The Study On Urban Competitiveness Trends Of Yangtze River Delta

The current globalization which sets national matches more focused on their cities'and regional competitions, makes city more and more the focus of economic and social development. To a certain extent, cities'development determines Chinese economy's level. The issues relating to enhancing cities'competiveness attracts more attention from policymaker in government and experts from the academic community, and have to be dealt with properly and wisely. The Yangtze River Delta, with its prosperous economy and dense urban area, holds a important status in China. Facing domestic challenges from other regional economies, the Yangtze River Delta will be involved with more and more competitive pressures. Under the new situation, the research on competiveness of Yangtze River Delta cities is of great significance as to promoting intra-regional and inter-city complementary, optimalising allocation of resources and enhancing the overall regional economy in the range of all the China or even the world.Based largely on new economic geography theory, this paper establishes a city's competitiveness evaluation index system and model in line with China's national conditions. This evaluation index system adopts a General Principal Component Analysis in order to dynamically detect the trend of the 16 cities'competitiveness in Yangtze Delta. This dynamic measurement from 2001 to 2007 reveals the characteristics of different types of cities, describe the dynamic changes of city competitiveness and brings to light the underlying factors of this variation. To compare the 16 cities into the context of the times is able to evaluate efficiency of each city's economic development strategy, and their respective strengths and weaknesses, which helps with tracing evolutionary trajectory and giving constructive suggestion in order to contribute theoretical guidance and practical measures for upgrading of the overall competitiveness of the Yangtze River Delta. In this paper, we suggest: Shanghai whose position as the Chinese financial and transportation center is stable, possesses both strong agglomeration forces and dispersion forces. It is the best for Shanghai to engage in cooperation with others cities in Yangtze Delta, and highlight their role in industrial radiation. Considering the gap of its agglomeration forces between that of Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou can nurture the local dominant industries so as for the formation of industrial clusters to enhance their respective competitiveness. Through relying on emerging industries with the establishment of backward linkage, Suzhou, Ningbo and Wuxi would benefit from industrial gathering. In the absence of regional location advantages, other cities in Yangtze Delta (including Changzhou, Nantong, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang, Tai4zhou, Shaoxing, Huzhou, Zhoushan and Tai zhou) could compete only with the Price Index Effect of Agglomeration out of its fast urbanization and its focus on further industrial subdivision.