Recently, President Liu Zhibiao accepted the interview with Xinmin Weekly on the issue of “high-quality integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta”. This article is an interview record.In the interview, Professor Liu Zhibiao pointed out that the key point of the Yangtze River Delta integrated development is divided into two stages due to different affecting factors. The first stage focuses on eliminating the natural and technological factors that intervene the integration, such as transportation, infrastructure and so on. At present, in the second stage, we should focus on eliminating the obstacles that influence the integration of systems, institutions, mechanisms and policies. The former one influences and determines the cost and efficiency of the regional integration, while the latter one causes friction costs of institutional mechanism, which is also the factor that we need to make great efforts to eliminate in promoting the regional integrated development.After several years of large-scale investment and construction, the strength of high-quality integrated development of the urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta lies in infrastructure. And the weak link is that the friction costs of the system and mechanism are too high, which is manifested in the excessive intervention of administrative power in market economic activities, and results in the insufficient opening-up of regional market to a certain extent.
