Economic vulnerability of mining city —A case study of Fuxin City, Liaoning Province, China

Abstract

The economic system of mining city is of typical vulnerability characteristics that can be manifested by its high economic sensitivity and lack of response capacity to the gradual depletion of regional mineral resources. Taking Fuxin City of Liaoning Province as a case, this paper established an economic vulnerability assessment method inte- grating BP neural network with vulnerability index, then carried out an economic vulnerability assessment of Fuxin during 1989-2006. The results indicate that: 1) Affected by the gradual depletion of regional mineral resources, the economic development of Fuxin had kept high economic sensitivity from 1995 to 2001, and the response capacity to cope with and adapt to the impacts of the perturbation of mineral resources was weak and relatively lag. The evolution of economic vulnerability can be divided into three stages: in 1989-1994, the economic vulnerability of Fuxin City decreased slowly; in 1995-2001, the beginning stage of economic transformation, the economic vulnerability of Fuxin City went up rapidly; in 2002-2006, the economic vulnerability of Fuxin City descended and showed a trend to be sta- ble. 2) The influence of economic sensitivity on Fuxins economic vulnerability is more evident than that of response capacity. 3) The decreasing supply of mineral resources and the simple industrial structure are main factors leading to the economic sensitivity of Fuxin. 4) The improvement of economic response capacity of Fuxin has typical character- istics of input-driven growth, and external assistance is of great importance to the rapid improvement of economic re- sponse capacity of Fuxin. And 5) the change from the simple industrial structure to diversified one of Fuxin is still un- accomplished, and the contribution of non-coal-based industry to local economic development is relatively limited.