国家出台大批国家级区域发展战略和各地制定相应的区域规划,给中国的人文-经济地理学带来了极好的发展机遇,其中,思考中国的区域制度是一个重要的理论命题。阐述了现行区域规划在内容体系上的“短板”,指出了“短板”的存在有中国区域制度的原因。通过“区域”的“政府”性质分析了区域规划中存在“短板”的必然性,进而讨论了中国“产权区域”制度下“区域”的“私人物品”特征、区域的竞争性和排他性,由此产生的区域与中央政府的博弈关系和区域外部性等问题。人文-经济地理学必须在区域制度方面深化对中国的区域规划、区域发展和区域关系等问题的认识。

A large number of state-level regional development strategies issued by the central government and corresponding regional planning formulated by the local governments, for China′s humanity-economic geography, has brought great opportunities for development. Why economic region in China is different from any other countries, why to develop in a high speed become a common problem among China′s economic regions, why China′s economic regions still did it in their own way although has been strongly condemned, if this economic regional system had something to do for China′s rapid development of economy, all the questions mentioned above are worth thinking for humanity-economic geographers. Dozens of regional strategies issued by the central government and corresponding regional planning have been established in recent years, all these strategies and planning are used by government as a means of macroeconomic regulation and control, and also used by the scholars in the field of region and urban planning as a means of service for practice. This paper think that government establishing regional strategies and planning which don′t follow the rules of market economy are always failure in many case, meanwhile, it′s side effects are very obvious, such as extensive development. excessive expansion of urban construction land, resources excessive consumption, coordinated development among regions. The content system of current regional planning has a "short board" for the reason of region system. The economic region in China is a kind of "property region" in nature, the government is the subject and representative of the region, under these condition, "property region" to "regional government" and the central government is in "personal items" characteristics. As long as it is a "personal items", the property region will inevitably be a selfish, competitive and exclusive, and conflict with the state's interests of public goods. Therefore, China's economic region must be competitive and exclusive. It is due to the competition among economic regions to make China′s regional system a institutional power to promote economic and social development. This paper also explains another three characteristics of China′s regional system. First, the market allocation of resources will always follow their own rules, when the governments intend to violate the rules of the market, the market is often pay no response, such as the irrational industrial development and population size prediction in the regional planning. Second, when the central government is no longer the main body of the resource allocation, the existence of game relation between local government and the central government makes the local government not to completely obey all the arrangement of the central government, especially the arrangement do not conform to the interests of the local government demands. The third, regional externalities is an objective phenomenon, regional development will bring to other regions positive or negative influence and will not assume responsibility or gains. China′s regional system has play an important role for its development, and is still in need of improvement, so, this field should be the direction of the fundamental theory research for humanity-economic geography.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.