REGIONALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIES

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  • Department of Geography, Peking University, Beijing 100871

Online published: 1997-11-15

Abstract

Sustainable development has become a state basic policy in China, and governments at various levels are struggling to realize it. Localities must take actions in several steps to reach the goal of sustainable development. The most important step is, based upon enivronmental conservation, to enhance the level of economical development by means of all possible meausres, and to satisfy qualitatively and quantitatively the increasing demands both of population growth and living standard improvement. In order to really achieve regionally sustainable development, the relationship between ecological environment conservation and economical development and demands satisfaction must be dealt with well and coordinated with each other, the development should be planned in short term, middle term and long term respectively and in a compatible or trundling way; and all policies and measures should be operationalizing. Regional development can be seen as a complex of the development of various industries. Thus the development and sustainability of industries is the guarantee for regional development. This topics may be discussed at three levels: 1. How to ensure the development of industries and their enterprises? Only if the enterprises’ production keeps profitable, industries can develop or even be enlarged. When the marginal benefit of the products decreases the scale of enterprises will not be enlarged. In the situation of market process adjustment, enterprises can achieve economic efficiency only if they reach certain scale. Enterprises with products lack of competition capacity will not get profit and may wither and even go bankrupt. 2. The development and sustainability of an industry should be conformed to the law of the industry. So industries can sustain their development only if continuously innovate and develop new products so as to advance to a new stage of development and occupy new markets. 3. Industries development should be long sighted without eagerness for quick success and instant benefit. Therefore, the environmental protection should be emphasized. Production could not damage the regionally ecological balance between nature and society, through any kind of pollution (including eyesight pollution and ethic pollution, in extensive comprehension). Exploitation profit of industry should not be at the cost of social diseconomy. Short sighted behaviors run in the opposite direction of sustainable development, and will be punished by the feedback mechanisms of environment and socity. The roles of government are improtant in coordinating the enterprises’ operation and industries’ management with regional development. By means of policies, the government can direct the development of industries and enterprises, at the three levels mentioned above, to be beneficial to overall regional development. It should be emphasized that the key of sustainable development in underdeveloped and developing regions is the current starting measures. These can be identified stey by step through regional diagnosis, causal analysis and CI (certified identity) design. Regarding the concept of sustainable development, more attention is unilaterally paid to ecological environment at present, and the importance of the function of economic growth is relatively ignored. In fact, sustainable development will not come true without the support of economy. Ecological and social effects can be seen as the goals of sustainable development, while the economical benefit is the key of operationalizing sustainable development. The development of industries is closely related to regional economy, so should be studied deeply in the research on regionally sustainable development. Development strategies of industries are also discussed and suggested in this paper, taking tourism, agriculture and industry (narrow sense) as examples.

Cite this article

Chen Chuankang . REGIONALLY SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRIES[J]. Acta Geographica Sinica, 1997 , 52(6) : 518 -527 . DOI: 10.11821/xb199706005

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