The Effect Of The Opening On The Economic Growth Of China’s Border Areas

Improving the opening degree of border areas is an important part ofour country’s opening strategy. The eastern coastal areas take themarkets as the leading factor, through the development of foreign tradeand the introduction of foreign capital; establish a manufacturing centerin the local world factories. Different from the eastern coastal pattern,the opening of the border areas depend more on the sub-regionalcooperation by participating in the surrounding countries and promotingthe economic integration of the surrounding areas, and then improve itsopening level. In the process of the cross-border sub-regional economiccooperation, it is an important realistic problem which is related to thecoordinated development of regional economy, border security, socialstability and national unity that how to promote industrial agglomeration,foster economic growth pole, and then leading to less developed inlandborder region economic development.In this thesis, the border area refers to the border provinces (areas)with neighboring areas, namely Jilin, Heilongjiang, Liaoning, InnerMongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan, Guangxi and Gansu; the opening-upmainly refers to opening to the outside world economically. This thesis,based on the relevant theories of the opening to the outside world andeconomic growth, deeply analyzes the present situation of China’s openingup to the border area, comparatively studies the opening up level, theeconomic growth and the regional difference at the national and regionallevel, empirically analyzes the nine border provinces and200cities fromthe provincial level and city level respectively, then fully explainsthe influence of opening up to the economic growth through the differentparts of the unit.First, from analyzing the four dimensions, namely import and exporttrade, foreign trade dependence, foreign direct investment scale, foreigncapital dependence, this thesis concludes that the foreign trade of theChina’s border areas rises overall, but the level of opening generallylower than the national average level. Second, from analyzing the indexsuch as real GDP and its growth rate, fixed asset investment, this thesisconcludes that the economic development level of China’s border areashas improved, but still trails behind to the national average. Not onlythat, the economic development level differs between the different borderprovinces. Third, though the regression analysis of the borderprovinces’ panel data, the author believes that it is lack of relevancebetween foreign direct investment and economic growth of border areas, which means that the impact that the foreign direct investment influencesthe China’s border areas’ economic growth is very small, while the impactof the foreign trade is larger. Fourth, through the empirical analysison the panel data from200cities border area, the author concludes thatopening-up has a great influence on the border area economic growth, thewhole society fixed assets investment promotes the economic growthremarkably, the labor costs pushes economic growth of border areas forwardweakly, and the geographical location of the border areas is not conduciveto economic growth.