ABSTRACT
As a unitary state, China has a long-standing tradition of centralization, but due to its vast land and population, provincial governments and leaders have also played a large role in the Chinese political economy. In the People’s Republic of China, governors and provincial party secretaries have been accorded with ministerial status. During the era of reform and opening-up, the twin forces of decentralization and internationalization not only furthered the salience of provinces within China, but also turn them into international actors, particularly in foreign economic relations. In the 1990s, several overseas scholars started to analyze the foreign policy implications of this phenomenon. 2 Their studies were mainly on the sideline of Chinese foreign policy studies. However, the issue gradually made its way into mainstream studies, when Lampton included a separate chapter on the provincial external relations in his book on the making of Chinese foreign policy.3 This chapter will try to deal with the same issue from a mainland scholar’s perspective. It will focus mainly on the role of the 12 mainland coastal provinces4 in the making of Chinese foreign economic policy, with some general observations about their role in the making of overall Chinese foreign policy. Although sub-national governments might not neatly fit into the category of societal forces, their functions and impacts are alike; all represent the forces from below on Chinese foreign policy making. 1. Sub-national Governments and Foreign Affairs: An Overview of Newcomers in the International Stage Sub-national Governments have always played a role in foreign affairs, research has been focused on this topic since the 1980s. Since the early 1970s, many sub-national, or non-central governments in federal states and decentralized unitary states began to engage themselves in foreign affairs. U.S. states, Canadian and
Chinese provinces, German länder, Swiss cantons, and even some Japanese prefectures have become increasingly visible actors in the international stage. They send officials abroad and receive foreign visitors, engage in competitive trade and tourism promotion, compete for foreign direct investments (FDI), forge sister-city networks around the world, set up overseas offices; they even take highly political and controversial measures, such as nuclear-free zone initiatives in 1980s, and economic sanctions against countries like Myanmar in the 1990s. Several high profile sub-national governments, like Quebec in Canada, and Hong Kong of China, are even members of international governmental organizations; Quebec is a member government of the Sommet de la Francophonie, and Hong Kong is a member of the World Trade Organization.
