The Role Of Subnational Government In International Cooperation

With the trend of economic globalization and the trend of decentralization continues, the rise of subnational government participation and influence in transnational cooperation has become a world wide phenomenon. However, research from international relations viewpoint on this topic is still insufficiency. Most of the relevant theories on this field so far, are developed based on western political systems, which makes them of limited significance as to China’s cases.Due to the opening up policy and central-local decentralization process, China is also experiencing such "local globalization" course-China subnational governments are not only expanding their interaction with the surrounding countries on the breadth, but also drilling down their cooperation in depth. One of the indications is the mass emergence of sub-regional cooperation mechanisms. As a typical case of China subnational governments participation, Xinjiang has completed its transition from closed to open, from being passively involved to actively participating, in the past few decades. This could be a window for us to explore the general characteristics of the internationalization of China subnational government. So this article regards the development of Xinjiang government openning up and cooperation with central Asia in a time sequence, then analyze specific examples on the basis of the result of field interviews, and also summarises the current situation of Xinjiang government’s participation in regional cooperation mechanisms at the present stage. So that we can make some conclusions on the general characteristics of China subnational governments’ participation in international cooperation, including the motivation factors, evolution trend, participating approaches as well as problems to be solved. And finally, we will also have a discussion on the path of China subnational governments’ international cooperation in the future.