Research On China's Regional Income Disparity In The Transitional Period

China's transformation from planned economy to market economy greatly promoted the social and economic development. Comprehensive national power has been continually strengthened and overall living standards have been greatly improved. However, at the same time, the residents'income disparities have been enlarged, of which the regional income disparity becomes a particular concern. The existence of appropriate regional income disparity has its inevitability and necessity, whereas excessive regional income disparity is not conductive to the coordinated development of regional economy, and affects the security and stability of society, which will become an obstacle to socio-economic development. Therefore, the analysis of regional income disparity during the transitional period has important practical significance to the successful transformation of China's economy and harmonious development of society.This paper focuses on the residents'income disparities among Eastern Region, Central Region, Western Region and Northeast Region, based on the structure of "Problem-posing to Problem-analyzing to Problem-solving", which can be categorized into three parts:The first part is the change progress of China's regional income disparity, in order to find out the tendency and main problems; The second part is the major factors influencing China's regional income disparity, which provides a basis for reducing the disparity; The third part is the policies and suggestions of regulation about regional income disparity so as to realize the coordinated development of China's economy.This paper analyzes regional income disparity through the method of time series analysis and cross-section analysis on the basis of the data from 1978 to 2008 announced by National Bureau of Statistics of China, which finds out that the income disparities among Eastern Region, Central Region, Western Region and Northeast Region have been gradually enlarged. No matter it is overall regional residents'income, urban regional residents'income, or rural regional residents'income, Eastern region is on the top and Western region is ranked in the end. Rural regional residents'income disparity is more than that in urban areas during the same period.Qualitative analysis shows that national policy and strategic orientation, foreign trade scale, geographical environment, social security level, transfer payment effect have important impacts on China's regional income disparity. By robust regression, this paper finds that the level of economic development, foreign direct investment and scale of higher education are also the primary factors that lead to regional income disparity. Furthermore, these factors are interlinked rather than isolated, together leading to the regional income disparity.This paper put forwards the policies and suggestions in order to regulate China's regional income disparity from both the macro-perspective and micro-perspective. The part of macro-perspective concentrates on the formation of regional coordination and interaction mechanism, the planning of regional core growth poles, the speeding of development process in rural areas, the development of public education and the optimization of government transfer payments structure. The part of micro-perspective proposes the suggestions about Eastern Region, Central Region, Western Region and Northeast Region respectively in order to promote the healthy and sustainable development of national economy via the regulation of China's regional income disparities.