| Chongqing is a municipality directly under the jurisdiction of the Central Government, but it is actually a framework of a province with both large urban and rural areas. It is like "a big horse dragging a big truck", so its ability seams to fall short of its wishes. What's more, Yongchuan and other five regional central cities are not strong enough in their influence and momentum to drive the development of the surrounding areas, and even some of them have weaker roles and functions than they did before Chongqing become such a municipality directly under the Central Government. Along the logical clue of theory study-empirical analysis-policy recommendations, this essay studies regional central cities regarding their functional effects, criteria for judgment and formation mechanisms, analyzes empirically the future positioning, gaps, potential advantages and the route of development, and explores the law of the development of regional central cities, thus providing specific policy recommendations for building regional central cities.I. Scope of Study1. Analysis of functions and effects of regional central cities. Progressing along levels of city-central city-regional central city, we study and define the connotation of regional central cities, analyze the characteristics of regional central cities, and the two major functions of congregation and diffusion and the effects exerted by regional central cities in regional economy and macro-regulation.2. Criteria and indicators of regional central cities. On the basis of the connotation, characteristics, functions and effects, we study and raise four kinds of criteria for the judgment of regional central cities, and sift a series of indicators for the development of economic society to establish an indicator system for the comprehensive evaluation of regional central cities.3. Mechanism of development of regional central cities. We analyze the internal mechanism from the perspectives of location, division of work among regions, progress of industrialization and the development of the service industry, etc., analyze the orientation mechanism from the perspectives of government and market, and analyze the coexistence mechanism from the collaboration of many regional central cities, the interaction between a regional central city and an extra large city, the integration of regional cities and regional economy and other aspects.4. Yongchuan's strategic objectives of development into a regional central city. We use the analysis method of SWOT to completely analyze Yongchuan's external and internal environment, and then address Yongchuan's target positioning of constructing regional central cities based on the economic and functional relationship between Yongchuan and the city proper of Chongqing, Chengdu-Chongqing economic ring, and border areas of Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou5. Study of the gaps and potential of Yongchuan toward a regional central city. We investigate Yongchuan's present state of the construction of a regional central city from the angles of supply factors, business development, the three requirements, etc. Applying factor analysis method, we compare the competitive strength of Chongqing's six regional central cities (Wanzhou, Fuling, Qianjiang, Yongchuan, Hechuan and Jiangjin) with that of Sichuan's four regional central cities which are adjacent to Chongqing (Yibin, Luzhou, Neijiang and Zigong), analyze the distance toward constructing Yongchuan into a regional central city, and analyze Yongchuan's potential to construct itself into a regional central city by adopting trend forecasting method, exponent smoothing method and K-value comprehensive forecasting method, etc.6. Path selection for Yongchuan's development into a regional central city. We study the development strategy from the three dimensions of space, economy and function, analyze the interaction mechanism, bring up the space extension mode and explore the space extension route of constructing Yongchuan into a regional central city; encircling creative modern agricultural development mode, we promote the restructuring of industrialization, exert great efforts in developing the tertiary sector and seek the route to swell industries in the construction of Yongchuan into a regional central city; focusing on the production function, we exchange function, innovative function, service function, managerial function and other respects, and search after the function advancing route of constructing Yongchuan into a regional central city.II. Main Conclusions of the Study1. Effective regulation of government and market behaviors is the prerequisite of the development of regional central cities. The formation of regional central cities is the result of the joint effort of governmental push and market choice, while merely relying on either of the two forces will cause distortion and waste of resource allocation, so the best way is to combine the effort of the two forces. When analyzing the formation mechanism of regional central cities, we can see that the market does not work properly because of externalities and the government fails to work properly because of internalities, and only if market mechanism and government mechanism work simultaneously, can we reduce the failures of the market and the government as many as possible, stepping up the rationalization of the size and system of regional central cities. In the field of competitiveness and the enterprise level, we should fully apply the measure of market and push ahead the prosperity of urban economy, creating the condition for the formation of regional economic center; between cities, the superior government should make forward-looking conduction in the level of planning, increase input in the infrastructure building, form a scientific system of encouragement and confinement and preferentially aid the cities qualified to become regional economic center.2. Industrial functions and effect realization vary in different stages of development of regional centers. There is marked differences between the status and function of the secondary and tertiary sectors during the formation of the regional