The Impact Of City-county Merger On Industrial Structure Upgrading

In 1982,the No.51 document of the Central Committee put forward the requirement of reforming the regional system and implementing the system of city leading county.In 1983,the system of "city governing county" was implemented nationwide.In 2009,the financial reform opinions pointed out that the financial system reform of counties directly under the provincial government should be stopped.In 2014,the national new urbanization plan（2014-2020）was officially released,emphasizing the positive and stable promotion of urbanization and striving to improve the quality of urbanization.In October 18,2017,General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in the nineteen report of the Communist Party of China that the city group should be the main body to build a harmonious city with large and medium-sized cities and small towns.By giving full play to the important role of urban agglomeration in optimizing the spatial layout and gathering production factors,to promote the quality,efficiency and power changes of regional economic development,The City-county Merger is a kind of administrative division adjustment to promote regional economic development.From 1982 to 2018,the number of counties decreased from 1998 to 1335,and the number of municipal districts increased from 527 to 970 Therefore,it is of great practical significance to study the removal of counties into districts for the upgrading of industrial structure.Based on the relevant data of 284 prefecture level cities in China from 2005 to2018,this paper focuses on the process of upgrading industrial structure from low level to high level,including the gradual evolution of industrial structure from the primary industry to the secondary industry and the dominant position of the tertiary industry At present,the industrial structure from labor-intensive to knowledge intensive,from low value-added to high value-added,from low processing to high processing industries in the direction of sequential evolution)and rationalization（the dynamic process of the continuous strengthening of the coordination ability and the continuous improvement of the correlation level between industries）two aspects to study the impact of the withdrawal of counties and districts on the upgrading of industrial structure.Firstly,based on the relevant theories and the existing literature,this paper makes a qualitative research,analyzes the impact of county removal and district setting on the two indicators of industrial structure upgrading,namely,upgrading and rationalization,and puts forward three hypotheses: Hypothesis 1:County removal and district setting can promote the local industry to evolve from the first industry to the second and third industry,and improve the industrial structure by optimizing the proportion of the three industries The second hypothesis is that the removal of counties and districts promotes the upgrading of industrial structure at the quality level;the third hypothesis is that the removal of counties and districts has an uncertain impact on the rationalization of industrial structure.Then,the paper uses the propensity score matching and double difference method to test the impact of withdrawing counties into districts on the upgrading of industrial structure.Thus,the paper empirically tests the impact of the withdrawal of counties into districts on each index element of industrial structure upgrading,and makes a robustness test.Finally,the paper analyzes the impact mechanism of the withdrawal of counties into districts on the upgrading of industrial structure.Through the research of this paper,it is found that the policy of City-county merger does not promote the upgrading of industrial structure in the short term,but has a significant inhibitory effect.The results also show that it will take four years for the promotion of industrial structure upgrading to come out.Secondly,the removal of City-county merger failed to promote the rationalization of industrial structure.In the short term,the City-county merger has not played a significant role in promoting the balanced and coordinated development of the three industries.However,according to the results of the study,it will take four years for the county to be divided into districts to play a significant role in the rationalization of industrial structure.It can be concluded that the policy does not promote the upgrading of industrial structure,and it needs four years or even longer to play a promoting role.