Since the reform and opening-up, Kunshan of Jiangsu Province has headed on a new path towards developing an open economy, known as the “Path of Kunshan”, by establishing development zones at its own expense. General Secretary, Hu Jintao, spoke highly of the development of Kunshan during a visit to the city. Since the 16th CPC National Congress, Kunshan has continued with healthy, sustained, and rapid development on a higher platform. At the end of 2005, Kunshan took the lead in fulfilling the target of building a moderately well-off society in an all-round way in Jiangsu Province. In 2006, Kunshan’s GDP totaled RMB 93 billion, and fiscal revenue was RMB 15.1 billion, and the total import and export revenue of USD was 42.8 billion, with a four-year average growth of 31.2%, 38.2% and 49.2% respectively. Kunshan has been ranked top among the “Ten Most Developed Counties (Country-level Cities) in China” for two years consecutively. In 2006, it was named among the first “National Ecological Cities”, and ranked first among the county-level cities in China in the “Evaluation of Urban Innovation Capability” by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Now, Kunshan is looking more like an all-round affluent society with benign interaction between rich people and the strong city, coordination of economic and social development, competitive development of foreign capital and private capital, co-prosperity of urban and rural areas, and simultaneous enhancement of environment and development.
Currently, Kunshan’s open economy has entered a new development stage. With the increase of Kunshan’s utilization of foreign investment stock and restrictions such as land and environment, it has become more and more challenging to achieve long-term sustainable and rapid economic development when utilizing expanding foreign capital. What is the main driving force behind the new round of economic development in Kunshan? A critical driving force will be the vigorous promotion of independent innovation while further expanding the reform and opening up and improving the degree and level of foreign capital utilization. Recently, General Secretary Hu Jintao also stressed the importance of heading down a path of independent innovation in open conditions. Kunshan has previously recognized the importance of continuously strengthening the capacity for independent innovation in open conditions, and has preliminarily constructed a three-tier (government, enterprises and policy environment) independent innovation support system, which has already produced clear results. The careful study of Kunshan’s path of independent innovation through developing capital-intensive foreign economy is of both major practical significance to the regions with high-level open economy development in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta, and of great theoretical significance to the study of the development path of developing countries under the intra-product international specialization.