central city. Seeing from different stages of urban development, at the lower and intermediate stage, the function of the secondary sector is more fundamental, while at the higher or mature stage of urbanization, the function of the tertiary sector obviously outweighs the secondary sector; seeing from the driving force of urban development, the secondary sector is the important original motive power of urbanization, and based on the development of the secondary sector, the tertiary sector is the follow-up motive power of urbanization in the later period of industrialization; seeing from the advancing effects of urban development, the secondary sector boosts the enlargement of urban size mainly through the build-up effect, while at the same time boosting the enlargement of urban size, the tertiary sector attaches more importance to the building of urban function and to the strengthening of its capability of radiation and diffusion.3. A regional central city should be developed in terms of spacial scale, economic strength, comprehensive functions and influence. That an area centre city is also judged from the above four aspects means it can not be called a regional center city until fulfill the four aspects and achieve the corresponding standards. Even though there are many development indicators for assessment, this essay reduces them to four aspects through research. The space scale is regarded as the skeleton of the regional center city, economic strength as muscles, comprehensive function as blood, and radiating ability as function, thus the regional center city is structured.4. Development of regional center cities is characterized by a gravity model. The attraction and radiation functions of a regional center city increase by the advance of comprehensive function, and decrease by the expansion of space scale, which declares that the attraction function between two cities is in proportion to the actual strength, while inversely to spatial distance. The analysis of assemble and radiation process of regional center cities states that the relationship between profits from city scale and external cost is not always playing a mutually-enforcing role. When a city has reached a certain scale, the benefit from the scale is not so obvious as before. Sometimes, negative earnings come which means development cost increases if the city is too large in scale. In other words, the benefit from scale is not without end. We also found a law that economic links of two cities in certain areas share mutual attraction. In this essay, an attraction formula is presented to show the attraction magnitude which can reflect the economic closeness between cities.5. Yongchuan has the comprehensive strength for developing into a regional center city. Yongchuan targets clearly to construct itself into a regional center city with comprehensive competitiveness, but still has certain difference. The analysis by putting Yongchuan in three reaches, locates the goals of becoming a regional center city in:western growth pole of Chongqing "one hour economic circle", strategic fulcrum of economic belt between Chongqing and Chengdu, financial center of confluence region of Sichuan Province, Chongqing municipality and Guizhou Province. The competitiveness factor analysis reveals that Yongchuan is with strong competitiveness among the ten cities which can be seen from that the three key factors of Yongchuan rank in the second, forth, and first position respectively and the comprehensive evaluation is in a high position. However, the comparative analysis of assessment indicator shows that Yongchuan has to redouble its efforts in constructing regional center city for it is not large in space scale, strong in economic strength, complete in comprehensive function, or enough in radiating ability.6. Special expansion, industrial growth, and function advancement are the necessary ways in development of Yongchuang into a regional center city. With fueled economic growth, Yongchuan has obvious advantages and potentialities over regional center city construction by focusing on special expansion, industrial growth, and function advancement. From the three industries'driving curves from 1997 to 2009, it can be seen the driving curves from 1997 to 2006 are relatively flat, but since 2006, the curve of the secondary sector increases rapidly by illustrating that Yongchuan has stepped into the acceleration phase of industrialized development possessing the power of providing strong driving forces for regional center city construction. The potentiality analysis declares that Yongchuan economic aggregate can be at least doubled in the coming five years to lay a solid foundation for regional center city construction. Special expansion, industrial growth, and function advancement are inevitable in the way of constructing Yongchuan to a regional center city.III. Innovations in Study1. Most of current theoretical researches about regional centers are focused on macro-level, while seldom on medium or micro-level. The research subject in this essay is chosen the regional centers at district-level, and is analyzed systematically of their function effects, assessment criteria, formation mechanism, and path choice.2. Upon the basis of theoretical researches about regional centers, by dissecting a "sparrow" (to analyze a typical case) this paper has made an empirical study on Yongchuan—a district-level county of Chongqing municipality, in the ways of target, difference, potentiality, and path, which can provide some useful advice in regional center city construction.3. It is a challenge to apply theory into practice because of the multi-variables and multi-systems used in scientific assessment to competitiveness of regional center cities. Built on past achievements, this paper chooses factor analysis to qualitatively analyze the competitiveness of regional center city on condition that the key factors shall be determined by its contribution to matrix varying, which would free up the shortcomings from the man-determined factors. Thus the assessment results would be more reasonable and objective.
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