The difference between China's special economic zones (SEZs) and those attempted in the West are:
-they were locally administered/micromanaged in China while centrally administered in the west by blanket tax incentives
-China's SEZ focussed on new enterprising startups focussed on Capital Equipment & export products
-In the West the focus was on providing jobs and replacing imports.
Here is some authorative detail:
https://chicagopolicyreview.org/2020/01/27/what-the-u-s-can-learn-from-the-success-of-chinas-special-economic-zones/These Chinese SEZs gave the central Government an opportunity to add Chinese characteristics to its Central Socialist
economic plan by encouraging private enterprise in these test SEZs without entirely changing the entire external system.
Just have a look at the cities that have grown up around these SEZs in the Pearl River estuary upstream from Hong Kong
and their meteoric growth in export revenue?
In Aus for example, we could go the opposite direction. At present virtually all industry is privately owned (thanks to the Hawke/Keating
sell down of State owned industries as a prerequisite for floating the AUD.)
SEZs would economically insulate existing Aussie industry
from competition from these zones , encourage exclusively Aussie PPP and add significant value to our exports.
The key is that their are exclusively for export goods
Politicians simply cant get their heads around any industrial development that implies jobs. These SEZs are Capital intensive & labour poor
but the bottom line is that they do not detract from labour outside the SEZs and the big bonus is to increase export revenue and share that with all
Aussies.
Governments have no qualms about infrastructure PPPs such as motorways tunnels & bridges so why not manufacturing PPPS in SEZs?
IMO, we can learn alot about industrial development , both good and bad, from the China experiment rather than summarily dismiss it on ideological grounds like what the Catholic Church did with Science during the Enlightenment!
As Protestantism later demonstrated, science and religion can co-exist and of course protestantism led the way, via science, to industrialisation.
