PPD 613a – Policy, Planning and Development International Laboratory
SPPD China Lab: Policy Options for Transitioning away from Export-Led
Growth in Southern China’s Pearl River Delta
Spring 2011, (1 unit, Lec 51340)
USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development
Instructor: Professor Mark Pisano
E-mail:
Telephone: 213.740.1280
Course Dates: Four Friday sessions from 2-5:20 pm on Jan 14, Feb 25, Mar 25, and April 22
Location: RGL 105 with the exception of March 25 when class meets in the Leavey Library Auditorium
Course Overview
This is a 1-unit course that precedes and is the prerequisite for a companion 3-unit intensive
field course offered in the summer term. Together, they comprise the SPPD China Lab for 2011.
Although the two are closely coupled, they are technically two distinct courses. A separate
Syllabus will be available for the 3-unit companion course. The primary purpose of this 1-unit course is to lay the groundwork for activity to follow in the companion course. Students will receive a request for a proposal with terms of reference from a client, conduct background research, form thematic teams, and develop a proposal including a work plan that will guide the field work in the summer. During the 3-unit summer course, PPD 613b, students will spend two weeks (May 23 – June 3) in southern China conducting interviews and other collaborative field work. Each team’s work culminates in a presentation to the client, as well as preparation of a final report to be submitted to the client. Potential clients are typically public or quasi-public institutions who welcome policy analysis and recommendations formulated by the SPPD Lab.
This year’s lab is located in one of the world’s largest megaregions; the Hong Kong – Shenzhen – Guangzhou region in southern China, a dynamic and vibrant area that spearheaded China’s economic transformation thirty years ago, and in so doing achieved high rates of economic growth year after year, fueled in large part by a manufacturing base geared towards exports. Cities in the region grew quickly from small farming villages to major metropolises through a huge influx of migrant labor from all parts of China, providing a low-cost source of labor. To address the challenges of rapid industrialization and the concomitant pressures on city services, municipal governments in the region are striving for greater regional cooperation and economic integration of the nine cities in the Pearl River Delta with Hong Kong and Macao.
The recent downturn in the global economy led to a sharp drop in exports when demand for China’s goods fell simultaneously in the US and the Euro zone. The resulting factory closures and labor disruptions illustrated the region’s vulnerability, stemming from its lack of a diversified economy. Though China’s policy makers have recognized the need to develop its domestic consumer base as a way to sustain its high rates of economic growth (called for in the 2006 national five year plan), the effects of the recent downturn have lent urgency to this initiative.
This year, the client for the SPPD China Lab consists of the government for one of the major cities in the Pearl River Delta, namely Shenzhen, a city of 14 million located just north of Hong Kong. Shenzhen has stature as the first special economic zone in China, a designation that allowed the city’s fathers to innovate and develop new economic models. After the downturn in 2008, Shenzhen government leaders initially assumed that the demand for exports would eventually bounce back, but are now coming to recognize that American and European consumers may not soon be returning to the free-spending ways that permitted China’s economic expansion. The Shenzhen leaders would like to see that their special economic zone, which was at the forefront of the turn toward a market economy three decades ago, now becomes a pioneer in developing a strategy to build a strong domestic consumer market and to diversify the economy. They recognize that such a strategy must be regional in scope because the communities along the Pearl River delta are linked both physically and economically, sharing the labor pool, natural resources, and infrastructure.
For this year’s project, the client in Shenzhen is requesting that the SPPD International Lab develop a set of policy options to promote regional cooperation in transitioning from an industrial manufacturing base to one that is more diversified and expedites the process of expanding the domestic market. A side-benefit of these strategies is that it is expected that decreasing the manufacturing base would lower demand for energy and consumption of natural resources.
This year’s lab builds on the prior work of Professor Heikkila and SPPD students who addressed issues of environmental degradation that resulted from rapid urbanization in the Pearl River Delta city of Foshan. They developed a model of urban waterway revitalization that was presented at an international Pacific Rim Council on Urban Development conference held in Foshan. Recognizing the student’s SPPD Lab Report as an effective and informative framework, the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific sector used it to develop an interactive web-based learning platform on urban river transformations. This web platform is now being used by the World Bank Institute as a model for World Bank offices across the world and can be seen here: http://vle.worldbank.org/moodle/course/view.php?id=362. (Log in as a guest.)
SPPD Overseas Labs and Expectations
The SPPD Overseas Labs are designed for graduate students in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development, although they are open to graduate students from other disciplines as well (with permission of the instructor). Furthermore, they are intended to draw students from any of SPPD’s Masters Degree programs in Public Administration, Planning, Public Policy, Real Estate Development, Health Administration, International Public Policy and Management, and Executive Leadership. The overall mix of students from these programs will vary from one Lab to the next depending upon location, instructor, client, project, and other considerations. While SPPD students form the core of the Lab work teams, they may also include SPPD alumni and/or student counterparts from collaborating institutions overseas.
The SPPD Overseas Laboratories are run as intensive field-based educational experiences. Students are expected to operate in a professional capacity while in the field. There will be a series of background presentations and lectures given by local and international experts during the Lab, and students are expected to draw effectively upon this resource material. Questions asked of these experts should be on point and clearly articulated, and should demonstrate a solid grounding in the relevant subject matter. More generally, students are expected to orient themselves promptly to their new surroundings and to adapt wherever appropriate to local customs (including banquets and social events).
