”Go West Young Man”: Economic Growth and the Role of Infrastructure Provision in the Pan-Pearl River Delta, China

Abstract: The purpose of the thesis is to analyze the recent growth figures of China and understand whether China will be able to sustain its outstanding economic growth pattern, in a time when it needs to rebalance its economy from investments towards domestic consumption. In fact, if China does not rebalance its economy to a consumption-­led economy, it might face difficulties to repay the massive investments that, before the global financial crisis, have been financed by China´s trade balance surpluses. To succeed, China will have to increase its productivity and synergistically grow throughout its whole territory. To understand the current state of the economy, under the framework of economic growth theories, I operated an empirical analysis of statistics released by different provincial bureaus, which yielded a unique dataset of the region of the Pan Pearl River Delta. The empirical analysis shows how eight, out of nine, provinces in the sample share some worrisome traits. In fact, all of the provinces, but Fujian, accumulate sensible deficits due to the massive investments operated throughout the years from 2000 until 2010. In retrospective, the quantities of investments in infrastructures seem to be excessive and question how China will pay for these and sustain its increasing indebtedness.