Lin Muxi, Dean of the School of Economics at Liaoning University in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, stressed that rejuvenating northeast China requires greater efforts to reform SOEs and the government administration.
According to him, the northeastern region was the first in China to have implemented the centrally planned economy but the longstanding practice of the rigid system has turned out to be a big obstacle to advancing reforms.
"The whole region has a poor ability to adapt to market-based resource allocation. Therefore, it's extremely important to transform the functions of government departments and streamline administrative procedures," Lin said.
"I've heard of an extreme case. A project in a city in northeast China needed to collect 133 stamps from the government to start construction. By the time the project was scheduled to start, they were 12 stamps short. This case shows how much constraint government administration has imposed on businesses. Once the shackles are off, market vitality will definitely be unleashed."
Zhu Fuen, a researcher with the Heilongjiang Institute of Socialism, holds that regional integration is the key to northeast China's economic recovery.
He suggested that a plan to revitalize the region be issued by the Central Government to allow the region to fit into national development strategy.
The three northeastern provinces should be integrated to an economic area, instead of only being an administrative area, similar to China's Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Zhu said, adding that more vitality from the market and society can be unleashed if the three are combined into one market entity to realize more coordinated development.
