Archive

  • Select all
    |
    Experts Forum
  • Experts Forum
    GE Quan-sheng, WANG Shao-wu, FANG Xiu-qi
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    There are a variety of uncertainties of understanding on climate change, although much important progress has been achieved so far. In this paper, some hot issues related with disagreements are explored on both sides, which could be significant to climate change research. These issues can be listed as follows: 1) the past climate change-whether the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age existed in the past 2000 years or not, whether the global mean temperature of the 20th century was the highest in the latest 1000 years or not, and whether the global warming trend in the last decade has disappeared or not; 2) greenhouse effects-different viewpoints on its mechanism, greenhouse effects on climate change, and effects of water vapor in the atmosphere on global warming. 3) simulation of climate system-differences of the global mean temperature by observed and simulated climate models as well as their shortcomings. 4) 2℃ threshold of the global warming-the physical significance of 2℃ threshold for the earth, and disputation on itself. Finally, it is proposed that five topics on climate change research need to be studied further in the near future.

  • Environment and Ecology
  • Environment and Ecology
    DONG Suo-cheng, LI Xue, SHI Guang-yi, JIN Xian-feng, LI Ze-hong, WANG Li-li
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Shanxi-Gansu-Ningxia-Inner Mongolia region along the Yellow River is a marginal region of western China with fragile ecology, less developed economy and imbalanced internal development status, which is faced with the dilemma and dual urgent tasks of economic development and eco-environmental protection. The article analyzes the basic conditions and necessity for eco-economic development in this area. On this basis, it puts forward an efficient eco-economic system and the strategy of eco-economic zone in this region, which includes cultivating national eco-energy base, constructing high-efficiency ecological farming-animal husbandry base and building eco-tourist attraction sites of northwestern China, as well as the countermeasures. The strategy is of great importance in realizing the comprehensive harmonious development of population, economy, society, resources and environment in Shanxi-Gansu-Ningxia-Inner Mongolia region along the Yellow River, and even has significant meaning for the strategy of the economic growth center shifting from the eastern to central and western China, and further coordinated development of the whole country.

  • Environment and Ecology
    CHEN Ke-long, SU Mao-xin, LI Shuang-cheng, LU Jing-hua, CHEN Ying-yu, ZHANG Fei, LIU Zhi-jie
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Research of ecosystem health is becoming a comprehensive cutting-edge discipline focusing on human activity, socio-economic organizations, the natural systems and human health, which has attracted more and more attention in China since the beginning of the 21st century. Urban ecosystem health assessment is an important direction of development in ecosystem health research, especially in the health of urban living environment, which well runs the city as a community or an eco-system. Based on the connotations of the health assessment of urban ecosystem, five indexes are selected to build an evaluation system, including dynamics, organizational structure, resilience, ecosystem services and the health status of populations. Besides the method of fuzzy mathematical models is applied to analyze and evaluate the health of the urban ecosystem of Xining city from 2000 to 2008. The results show that the health status of the ecosystem of Xining city was mainly at a pathological level and tended to be improving year by year during the nine years. Per capita GDP, urban population density, per capita green area, sewage treatment rate, the Engel's coefficient and the number of well-educated people have exerted influence on the healthy development of Xining. It is forecasted that the sick and unhealthy status will have a declining trend in the next three years, while the healthy and very healthy status will have a rising trend, suggesting that the ecosystems of Xining will be further improved. And the health in the three years will be mainly in a sub-health state. In fact, forensic analysis will greatly enrich the health of China's urban ecosystem as a case study. It is of great practical significance to monitor urban ecological environmental changes in urban planning. Ecosystem health assessment studies on sustainable development are a contemporary hot spot, and how to accurately predict the status of the future healthy development needs to be further explored.

