Does China Exist Resource Curse: The Impact Of Natural Resource Endowment On Import And Export, Industrial Structure And Urbanization Rate

Natural endowment of resources is material basis for a country’s economic development. Heckscher Ohlin’s factor endowment theory insists that the abundance of factor endowments determines the different prices of the factors, which results in international trade. In order to make profit in international trade, each country should specially produce goods which intensive use their abundant factors. David Ricardo’s comparative advantage theory also insists that each country should produce goods with own advantages so as to win the absolute and comparative advantages in international trade. The abundant degree of natural resources determines the advantage of a country’s products. In the development of economy, a country firstly focuses on the resource endowment conditions, giving priority to the development of related industries so as to accumulate advantages and then develop other industries. Therefore resource endowment, the foundation of a country’s economic development, has far-reaching influence on the economic development in all aspects.Natural endowment of resources, namely, the abundant degree of natural resources, is a necessary material supply for economic development. Area with abundant natural resources will give priority to the development of related industries; while area with less natural resources will use other resources to cover the shortage, which forms different industrial structures in regions. Therefore, whether the resource endowment is abundant or not determines product structure and industrial structure of this area, at the same time, it also influences other aspects, such as: import and export of regional economy, the urbanization process etc.But the natural endowment of resources is a double-edged sword for economic development. Resources can promote economic development vigorously. However, to a certain stage, resources will hold back economic development. The speed of economic development in areas with abundant natural resources is less than that in areas with poor natural resources, and this phenomenon is called "resource curse". Chinese economy has obtained the considerable development since the reform and opening up which carried out thirty years ago. However, has "Curse" appeared in China’s economic growth? Domestic scholars have done a lot of researches, many scholars believed that to a great extent China’s economy had the “resource curse”; at the same time, others demonstrated that China did not have a "resource curse". Public opinions are divergent about “resource curse", but what most scholars discuss is the influence on economic growth rate, but not specific aspects of the economy. Therefore, this paper tries to study the following question: Does resource endowment promote or hinder economic micro specific aspects, such as import and export, industrial structure, urbanization etc. Only in a comprehensive discussion of influence of natural endowment of resources on these aspects, can we have a full understanding of the multiple influences of natural resources on economic development.To sum up, based on “the resource curse” theory, this paper explore the effects of resource endowment on several typical aspects of Chinese economy, which include: import and export, industry structure, the level of urbanization. Besides, in order to clarify the location influence, the author divides whole country into the eastern, central and western regions to make a comparison. Through the empirical study of 25 provinces in China, the analysis shows that there exists a positive relationship between the natural endowment of resources and regional import and export. The improvement of exploitation degree of natural resource endowment can promote the increase of import and export, but in eastern regions it hinders. Analyzing industrial structure, empirical result shows that the improvement of natural resource abundance hinders the optimization of industrial structure. Therefore there exists a negative relationship between natural endowment of resources and industrial structure, but a positive relation in the central region. In this paper, the author also analyzes the relationship between natural endowment of resource and urbanization. It shows that the improvement of natural endowment of resource promotes the increase of urbanization rate, and there is a positive correlation between two variables.