Research Of County Economy Disparity In The Shan Xi-gan Su-ning Xia Economic Region

Regional economic difference has always been a common problem in the process of economic development in all countries. It is also a key issue in the regional economics research. ShanXi-GanSu-NingXia Economic Region, which is mainly made up of the the original old revolutionary base areas which has an important historical position in the history of Chinese modern revolution, geograohically across the ShanXi, GanSu and NingXia province. Most of the economic region is located in the loess plateau, and is the national important energy base which is abundant in energy and mineral resources. Since the 1990’s, as a result of the large-scale development of energy and mineral resources in the Longdong and northen ShanXi,the development gap among counties began to widen.In order to speed up the revitalization of this area, the central government put forward the construction of “ShanXi-GanSu-NingXia Economic Region” in the new round of west development. The national development and reform commission has complied the <Plan of revitalizing the ShanXi-GanSu-NingXia old revolutionary base areas> in the early 2012, which is China’s first revitalizing plan dedicated to old revolutionary base areasOn the basis of summarizing the research achievements about regional economic inequality at home and abroad, this thesis divide the ShanXi-GanSu-NingXia Economic Region into three regions, that is ShanXi, GanSu and NingXia province, in accordance with their administrative attribution. Analyzing the change of county economic disparities using the Gini coefficient and the Theil index, the results show that, the county economy disparity in ShanXi-GanSu-NingXia Economic Region expands from 2000 to 2011. From the aspect of industrial structure, the second industry accounts for the most part of county economy disparity. From the aspect of space structure,county economy disparity is mainly caused by the disparity within the province,while the contribution of provincial disparities is growing. Also, by means of exploratory spatial data analysis(ESDA), the spatial disparities at the county level in ShanXi-GanSu-NingXia Economic Region were investigated by analyzing the per GDP data during 2000~2012, using ArcGIS and GeoDA software. Empirical resultsshowed that the overall spatial disparities of regional economy in the county level of ShanXi-GanSu-NingXia Economic Region had been greatly increased from 2000.There are significant positive spatial correlation among the county economy, reflected in the relatively highly( lowly) developed counties tended to be located near other highly( lowly) developed counties. At the same time, there are obvious spatial heterogeneity, which is to say the Shanbei district with higher economic development level and the less developed region of GanSu and NingXia province, respectively,concentrated in the spatial distribution, and furthermore, this feature became more and more prominent since 2000.In addition, this paper carried on the qualitative analysis on the factors that affecting the county economy disparity such as the geographical conditions, resource enrichness, and the policy. Finally, several suggestions are put forward.