  • Environment and Ecology
    ZHANG Ping-jiu, PAN Gen-xing
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    The process and mechanism of soil quality change along vegetation succession in degraded karst regions has been the research focus of soil science and ecology in China for the last 10 years. Topsoil samples were collected from selected eco-tesserae along a vegetation succession in Stone Forest, Yunnan, China. Soil nutrient pools of organic carbon and total nitrogen and those parameters of biological activity such as microbial biomass carbon, BR, PR, and qCO2 increased and evidenced the changes in soil function for ecosystem health along the vegetation succession. Bacterial community structures measured by molecular method (PCR-DGGE), as molecular footprint, traced sensitively soil quality and health changes caused by vegetation succession. These results demonstrated that, compared to bare land, vegetation restoration has not only enlarged soil nutrient pool, but also enhanced soil microbial biomass, diversity and activity, leading to a soil ecosystem with higher productivity and stability. In general, compared to cypress plantation, natural restoration (grassland and shrub) was an effective approach to improving soil quality indicated by soil biochemical properties. It was interesting that rate of soil quality recovery was faster at the early stage of vegetation restoring (thin grassland layer from bare land ), which meant good basal soil conditions built up for degraded karst ecosystem further restoration.

  • Environment and Ecology
    YIN Fei-hu, LIU Hong-liang, XIE Zong-ming, CHEN Yun
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Under plastic film drip irrigation is extensively employed in cotton crop planting in Xinjiang, China. Fertigation is one of the core techniques of water saving irrigation. The ideal fertilizer used for fertigation should be highly dissoluble in order to avoid blocking of dripping tunnel of drip pipe. Cotton special fertilizers are kinds of novel compound fertilizer which well fit the drip irrigation system and nutrition need of cotton crop under drip irrigation. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the mobility of N, P and K elements of both special fertilizer and formal fertilizer in soil and cotton use efficiency under drip irrigation. Field experiments were conducted in Shihezi, Xinjiang in 2006. The results indicated that N, P and K elements of special fertilizer were more movable in soil than that of formal fertilizer under fertigation and their distributions in soil were fit for cotton root distribution. Use efficiency of N, P and K of special fertilizer were enhanced to some degree by fertigation. Physiological use efficiencies of N, P and K of special fertilizer compared with that of normal fertilizer were increased by 3.62%, 4.18% and 1.45%, respectively. Agronomic efficiency of N, P and K of special fertilizer compared with that of normal fertilizer were increased by 29.37%, 29.2% and 29.38%, respectively. Compared with normal fertilizer applying treatment, the seed cotton yield of special fertilizer one was increased by 6.9%.

  • Hydrology and Water Resources
  • Hydrology and Water Resources
    SUN Cai-zhi, WANG Yan
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Water shortage, especially in Liaoning province, has become the major bottle-neck for the regeneration of major old industrial bases in China. The total-factor decomposition model was constructed in this paper to measure the economic growth effect, industrial construction effect and water utilization intensity effect of driving mechanism for water utilization change in Liaoning Province from 1994 to 2007. The contribution ratio of each effect on water utilization change was calculated, and the temporal differences of these effects were analyzed. The total-factor decomposition model was also applied to measure the three kinds of effect of 14 cities in Liaoning for the period 1994-2007, and combining the ISODATA cluster model to cluster the effect in space, the spatial difference of effects was carried out. The results showed that: economic growth increased the amount of water and water utilization intensity, while industrial construction decreased water utilization. The results of this paper have significance for exactly understanding the relation of water utilization and economic development, and also has a certain reference significance for the regulation of industrial policies and sustainable development.

  • Hydrology and Water Resources
    ZOU Jun, YANG Yu-rong, MAO De-hua, TIAN Ya-ping
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    In order to probe into each region's virtual water research and practice in China, the quantitative evaluation of indicator system method and matrix categories of mutually exclusive method were conducted to classify China's provincial regions. First, three senior function regional types were divided, namely, virtual water import region (13 provinces), virtual water output region (9 provinces) and virtual water equilibrium region (9 provinces) according to the index of water resource gift, which was built up by three indicators of multi-year average precipitation, per capita water resources and runoff. Second, 12 secondary function regions were identified according to combinations of the various indexes of agricultural product trade which was constructed by three indicators of proportion of agricultural output, per capita food production and per capita meat production and non-agricultural water resource demand pressure index which was constructed by four indicators of urbanization rate, proportion of urban domestic water utilization, proportion of urban industrial water utilization and proportion of industrial output. The 12 secondary function regions are typical virtual water import (output) area, inner optimization area, growing virtual water import (output) area, composite type area, potential virtual water import (output) area and reality virtual water import (output) area. Third, the authors pointed out that it should raise the commodity rate of water-intensive industrial and agricultural products in the virtual water import regions, and reduce water-intensive industrial step by step in the virtual water output regions. However in the virtual water equilibrium regions, it is not suitable to adopt virtual water strategy. Furthermore, some suggestions were put forward on the orientation of water-density industrial development and virtual water studies in each secondary region.

