Research On The Interaction Mechanism Of Small Towns Construction And Regional Economic Development

Small towns are the lowest administrative level of China’s urban system and the basic unit of urbanization. The small town construction and regional economic development are mutually affected and closely interacted. The small town construction can help push the regional agricultural modernization and industrial structure optimization, and can also foster the new growth point of the regional economic development and breakthrough the urban and rural dual structure. In the course of regional development, the governmental regulate and control, economic development, factor flow, environmental conditions and etc. could drive the small town construction and also play a different role for different stages of the small town development. During the course of small town construction development, as a result of the function of accumulative effect, regional advantages, interest drive, and industrial structure transfer, the small town construction and regional economic development will be mutually interacted. The factor flow is a media of this interaction, and also a key link for this interaction mechanism to play a role.At present small towns’ability to drive rural economic development has been greatly enhanced, and small towns serve as a breakthrough of the urbanization in the process of the expansion of domestic demand. The empirical study shows that China’s consumption’s elasticity to GDP has been greater than the investment’s elasticity to GDP since the reform, which indicate that it is more effective and more economical that economic development more relies on consumption increase instead of investment; Within the consumption demand rural residents’consumption demand plays more and more important role in promoting the economic growth, and it’s efficiency is higher and higher. The gap of household consumption level between urban and rural areas is in widening, one important reason is that the income gap between urban and rural residents enlarges gradually. Another reason of peasants’low consumption expenditure is that the market development is not perfect in the rural areas and small towns. Low quality of goods, unreasonable commodity structure and high commodity prices restrict the increase of farmers’consumption. The small town construction and development can largely drive the growth of the rural consumption demand and therefore drive the regional economic development. In addition, farmers are willing to enter small towns to become urban residents, but the difficulty in protecting the land rights of farmers under current system of land is the biggest obstacle for farmers’migration.The driving effect of small towns’construction on the regional economic development can be discussed in three aspects:the surplus labor force transfer, the improvement of lives of urban and rural residents and the optimization and upgrade of industrial structure. Research shows that in recent years small towns’ability to absorb rural surplus labor force enhanced. The situation of eastern region is far better than the other three economic zones in the aspects of the small towns’employment structure and industrial structure. The small towns’tertiary industry on the whole is not developed, the level of economic development of four major economic regions can be mainly embodied in towns’secondary industrial output proportion. From the point of view of industrial structure evolution, the industrial structure of our country is in the transition process from "one, two, three" stage to "two, three, one" stage. According to analysis of county economy, the secondary industry has the highest efficiency in promoting the GDP growth, which followed by the tertiary industry, and the last is the primary industry. Through the gray relational analysis on the county economic data the dissertation gives the following findings:The urbanization level’s increase, the economy growth and economic level’s improvement play a strongly positive role in enhancing the income of the farmers; Small towns economy development and population growth within our county have a positive effect of moderate intensity on town residents’income rising; The development of small towns in china can enhance the level of employment for urban residents; Amount of small towns poverty population varies inversely with the urbanization rate, the small town economic development level and income level of urban and rural residents; The growth of economic gross partly gives rise to the increase of urban poverty, which indicates that in the process of urbanization and economic development structure and efficiency must be emphasized instead of pursuing the quantity goal alone.A structure model of the development of small towns under the driving of the regional economic factors is built to help make the analysis with the partial least squares (PLS) techniques and obtains the following conclusions:Government support and guidance is one kind of important driving force to promote the development of small towns, its role in promoting the development of small towns gradually enhanced. Government support is mainly embodied in the fiscal expenditure. Small towns in underdeveloped area need more financial support. Given the limited local financial resources the central government should provide more financial support in small towns of these areas; The agricultural development and the increase of rural surplus labors which represents the internal demand for urbanization play a positive role in promoting the development of small towns; Factor earnings of small towns should be increased to narrow the gap between small towns and cities and to attract more labors’immigration to small towns; China’s small towns economy is still in the stage of driving by the secondary industry, and its role has been enhanced with the development of small towns, so we must pay attention to the development of the secondary industry of small towns;The significance of the stability of employment has heightened with the economic development of small towns, so the tertiary industry must be actively emphasized to expand and stabilize the employment in small towns.