Urbanization,Agglomeration And Regional Coordination Of China

The coordinated development of regional economies is the important content of "Ninth Five-Year" Outline, "Tenth Five-Year" outline and "Eleventh Five-Year" Outline of China. The coordinated development of regional economies is the prerequisite and basis for China to realize sustainable and efficient development. Although the standardized definition and criteria of the coordinated development of regional economic has not been achieved yet in academic circle, speeding up the development of backward regions and narrowing the gap between regions will be helpful to realize the coordinated development. The mutually facilitated relationships between agglomeration and economic growth have been widely confirmed in theory. However, about the role of coordination in economic development and how to achieve coordination, people do not reach a consensus yet. Cities are the product of agglomeration economies, and the contribution of urbanization.to economic growth comes from the spillover effect of agglomeration economies. The degree of urbanization reflects the level of economic growth, and consequently the differences of urbanization level between regions reflect the differences of regional economic development. In China, the study about urbanization just began after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee. At that time, the most studies only focused on the relationship between urbanization and industrialization and this is far from to resolve the existing problems. The Central Government has repeatedly called to speed up the development of urbanization and taken the urbanization as the key solution to resolve the "Agriculture, Countryside and Farmer" issue and to realize regional coordinated development. However, there are no very clear explanations about how to enhance the urbanization. This paper tries to elucidate the necessity of coordinated development in theory and find effective resolutions to realize coordinated development by exploring the inherent relationship of urbanization, agglomeration growth and coordinated development of regional economies.This paper studied how regional differences were formed in an open system and its impact on economic growth. Based on the dynamic interaction among urbanization, agglomeration and diffusion, coordinated development of regional economies can be achieved through the special evolution mechanisms of the industrial and spatial structure, and the government's regulation. In China, the development of the Yangtze River Delta is a successful case of coordinated development of regional economies. We studied the mechanism by which the Yangtze River Delta was formed, and the conclusions were showed as following:(1) Through analyzing the inherent relationship among urban agglomeration, income gap and economic growth, it was concluded that the relationship between the growth and income gap comply with inverse "U" curve. Urban agglomeration has very significant effects on income gap, and the urban agglomeration could accelerate the economic growth of backward areas through spillover effect of capital, consequently narrowing the income gap between regions. When distance between two regions is far enough or both are in different closed system, the spillover effect of capital is negligible. Under this condition, the income gap is related to the urbanization level, and high income results from high urbanization. When cities are in an integration system that means the capital can move freely and spillover completely, there is no income gap between regions. If the urbanization levels of two regions are different, we can minimize the income gap between them through adjusting the spillover degree. Combined with China's conditions, the gap within the region could be reconciled through the mechanism of spatial integration. To achieve coordinated development between the eastern and western region, on the one hand, we should speed up the urbanization of backward regions, and enhance agglomeration functions of cities, and upgrade the industrial structure, and improve its abilities of "learning by doing" and accepting "spillover effects" from other regions. On the other hand, we should strengthen the interaction between the eastern and western regions, and promote spillover of capital to the remote and backward regions through industrial transfer and the flow of production factors.(2) This paper constructs a framework in which takes urbanization as power, agglomeration-diffusion mechanism as mechanism, the adjustment of industrial structure and spatial structure as pathway. On the one hand, urbanization is closely related to agglomeration-diffusion mechanism. Urbanization facilitates the upgrade and optimization of industrial structure, and the industrial upgrading in developed regions will inevitably lead to industrial transfer to backward regions which affects the industrial structure of backward regions. On the other hand, when urbanization develops to the advanced stage, the urban system will be changed and urban agglomeration comes up. As agglomeration center, urban agglomeration can exert its radiation effect in a larger scale. The formation of urban agglomerations network will further strengthen communication and contacts between regions. Government regulation is to ensure the smooth operation of all mechanisms, and consequently accelerate the process of coordinated development.(3) From the dynamic perspective, the urban agglomeration integration is based on the communications integration, space integration and policy integration, and its power mainly comes from the agglomeration and diffusion effects, the industrial development and regional division of labor, government coordination, technical progress and environmental improvement. The empirical study showed that the regional industrialization and regional urbanization was the prerequisite and basis for integration development. The government, FDI, science, education and environment were the important factors to affect the integration process of urban agglomeration. Spatial correlation analysis also confirmed the interaction between the neighboring cities and the trend of agglomeration. This article also summarized the integrated pattern of urban agglomeration. At the early stage of urbanization, the gap within the region was small, but the overall development level was very low. Subsequently, along with urbanization, center city grows rapidly and becomes the regional growth pole, and the overall development of region is elevated. At the same time, the internal gap was enlarged. This stage could be considered as non-equilibrium development stage. Finally, when it developed to an advanced stage, the urban and rural integration, industrial integration and spatial integration are formed.The innovation of this paper is:(1) we first constructed a model which elucidated the relationship of urban agglomeration, the income gap and economic growth, and provided the theoretical basis for the regional coordinated development. (2) This paper tried to take urbanization as a bridge to bring industry and space, two relatively independent research areas, into one analysis framework. (3) We elucidated the mechanism how urbanization facilitated the regional coordinated development and explored the new and effective pathway to realize the regional coordinated development through combining the expansion of urban agglomeration and "growth pole" theory with practical application.