Shen Guiping: Across the world, regional autonomy has been implemented in many countries based on ethnic factors, such as Oran autonomous province in Finland, five autonomous regions in Italy, more than a dozen autonomous regions in Spain, and so on. Due to autonomy, the national government lacks strong political, economic, and social integration in these regions, resulting in a low degree of integration between these regions and the external economy, society, and culture. This may lead to the disconnection between the economic and social linkage development of autonomous regions and other regions of the country, which breeds a tendency of separation in these regions. Some rich autonomous regions like Catalonia in Spain want to get rid of the “burden” of other poorer regions. Some traditional settlements “abandoned” by the modern society seek to be separated from the other areas, such as 300 Indian reservations in the remote areas in the United States. This is a frequent drawback derived from the so-called high degree of autonomy in the West.
