China: Great Dragon Rising - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 308

better economic opportunities, and socially or otherwise
disadvantaged men are able to get brides. Marriage mi-
gration streams have been demonstrated from poorer
southwestern provinces such as Y unnan, Gweichou,
Sichuan, and Guangxi to the more affluent coastal
provinces of Guangdong, Hebei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fu-
jien, and Anhui. Brides then take on the hukou of their
spouse and are able to participate in the local economy .

reforms as he spread the word to dare to xiahai —“Jump
into the sea of business.”
In order to defray the impact of radical change on
the political system, Deng Xiaoping focused his new eco-
nomic policies on the country' s Pacific Rim. The plan in-
corporated a system of special economic zones (SEZs)
and economic development zones (EDZs) designed to at-
tract technologies and foreign investment from abroad
(Figure 11-10).

TVEs and “Privatization”

SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES (SEZs) AND
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ZONES (EDZs)
SEZs and EDZs are founded on a variety of incentives
such as relaxed import and export regulations and low
taxes. Land can be leased and labor can be contracted.
Goods produced can be sold in China or abroad. In-
vestors can reap profits at home.
There are many open economic zones and develop-
ment zones in China, but formally there were only five
SEZs: Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shantou in Guangdong
Province, Xiamen in Fujian Province, and the entire
province of Hainan Island. Initially , there were four SEZs
along the coast of China. Each of these possesses partic-
ular locational advantages. Shenzhen is adjacent to
Hong Kong (Xianggang) on the Pearl River estuary in
southern Guangdong Province. In the same region is
Zhuhai, adjacent to the former Portuguese colony of
Macau. Shantou and Xiamen are former treaty ports
across from Taiwan. Hainan Island, approaching South-
east Asia, was added in 1988.
Fourteen additional cities were opened to foreign
enterprise in 1984. Most of these were once treaty ports
with a history of foreign relations. They also had estab-
lished industry and transport infrastructures as well as
local labor pools. Moreover, all the open cities had con-
nections to overseas Chinese communities.
In 1988, three open economic regions were desig-
nated as special zones for foreign investment: the
Yangzi (Chang Jiang) Delta Economic Region around
Shanghai; the Pearl River (Zhujiang) Delta Economic
Region around Guangzhou; and the Minnan Delta Eco-
nomic Region around Xiamen. These represent efforts
to diffuse the benefits of an open policy from SEZs to
other parts of the country . China now has hundreds of
central-government-regulated economic zones like
Shenzhen and more than a thousand run by provincial
governments.
More freedom and opportunity for development
and profit have generated unrest. University students

Rural industry continues to spring up around cities and
towns, and it is estimated that 60 to 100 million people
have left the land for better pay in small factories around
towns and along transportation lines. Others work in in-
dustry on a part-time basis, as in Korea and Japan. Farm
types, based on income sources, can be categorized as
traditional agricultural, mixed activity , and industrially
focused. The latter two categories include T Township and
Village Enterprises (TVEs).
TVEs were designed to provide employment in the
countryside to boost revenues and to hold people to spe-
cific areas under the rubric, “Leave the land but not the
township or village.” This has resulted in a pattern of
partially urbanized rural people who engage in non-farm
sector employment without migrating to cities. Rural in-
dustry contributes more than 40 percent of rural total
output value. Moreover, the growth in non-farm activi-
ties is significantly greater than farm ones. These enter-
prises are important in absorbing surplus rural labor.
Originally TVEs were held collectively . However,
economic reforms since the 1980s have led to increasing
privatization. While actual ownership stays with “the
people,” the rights of the majority of TVEs have been
“sold” or “rented” to share-holding managers. Industrial
clusters compete with each other and those that fail are
shut down. Even though private enterprise does not con-
form to socialism or communism the state government
has acquiesced to it. TVEs in their original collectively-
owned format are disappearing as they are transformed
into “informal” private businesses.

Regional Development

Since 1978, China' s development policy has stressed effi-
ciency over equity and an open door instead of self-
reliance. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping toured several southern
Chinese cities. This well-publicized tour energized his