The regional disparities in Chinese provincial government innovation

Abstract

There has been an upsurge of local government innovation in China since administrative reform began more than 20 years ago. However, studies on the regional disparities and their affecting factors for Chinese local government innovations are scarce. The paper focuses on identifying the regional disparities and what factors affect the regional disparities in local government innovation, specifically, in Chinese provincial government innovations. First, the paper explores the regional disparities in Chinese provincial government innovations using the data on the provincial numbers of winners and finalists of the Innovations and Excellence in Chinese Local Governance (IECLG) Awards Program and suggests some hypotheses for the relationship between the affecting factors and innovation implementation behavior in the public sector at the local level. The hypotheses are tested using data on the provincial numbers of winners and finalists of the IECLG Awards Program, the Chinese provincial economy statistics, and the Chinese provincial indicator of openness degree in economies and society. The findings illustrate the significance of correlation between the regional economies, regional openness, available resources, administration expenditure and the innovation behavior in the public sector at the provincial level. The implications of the findings are discussed for further research on the innovating behavior mechanism in the public sector at the local level.