The integration of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has been discussed for over a decade, and this year the calls are louder than ever. Yet the reality is that the region has still not achieved integration, and development within it is highly unbalanced.
　　An expert once commented on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region: In China, no other region has a platform for urban development as advantageous as the Beijing-Tianjin area—neither the Pearl River Delta nor the Yangtze River Delta could, for a considerable period, match the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in terms of policy, resources, talent, and scientific research advantages. Even so, compared with the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, the development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region lags far behind.
　　Why is the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region so far behind the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta? Let us take a look.
　　1. Over-reliance on Beijing, which may not share the spoils
　　The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has a particularly severe tendency toward centralization. Relying on its locational advantage as the capital, Beijing has gathered resources from all sides, with high-end industries such as finance and culture concentrated there. Hebei looks on eagerly at Beijing, waiting for Beijing to share the spoils, but so far Beijing has not given it much. At present, a huge poverty belt has already formed between Beijing-Tianjin and Hebei, with an obvious dual structure and prominent contradictions in the wealth gap.
　　In contrast, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and even Suzhou in the Yangtze River Delta region, and Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta region, have formed a "multi-core" urban agglomeration development model, with smooth infrastructure connections, each city having its own industrial advantages, developed urban economies, small gaps in public services, and relatively coordinated integration and complementary development among regions.
　　2. Lagging integration of transportation and logistics
　　According to media reports, traveling from Beijing to Wu'an County under Handan City in Hebei requires three transfers—by high-speed rail, bus, and taxi or public bus. Transportation integration in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is far from being achieved.
　　In the Yangtze River Delta region, however, county-level cities in all directions around Shanghai can be reached directly by bullet train, and the radiation effect of the three-hour economic circle is obvious. In the Pearl River Delta, expressways from Guangzhou and Shenzhen to surrounding cities extend in all directions.
　　3. Homogeneous industries, each going its own way, with serious internal strife
　　The three places of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei still have unrelated and independent industrial systems. Although Beijing has advantages in science and technology and the information industry, Tianjin has advantages in advanced manufacturing, and Hebei has advantages in heavy industry, in recent years there has been fierce competition and serious internal strife among Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei over infrastructure construction, manufacturing, and the building of industrial platforms. This is mainly because the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region involves three administrative entities, two of which are municipalities directly under the central government, each going its own way; this barrier of administrative division leads to market division.
　　Relatively speaking, the atmosphere of cooperation among cities in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta is good, and the effect of division of labor and collaboration has already emerged. For example, Shanghai's headquarters economy radiates well to surrounding areas, and many enterprises headquartered in Shanghai set up R&D and production bases in neighboring cities. In the Pearl River Delta economic circle, it is relatively easy for Guangdong Province to allocate resources in a unified way at the provincial level; its industries are mainly driven by processing trade, but the effect of differentiated development among cities is significant, which instead makes it easy to form cluster effects.
　　4. Low degree of marketization in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region
　　Overall, the development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region originates from administrative power rather than market drivers. When administrative orders cause various resources to flow continuously to Beijing and Tianjin, the "trickle-down effect" that the primate cities should produce is slow to appear.
　　Relatively speaking, the Pearl River Delta was the earliest region to open to the outside world, which also means it was the earliest to implement marketization; within the region, the force of administrative segmentation is small, and resource factors flow freely. The Yangtze River Delta, as another representative of an export-oriented economy, also has a very high degree of marketization.
　　5. More state-owned enterprises and low private-sector vitality in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region
　　Private economic reform in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region lags, and the proportion of state-owned enterprises is too high. A high proportion of state-owned enterprises means that transformation is difficult and industrial transfer is also difficult. And fewer private enterprises lead to weak capacity to take on transferred industries. For example, in Tianjin, there are very few private enterprises in surrounding areas, resulting in a lack of vitality to take on Beijing's manufacturing industry.
　　As is well known, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta are both gathering places for private enterprises. Private enterprises are more flexible in interregional collaboration.