“Lock-in Effect” to Be Blamed for Regional Development Imbalances

CHEN Feixiang1( 陈飞翔), LI Kaiyan2( 黎开颜) and LIU Jia3( 刘佳)
1CHEN Feixiang, Professor, Institute of Economics, Tongji University
2LI Kaiyan, Ph.D, School of Economics and Management, Tongji University
3LIU Jia, Ph.D, School of Economics and Management, Tongji University

Editorial note:China’s regional development has long remained in disparity. Despite various discussions on the causes of this disparity, it is not common to take a look at the “lock-in effect” as being one of the root causes. Based on some statistics, the authors find that the existence of the lock-in effect” should be blamed for the disparity between east, central and west China, and that the reform and opening up since 1978 has escalated this effect.

I. Introduction
Starting from the late 1980s, the disparity in economic development between east, central and west China escalated as the nation gradually opened up to the outside world and embarked on a course of robust economic growth. The Chinese government was confronted with the arduous task of boosting national economic growth while reigning in regional disparity.
A country seeking high-speed growth in its early stage of economic development tends to allocate its scarce resources into regions possessing better infrastructure, so that when they develop, they can bring along the less developed regions. The regional disparity caused by this practice is not uncommon in the course of a country’s development, and cannot disappear anytime soon because of its path dependency and “lock-in” characteristics.

Download the full text