The Evolution Of China’s Regional Economic Development Models

With the increase of China’s comprehensive national power, and the rise of our roles in world, China’s regional economic development modes have attracted unprecedented attention. The issues about the basic connotation, measurement and evolution rule of regional economic development model have reached no conclusion. Therefore, to solve the confusion in the use and research in regional economic development model, and explore more targeted regional economic development modes, have important theoretical and application value to help the social public, academia at home and abroad to fully understand the development mode in our country. Also, it is of great significance to promoting the scientific, efficient and sustainable development of our country.Along with the development of the age, China has entered into the transitional period, and new characteristics have occurred in China’s regional economic development models. However, what is the evolution venation of regional economic development model, and whether the past models is currently applicable? Then, what is the future innovation of the regional economic development modes and what drives them to innovate? These are the problems need to be answered by academia.As there has high expectations about deeply analyzing China’s regional economic development modes in social from all walks of life both at home and abroad, we undertook this study. And in doing so, the confusion in explaining China’s regional economic development model would be avoided in a certain degree. During finishing the thesis, the author participated in many subject projects, which have provided important support for the thesis. These projects include National Social Sciences Foundation of China, Key Program (Grant No.10ZD　&　016, Grant No.08AJY041), National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (Grant No.41071093, Grant No.41401128), Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology, China(Grant No. 11dz1211000, Grant No. 13231203400), and so on. Through summarizing of previous research, the thesis have discussed the connotation, measurements, categories and characteristics of regional economic development mode. By using the relevant methods of economics and geography, the evolution of China’s regional economic development models is qualitative analyzed and quantitative described. Then, taking Chongming eco-island model of Shanghai as an example, the background, theoretical basis and practical application of regional economic development model are analyzed. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The regional economic development models have the characteristic of demonstration and limitations. Regional economic development model refers to certain model to realize rapid and sustained development of regional economy, by using all kinds of production factors and production relations, under certain time and circumstances. Due to great performance in economic development of the models, they are easier to be regarded as the learning objects by other districts, which makes the models have has strong demonstration. In addition, regional developments models often are formed in a certain time background, based on certain production factors and production relations, which makes the models could be only applied in certain time and circumstances. From the dimension of elements, resource driven model has strong applicability in the initial stage of industrialization when natural resources are largely demanded. And human capital driven model presents the stronger superiority in post-industrialization stage. From the dimension of system, government-motivated models have relative suitability in the early stage of industrialization among all the different stages. While market-driven models have stronger vitality in each stages, comparing to government-motivated models. From geographical spatial relations dimensions, with the deepening of economic globalization, the integration of global resources determines the regional international competitiveness to some extent. Thus, exogenous models has more obvious advantages than endogenous models.(2) The effect of new production element, market and exogenous forces has become increasingly obvious. With the changing of time, China has entered from the stage in which traditional elements like capital, land etc. are largely depended to a new stage in which talent, technology innovation have occupied the leading position. From system circumstance, the role of government has partly be replaced by the market. And from globalization trend, China has deeply participated in global division of labor, integrated into global capital market, elements market, and technology market. Thus, China’s regional economic development is more profoundly affected by the global economic situation, foreign economic relations. There has also been an obvious evolution from models such as "Resource-Government-Endogenous", "Resource-Government-Exogenous", and "Human capital-Government-Exogenous" towards "Human capital-Market-Exogenous" on the whole. That is models of resources-driven, government-oriented, and endogenous have transformed into models of innovation-driven, market-oriented and exogenous. Benefiting from science and technology innovation, market development, exogenous forces, Chongming Island has realized the upgrade from the development models relied on resources, the government’s push, and endogenous forces to models relied on innovation, market and exogenous forces in a relatively short time. Thus, Chongming model has reflected the new features of China’s regional development models in the new period.(3) Regional economic development models are evolving dynamically under the influence of path dependence and path creation. And with mutual learning and extensive communication, regional economic development models in China have seen an evolution from differentiation to convergence, which is mainly affected by economic globalization, market integration and convenient communication. The features in elemental structure, system environment and endo-exogenous relationships tend to be similar. It should be noted that this convergence is mainly characterized by goal convergence, although the process is different. However, scientific and technical innovation, market and exogenous forces became the common driving force of each model.Through the theoretical and empirical analysis, this thesis puts forward a comparatively thorough theoretical framework to examine all Chinese development models. It is an important supplement and development to the existing research. The innovation point of this paper embodies the following: first, the measurements of regional economic development models are put forward, which is helpful to solve the chaos in recognition on regional economic development models. Second, based on spatial and temporal perspective of economic geography, the evolution process and path of China’s regional development models is analyzed, thus, the evolution map of China’s regional economic development models could be obtained. Third, the formation and evolution mechanism of regional economic development model was analyzed from the perspective of production elements, system and relationship.