Learning Objectives
As with all SPPD International Labs, the learning objective is to learn how to translate “classroom knowledge” into professional practice, and to do so in a setting outside the United States. Emphasis is therefore placed on having students develop a deeper understanding of the contextual dimensions of knowledge and practice. The pedagogical model draws on a professional consulting paradigm, with a clearly identified client and terms of reference for the students’ work.
Specific learning objectives for the two-part lab include the following:
Students will develop an understanding of how China and in particular the Pearl River delta region is creating systems to plan, manage, finance and administer large economic regions and how this compares to other selected countries
Students will develop a framework for understanding the types of policy interventions that can be used to stimulate consumer demand and how these interventions span various sectors (i.e., reducing the monopoly of state-owned enterprises with their easy access to capital through state-owned banks, fostering the growth of small and medium size enterprises and developing a service sector, promoting industry clusters and deeper labor markets including regional cooperation in developing a joint strategy for reforming the hukou system that determines where migrants can live, strengthening the social safety net, promoting regional cooperation in joint planning and linkage of infrastructure development, and so forth – with the particular mix of policies chosen depending partly on the purview of the client agencies and partly on the expertise of the students in the class)
Students will learn about the workings of various sectors of government in China, the structure of local government agencies, the mandates of particular agencies, the organizational structure and staffing, and the policymaking and decision processes
Students will learn about the processes of urban development in China and how opportunities for private sector involvement and investment are structured
Students will get experience in finding and gathering data relevant to an urban development project and using the data to diagnose problems, design and assess various options, and develop recommendations that take into account the constraints facing the client.
Students will learn how to manage a consulting project and improve their ability to define a manageable set of terms of engagement for a consulting project as well as develop proficiencies in skills required in international consulting. One such skill is learning how to take a vague and somewhat ambitious scope of work from a client and shape it into a more narrowly defined and clear set of objectives, activities, and deliverables.
It is expected that by the end of the fieldwork experience, students will have strengthened their ability to present analyses of issues and recommendations in a concise, clear and interesting manner from the perspective of their client.
Through the collaborative research effort, students will also gain a greater understanding of how to function as part of team and how to resolve organizational issues within the team as well as gain insights into their individual strengths and what they can contribute to a team effort.
Course structure
Topical focus
The focus of this year’s SPPD China Lab is linked to five key issues that offices of the Shenzhen government have indicated are priorities:
International experiences regarding the planning, managing, financing and administering of megaregions and promoting cooperation among various cities, agencies and other entities within the region
International experiences in expanding domestic consumption and fostering a pro-consumption model of economic growth (e.g., reforms to facilitate more rational urbanization, a more robust services sector, improved financial services for small enterprises)
Identification of opportunities for greater regional cooperation in the Pearl River delta with respect to specific projects, services or infrastructure that can promote a pro-consumption model of economic growth (e.g., financial services sector, land reform, hukou reform, housing)
The development of regional policies for migrant labor and finding better ways to rationalize labor markets and the building of business alliances
Promoting civic engagement, community pride and citizen participation to build support for reforms. Of particular focus will be reforms addressed in previous SPPD China Labs, namely the remediation of environmental degradation and revitalization of urban waterways.
These go to the nexus of the role of government and markets, and the relationship between political leaders and civil society. In the case of the megaregion in the Pearl River Delta, this relationship is one that is evolving, particularly with the expansion of the middle class and rising education as well as income levels.
The 3-unit companion course during the summer will focus intensively on the experience of communities in the Pearl River delta. This preparatory course during the spring semester, however, will be scaled more modestly, in keeping with its single unit of academic credit. Though we will review the previous work undertaken in the Pearl River delta community of Foshan by the 2009 and 2010 SPPD Labs, we will not concentrate exclusively on the region during this preparatory phase, but shall instead identity and draw upon pertinent lessons from relevant cases elsewhere in the world, including here in the United States.
Assignments
The assignments are designed to prepare you for the field experience in the summer, by ensuring that you are familiar with Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and the Pearl River delta region, that you identify a set of the international experiences or cases that may be of interest or have lessons for Shenzhen decision makers, and that you develop a proposal and work plan specifying the scope of work that you anticipate being able to accomplish while in Hong Kong and China.
The first assignment will be done in small groups, whereby you explore various aspects of the Shenzhen region including the history of its development over the past 30 years, the current demographics, the administrative structure of its government, the industrial base and economics of the region, examples of current regional cooperation initiatives, whether there are joint initiatives between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and recent policy controversies that are relevant to the class. During the first class session, we will select the set of topics and form groups around each topic.
The second assignment will focus on the five priority areas of Shenzhen government. Groups will select a priority area, explore the topic drawing on published literature (drawn from academic sources to the extent possible), and synthesize the literature to identify the key issues and draw any relevant lessons for Shenzhen. You will need to form your groups and identify your selected literature by our second class meeting (Feb. 23). The topic synthesis should be submitted as a written document due on March 6 prior to our third class meeting. Groups will be asked to make a brief presentation on their topic during the third class meeting (March 9).
The third assignment is to develop a brief proposal (3-5 pages) in response to the client’s terms of reference, which will be handed out during the second class session. The class as a whole should use this opportunity to begin thinking strategically about how best to utilize its time in Hong Kong and Shenzhen productively to maximize the potential value of the intensive field.
Determination of grades
Final grades for this 1-unit course are based on the following items:
• Class participation (10%)
• Assignment 1 – Background Research (25%)
• Assignment 2 – Topic Synthesis (35%)
• Assignment 3 – Proposal and Work Plan (20%)
Statement for Students with Disabilities
Any student requesting academic accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to me (or to TA) as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) 740-0776.