Research On City System Structure And Regional Economic Development

Since the reform and opening policy, the urbanization in China has achieved great progress. The urbanization rate has been increase for18.57%in1978to51.78%in2012, and economic activity centralize from rural areas to cities and towns. Agglomeration externalities quickly promote the labor productivity and production efficiency. Urbanization and Industrialization jointly promote the rapid growth of China economy.China urbanization rate exceeds50%in2010, which means that China has entered the stage of fast urbanization. In future, the process of China urbanization should not only pay attention to urbanization rate, but also take overall planning of urbanization in order to form a city system structure which is in line with economic laws.Since the reform and opening policy, the urbanization in China has achieved great progress. The urbanization rate has been increase for18.57%in1978to51.78%in2012, and economic activity centralize from rural areas to cities and towns. Agglomeration externalities quickly promote the labor productivity and production efficiency. Urbanization and Industrialization jointly promote the rapid growth of China economy.According to the relative research, the infrastructure investment and industry investment of city will lead to industrial agglomeration and population agglomeration, and the spatial distribution differences of population agglomeration shape the city system structure. The mechanism of city system structure on regional economic development includes the saving of economic infrastructure, information spillover and knowledge agglomeration. This article focuses on the research of the relationship of city system structure and regional economic development.Through constructing the index system of city system structure, this article develops the research of the changes of China city system structure from city concentration ratio, city primacy, city concentration and city structure inequality. Based on the data of the city resident population in China main provinces between2005to2011, this article finds that, the ratio of the number of city that city primacy increases to the number of research samples is61%, while the concentration is87%, and the GINI Index is87%, and the Theil index is78%. In general, most China provinces’city primacy increases between2005and2011, and the city system structure become more concentrate.Based on the regional economic development model and the China macro-economy data between2005and2011, this article develop and empirical examination between regional city system structure and regional economic development. Through constructing panel econometric model and using fix-effect and random-effect estimation, results show that, city population concentration ration has a significantly positive effect on the region GDP, and city primacy measured by the ratio of the biggest city population to the regional total population has a significantly positive effect on the GDP, the labor productivity and the GPD per capita, and city concentration measured by Herfindahl-Hirschman Index has a significantly positive effect on the GDP and the GPD per capita, and the GINI Index together with Theil Index has a significantly positive effect on the GDP, the labor productivity and the GPD per capita. In general, China city population concentration will promote the regional economic development.The development of China city system structure should conform to the economic laws that city population concentration will not depress the regional economic development, while city population concentration will promote the regional economic development on contrary. At present, China is in the developing stage, in order to promote regional development, we have to make rational use of the resources, and increase the efficiency of resources and labor productivity by externality of scale and agglomeration. In this stage, we should firmly grasp the core leading role of big cities, and encourage the development of big city and the concentration of population to big city under tolerance range of resources and environment. In the aspect of institutional arrangements, we should make a balance between urban and rural development, support infrastructure construction and push the process of the equalization of public services to implement the people-oriented urbanization and keep the increase of city population concentration and promote the sustainable development of regional economy.