Interactive Relationship Between Rural-Urban Transformation And Farm Land Conversion

Rural-urban Transformation is an important socio-economic phenomenon worldwide since the 18th century. Based on international experience, China is in rapid transitions, but has shown outstanding lagged features: rural-urban structural transformation of society with high proportion of rural population; rural-urban structural transformation of industry with low proportion of the tertiary industry output value; rural-urban structural transformation of employment with high proportion of agricultural workers and with low proportion of workers from the third industry. Those non-balanced development in urban and rural areas has become serious structural contradictions which may constraint China's comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development in the 21st century. Therefore, governments all levels have emphasized on accelerating urbanization process and promoting rapid rural-urban transformation as basic strategy. However,rapid rural-urban transformation is/will be threating on farmland conversion. Coordinating the relationship between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion has risen to be the strategic problem for countries in transitions. So, research on the interactive relationship between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion will help speed up the process of transitions, make rational use of land resource and achieve the objective of coordinated development in urban and rural area, which is of great theoretical and practical significance.Based on the principles of development economics, regional economics, new economic geography, urban economics, land economics, statistics and spatial statistics, econometrics, public policy theory, the paper employ general methods such as combining macrocosm with microcosm research, qualitative with quantitative research, static with dynamic research, normative with empirical studies,specific research methods such as cluster analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, Granger causality test method, ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares method. Tools such as Excel, SPSS, Eview and MapInfo are used. The paper is divided into six chapters focusing on the analytical framework of "process-relationship-mechanism-coordination" ,which are organized as follows.Chapter 1 introduces background, significance and objectives, describes literature review. And then, methodologies used in the paper are formed and possible innovations are summarized.Chapter 2 analyzes temporal-spatial process and features of rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion respectively. Starting with the definition of rural-urban transformation from the aspects of rural-urban transformation for population, employment and industry, which are China's current serious structural contradictions and that of farmland conversion, the paper continues with an analysis on temporal-spatial process of rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion and summarizes some features, which preliminary reveal the relationship between rural-urban tansformation and farmland conversion to provide a basis for follow-up study.Chapter 3 pretests the relationship between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion. Starting with literature review, the analytical framework for the correlation, the hypothesis of Kuznet's and especially the causality are constructed. Firstly, the Pearson correlation and the hypothesis of Kuznet's Curve are pretested. And then, Based on outlining the bounds test used to test Granger causality, the paper focuses on the causal relationship using time-series data, panel data and data from typical regions such as Zhejiang province, Hubei province and Guizhou province. Results show that there is positive correlation between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion. There exists bio-directional causality, but the causality may exist regional characteristics.Chapter 4 analyzes interactive mechanism between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion. As a major theoretical basis, New Economic Geography is introduced, and then interactive mechanism between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion is analyzed qualitatively. Lastly, we establish such a framework taking account farmland conversion into Carlino-Mills's model on regional growth, employ two-stage-least-square (TSLS) and ordinary-least-square (OLS) to estimate the interrelationship and test the model using recent data for district (grade) cities in China(from 1999 and 2005. Results further confirms that conclusion that rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion interact each other. Rural-urban transformation influences farmland conversion and it is positive and significant. but the evidence that the change of urban population influences rural urban land conversion is more stronger than the evidence that the change of non-agricultural employment does.Conversely, Farmland conversion influences rural-urban transformation in a positive way, but the evidence that farmland conversion influences the change of urban population is significantly and the evidence that farmland conversion influences the change of off-farm employment is not.Chapter 5 is to coordinate relationship between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion. Conclusions on the preceding chapters show that the degree of China's rural-urban transformation is currently still low, the structural contradictions are still serious and a large amount of land is still required to accelerate the process of rural-urban transformation.So, it is unavoidable for farmland conversion, which must coordinate with rural-urban transformation for population and employment. To coordinate relationship between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion, it is inevitable for the government to interview, because farmland conversion is above all the result of decision-making behavior of the government. But the goal of the government's desion-making should encourage farmland conversion to support more urban population, provide more jobs and opportunities. Therefore, starting with introduction of literature review on decision- making of farmland conversion, the chapter analyzes cost-benefit methods and presents a methodology combining cost-benefit analysis and population-based or job-based analysis for decision-making of public policy, which provide a long-term and powerful tool to coordinate relationship between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion. Lastly, six policy recommendations are put forward.Chapter 6 presents the main conclusions and future researches.Possible contributions are summarized as follows: (1) Combining rural-urban transformation with farmland conversion, the paper presents a theoretical analysis framework of "process-relationship-mechanisam-coordination",which is applied to do researches on interactive relationship between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion at macro-level and at micro-level.(2)Employing Granger causality test,using time-series data,Panel data and data in typical region in different stage of transformation,the paper tests the causality between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion.(3)The paper presents a methodology combining cost-benefit analysis with population-based or job-based analysis for decision-making of public policy,which help coordinate the relationship between rural-urban transformation and farmland conversion at a long term.