Measurement And Inter-provincial Differences Of Economic Development In West China

Since the implementing of Reform and Opening policy in China, China’s economicscale has been rising and it became the second largest economic entity in the world in2010.But at the same time, economic development problems such as the unbalanced socialstructure, low quality of people’s life and environmental pollution are still outstanding.Regional development gap is also widening. The “the12th five-year-plan scheme” putforward to accelerate the transformation of the mode of economic development as the mainline. Therefore, study on economic development level and its regional differences have strongrealistic pertinence. The western region of China has always been the low economic levelarea. Since the implementation of the western development strategy, the proportion ofwestern region’s economic aggregate in China has kept on rising, the speed of economicgrowth is also higher than that of China. But the development situation of social, life andenvironment is not so satisfying. Therefore, this paper chose the western region of China asresearch object. It has positive significance to promote the development of theunder-developed area and narrow regional differences during the process of our country’seconomic development.Based on the definition of economic development, this paper divided it into foursubsystems: economic, society, life and environment. Then36indicators were chosen tomeasure different development factors. Based on these, this paper emphasized on the analysisof western region’s economic development level and provincial differences. Firstly, using themethod of factor analysis, the western region’s economic development level was estimated.Then the paper analyzed change trend and subsystems’ development impact on the wholeeconomic development level. Secondly, using the variation coefficient and Theil index,western region’s economic development differences were estimated. And the influencedegrees of four subsystems’ provincial differences were analyzed using decomposion of thecoefficient of variation, the spatial distribution of western region’s economic developmentdifferences were analyzed by calculating the average values and relative change rates. Thirdly,the paper analyzed western region’s economic growth level and its difference, then contrast itwith those of economic development. Finally, put forward some countermeasures onimproving western region’s economic development level and narrow provincial development differences to each province. The results show that:1) From2000to2010, the western region’s economic development level and economic,society and life subsystem’s development level has been continuously improved. Theimportance of the economic system has been raised, but the importances of the society andlife have fallen. The environment system has negative influence to economic development.Provinces’ change trend of economic development level is similar with that of westernregion, which has been rising since2000. But Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet,Shaanxi, Ningxia and Guangxi’s environment level has been falling. In addition, subsystems’influences are quite different among different province’s economic development,.2) Since2000, western region’s provincial difference has been narrowing. The social andeconomic differences are narrowed the fastest, the whole difference and the life difference arenarrowed the second fastest, the environment difference is narrowed the slowest.3) After the decomposition of the influence degrees of four subsystems’ provincialdifferences, the result show that economic and social differences are the most two importantfactors. The contribution of life difference is comparative smaller and that of environmentdifference is even tinier, but these two differences are continuously increasing, so theyshouldn’t be ignored.The analysis of the spatial distribution of western region’s economic developmentdifferences shows that the absolute difference is mainly affected by high level provinces suchas Chongqing and Neimenggu and low development level provinces such as Guizhou,Yunnan and Tibet. Furthermore, relative difference is mainly affected by low developmentlevel provinces. In addition, the impacts on four subsystems’ differences are not identical.4) The western region’s per capita GDP level has always been below the nationalaverage level. But after2001, its economic level is more and more close to the nationalaverage level and its growth speed becomes higher than the national average level. Before2005, the western region’s GDP difference was narrowing whereas per capita GDP differencewas widening; after2006, these two are both widening in different degrees. Furthermore, thewidening of per capita GDP absolute difference is mainly affected by high level provinces,but the relative difference is simultaneously affected by high level and low level provinces.5) The western region’s economic growth and economic development is different inchange trend, province sequencing, change speed and relative difference.