ABSTRACT
The last two chapters showed how the Chinese national five-year-plans, as in many other transitional socialist countries, provided State intervention and investment in shaping China’s economic geography patterns over time. The transformation from Maoist redistributive policies to Deng’s development philosophy places planning policies at the core of Chinese theory of urban and regional agglomeration. The planning policies that advocate economic development based on market mechanism are effective means for allocating resources and capital between cities and regions. This chapter looks into the evidence of urban and regional agglomeration, as a complement to understanding the economics of China’s planning policies. It focuses on the interaction between spatial agglomerations and planning policies, with a specific focus on the geography of the ‘four largest’ urban agglomeration belts.
