Partnership between European and Chinese cities

2011

ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability

Status, quality and characteristics of existing partnerships between Chinese and European cities.

The aim of this report produced by ICLEI is to give a detailed overview of the state of the art of partnerships between European and Chinese cities. The opening of the Chinese market, on one hand, and Europe’s business sector showing interest in approaching a new potential market on the other, are the bases of this research.

The first part of the paper is dedicated to the general understanding and comparison of centuries of geographically separated historical events.

An analysis | 11 case studies

Thus, figures on market development, urbanization patterns and political features are taken into consideration. The second and core part of the report presents a series of interviews with some of the most involved European cities into partnerships with Chinese administrations. Interviews were usually carried out by phone with officers from the most appropriate city’s department – i.e. international relations office, economic development, cultural office, etc.

Topics addressed concern the character, formal status and duration of the partnership ; main topic addressed and key achievements within the partnership ; future expectations ; key obstacles and weaknesses perceived by partner cities ; needs and wishes for support to improve the partnership.

In the last part main conclusions about each theme presented are drawn up and good practices for future partnerships are suggested.

European-Chinese partnerships

Objectives :

General features about the methodology :

The Chinese context

The People’s Republic of China is governed by the Communist Party under a single party system. The territory is today organized in a complex system, including 22 provinces, 5 autonomous regions, 4 directly administered municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two highly autonomous special administrative regions (SARs) - Hong Kong and Macau which are self-governing under “one country, two systems”.

The organization of the Chinese economy has been undertaken to several reforming operation during the last century. Under state socialism two main massive restructuring processes aimed to tackle macro-regional inequality which despite big manoeuvre had never been solved. In particular Mao Zedong tried to push on redistributive regional policies – “blood transfusion” - such as the People’s Communes and the Great Leap Forward which turned out in a failure and causing million of deaths.

The first opening to a more liberal market model began in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping with his market based economic reforms. The “growth first” mentality has been recognized as an ideological key parameter for the new entrepreneurial model, mainly characterized by an economic devolution. During these years parallel experiments started in different Chinese provinces : the household responsibility system – HRS - by which local managers where responsible for losses and revenues of the owned activity (Xu & Juzhong, 1998) ; the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) which enjoyed various privilege i.e. open trade, retention of foreign exchange earnings, tax advantages and the right to authorize small foreign investments (Wong & Kwan-Yiu, 1987) ; reform of State owned enterprises where a limited number of enterprises were allowed to keep a share of profits. These experiments were the first steps made in order to modernize the Chinese economic system which caused the growth of violent intercity competitions. It turned out in a self-destructive phenomenon causing the construction of redundant infrastructures and industries and uncoordinated development with strong impacts on the environment.

In 2001 China became part of the World Trade Organization (WTO) thus giving a strong boost to the export industry but without solving the internal friction between local governments. For this reason three main regional regulations had been studied and implemented in the last years (Vogel et al., 2010) :

Each of this reform is led by a common logic which is the partial decentralization of decision-making throughout the empowerment of peripheral administrative bodies. Local governments in China are currently increasing their importance. The decentralization process has been put into reality through different actions, each one resulting in a lightening of the role played by the central government. Some examples concern the investment field where municipal governments emerged as a major agent of investment changing their role from “government control” to “governance guidance” in growth management ; new regulatory, taxation and licensing powers are now delegated to local district and county governments expanding their influence on the socio-economic sphere; private enterprises enter now in the LG jurisdiction as one component of the local corporate whole ; state-owned enterprises (SOEs) became more autonomous being allowed to base their decisions on the market demand of production.

The European context

The first step towards establishing the European Union (EU) was taken on the 18th of April, 1951 when, based on the Schuman plan, six countries came together to sign a treaty under which they agreed to run their heavy industries – coal and steel – under a common management. Those six nations were Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. This co-operation then expanded in other sectors, beginning with economics and the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) and continued in 1968, when the same countries allowed free cross-border trade for the first time.

From 1973 onwards, more countries from the European geographical area came on board and joined the EU. There are currently 27 member states, including the original six EEC members and (in chronological order of their joining the EU) Ireland, Denmark and United Kingdom ; Greece ; Spain and Portugal ; Austria, Finland and Sweden ; the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Malta, Cyprus and Slovenia ; Romania and Bulgaria. In January 1993 the single market and its four freedoms were established : the free movement of goods, services, people and money is now a reality.

Since the official introduction of common currency the Euro on the 1st of January, 2002 more than 80 billion coins have been distributed within the Euro countries : Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands. Denmark, Sweden and the UK have decided to stay out for the time being.

