Urban-Rural Coordinating Development

With more than 30 years'development under reform and open-door policy, China's economic strength has grown rapidly. However, urban and rural developments are exposed to serious imbalance. The fact of weak agricultural basis, lagging rural development, low income of farmers and insufficient rural demand hinders the development of national economy and society as a whole. The 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2002 pointed out that solving problems related to farmers, agriculture and rural areas should coordinate the urban and rural areas in the economic and social development. As a result, the urban-rural coordinating development begins throughout China. In 2003, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed scientific development perspective. As a result, the developing strategy has turned from prioritizing development to coordinating development, among which urban-rural coordinating development is put in the first place. In the seven years from 2004 to 2010, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council released seven "No.1 Documents" continuously, guiding the development of agriculture and rural areas. A series of policies to strengthen agriculture and benefit farmers was implemented, and the development of agriculture and rural areas appears flourishing prospects.It has been ten years after the policy of coordinating the economic and social development of urban and rural areas was released in 2002, which is an important strategy based on experiences and lessons of dealing with urban-rural relationships ever since the foundation of New China, especially after the reform and open-door policy was implemented. What is urban-rural coordination? How to comprehend its connotation and basic contents? What measures has the government been taking? What are the results? How to evaluate the results of coordinating urban and rural areas? What happens in the City of Dalian where we live? With all these questions, the author has decided to choose the topic of urban-rural coordinating development, taking Dalian as an example.There are a lot of researches on urban-rural coordination. Many literatures on relations between urban and rural areas in foreign countries, especially in developed countries, have revealed the thoughts of coordinating urban and rural areas although they do not employ the phrase "urban-rural coordination". Marx's thoughts on "urban-rural coordination" are ample. Relative domestic researches grow abundant with innovative research methods. In the first few years after urban-rural coordinating strategy was developed, domestic research focused on the in-coordinate relation between urban and rural areas. Scholars studied the background, significance, connotation, determination factors, methods, thoughts and so on. In recent years, some scholars have begun establishing relative evaluating systems and conducting empirical analysis on the coordinating extent with regard to regional status. Other scholars have researched on experiences and reference significance as well as enlightenments of the urban-rural coordination in foreign countries including both developed and developing countries. In summary, domestic research on urban-rural coordinating developments is rich in quantity but barren in theoretical contributions. There are not enough researches combining industrialization, marketization, urbanization and internalization. So are researches on the periodicity and the relationship among different stages and different objectives. It is common that theories and policies, thoughts and countermeasures have litter to do with practice.Urban-rural coordinating development is an innovative and experimental probe in China. The existing theory is not systematic or mature, requiring new research. Under this background, researches on the achievements of urban-rural coordination and adjustments in reference to the practice are beneficial to the understanding of urban-rural coordinating development and the perfection of the existing urban-rural coordinating development, which will give better guidance to the practice.Based on carding theories and practices of urban-rural coordination, the dissertation establishes a relatively reasonable evaluation index system to evaluate urban-rural coordination, assessing the urban-rural coordinating extent. Combining the practice of urban-rural coordinating development in Dalian City, it analyzes the problems and comes up with thoughts and countermeasures to solve problems. This is also the basic research thought of the dissertation. The dissertation follows the thought of why (research background), what (urban-rural coordination theory), how (practice and evaluation) and how to do (countermeasures and suggestions).The dissertation is divided into six parts. The first part is introduction, illustrating the research background, significance, content and structure, research methods, thoughts as well as the innovations and drawbacks of the dissertation. The second part deals with theories and practices of urban-rural coordination. Based on the existing research, it clarifies the basic theories of urban-rural coordination, including the connotation, objectives, requirements of urban-rural coordination as well as its relationships to other relative concepts. It systematically combs and summarizes the researches on and practices of urban-rural coordination. The former is concerned with the literature review, and the latter reviews the practices of foreign countries, including developed and developing countries as well as the seven "No.1 Documents" and major practices in China. Part Three establishes the evaluation index system of urban-rural coordinating development. Based on the primary selection and optimization of the existing index systems, the dissertation establishes two evaluation index systems according to the connotation and extension. The two systems are idealized and operable separately. Part Four deals with the evaluation method of urban-rural coordination. It firstly introduces several methods to determine the index weight, mainly subjective determination of the weight of indexes and objective determination of the weight of indexes, and make a comparison between them. It then introduces two weight-giving methods of urban-rural coordination indexes, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and principal component analysis (PCA), and combines them together to get a new weight-determining evaluation model which is the optimal combination empowerment model. The optimal combination empowerment model is used to determine the weight of urban-rural coordinating evaluation indexes. Finally, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is employed to analyze and evaluate urban-rural coordination. Part Five measures the extent of urban-rural coordinating development in the city of Dalian. Employing the evaluation index system and weight established in the last two parts, in reference to the dada of Dalian from 2000 to 2010, the author has calculated the urban-rural coordinating extent in Dalian and come to the conclusion that the extent of Dalian's urban-rural coordinating development is improving and the gap between urban and rural areas is narrowing, which is consistent to the objective of Dalian to urbanize the whole city. Part Six analyzes and evaluates the extent of Dalian's urban-rural coordinating development. It firstly summarizes characteristics of Dalian's urban-rural coordination from the perspective of practice. In reference to the data in Part Five, it analyzes the development of Dalian's urban-rural coordination from 2000 to 2010 and points out reasons and problems. Countermeasures and suggestions are raised aiming at the problems found in practice.The innovation of the dissertation lies in three main aspects. First, it establishes two index systems to evaluate urban-rural coordination:idealized and operable urban-rural coordination evaluation index systems. Second, it conducts empirical analysis on Dalian's urban-rural coordination based on first-hand dada. It calculates the dada reflecting Dalian's urban-rural coordination extent based on the dada of society, economy, life and environment in urban and rural areas in Dalian. Third, it determines the weight of evaluation index using optimal combination empowerment model which combines subjective and objective determinations of the weight of indexes. The weights of two indexes are calculated employing AHP and PCA separately, and then combine them into the final weight using optimal combination empowerment model and taking minimum bias squares as the target function. The final weight reflects not only the importance of index themselves, but also the actual observation value when indexes are used in targets under evaluation, which improves the accuracy of evaluation. At last, urban-rural coordination is evaluated in reference to fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model.The dissertation studies urban-rural coordination in a specific city, mainly from the aspects of macro and comprehensive perspectives. The evaluation of coordination extent is the most important part of the dissertation, based on which problems and countermeasures are analyzed.