| Resource-based cities can be defined through the points of view of embryogenesis and function science. Concerning embryogenesis, resource-based cities are the ones that rise or develope because of the exploitation of natural resources; concerning function science, resource-based cities must carry the function of exporting resource-based products to other parts of the country, in other words, resource-based industries must occupy a large proportion in the regional economy. Thereby I give the following definition for resource-based cities: they are the ones that rise or grow up because of the exploitation of natural resources and in which resource-based enterprises occupies a large proportion of regional industry. The so-called natural resources here refer mainly to mineral products. Forest reserves, of course, are included. Resource-based industries are made up of businesses that exploit natural resources, that make elementary processing such as iron and steel industry and colored metallurgy industry. In the first thirty years after the founding of the PRC, the construction of energy and mineral bases were attached great importance as a result of the strategy of giving priority to the development of heavy industry. Consequently, a large number of resource-based cities and towns were shaped in all parts of the country. Northeast China is typical among them. Heilongjiang province is an important coal production base of our country, and is one of the cities that export coal. She is also the province that consume the largest amount of coal. There are four coal mine bureaus whose yearly production of coal exceed 10million tons, eight province-owned coal mines, more than ten towns that produce coal, and some coal mines that are runned by people or institutes outside coal mine administration system. There are about 800 thousand people in the trade, with 670 thousand people working in the state-owned key mines, 130 thousand in the local mines. The four coal cities in Heilongjiang province are supposed to be basicly the epitome of resource-based cities in Northeast China, similarly, the problems they are facing are what other resource-based cities encounter now. The four coal cities, with not only abundant coal but also other mineral resources, are all in the east of HeiLongjiang province. These cities benefit from the nature resources. While after half century exploitation, the coal resources are becoming exhausted. Now, the unitary urban economic structure has become a common problem that these cities face. Concretely, unitary economic structure has the following characters:, first, unitary industry structure; second, unitary employment structure; third, unitary ownership structure; forth, unitary enterprise size. The reasons why such unitary economic structure occurred could be concluded as following: First, for a long time, resource-based cities are structured as bases of energy and raw materials. Generally, this strategy is carried out by different government departments, such as departments of petroleum, coal, electric power, metallurgy and forest. While during the implement of the strategy, almost evenly department considered the position of the industry that it administers from its own point of view, without considering the relevancy to its forward and backward industries. Therefore, the chain of the industry was divided up by different government departments. Second, in almost every resource-based city exists the strong enterprise and weak local government. The resource-based enterprise, which is the economic subject of the city, congregated fund and human resources. However, the local government, lack of fund, carried little function in the development of local economy. The local industries and private economy have less effect on the formation of economic structure. On the contrary, the large scale resource-based enterprises, which belong to central or provincial movement, play the key role in the formation of economic structure. Besides, the long time coal exploitation caused great destruction of local environment, with land subsiding becoming an imperious problem to be solvedhereinto. At the beginning of the coal exploitation, people paid much attention on producing and wanted to make profit as much and fast as possible. Nevertheless, people ignored the planning of urban construction. The town developed freely nearby the mine, with miners and their dependents living above the coal mines and the blocks sitting on the mines. The continually mining caused the subsiding of waste necessarily. Moreover, while people mining on industrial scale, the urban construction was not planned scientifically, which cased the land subsiding becomes more and more serious in four coal cities. At present, the subsiding area of Hegang city is 63.73 sq. km. The biggest depth of subsiding area is more than 30 meter; the biggest width is more than 6 meter. This situation is infrequent even in the world. Now, the waste of this city is sinking at the speed of 130 centimeter per year. The surface of subsiding area will expand further. In addition, environment problems, such as solid waste pollution, water pollution and atmosphere pollution, are quite serious in these coal cities. The deterioration of environment in coal cities is seriously threatening the health of inhabitants. The cities, as human homestead, have not provided comfortable environment for inhabitation. The development of coal cities is facing austere ecologic crisis. It is emergent to improve the urban environment for inhabitation and to promote the sustainable development of cities. In addition, the conflicts between people and society existed in coal cities. Unemployed workers fell into about three parts. Part of unemployed workers are fired by the enterprises which faced resources exhaustion or by the annexed enterprises: part of those are from the enterprises which are associated with resource exhaust enterprises or from enterprises lack of competitiveness; part of those are new-joined workers, who can not find jobs due to the lack of points of economic growth in cities. Employment problem should be resolved successfully, otherwise it will deeply affect the economic transformation and development of coal cities. There are some successful cases about economic transformation of resource-based regions in other countries, such as the case of Ruhr in Germany,... |
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