Analysis Of Regional Disparity Of Marine Economy In China

Marine economy occupies an increasingly important strategic position in the national economy and social development, as some problems, e.g. shortage of land resources, environmental degradation, are becoming more and more serious. For the great potential of marine resources, China's marine economy has been maintaining rapid growth, but on the other hand, regional disparities in marine economy are also very important problems we have to face. Regional economic disparities, which has been one of the core issues in regional economics research, is also a universal problem that all countries have to face as economic developing. What is more, as an important component of land economic system, the marine economy disparities should also be paid more attention. Thus, it has great significance to study the evolution laws and reasons of marine economy's regional disparities .In this text, based on the analysis of marine economy's regional disparities theory, research status and measure methods, using Theil Index and the Gini coefficient, we explain the overall disparities of China's marine economy in 1996-2005 and its dynamic evolution features of the main industrial structure, and make a decomposition of them. For the research, we choose the datas of 11 coastal provinces or municipalities as the basic unit of space, and per capita output value of marine industries as variable indicators to measure the disparities in regional marine economy. Then we make dynamic and static analysis on these provinces'marine economy, in order to study the differences of their bases for development, industrial structure and growth rate. We also evaluate every province's comprehensive development of marine economy strength, using principal component analysis. Finally, according to the above, we explore the causes and mechanism of marine economy's spatial disparities, and propose some measures to alleviate China's regional disparities in marine economy.Generally, we focus on three aspects as follows:(1) The growing trend of the absolute disparities of regional marine economy in 1996-2005. In the late 1990s, the relative disparities decreased sharply, while in the early 21 century it increases gradually, with some fluctuations appearing in several years. The overall relative disparities of China's marine economy are mainly caused by the intra-regional disparities, especially that of the central region. What is more, some other factors also have some effects on marine economy, such as the strength of the growth-pole effect, some political and economical surroundings as well as sudden affairs.(2)The research on the spatial structure changes of China's major marine industries, and some conclusions are shown as follows:Horizontal analysis: the agglomeration level of special resources are the highest, while that of general resources and coastal tourism are the lowest, between which are the sea salt industry, marine transportation, shipbuilding industry, and so on. Industries which can be entered easily develop very fast, because marine explorations are primarily to make use of natural resources, while the second marine industry is still in an initial stage.Longitudinal Analysis: marine oil, gas and coastal sand mining changes relatively gentle in view of Gini coefficient, with a little increase from 1996 to 2002, while a little decrease from 2003 to 2005. For the other industries, each has several fluctuations to some different extents. It also shows that inflection points are consistent with the figure of marine economic disparities. We also can see that the differences of regional distribution are larger for some major marine industries.(3) Research on marine economy disparities in different provinces through both static and dynamic methods: we can also give some conclusions by these methods, the relative underdevelopment coastal provinces are also areas where marine resources are poor, while the relatively backwardness of industrial base is also an important reason for the unbalanced development of marine economy. The spatial distribution of regional marine economy presents a notable polarization trend, that is, the better basis and higher growth areas with Shanghai, Tianjin, Zhejiang, and Guangdong as the representative and weaker basis and lower growth areas with Guangxi and Hebei as the representative, between which the disparities are becoming larger and larger. For different provinces and regions, they are at different evolution stages of industrial structures, the second marine industrial development generally lags behind. So we present a comprehensive evaluation of inter-provincial marine economy as follows: Shanghai, Guangdong and Shandong are developed areas in marine economy, Jiangsu, Hainan, Hebei and Guangxi are relatively less-developed regions in marine economy, while Zhejiang, Fujian, Tianjin and Liaoning are in the middle.(4) For the regional disparities of marine economy, the mainly reasons are the differences in historical basis, the level of economic development, resource endowment, regional development policies, foreign investment orientation and the leading role of central cities, and spatial agglomeration is the dynamic mechanism. So, in order to alleviate the disparities of marine economy between China's coastal regions, we should optimize the industrial structure, perform the strategy of science and technology, establish multi-channel financing, actively promote the unifications of maritime and terrestrial economy, speed up urbanization of coastal areas .