【正文】
is, there should be a greater balance between capital and labour factors, as is the case in the regions of Shanxi, Jiangsu and Guangdong. In overall terms, there has been some convergence but at a very slow rate of not much greater than 1%. Given these results up to 2020, in the last five years we can speculate that more of the same should have happened, so that regional differences have probably narrowed a bit further. But the rate of convergence needs to be greater if the problem is to be tackled in a meaningful way. The guest editorial paper by Zhou and Wei offer a number of conclusions regarding global influences on regional development in China. These conclusions may be summarized as follows: ? Only firms with a strong internal Ramp。D capacity benefit from FDI in technological innovation. ? Public institutions have been of great assistance in fostering knowledge dissemination to industry but the scope of such transfers have been limited and need to be expanded. ? The system of science and technology affects knowledge creation in China more than FDI or where Chinese industry is located. ? Some regional clusters of innovation have started to emerge but means need to be found to share the results of these works among more enterprises. What is not clear in this is to what extent any of these conclusions potentially affect regional disparities. Nothing in this discussion necessarily changes the existing pattern of disparities and may in fact widen the gaps between have and havenot provinces.