By Xuan Xiaowei, Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.245, 2021 (Total 6310) 2021-9-6

Abstract: China now is constructing a unitary national territory planning system with clear definition of power and responsibilities featuring scientific thinking and high efficiency to solve problems such as the excessive types of plans, overlapping and contradictory contents, the capricious launch and abortion of local plans and so on. At present, the establishment of a national territory spatial planning system has registered impressive progress while it is still faced with dilemmas on how to properly proceed with the power delegation to local governments while still maintain the order, stability and vitality across the board. In line with the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Major Issues Concerning Upholding and Improving Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Modernizing the State Governance System and Capacity, one of the goals of modernizing China’s national governance system and capacity is to sort out the authority and responsibility relationship between the central and local governments by establishing a working system with a clear definition of authority and responsibility at both levels, which also ensures the stable operation and maintains the vitality. To this end, the paper suggests that the establishment of a national spatial planning system needs to comply with the requirement by modernizing the national governance system and capacity to gradually transform from a generalized governance with ambiguous definition of power and responsibilities to a clearly-defined and differentiated one.

Keywords: spatial planning system, the relation between the central and local governments, governance modernization