The Structural Convergence Of China's Manufacturing Industries

Since the 20th century Solow (1965) and Swan (1956), who represented the classical economists, created a new economic growth theory, the regional convergence of economic growth has attracted wide attention. A large number of academic achievements in both theory and empirical methods come into becomings. However, economists ignores another important aspects, namely the convergence of industrial structure. Aigenger et al (2001) studied the European economic growth in 1985-1998 and found that the economic growth depended on past changes in the structure. Then the imbalance in regional economic growth to some extent, may be caused by the differences in industrial structure and division.Regional industrial structure problems in the final analysis related to the configuration and reconfiguration of the factors in different regions and industries. Whether the regional industrial structure is reasonable had respect to the regional economic operation quality and efficiency. The relative study on the convergence of industrial structure in China's academic achievements was rare. Most scholars had give a a negative position to the structural convergence in China. They linked the structural convergence to excess capacity and the weakening of industry division. In fact, at this stage, with the economic globalization and scientific advancement, the style of industry division has changed a lot. The traditional division of labor between sectors has translated to the inter-sector division. Even though the content and level of production was different between regions, the share of the total output showed same. So the industrial structure tend to convergence. The structural convergence does not mean the weakening of inter-regional division of labor.Therefore, we will study the structural convergence from a new perspective. We place extra emphasis on the dynimic process of structural convergence during the course of the market integration. This paper mainly includes the following:In Chapters 1 and Chapter 2 we introduce the process of relative research in the field of regional industrial structure, summarize the academic achievements, and put forward the key point of our paper. In order to establish a basis for the empirical test we carry out the theoretical analysis on the convergence of regional industrial structure of the manufacturing industryIn Chapter 3 we compare the existing approaches of measuring convergence of regional industrial structure and improve the Krugman Index in order to get a proper result. The empirical study show that the Structural Difference Index of national and the three areas show a first slight decrease, big increase and then little decrease process, that is a process from divergence to weak convergence. The regional manufacturing structure between the six administrative regions has a large difference. The industrial structural difference index of East China is at a steady-state level, while the manufacturing structural difference index of Northwest China shows a monotonic rise, the average manufacturing structural difference index of Central South China and Southwest China change little, roughly first increase and then decrease. The overall industrial structural difference changes process test results of Typical areas show that, compared to other national regions, three provinces and cities'manufacturing structure difference is gradually reduced inYangtze River Delta, which fit with many scholars'conclusion; Bohai Rim manufacturing structural differences become larger and larger. Using modified Krugman index, on the basis of regional division, we wholly study about the regional industrial structure of China's manufacturing industry convergence and divergence trends, and conduct comparative analysis between regions, especially for the typical areas such as Yangtze River Delta and Bohai Rim, which we detailed explain their regional industrial structure convergence and divergence conditions.In Chapter 4 we use a varying coefficient panel data model to test China Provinces and autonomous regions'market integration coefficient based on the regional groups, by establishing additional dummy variables panel data model, Comparing the impact of different regional integration markets'integration coefficient on the manufacturing regional industrial structure difference index, to test whether there is a theoretical inverted U-trend in the Convergence process of China's manufacturing regional industrial structure. The results show that, China's overall level of market integration and manufacturing regional industrial structure differences is negatively correlated, which means with the increase of market integration, industrial structural differences of regions go narrow, regional industrial structure go convergence; the eastern region is at an advanced stage of market integration , with its market further increase the degree of market integration, the influence of market integration on the regional industrial structure differences is gradually weakened, which means the speed of Industrial convergence will gradually decrease; while the western region that is at a lower level of market integration, their regional industrial structure differences did not completely follow the inverted U-curve development path, it crossed the phase of inter-regional specialization enhancement that should have expanded structure differences, directly into the process of industrial convergence.In Chapter 5 by utilizing theσandβconvergence methods in the field of economic growth, we make an empirical test on 20 two-digit manufacturing regional industrial convergence in China, test results show that China's manufacturing industry inter-regional level of the distribution and structure of the share did not show a consistent trend of convergence, non-metallic mineral products, ferrous metals smelting and pressing industry, and other resource-intensive industry show a significant convergence tendency; while electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing, general equipment manufacturing industry and special equipment manufacturing industry etc. are gradually realizing structural differentiation trend of industrial agglomeration.In Chapter 6, by choosing factors such as the degree of economies of scale, industry concentration degree of efficiency, market size which have regional characteristics as explanatory variables, we do an intensive research on the formation mechanism of the convergence in China'manufacturing regional industrial structure. Using dynamic panel data model, we comparatively analyzed the formation process of all manufacturing regional industrial structure convergence and divergence trends, empirical results show that: (1) The convergence of regional industrial structure mostly happened in higher transportation costs, stronger dependence on the raw materials industries, as our provinces and autonomous regions'natural resources and needs structure have some degree of similarity, the current situation of industrial structure convergence depend more on the original development path, to differentiate the inter-regional industrial structure and achieve reasonable division subject to further improvement and the establishment of a unified national market. (2) structural differences between regions expand, mainly in equipment manufacturing sectors such as electrical machinery and general equipment manufacturing sector, because of higher production technology and scale barriers, despite the competition of local government and other non-market behavior, but at the huge impact of the combined effect formed by local industry association and large-scale restructuring of industry consolidation driven by policy, these industries gradually develop towards agglomeration.