The Catching-up Effect Between Provinces Of China-based On An Empirical Study

The competence between countries is the comprehensive national strength basedon economy and technology in21century. However, the imbalances in the worldeconomy are still unchanged as the millennium passed. After World War II, thedevelopment of economic theories gives the prosperity that economic convergencesexist between different countires. Neo-classical Growth Theory(NGT)、DevelopmentEconomics、Late-developing Advantages Theory and then "Washington consensus"and "Beijing consensus" demonstrate the validity of the economic convergences orsummarize the experiences of some countries economic development. There areexceptions,such as German、Japan、the Four Tigers、China、India、Portugal、Brazil, that all those countries achieve rapid development and industrializationsuccessfully,which is encouraging as well as set exemples for economic convergence.So it is essential to using Catching-up theory to test and verify the convergencesbetween proveniences in China when the problem of balanced development betweendifferent areas.First,the author simply studies the machinsm of catching-up and compares theideologies of catching-up in different theories.Next,the article analysis the state of thecatchting-up effect in China,and the reasons due to the divergences of differentprovinces are the special historical advantages,the difference of returns of capital indifferent provinces,the degree of marketization and the difference of thchnicallevel.Then,basing on Abramovitz’s hypotheses, the paper uses the panel data of1978-2010and1995-2010to vertify the convergence between proveniences and thereasons due to the GDP gap by methods of F·Fargetti&A·Foti’s model（1997）andNEG, with setting Shanghai as the leader of other27proveniences. The resultsdsupport the convergence but the catching-up effect is weak,and the main reason isthe difference of capital per worker. Besides, it is passive that the technical efficiencyof the eastern regions is higher than those of the western and central regions by usingthe DEA method measuring the change of technical efficiency from2001to2010.The conclusions of the article is that,firstly, the convergence between proviencesis exist,while the catching-up effect is weak. Second, he special historicaladvantages,the difference of returns of capital in different provinces,the degree ofMarketization and the difference of thchnical level are the reasons leading the change of GDP gap between provinces.Third,comparing the elements affecting the GAP,capital is more important than technical level and other factors.Fourthly, the technicalefficiency of the eastern regions is higher than those of the western and centralregions.