| Looking back international and domestic economic development, there are various and characteristic feature on regional economic cooperation, but the similarity are industrial factors'integration and market unification, such as regional cooperation of Pan Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta economic circle, the economic circle around Bohai, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, APEC, ASEAN, EU Free Trade Zone, the North American Free Trade Area, the Central African Free Trade Zone, etc. on domestic and international level respectively, all of them has made great progress.Tumen River Area Cooperation has got great concern by the international communities since been raised in 1980's, especially in the early 1990s; it has got attention of United Nations Development Programme (short form as UNDP) and has been an important programme sponsored by UNDP after carefully studied. Government of China, DPRK and Russia signed the"Agreement on the Establishment of Consultative Commission for the Development of the Tumen River Economic Development Area and Northeast Asia", China, DPRK, Mongolia , ROK and Russia signed the"Agreement on the Establishment of the Tumen River Development Coordination Committee"and"Memorandum of Understanding Environmental Principles governing the Tumen River Economic Development Area and Northeast Asia"with the advocate of United Nations Development Programme in December 1995. The signing of the above 3 documents has not only became a legal protection for all the members who participate the Cooperation, but also shows the endorsement and political commitment from the member countries. Infrastructure construction, such as: road, rail, ports and Customs have been strengthened under the enhancing of environment building by the member countries. The number the cross-border travelers between China-Russia and China-Korea have reached 300-400 thousand per year. Passenger flows and commodity flows have been activated and the economy been promoted. Tumen River regional cooperation has been made substantial progress and the region has been a key area for promoting investment and trade from a military restricted area. In particular, all the member countries agreed to upgrade regional cooperation from Tumen River into Greater Tumen River Regional Cooperation on the 8th United Nation Development Programme Consultative Committee Meeting in 2005. Member States increased their participation provinces, from then on, Tumen River Regional Cooperation has been put into a new development period. However, looking back to the past more than 20 years of Tumen River Region Cooperation, it was in a low speed compared with other areas'cooperation, and restrictive factors can be summarized as follows:Firstly, lacking of unified regional general plan. Although Tumen River Regional Cooperation is a multilateral cooperation, but there is not a general regional developing plan to guide directly economic and social development. As example, Jilin Province drew up"the'Eleventh Five-Year'Master Plan on Jilin province's participating in the Greater Tumen River Regional Cooperation". Russia also has a plan to promote Far East development. And Tumen Secretariat of UNDP has advocated the member countries to make an accepted whole regional plan for several times, but still no consensus.Secondly, lacking of central government's practical participation and necessary trans-national organizations'joining. The local governments of Tumen River region show great enthusiasm to participate the regional cooperation. Tumen River Regional International Cooperation has been taken as an important programme to Jilin, Inner Mongolia and some related provinces in China. Rajin-Songbong, a city in DPRK, as an important opening up area, has issued relative priority policies. Government of Primosky Kri in Russian Federation enhanced participation in the Tumen River Regional Cooperation as an active response. Four provinces in eastern part of Mongolia that adjacent with china actively join in all co-operational projects. The eastern coastal regions in ROK actively promote the construction of land and sea transportation line in Tumen River Area, to expand economic and trade exchanges. But central and local governments have different interests and benefits, especially involving border-crossing, boundary bridges'construction, trans-border roads and railways, flight opening and Cross border trade problems can't be solved by local government. Meanwhile, no organizations that participated by member countries have been established to solve happening problems in regional cooperation.Thirdly, lacking of agreements on multilateral trade and economic cooperation and no legal protection to trans-border cooperation. To successful regional cooperation in the world, the agreement on tariffs, trade facilitation, customs cooperation have been signed to promote comprehensive regional cooperation, but no bilateral and multilateral agreements have been signed by the member countries in Tumen River Region. Tumen River Regional Cooperation is still in extensive and spontaneous development. Economic and trade activities have great influence by man-made factors with big randomness.Fourthly, lacking of driving force from international financial group to promote regional cooperation. An important reason on slow development in Tumen River Regional Cooperation is no big investment, no economic driving force to improve infrastructure facilities on passageways and border-crossing.As response to above problems, necessary measures should been taken as following: Firstly, member countries should strengthen coordination and make acceptable general plan. Secondly, the governments should play a leading role in the regional cooperation project, build up regional organizations that actively participated by center government and solve the problems in the cooperation through regular meeting's mechanism. Thirdly, the member countries should sign bilateral and multilateral agreements to ensure economic and trade exchanges and cooperation under legal protection. Fourthly, the member countries should promote international finical groups involving in the Tumen River Regional Cooperation and bring economic driving force to the regional cooperation.In the process of Tumen River Region's cooperation, international and domestic experts and scholars have done a lot of research work. A number of guidance and reference has been taken into this paper. The objective of the paper is that through reviewing development course of Tumen River Regional Cooperation, focusing on playing regional cooperation function and solving restraining problems happened in the Cooperation, proposing countermeasures as reference. |
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