Although European rules allow national and local administrations to preserve their own individuality, traditions, history, present issues and strengths, the different types of organisations can broadly be listed as follows :

In any case, it is commonly perceived that top down and command-and-control models of governance are no longer appropriate. Generally speaking, European governments try, more or less, to implement urban governance which differs from traditional forms of governance by including actors representing not only the public sector but also the private and voluntary sector, all pursuing mutual interests. Local governments have gained more and more significance, particularly in the Nineties and, through the devolution of tasks and powers, central governments have increased the burden on local governments (LGs). Simultaneously situations arose where European policies took over responsibilities previously assigned to national governments (Dekker K., 2001).

Issues and barriers continue to surround the development of sustainable policies and urban government. Joined governance structures may generate tensions and conflicts with respect to accountability, legitimacy and power, especially in situations where there is devolution of responsibility without proper devolution of decision-making authority, competence or budgetary power. Networks are only suitable for specific projects or policy fields, not for a holistic view or policy. Furthermore, participants in networks are not democratically elected, although there are no physical barriers to participation. A partnership is usually made up of those capable of adding resources, including political power or legitimacy and sometimes the goals of different partners in the network may conflict ; commitments may be set for self-interest rather than on the good of the community as a whole. Finally, young, weak and relatively small organisations are hardly able to take part into the European decisional context. Still considering LGs under a European prospective, the non-homogeneous national systems throughout the EU and peculiar economic situations hinder the compact development of common policies. A higher consideration and involvement of LGs into the international arena would promote a bottom-up approach and ensure the connection between central and peripheral administrations.

As already mentioned, numerous urban policy initiatives in Europe are intended to integrate economic, ecological and social aspects. The Dutch Big Cities Policy is a partnership established, in written agreements between the national governments and the mayor of four cities - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht – as well as more than 20 medium-sized towns. It mainly aims to bridge the gap between the old and inadequate policy implemented from the Sixties to the Nineties, where physical urbanisation was addressed more than any social aspects (Andersem & van Kempen, 2003). Governance became a key element in Danish urban policy in the Nineties due to social problems which presented themselves in certain neighbourhoods throughout the Eighties. As a result, a new bottom-up approach was implemented, chosen for two main reasons: the huge costs of traditional urban renewal combined with its modest results and also the lessons learned during the conflicts with tenants in the process of past phases of urban renewal (Andersem & van Kempen, 2003). The following section will give the reader other examples of how European cities are currently facing problems related to urban governance, globalisation and sustainability.

Urban growth : different realities in comparison

Over the last few decades, urbanisation has been an essential part of most nations’ development towards a stronger and more stable economy, underpinning improvements in living standards for a conspicuous proportion of the world’s population. Economic wealth and big cities presence are strongly linked aspects, as most of the world largest urban areas are in the world largest economies. Cities and towns also have important roles as centres of artistic, scientific and technological innovation, and of culture and education.

Since market reform started in 1978, China has experienced a rapid urbanization and industrialization. By the end of 2009 the overall population living in urban areas in China had reached 622 million. During the last 30 years China had an average urban growth ratio of 0.93 % per annum representing today nearly one fifth of the world’s total city population. By the year 2020 it is foreseen that up to 56 % of Chinese population – about 850 million of citizens - will live in Chine’s cities. Urban sprawl has mainly occurred in big cities since have been undergone a dramatic urbanization process. The term “big city” refers to those areas having non agricultural residential populations over 500,000 living in the urban and nearby suburban areas. Big cities accommodated 61 % of their total number of new urban residents from 1990 to 2009 (Zhao, 2010). A main concern of the Chinese Government is to limit city sprawling implementing a number of policies in this sense. Migrants from the countryside are encouraged to move in small cities and villages outside the highest density contexts ; land development permissions are restricted in order to promote a more intensive and high density land use ; in 1990 the planning regulations prescribed that residential population density in big cities was to be at least 140 persons per hectare.

Different is the situation in Europe where although urban areas are still expanding very rapidly, the population growth is not increasing at the same speed. At the end of the 17[h]th century small-scale, labour-intensive family farming encouraged a deep attachment to the countryside. Moreover, the pro-agricultural (peasant) orientation of the ruling bureaucracy indirectly fostered a culture of anti-urbanism – a culture which was still present during the Fifties and Seventies and that only later mutated (recent developments in the Chinese market and political system will be discussed more in detail in the next chapter). In the graph below, it is worth highlighting the phase of accelerated growth which manifested itself during the second half of the 20th century. The recorded percentages of people living in urban contexts between 1963 and 1980 plateau at about 17 %, yet by 2000 that had already risen to 20 %.

Sources

This analysis belongs to the file « Europe - China Exchange Platform Survey »

An analysis

11 case studies