant to Yangtze River Delta regional integration and documents on industrial development and urban construction in Zhejiang Province, Jiaxing City, and Jiashan County were conducted for comparison with empiricism from the interview records. The main difference between PPP projects in terms of the regional and urban scales was the flow of factors in the regional space. The flow of factors included material factors, such as capital and labor, and abstract factors, such as policies, business models, and management experience. For example, the Sino-Singapore Group not only brought the industrial capital of Suzhou Industrial Park to Jiashan Industrial Park but it also introduced the existing excellent development model and government-enterprise cooperation mode of Suzhou Industrial Park into the development of Jiashan Industrial Park. Using market tools to assist in the construction of regional integration systems and mechanisms plays a core role in regional-scale PPP projects. Considering that the development of PPP projects on regional and urban scales is blocked by administrative boundaries, the relationship between cross-regional subjects is key to the success of the project and includes the complex relationships between the Suzhou Industrial Park Government and Sino-Singapore Group, the Jiashan County Government and Sino-Singapore Group, and the Jiashan State Investment Group and Sino-Singapore Group. Cooperation between the Jiashan County Government and the Sino-Singapore Group is inseparable from the support of the Suzhou Industrial Park Government. Introducing the Jiashan State Investment Group and Sino-Singapore Group as close partners is also necessary. Whether a multi-subject relationship can be properly handled determines the success or failure of regional-scale PPP projects.
Keywords
