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| REGION,COMPETITIVENESS AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT |
| CHENG Yu-hong |
| Economic College of Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China |
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Abstract The notion of competitiveness has been used in a variety of ways and contexts and overstepped its original meaning, since competitiveness is an abstract, fuzzy and complex concept, particularly as it is applied to place, such as cities and regions. Therefore, it is not surprising that the policy discourse around regional competitiveness is somewhat confusing. This paper firstly reviewed two main ideas about regional competitiveness, which were from Porter's viewpoint and Storper's viewpoint, through tracking the origination of competitiveness and its expanded application. It discussed the notion of regional competitiveness from the point of competition concept. Then this paper pointed that region as the main body of competition has multi-main-body character, including the government, firm and resident. And all of them have different aims and the operation mechanisms in the regional competition and regional development. The multi-main-body character and its multi-object of regions determind the notion of regional competitiveness differs from the notion of firm or industrial competitiveness and has more abstract and fuzzy characters. But the regional competitiveness indeed exists in the practice of regional development under the background of economic globalization. Based on these, this paper further discussed the roles and impacts of competition in the practice of regional development from the two aspects of both firms and places (cities and regions). At last, the article pointed out that the diverse characteristic of the regional competition main body, on one hand, determined the region as an enterprise. But on the other hand, the concept of regional competitiveness differed from enterprise competitiveness. So, this paper concluded that the regional competitiveness was not an object of regional development but an indicator of regional development in the special periods of time. It was a sticking point to rightly comprehend the whole meaning of regional competitiveness in designing and constituting the policies of regional competition. Ulteriorly, for the local government made the regional competition policy, the competition among the regions had the characteristics of two respects: On one hand, the competition among the regions was more gentle and fuzzy, compared with the competition among enterprises, under the mechanism's function of relevant resource distribution in the area; On the other hand, the impact on regional development of competition consequence among the regions was more far-reaching. Because the region could not be moved in space, it determined that the pursuit to the regional competitiven should be a more long-term complicatedness course. The appraisal on the regional competitiveness should be put in sustainable development strategic frame of the region.
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Received: 14 May 2007
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2008, Vol. 23 
