| Since the reform and opening up,China has achieved remarkable urbanization performance.Especially since the 1990s,China’s urbanization rate has risen by leaps and bounds with fiscal decentralization reform and marketization.At the same time,China successfully has avoided some common urban diseases such as urban poverty,large-scale unemployment and urban slums those occurred in the process of urbanization in many countries.Of course,there are some uncoordinated phenomena of urbanization,for example,the population urbanization rate lagged behind the land urbanization rate,the registered population urbanization rate lagged behind the permanent resident population urbanization rate.Government-led is an important feature of urbanization in China.As the actual promoters of urbanization,local governments play the key role in the urbanization process in China.So,it must be from the perspective of local government to understand China’s urbanization.Therefore,this paper takes the intergovernmental relationship of "political centralization-economic decentralization" as the theoretical foundation from the perspective local government,and studies the influences of local government on China’s urbanization from both theoretical and empirical aspects.The role of local government in the urbanization process is restricted by urbanization policy paradigm of central government.The paper sorts out the relevant policies of urbanization in China,and divides China’s urbanization policy paradigms into four stages,namely,the suppression urbanization policy paradigm in 1949-1978,the control urbanization policy paradigm in 1978-1992,the promoting urbanization policy paradigm in 1992-2012,and the deepening urbanization policy paradigm from 2012 to present.Correspondingly,China’s urbanization process is divided into four historical periods,that is to say,the slow period in 1949-1978,the steady period in 1978-1992,the expansion period in 1992-2012,and the new period started in 2012.It can be seen that the central government’s urbanization policy paradigm has a great influence on the role of local government in the urbanization process.In the suppression urbanization policy paradigm,the main role of local government is to implement passively the central government policies.The Market-oriented and decentralization reform since 1992 stimulated greatly the enthusiasm of local governments,and accelerated the urbanization process in China.The local government’s logic to promote urbanization is based on the intergovernmental relationship of "political centralization-economic decentralization".Since the reform and opening up,China has gradually formed the central-local government relationship of "political centralization-economic decentralization",and this government relationship is further replicated in the local.This has formed the intergovernmental relations pattern in which local governments at all levels compete with each other and are responsible for higher level government.In this pattern of intergovernmental relationship,local officials compete with each other not only for GDP and taxes in the economic sphere but also for the promotion in political field.Local governments have promoted the urbanization development in the process of"competition for growth" and "competition for promotion".The empirical analysis shows that fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental competition have significantly improved the level of local urbanization,and land finance has a significant positive effect on the urbanization level to provide financial support for the local government’s urbanization competition behaviors.The deep involvement of local governments has led to the uncoordinated phenomena in the process of accelerating urbanization,highlighted in two deviations,namely,the population urbanization rate lagged behind the land urbanization rate,the registered population urbanization rate lagged behind the permanent resident population urbanization rate.Local government’s preference for land urbanization is due to its pursuit of economic performance,fiscal revenue and image engineering.Population urbanization deviation firstly is a statistical phenomenon caused by demographic system and household registration system in China,actually it was caused by local government behavior,that is to say,on the one hand,local governments need a large number of floating population to serve the local economic growth for political achievement,on the other hand,local governments are reluctant to provide public services and social benefits for floating population due to financial burden.The household registration system just provides the best policy tool.The empirical analysis shows that fiscal decentralization and intergovernmental competition have significantly aggravated the level of these two deviations.China is currently promoting the new urbanization.One of the main objectives of the new urbanization is to improve the level and quality of urbanization,to narrow the gap between the registered population urbanization rate and the permanent resident population urbanization rate.The mechanism to achieve these goals is the local government behavior of adding at every lower level.Although the local government lacks the impetus to promote the registered population urbanization rate,but if it is taken as a factor of political promotion,the local government may raise the ratio of and expand the scope of the urban public service covered the floating population for the sake of political promotion,which is conducive to achieve the goal to raise the registered population urbanization rate.The analysis based on the 13th five-year plans of the central and local governments shows that,local governments have made generally to add of population urbanization rate indicator at every lower level,whether the provincial governments or the prefecture-level governments,whether the registered population urbanization rate or the permanent resident population urbanization rate or the narrowing of the gap between them.That is to say,the lower level governments compete to put forward higher development indicators for the urbanization targets proposed by the higher government.The "overweight" behavior of local governments is conducive to realize the new urbanization targets of the central government,but also may bring hidden worries.Indicators first,which may lead to urbanization rate worship.Urbanization will be the strategic objectives and major tasks in China in the future.So,it needs to strengthen the top-level design of urbanization strategy,do a good job in design,statistics and monitoring of urbanization rate indicators.In the future,it is necessary to play the positive role of local government.So,it needs to adjust the achievements and promotion evaluation system for local government,to include the population urbanization rate index into the local government performance evaluation system and local officials promotion measure system,to weaken the weight of economic evaluation,and to guide the local government to promote the population urbanization by indicators.At the same time,local governments themselves should pay attention to fulfilling the functions in the public service sector,to do a good job in urban basic public services and urban governance,to avoid the occurrence of "urban disease",to coordinate multiple forces,so that to ensure the sustainable and high-level development of urbanization. |
