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“Rejuvenate the Northeast”, proposed during the 16th National Conference of the Chinese Communist Party in 2003, represents a major economic development policy initiative modeled along the lines of the previous “Develop the West” policy. The “Ten One Five” plan, announced in 2006, reconfirmed “Rejuvenate the Northeast” as one of the plan’s most important development initiatives. Over the coming half decade, economic development in China’s Northeast will be seen as a bellwether of the effectiveness of the policies of China’s leadership under Hu Jingtao.Unlike recent innovative economics being pursued in other parts of China, where systems are literally being remade from scratch, the crux of economic development in the Northeast is the “implanting” of a market-based system of resource allocation into the existing industrial framework. The power of the market, it is hoped, will spur improvement and transformation by achieving regional economic equilibrium and stable growth, while existing industries pass in relative stability through this period of change. Like the poverty reduction strategies followed in western China, “Rejuvenate the Northeast” heavily targets wealth growth by leveraging the region’s rich natural resources, extensive transportation network, outstanding pool of technically-skilled people and well-developed heavy and chemical industries. Therefore, in working to rejuvenate the Northeast, China is working to adjust the structure of the region’s industrial base while concurrently implementing technical reform of its existing industrial base in order to better plug northeastern China’s economy into the needs of international economic development.For Mainland China, “Rejuvenate the Northeast” means more than coordinating economic development between regions and achieving an equilibrium in the pace of growth. The ability of such a program to bring economic prosperity to the Northeast, long held in the shackles of the inertia of planned economics, is a major test of China’s efforts overall to bring the regions into relative equilibrium, implement harmonious development and stay on course toward developing a healthy society. In light of the quickening pace of both globalization and the integration of regional economies, China’s Northeast promises to be one of the most important, and most sensitive, of the global economies battlegrounds. This can only be further heightened by the fact that the Northeast will stand at the forefront of any international cooperative initiative between China and the countries of northeastern Asia. The fact that China’s Northeast has yet to become a mutually beneficial economic platform for Chinese cooperation within northeast Asia certainly has influenced the course and extent of economic development in this part of the country.This research is not limited to the traditional economy of China’s Northeast, which is rooted in traditional heavy industries, but rather expands its scope to examine economic growth trends in the Northeast against the backdrop of the global economy as well as relevant development issues. Therefore, research attempts to validate new breakthroughs in China’s geostrategy underway in the Northeast and explain the emergent international economic interrelationships and cooperative arrangements being forged in northeastern Asia in terms of geopolitical, international environmental, production and market factors with the further objectives of researching the ability of “Rejuvenate the Northeast” to prepare China’s Northeast to become a focus of offshore investment for Japanese and Korean firms looking to shift second-tier technologies and production offshore as well as to foster regional economic cooperation and lay the groundwork of future economic growth and prosperity. In addition, this research assesses from a subjective point of view both the internal structural impediments and external environmental challenges that face “Rejuvenate the Northeast” in order to determine whether the program will truly be able to achieve the results anticipated by the Chinese central government.
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