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| THE RESEARCH DIRECTION CHANGES OF THE SUB-REGIONAL COOPERATION AND RE-EXAMINE OF IT |
| HU Zhi-ding1,2, LUO Hua-song2, XIONG Li-ran2, ZHANG Wei2 |
1. School of Geography, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China;
2. School of Tourism and Geography Science, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming 650092, China |
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Abstract Sub-regional cooperation, a new way of cooperation, emerged in East Asia in late 1980s and early 1990s. The paper reviews the previous researches. The authors point out that in the past 20 years, sub-regional cooperative research has experienced three changes in research direction. The first is the researches of the sub-regional economic cooperation which focus on the feasibility and the necessity of sub-regional economic cooperation but not on the sub-regional economic cooperation theory. The second is the researches of non-economic effects of the sub-regional economic cooperation including "sub-regional economic cooperation and sustainable development", "sub-regional economic cooperation and the ecological environment" and "sub-regional economic cooperation and regional social, economic, political". The third is the researches of non-economic factors and non-economic areas of collaboration of the sub-regional cooperation. Non-economic factors include the impact of large countries, border security, non-traditional security and international political pattern. Non-economic cooperation includes security cooperation, environmental cooperation and education cooperation. The changes of research direction reflect practical significance and value of the sub-regional cooperative research. This paper also discusses some basic issues of the sub-regional cooperation including the definition, characteristics, classification and interaction, theoretical explanations of the regional cooperation and the balance of sub-regional cooperation. The authors conclude that sub-regional cooperation can be divided into sub-regional economic cooperation and non-economic cooperation. There are four characteristics of sub-regional cooperation including "the content of the sub-regional cooperation", "openness and complexity of sub-regional cooperation", "diverse goals and non-compliance of sub-regional cooperation" and "low-level mechanisms and diversity of sub-regional cooperation". Finally, from the perspective of game theory, the authors explore the balance of the sub-regional cooperation, and explain the reasons why different sub-regional cooperation is in different levels of development.
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Received: 01 June 2010
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2011, Vol. 26 
