Analyzing the South-North Gap in the High-Quality Development of China’s Urbanization

Jing Liu,Nan Zhang,Lei Zhang

doi:10.3390/su14042178

Abstract

High-quality development (HQD) is the direction of China’s urbanization development. This paper defines HQD of urbanization in terms of theoretical connotation and constructs the evaluation index system of HQD of China’s urbanization from five aspects: innovation, coordination, green, open, and livable. The development index reflecting the adequacy of urbanization development in each region is calculated by using the range normalization law. The spatial weight attribute of each province and municipality is added to calculate the south-north regional development index, respectively. In addition, the Gini coefficient method is used to calculate and explain the regional imbalance coefficient of internal imbalance between southern and northern regions, and then determines the high-quality balanced development index of urbanization in southern and northern regions. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces and municipalities from 2001 to 2019, the results show that the quality of urbanization in all regions of China has gradually increased over time; in terms of region, the balanced development in southern and northern regions has overall improved significantly, but the gap between them is increasingly widening. The main reason is the lack of innovative development momentum and the pressure of green development.

Highlights

Over the past 50 years, China has made rapid progress in urbanization, with the urbanization rate rising from 17.9% in 1978 to 63.89% in 2020
From the calculated development index of high-quality development (HQD), we can see that the spatial distribution of HQD of urbanization in China is high in the south and low in the north
There is a large gap in the level of HQD within the northern region; the highest development index value is 0.701 in Beijing and the lowest is only 0.414 in Gansu, so the regional development imbalance is obvious

Summary

Introduction

Over the past 50 years, China has made rapid progress in urbanization, with the urbanization rate rising from 17.9% in 1978 to 63.89% in 2020 (https://data.stats.gov.cn/search.htm, accessed on 5 January 2022). HQD is the result of improving the economic structure, replacing old drivers for growth with new ones, achieving coordinated economic and social development, and significantly improving people’s living standards once the size and scale of the economy reach a certain stage [5]. In this new stage, the key is to solve the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development and improve the quality of the drivers for development [6,7], so that the organic combination of vitality, efficiency, and quality can be realized to improve the quality of the supply system; HQD of micro subjects is established by improving the efficiency

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion