Research On Economic Development Of Coastal Port Clusters In China

As a major port country,China keeps the largest port scale in the world for many years.In the process of global economic integration and regional economic development,the global ports show the trend of agglomerational development.In order to enhance the overall advantages in the global competition,the coastal ports in China have gradually formed into five major coastal port clusters,including Bohai Rim port cluster,Yangtze River Delta port cluster,Southeast coast port cluster,Pearl River Delta port cluster and Southwest coast port cluster.The port clusters can generate the environment that has complementary advantages and promotes cooperation and interaction,so as to produce huge radiation effect of agglomerational economy,which promotes the continuous expansion of the economic development from the hinterland of a port to the surrounding coastal area and inland area.The agglomerational economy drives not only the development of the port clusters,but also the national economy.However,during the rapid port development in China,some problems occurred such as the waste of resources and vicious competition among the ports in the same port cluster.Therefore,it is necessary to clarify the causes of existing problems in port clusters development,and process the empirical analysis.These results play an important role on the establishment of an efficient and orderly port cluster to exert the agglomerational economic effect.Therefore,this study firstly summarized the domestic and foreign experience on the economic development of coastal port clusters as well as the theories and research methods on the coastal port cluster economy,and discussed the current situation of the five major coastal port clusters in China,and then analyzed the main problems and causes in the development of coastal port cluster economy.Secondly,this study analyzed the international and domestic factors affecting the development of the coastal port cluster in China,as well as the effects of the development.Thirdly,based on the port throughput and other production data as well as the relevant economic data of the major ports in each coastal port cluster from 2008 to 2017,the empirical analysis was conducted on each coastal port cluster.The empirical analysis was composed of the assessment of the technical efficiency of port industry based on super efficiency DEA method,the covariance analysis of influencing factors of the technical efficiency of port industry,the analysis of the level of industrial agglomeration in port clusters using location entropy index,spatial Gini coefficient and Herfindahl index,the evaluation on the spatial economic impact among ports in the port cluster basted on the spatial econometric model using Geoda software.Finally,based on the current situation,this study predicted the economic development prospects of these coastal port clusters,provided countermeasures and suggestions for the economic development of the port clusters.The overall purpose of this study was to summarize the experiences in economic development of the coastal ports clusters,analyze the current developmental situation and problems of the coastal port clusters in China,and evaluate the economic intensive development level of the coastal port clusters using the economical theories and methods.These results are useful to determine the current situation of the development of coastal port clusters,as well,to provide important theoretical basis for the development plan in future of the coastal port cluster in China.