Rapid Economic Development and Slow Industrial Upgrading in the Pearl River and the Yangtze River Deltas

The study of regions has been undergoing an intellectual ‘renaissance’, resulting in a growing literature on the renewed importance and dynamics of varied forms of regions and regionalism (see Amin, 1999; Lovering, 1999; MacLeod, 2001). However, insuffi cient research has been devoted to the ‘crucial middle ’ role of regions in bridging and integrating global, national, and local economies. This role also turns regions into highly contested terrains for the diverse tensions and outcomes of economic integration, or lack of it, to play out. These include simultaneous tendencies in competitive and cooperative policies and practices of subnational and local governments versus those of global and local fi rms, as well as shifting opportunities and constraints on economic development and industrial upgrading. In this article, I advance a thesis that new regional dynamics are capable of mediating or restructuring global-local economic relations in varied ways to either facilitate or hinder the course of local economic growth and industrial upgrading. This thesis is elaborated and validated through a comparative analysis of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in China – two of the most dynamic manufacturing region