Specialization, Diversification And Chinese Urban Economic Growth

Urban economic long-run growth is characterized by growth of products and labor services and continuous evolution of industrial structure. Since reform and open-up, Chinese urban economies have kept rapid growth for years, accompanied by acceleration of urbanization process, increase of the number of cities and emergency of large-scale cities. However, Chinese urban economic construction generally exists "big and complete" and "small and complete" industrial layout, as well as subsequent blind pursuit of specialization. So whether the local government’s urban development practice is in line with the law of urban development? Whether it really promotes the growth of China’s urban economies? In addition, in recent years, China’s economy has faced increasingly prominent pressures of slowing growth and structure transition. How to adjust and optimize urban industrial structure according to the laws of economics and urban economic construction practice is of great significance to achieve Chinese long-run, stable and healthy development.First of all, based on industrial agglomeration theory and externality theory, we comb and summarize home and abroad relevant research results, aiming to explore the factors influencing specialization and diversification and the relationship between specialization, diversification and urban economic growth. And then we use the statistical data between 2003 and 2013 of 285 Chinese prefecture-level and above cities, to estimate their levels of specialization and diversification and analyze the characteristics and trends of their levels of specialization and diversification. Next we construct an econometric model to analyze the relationship between specialization, diversification and Chinese urban economic growth from the perspective of city size, and analyze the pros and cons of specialization and diversification of cities with different sizes according to the regression results. Finally, based on the results of empirical analysis we provide some policy suggestions on how to adjust and optimize the urban industrial structure according to their own actualities to achieve coordinated development between cities.