| Unequal regional development in the mainland China has long been an interesting topic and fundamental difference of opinion persists in the academic society. Since the beginning of the 1990s,a widening regional gap in social-economic conditions among province and especially between coastal and noncoastal regions has raised great public concern and become an emotional topic of Chinese society. Aimed at providing some new insights from a regional convergence perspective,this work analyze the issue based on recently developed methods of exploratory spatial data analysis.This thesis is organized as follows: In chapter 1 "Introduction", the background of Chinese regional disparities is provided and conventional theories and methodologies used in examining the Chinese regional development are examined. In chapter 2,data and methods used in this study are discussed. Chapter 3 is devoted to an empirical examination of the Chinese regional disparities. One of the innovation of this paper compared to those previously done studies on the same topic, is its multi-scale approach. This study adopts a bottom-up aggregation of spatial data, beginning with the administration unit of county, via those of prefecture and province, and ending by that of region, form county to prefecture to province to region. Another innovative contribution is the empirical strategy of decomposing the measured inequality index the study used. First, the regional inequality measure ofTheil index is constructed based on a hierarchical structure of three-level measurement, that is, either through the region-province-prefecture approach or via the region-province-county approach; then, the calculated Theil regional inequality index is further decomposed into the inter-regional and intra-regional sub-indices. Next, the same approach of a three-level hierarchical structure of inequality measure is applied to the construction of Gini index, but this time, in addition to the decomposition of inter-and intra regional sub-indices,the Gini index is further decomposed according to the composition of different social-economic groups in the Chinese society.Some interesting findings revealed in this study worth further discussion. The most important contribution of recent Chinese regional disparities has been identified with the Theil sub-index of intra-provincial inequalities, which is far more significant than the inter-province and inter-region inequalities components, thus has been recognized as the first and foremost important contributor of recent Chinese regional disparities. Thisfinding is contradictory to the conventional wisdom found in the existing literature. Another important finding is the trend of spatial of spatial agglomeration of industrial production based on the decomposition of the Gini coefficient.Chapter 4 is an exploratory spatial data analysis of Chinese provincial per capita GDP over the sample period of 1978-2001. It revealed strong evidence of spatial autocorrelation as well as significant patterns of local spatial association. The detection of spatial clusters of high versus low per capita GDP distribution throughout the sample period serves an indicator of the persistence of spatial disparities over the Chinese economic landscape.Chapter 5 is for plicy issues, the main focus is given to workable suggestions in order to reduce the regional disparities. This includes establishment of a nation-wide, unified free market and accessible physical infrastructure. In chapter 6, the paper ends with a research summary and concluding comments. |
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