Research On The Influencing Factors Of Economic Development In China’s Land Border Areas

As the regions of reform and opening up expand from coastal areas to inland areas,China’s land border areas have become the frontier of opening up based on their special location advantages.China has built a number of border ports,set up lots of open cities,border economic cooperation zones and cross-border economic cooperation zones in the land border areas,which provides good opportunities for the economic development of the land border areas.In the 21 st century,with the implementation of the Western Development,the Border Prosperity Action,and The Belt and Road Initiative,the state’s support for land border areas has been continuously increased,and the economic development level of land border areas has been continuously increased.The economic development of land border areas not only helps to narrow regional gaps and achieve coordinated development between regions.As an important strategic functional area of a country,land border areas are still lagging behind in terms of economic development from a national perspective due to various factors such as history,location and national defense and security,and the gap with the national average level is even widening.Based on the above background,this dissertation takes the influencing factors of economic development in China’s land border areas as the research object,takes the location characteristics of the land border areas into consideration,and discusses the influence degree and possible influence mechanism of border ports,border effects and border policies on the economic development of land border areas,through the theoretical and empirical analysis.The whole dissertation is arranged in the route of problem posing,problem inquiring and solving.Its structure is as followed:The first part presents the problem and covers the content of Chapter 1.This part firstly introduces the research background and research significance,followed by a review of relevant research literature,then introduces the framework structure and research methodology of this paper to clarify the research ideas of this paper,followed by a definition of the main concepts involved in this paper,and finally summarizes the possible innovations and shortcomings of this paper.The second part is the analysis of the problem,covering chapters 2-7.Among them,Chapter 2 is the theoretical foundation;Chapter 3 is the analysis of the current situation;Chapter 4 is the theoretical analysis;and Chapters 5-7 are the empirical analysis.In Chapter 2,The main concepts in this paper are defined,and then Marxist economic development theory,Western development economics and economic development theory,new economic geography theory and government intervention theory are sorted out,and the core ideas of the above theories are mined and refined to provide a theoretical basis for the next in-depth study of the factors influencing economic development in land border areas.In the current situation analysis section of Chapter 3,an overview of the land border areas is firstly introduced,and then the economic development of the land border areas is described in terms of economic level,livelihood protection,infrastructure,domestic and foreign trade and economic difference.Comparative analysis from the vertical and horizontal dimensions is carried out,so as to fully demonstrate the dynamic evolution process of the economic development in the land land border areas and provide reality basis for this study.Chapter 4 analyzes the influence mechanisms of border opening effect,border barrier effect and border policy on the economic development of land border areas in the context of the location characteristics of land border areas,and proposes research hypotheses on this basis to lay the theoretical foundation for the following analysis.The empirical analysis part is in chapter 5-7.Combined with the research hypothesis proposed in Chapter 4,the empirical test of the influence of border opening effect,border barrier effect and border policies on the economic development of land border areas have been carried out.Among them,Chapter 5 examines the impact of the border opening effect on the economic development of land border areas based on border crossings and investigates the degree of coordinated development of the border crossing economy and the border area economy.This chapter firstly examines the impact of border crossing on the economic development of land border areas as a whole,then analyzes the heterogeneity of the impact effect of border crossing,and explores the impact mechanism of border crossing on economic development,and finally analyzes the coordinated development of port economy and border area economy,and studies the coordinated development of port economy and border area economy in each province and region,All of that analysis is helpful to understand the evolution process of the coordinated development of port economy and land border areas economy.Chapter 6 analyzes the influence of border barrier effect on the economic development of land border areas.In this chapter,the counties of border provinces are divided into several equidistant zones according to the distance between each region and the boundary line,and then the influence of the border barrier effect on economic development is investigated.Chapter 7 examines the impact of border policies on the economic development of land border areas based on the Border Prosperity Action.This chapter investigates the impact of the Border Prosperity Action on the economic development of land border areas by constructing a multi-period Difference-In-Differences model and conducting a heterogeneity analysis,which helps to comprehensively understand the impact of border policies on the economic development of land border areas.The third part is the problem solving,which is in Chapter 8.In this chapter,the research conclusions are summarized based on the previous analysis and the corresponding policy recommendations are proposed.The following conclusions are drawn according to the above research:Firstly,the border opening effect can promote the economic development of land border areas as a whole,but with heterogeneity.Based on the analysis of the effect of border opening on the economic development of land border areas,it is found that the border ports are beneficial to the economic development of land border areas on the whole,but the effect on the economic development is heterogeneous.Secondly,the border barrier effect inhibits the economic development of land border areas,but it is regional heterogeneous.Affected by the border barrier effect,the economic development of land border areas presents a gradient feature,that is,the closer it is with the boundary line,the lower the level of economic development,and with the increase of the distance from the boundary line,the level of economic development is constantly increased.The influence of border barrier effect on the economic development of different regions is different.The influence is the largest in Southwest China,but less in Northeast and North China.Thirdly,the land border policy significantly promotes the government expenditure and residents’ income in the land border areas,but does not have a positive impact on economic growth,industrial structure and human capital.the border policy on the economic development of land border areas is heterogeneous:from the perspective of different types,the income of residents and government expenditure in border counties are improved obviously,and the gap of human capital between land border areas and non-border areas is widening,and the economic growth of border urban areas lags behind that of non-border areas;from the perspective of region,the border policy significantly increase the residents’ income and government expenditure level in the northwest region,but the impact on the industrial structure of the northwest region is not significant.The promoting effect of the border policy on the economic growth in the northern regions is most significant,but human capital in the land border areas of each region lags behind the non-border areas.The possible creative points of this dissertation are as follows:Firstly,describing and taking into the regional peculiarities of land border areas,and it is used to analyze the influence mechanism of the factors such as border opening effect,border barrier effect and border policies on the economic development of the land border areas.Based on the location characteristics of the land border areas bordering its neighboring countries,The strategic choice of defense security priority economic development.Theoretical analysis on the influence mechanism of the factors such as border opening effect,border barrier effect and border policies on the economic development of the land border areas is carried out and empirical tests are made.Secondly,a more comprehensive study of the impact of borders on economic development in land border areas is conducted by using multiple types of data.The impact of borders on the economic development of border regions is mainly manifested in two aspects: on the one hand,the border opening effect promotes the economic development;on the other hand,the border barrier effect inhibits the economic development.In the process of studying the influence of border opening effect,some factors such as bilateral political relations and economic level of neighboring countries are included in the model and their influence mechanisms are analyzed to make the study more in-depth and detailed.In the study of the border barrier effect,it is analyzed based on the "distance" variable by using various types of macro and micro data,which proves that the border barrier effect inhibits economic development to a certain extent,and the economic layout and economic development of border provinces and regions show a gradient.Thirdly,a comprehensive study on the influence of the land boder policy,the Border Prosperity Action on the economic development of land border areas is carried out.The existing literature on the effect of the Border Prosperity Action mostly focuses on qualitative research,or they shows that the achievements of economic development in the land border areas are the effect of the Border Prosperity Action,which is bound to have bias in estimating the impact of Border Prosperity Action.In recent years,the literature on quantitative research mostly focuses on the research of certain provinces or certain counties,and often adopts a "one-size-fits-all" rather than "progressive" design method,so the research conclusions drawn are quite different.In this paper,we construct a multi-period Difference-In-Differences model to investigate the impact of the Border Prosperity Action on the economic development of land border areas.It proves that the border policy focuses on stabilizing the people and strengthening the border by increasing government expenditure,rather than pursuing economic growth.