Research On The Impact Of Trade Liberalization On Urbanization

With the reform and opening,China's urbanization has developed rapidly.The level of population urbanization has risen from 17.9% in 1978 to 56.10% in 2015.However,there is still a big gap with the level of developed countries in the world.Promoting the process of urbanization is not only an important way to deal with external challenges,but also an inherent requirement and a strong support for its own development.Since China's reform and opening,especially after China's entry into WTO,the strategy of opening up has exerted a far-reaching impact on China's urbanization process and population mobility.Under the natural experimental framework of China's entry into WTO,this paper empirically analyses the impact of the liberalization of trade on the level of urbanization by using the method of double difference,and draws the conclusion that the liberalization of intermediate trade can promote the process of urbanization in China.After considering the identification assumptions and a series of other factors that may interfere with the estimation results,this conclusion is still valid.On this basis,this paper further considers the heterogeneity and mechanism of the impact of intermediary trade liberalization.The results show that after China's accession to WTO,compared with inland areas,small cities are more significant in promoting urbanization than large and medium cities.The promotion of urbanization process is mainly due to the reform of domestic household registration system brought about by trade liberalization and the promotion of employment demand of enterprises.The innovation of this paper is to explore domestic urbanization and related population mobility from a new perspective of open economics.