Measurement and Evolution Characteristics of Inter-provincial Institutional Openness in China

Institutional opening is a significant strategic transformation of China’s opening-up after entering a new stage of development. However, few studies have quantitatively evaluated the level of institutional opening in China and derived empirical scenarios and characteristic judgments based on such evaluations. In view of this, this paper starts from the essential connotation and fundamental characteristics of institutional opening, and based on the dual synergy perspective of institutional innovation at the domestic level and the construction of FTA networks at the international level, constructs a dynamic comprehensive index to measure the level of institutional opening in China’s provincial regions from 2013 to 2022. The measured dynamic comprehensive index shows that China’s provincial regions have achieved remarkable achievements in institutional opening, but also exhibit significant differences. From the “group” characteristics, the “First-tier regions” of “seaside global opening” in North China, East China, and South China have leading institutional opening; the “second-tier regions” of “central region gradient opening” in Central China and Northeast China have constructive institutional opening; the “third-tier regions” of “land-based cross-regional opening” in Southwest and Northwest regions have inclusive institutional opening. Moreover, based on the results of the spatial difference convergence test, it is shown that the institutional opening levels of different provincial regions do not show a convergent trend, and the heterogeneous “province” characteristics remain significant, indicating that unlike previous policy-based opening, institutional opening is more difficult to achieve homogeneity through simple replication and imitation among regions; and the test results reveal the spatial autocorrelation phenomenon, which to a certain extent reveals the “interconnectedness” of provincial institutional opening. Guided by the important spirit of “steadily expanding system-oriented opening-up” proposed in the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, each region in the future should, based on the provincial layout and situation, explore differentiated paths for system-oriented opening-up and jointly strive towards the common goal of higher-level opening-up.