A spatial analysis of market economy in the People's Republic of China: Exemplified by rural industrial development.

• Main Author: Shen, Xiaoping.
• Other Authors: Roberge, Roger
• Format: Others
• Published: University of Ottawa (Canada) 2009
• Subjects: Geography.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10393/10102; http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-8128

China's economic reforms have been underway for 16 years. Among its effects, it has created a fast growing market economy in which rural industry is the most important sector. The spatial effects of China's market-oriented reform is analyzed in this research through the experience of rural industrial development. Rural industry has existed since the foundation of the People's Republic of China. Most recently, as the result of the economic reforms of 1978, rural industry, as represented by millions of individual entrepreneurs, has become the fastest growing industrial sector in China. There were 58 million labourers engaged in rural industries in 1991 which accounted for a 300% increase since 1980. The seven million rural industrial establishments in 1990 accounted for a tenfold increase since 1978. The spatial distribution of rural industry is very unbalanced in China. At the provincial level, the most highly developed area is concentrated on China's east coast. A factor analysis has been used to develop three overall indicators from twelve variables. The regional rural industrial development level is classified by those three indicators. Using multiple regression, this research has revealed the links between the degree of rural industrialization and a region's overall economic performance. The high correlation with household expenditure, transportation facilities, and the degree of rural industrial development identifies the market characteristics of rural industry, and illustrates how they reflect characteristics of China's region. At the regional level, Chinese rural industry is constrained by the relative closure of a rural region. Chinese rural entrepreneurs were only allowed to establish enterprises in nearby market towns but not in large metropolitan areas. The objective of the policy is to restrain population growth in the larger metropolitan regions. After twelve years' development, the distribution of rural industry in Beijing has shown a very clear bias to suburban areas and the existence of transportation facilities. A GIS map overlay analysis has been applied to identify the relationship between existing rural industrial location and location criteria. The result shows the high concentration of rural industry in the suburban area and the correlation between rural industrial development and regional market and transportation accessibility. Although government policy was obviously attempting to diffuse the process of rural industrialization as much as possible throughout the national territory, the Chinese economy did not escape the concentrating effects of market forces, even in the highly controlled national capital region. The spatial analysis of rural industrial development not only reveals the spatial behaviour of market economic development in China, but also provides a better understanding of the link between political shifts and industrial change in space in a reforming socialist country. This research also shows that a combination of GIS and statistical analysis methods can provide us with powerful tools for spatial analysis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)