Study On China’s Urbanization Development With Human Capital As The Driving Force

Urbanization has been recognized as the great force in the future of China’s economic growth and development. How to enhance the overall quality and level of China’s urbanization has become an urgent problem to be solved by the Chinese Government. Urbanization is not as simple as the proportion of urban population increasing or the expansion of city area. The focus of urbanization also includes changing the mode of economic growth, upgrading the industrial and employment structure, and weakening the new dual structure within cities and towns, to achieve the rise of social welfare and the true meaning of the urban population living environment. As the change of China’s population structure and urbanization stage, and contrasting the urbanization with simple labor and labor intensive industry since the reform and opening up, human capital problem has been paid more and more attention in the process of urbanization. The influence and effect mechanism of human capital investment to improving in the urbanization rate and the quality of urban has very important practical significance for building the" new-type urbanization" in china.My doctoral dissertation basing research findings of the human capital theory, urbanization theory and endogenous economic growth theory, and combined with the actual development process of China’s urbanization, has researched the basic condition of human capital and the development of urbanization in different areas of China, the migration changing China’s human capital layout, the influence factors of China urbanization level, the effect of human capital to the urbanization rate increasing, the effect path and mechanism of human capital on China urbanization development, and how to run the " new-type urbanization" road with the human capital investment as the driving force.This paper found:1. Since the reform and opening up, China’s urbanization rate experienced a "higher in the north and lower in the south"-"higher in the south and lower in the north"-"higher in the east and lower in the west" spatial pattern. Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian and Shandong province in the eastern coast have enhanced the fastest rate of urbanization2. The human capital of urban population has gathered to the eastern coastal significant. On the contrary, most of the rural human capital is remain in the Midwest, especially in the central region. Per capita education years of the employment population in most of the provinces is between 8 and 10 years. The education Gini-coefficient of the employed population was 0.21 in 1996 years, and 0.28 in 2010 years, has showed a decreasing trend, while coastal Education was fairer than the western backward areas.3. The migration and flow of population strengthen the unbalance of human capital further, which exhibiting a selective migration characteristics. The total net exporting of country human capital was approximately 501 million person*years and 1.2 billion person*years respectively in 2000 and 2010, and human capital net import and net export provinces has little change in the period. The human capital net import of the eastern region was 474 million person*years, that the central and western regions was 364 million person*years and 107 million person*years in 2010.4. The fundamental driving force of China’s urbanization is also the evolution of development of productive forces and the socio-economic structure as the rest of the world. The per capita GDP, the third industry value accounts for the proportion of GDP, the total power of agricultural machinery, the human capital and the average education years of the urban population is the main driving force of China’s urbanization stable development since reform and opening up., " Before 9th Five-Year "Plan, China’s urbanization rate increase has relied on agglomeration effect of the initial industrialization stage, and which has being based on the development of the third industry with further expand the breadth and depth of urbanization in the after.5. The per capita level and total stock of human capital have a stable role in increasing China’s urbanization rate in each stage. The standard ridge regression coefficients of the per capita education to urbanization rate were 0.109 and 0.122, and that of total human capital to urbanization rate were 0.104 and 0.117 in 1978-1995 years and 1996-2011 years. The role of human capital was increasing.6. Specific to the high, medium and low level three stages of urbanization, human capital has dominating role in the high stage.7. Specif ic to the eastern, central and western three regions, eastern region per capita education has bigger role than central and western region, which is also the largest driving force to promote the development of the eastern town.8. The human capital to promote the transformation of economic growth mode means that labor efficiency promotion and wage income ratio rising. The share type economic growth will leveraging domestic demand and achieve economic fundamental of the sustainable urbanization. The inadequate economic growth momentum in China’s urbanization development, the fundamental reason is high investment and the extension of the economic growth. The role of human capital to the economic growth is still dominated by factor inputs, assisting role to the efficiency of other factors, and has low human capital spillover effect.9. The human capital can through the industrial structure upgrading to promote the development of urbanization. Human capital promotes China’s industrial structure upgrading Indeed, but the impact of human capital on the third industry is not as bigger as the second industry yet. The proportion of the third industry in China was rising recent years, but the industry level is not high, high-end industrial development presents small-scale, and emerging industries is in the basic training phase. The development of China’s industry and service industry is the premise to sacrifice the agriculture development, and coastal industrial development is to deprive human capital of the inland with the huge migration of human capital. The third industry development in the eastern can satisfy with enough population concentration initially, but if it wants to break the labor-intensive stage, will need a higher level of human capital clustering to support.10. The human capital agglomeration effect is obviously greater than population agglomeration effect on the rising of the east urbanization rate. China’s population migration has selective characteristics, while the level of human capital is an important basis for people’s selective migration. Therefore, rather than worry about the adverse effects of population excessive concentration to the east, and through policy factors to change agglomeration direction, it is better to seize the human capital agglomeration advantages, to promote the profound developing of the eastern town.11. The role of human capital acts on urbanization is also reflected in the migration’s human capital accumulation, income increase and urbanization degree deepening can effective interaction:the floating population’s urbanization degree more deep in higher education level; Deep urbanization degree will increase the human capital investment and the human capital return rate. The traditional migration flows like Migration of birds, constituting with "Go to town" and "return to hometown". Human capital investment can truly break this traditional mode and promote the population urbanization orderly.Therefore, human capital promoting urbanization is the new idea of urban development in the future. China’s urbanization development experience affirmed the importance of human capital for the urbanization development. The importance of human capital for the urbanization development in that it drives urbanization is not a simply gathering resources, which also excavates endogenous factors and thereby provides a driving force for sustainable urban development. The "endogenous power" of "new-type urbanization" is element agglomeration and factor efficiency improving, and with urban space effects increase. The first point of "new-type urbanization" is to rely on human capital investment, improve the selectivity migration of the labor factor, forward to fully competitive market with price allocation situation. The second point of "new-type urbanization" is to rely on human capital investment to change the extensive economic growth mode, to achieve industrial upgrading and technological progress and enhance the efficiency of factors.Finally, for building "new-type urbanization" with human capital as the driving force:first, we should pay more attention to the education equity and migrate population education; Secondly, to achieve Share-based economic growth under the opportunity of demographic dividend turning to human capital bonus; Third, to implement a multilevel nature of human capital investment strategies extending the industrial chain; Fourth, the primate cities of city group must to go high-end human capital investment strategy initiative; Fifth, fifth, to further promote the effective interaction of human capital accumulation of migrant population, income increase and the urbanization degree deep; Sixth, the current policy adjust should focus on the freedom of the elements.