Managing and financing metropolitan public services in China: experience of the Pearl River Delta region

Abstract

Under China’s current fiscal policies and inter-governmental relations, it is a significant challenge to finance and deliver public services across jurisdictions. This challenge was met in the Pearl River Delta region in southern China with a collaborative governance approach. Directives from higher-level governments and horizontal inter-city fiscal arrangements were successfully combined to deliver public services. Effective networks should be developed to improve co-ordination and collaboration in delivering cross-jurisdictional public services.

Keywords:

• Collaborative governance
• fiscal policy
• inter-city public services
• inter-governmental relationships
• network governance
• Pearl River Delta region

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Ministry of Education Key Research Center (Major Project 16JJD630013), National Social Science (Key Project Fund 13&ZD041), National Science Foundation (Project 71673111), and Guangdong Science Foundation (Project 2015A030313323). QIU Mengzhen, TU Siming and GONG Rui assisted in data collection. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 78th annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration Annual Conference (Atlanta, USA) and a workshop at the Education University of Hong Kong. The authors are grateful for the comments from the panelists, anonymous reviewers and the editors of this PMM theme. The authors are solely responsible for any errors or omissions.

IMPACT

How to finance and deliver public services across jurisdictions is a significant challenge to public officials and academic researchers. This paper offers a new way of tackling this issue with a collaborative governance approach in the Pearl River Delta region in southern China. Local governments tended to favour projects with positive economic benefits and visible outputs over less productive tasks such as environmental protection. Effective networks will enhance co-ordination and collaboration in delivering cross-jurisdictional public services. The lessons in this paper will be helpful for countries that are undergoing rapid urbanization.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Baojian Xie

Baojian Xie is an Associate Professor in School of Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

Lin Ye

Lin Ye is a Professor in the Center for Chinese Public Administration Research, School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.

Shao Zijie

Zijie Shao (corresponding author) is an Associate Research Fellow in School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.