Since 1978 the historical Chinese economic reform has reduced the scope of state planning and expanded the playground for the non-state-owned sectors. However, some provinces adopted much more favorable registration, loan, and taxation policies toward the non-state-owned industry than the other provinces did. My research attempts to explain this puzzle of regional variation by exploring the major political­economic causes of provincial policies. Growth-oriented, political-support, and interest-group politics hypotheses are formulated on the basis of the newly interdisciplinary theories on political-economy. To reach a comprehensive explanation, a statistical analysis of the thirty provinces in China over sixteen years will be conducted. Data on the implementation of registration, loan, and taxation policies in the provinces will be regressed on the data related to each hypothesis. In addition, the policy-making process in two pairs of provinces with similar starting points yet different ending points of reform will be studied thoroughly. A field trip to China is necessary to collect the above data and to survey the findings by the Chinese scholars. On this trip, I plan to visit the primary data-collection agencies such as the State Statistical Bureau and Beijing National Library, as well as the prominent Chinese research institutions such as Beijing University and Institute of Industrial Economy of Academy of Social Sciences.