The Comparative Study On The Early City Modernization Between Jinan And Yantai

In the transformation process of China's modern society, the modernization of cities had a visible demonstration effect. Two cities are worthy to be studied in the development process of Shandong's cities, which are Jinan and Yantai. The former was a traditional administrative centre, while the latter gradually developed by setting up commercial port with agreement. Lots of differences appeared during the process of modernization of these two cities. This paper aims to do comparative study on the developing trail and developing level about Jinan and Yantai's early modernization, providing historical evidence and references for modern Chinese urbanization. At present, A lot of work about the study of Jinan and Yantai have been done except the comparative study on these two cities.This paper will do horizontal comparisons according to different time periods. It is divided into the following six sections.Part I: The comparison between Jinan and Yantai before the mid-nineteenth century. First, the comparison of the ecological environment and the early history between Jinan and Yantai is studied. Jinan had longer history than Yantai because of the better ecological environment for the ancient human survival and development. However, with the beginning of modern society, the coastal advantages of Yantai emerged slowly, and it transferred to a modern commercial town from an ancient fishing village thanks to its foreign trade, which was one reason why later be selected by foreign invaders as the first treaty port.Part II: The development of Jinan and Yantai in the initial stage of modern society. Because of the invasion of foreign capitalism and compelling to set up the commercial port, the natural economy in Yantai was gradually disintegrating, and then it took the road of semi colonial and semi feudal society as well as the road of early modernization. At the same time, the natural economy in Jinan was also disintegrating with a relatively slow pace. Since then the developing trials in these two cities began to separate from each other.Part III: The development of Jinan and Yantai at the end of the Qing dynasty (1900-1911). At the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, with the opening of Tsingdao port and the opening into traffic of Jiaoji Railway, plus other Northern coastal cities'strong competition, Yantai was declining gradually. The narrowing of trade scope and weakening of economic function also accordingly affected Jinan's modernization. Qing government implemented "New Deal" policy in the late 19th century and the local government in Jinan keenly grasped this opportunity and set up the commercial port in 1904, which became a historical starting point for Jinan. The early modernization in Jinan accelerated the changes of the pattern of Shandong's City.Part IV: The development of Jinan and Yantai during Early Republic of China (1912-1927). The Jinpu railway had greatly changed the goods flowing direction of Yantai, making it second-tier division coastal trade port from a major cargo distribution in the north. Since the Early Republic of China, Yantai's foreign trade wholly kept stagnant even recessed except a few years or individual items because of factors at home and abroad. And it had affected severely the modern process. From the Revolution of 1911 to Early Republic of China, Shandong was in unrest and many urban economies had been damaged, while Jinan had a relatively rapid economic development, which made some modernization factors gradually emerge in culture education and social life depending on economy.Part V: The overall comparative studies on city modernization between Jinan and Yantai. The paper reveals two different modes about city development by comprehensive studies on the road to city modernization, power of city development, and functional status of Jinan and Yantai in modern times.In Conclusion, we could get the following revelations: (1) The city modernization should insist on combining opening to the outside world with self-dependence, while sovereignty independence is the premise of openness. (2) The rise of modern transportation industry is a negligible impetus in the process of the urban modernization. (3)Stable social environment and the Government's wise policies are important guarantees for the development of cities.