ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an explanation of interrelations between the three main forms of governance: national and provincial oversight, city autonomy and regional cooperation. It investigates the national and provincial levels of government and deals with the important issue of decentralisation. Governance involves institutions such as laws, regulations and guidelines in addition to the organisations that administer them. However, governance institutions, and the organisations supporting them, are not static but constantly evolving. China is a unitary state in which the national government has supreme power and discretion to monopolise governance of the country by centralising power at the national level or delegate or decentralise some of those powers to lower-level governments. Decentralisation helped to turn the municipalities of the GBA into entrepreneurial and competitive actors, constantly driving further development and big projects to ensure revenue. Planning autonomy assisted the development of infrastructure for industrial and urban projects, and cities.
