ABSTRACT
Business or technical people in the metropolis might try to establish links with their families' old hometowns. Often it was economically more rational to make liaisons with other places more appropriate for their particular economic aims. The economies of Shanghai and its delta were intertwined, even when central policies to separate them were overwhelmed by cumulative policies from local leaders to link them. The Shanghai government in early 1986 classified horizontal links between the municipality and outside provinces into four categories: economic liaisons, compensation trade, new enterprises, and technical cooperation. In early 1989, nine "Shanghai people with Ningbo origins" set up the Shanghai Association to Promote Ningbo Economic Construction, which was nongovernmental. Raw materials shortages gave Shanghai state cadres great incentives to make horizontal liaisons elsewhere, if only to preserve their own jobs by getting contract documents that could be reported upward in the bureaucracy.
