Senior officials from the development research center of the State Council suggested that Northeast China should promote regional cooperation and form pillar industries to revive the old industrial base.

"We should design a comprehensive system aimed at improving the performance of the whole region, but should not restructure some of the region's industries only," said Feng Fei, deputy chief of the industry department of the State Council development research center. He said that during a seminar on revitalizing Northeast China.

As China's traditional industrial bases, Northeast China's Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces share many similarities in terms of economy, culture and history. And they have many important industrial bases, which include machinery, automobiles, chemicals and medicine.

But co-operation among them has been rather low-level in the past, which prevents local enterprises from increasing scale and participating in international markets, said Jin Xuecheng, a senior official from the People's Bank of China.

"The three provinces have many industries in common and all plan to develop them as pillar industries, for example, automobiles. This may lead to redundancy and destructive competition," Jin warned.

"The most important thing local governments should do is to sit down and work out medium and long-term regional development plans in line with the central government's rejuvenation strategy for the region," said Jin.

Co-operation may equalize the sharing of service costs across the region and allow a more harmonious distribution of resources, said Mario Pezzini, head of Territorial Reviews and Governance Division of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Northeast China should focus on developing two city clusters, one on the Liaodong Peninsula with Dalian as the core, and the other includes inland cities with Shenyang as the hub, suggested Feng Fei.

"It is more reasonable to build up famous brands backed by the whole region rather than developed by one province alone," said Feng.

(China Daily December 6, 2003)