The Research On Chinese Interprovincial Relationship Between Natural Resource Abundance And Economic Growth

For a long time, economic growth in China has regional differences. Although Shanxi, Heilongjiang and other midwest provinces are rich in natural resource, their economic growth is relatively slow. While Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian and other eastern provinces lack of natural resources, their economic growth ranks top in China. The panel data used in this paper includes natural resources and economic growth in China during 1995 to 2008. Through introducing factors such as manufacturing investment, human capital investment and institutional quality, this article tries to figure out how the abundance of natural resources influnces on economic growth and the acting mechanism between them. This paper establishes an econometric model based on analyzing the "the curse of resource" theory. The results show that it is negative correlation between natural resource endowment and economic growth. "The curse of resource" exists among the provinces in China. At the same time, with the the addition of manufacturing investment, human capital investment and institutional quality into the model, the impact of natural resource endowment on economic growth gradually weakened. This indicates that richness of natural resources brings in crowding-out effect on manufacturing investment, human capital investment and institutional quality. Natural resource endowment has an indirect effect on economic growth throuth weakening manufacturing investment, human capital investment and institutional quality. Finally, in order to eliminate "the curse of resource", this paper comes up with three specific policy recommendations: institutional quality optimization, human capital accumulation and industrial structure optimization.