ABSTRACT
Over the last decades succeeding regional economic policy in China has shifted from fostering small to medium sized self-sufficient inland cities interior regions (for strategic purposes) to maximizing regional advantage based on coastal areas (Linge and Forbes, 1990). Since the Rio Conference on the Environment, sustainable development at the regional level has been raised to paramount importance in China's overall economic strategy. This regional focus recognizes the enormous size of the nation and the contrasting endowments of the many provinces (DRC/ADB, 1994). China has undertaken a number of pilot projects to explore this new challenge for development, and one of the most important is the UNDP project "Support for Sustainable Development of the Yellow River Del ta" (CICETE, 1997).
