City-region integration policies and their incongruous outcomes: The case of Shantou-Chaozhou-Jieyang city-region in east Guangdong Province, China

• The rhetoric of integration is formed in Shantou-Chaozhou-Jieyang in Guangdong province, China.
• The rhetoric of city-region integration has not been converted into institutional set-ups.
• The disjuncture between the rhetoric of integration and reality of competition is examined.

The Guangdong Provincial government in China envisages co-operation between, and development of, the three cities of Shantou, Chaozhou, and Jieyang. To these ends, it has sought to mobilise the region's untapped resources through policies encouraging these cities' integration and growth. However, the policy and rhetoric of inter-city integration has not yielded concordant material outcomes. Instead, the three separate municipal governments have engaged with the policy agenda not in pursuit of co-operation and integration, but rather to take advantage of otherwise unavailable opportunities to boost their individual economic competitiveness. This paper examines the disjuncture between the rhetoric of inter-city co-operation and the material reality of competition in the Shantou-Chaozhou-Jieyang city-region. The paper takes significance first, in its critical exploration of the grounded and political processes underpinning the formation and implementation of the city-regional integration policies proliferating in China recently. The paper's second point of significance lies in its contribution to broader literature on city-regionalism and state rescaling.