  • Hydrology and Water Resources
    WANG Gang-sheng, XIA Jun, CHEN Jun-feng
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    A Multi-Parameter Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analysis (MPSUA) method is developed to evaluate the relative importance of parameters and model performance. The idea of MPSUA is to couple the Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) with the Multi-Parameter Sensitivity Analysis (MPSA) based on Monte Carlo simulation. The implementation of MPSA includes the following steps:(1) Running the model using randomly generated parameter sets; (2) Computing the objective function values, which are defined as the sum of squared errors between 'observed' and simulated values. The observed values are the output from model simulations using the median of the characteristic range for each parameter. (3) Identifying the 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' parameter sets by comparing the objective function values to a given criterion, e.g., the 50% division of all sorted objective functions. The objective function value which is less than the criterion is classified as 'acceptable', otherwise it is classified as 'unacceptable'. (4) Measuring the separating degree between two cumulative distribution curves for "acceptable" and "unacceptable" parameters. Larger discrepancy means higher sensitivity. The case study in the Chaobai River Basin of North China showed that the model performance can be evaluated based on MPSUA, even though the optimum parameter values were unknown. For example, the same model could reach a higher modeling precision for the Chaohe River Basin than that for the Baihe River Basin. Such a difference in model performance is likely caused by both the uncertainty from model structure and the uncertainty from input data. The consistency between parameter optimization by SCE-UA algorithm and MPSUA also illustrated the rationality of the methodology applied in this paper. Further studies can take into account multiple objectives into the MSPUA.

  • Earth Surface Processes
  • Earth Surface Processes
    ZHAO Hong-zhuang, LI You-li, YANG Jing-chun, LU Hong-hua
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    The hypsometric integral (HI) of a drainage basin is a morphometric parameter for describing basin geomorphology. Lately the HI has become an index to infer activities of active tectonics in some orogenic belts. Some scholars take the hypsometric integral as an index to deduce the regional active tectonism.This paper examines two issues related to the HI:area dependence and space dependence. Our study calculates and analyzes the 10 rivers' hypsometric integrals of the Northern Tianshan Mountains, and the relations of the HI influencing factors. The result shows that there are x-logarithmic negative correlations not only between the average HI and the average area, but also between the average HI and the average drop, sorted by the different threshold accumulations of the drainage sub-basins in the Northern Tianshan Mountains. Moreover, there are higher HIs on moutain-type subbasins at upper stream and lower HIs on hill-type subbasins at piedmont.The three east-west trending thrust-fold belts along the southern flank of the Jungar basin divide the study area based on HIs into several regions with the same tendency of the three thrust-fold belts. It opens out the spatial dependence of the HI. The abnormal districts of the HI in the smaller drainage basin, present the remarkable influence of the rocky ingredient and the lithologic difference. In Manas river basin, by overlaying lithologic and tectonic maps on different drainage areas of subbasin groups, we found that the HIs of subbasins showed the effect of lithology and tectonics using a threshold less than 9km2. However, the HIs showed almost entirely the effect of tectonic elements using a threshold more than 20km2.

  • Earth Surface Processes
    Aruhan, YANG Chi, Tongliga
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Spatial information was obtained for different periods and different types of desertified land Duolun County, Inner Mongolia. In this paper, the intrinsic mechanism of mutual conversion of different types of desertified land is revealed by computing relationship between perimeter and area of patches, fractal dimensions and stability indexes etc. on the basis of principles and methods of fractal theory. The results show that the types of desertified land in different periods in Duolun County, Inner Mongolia, have fractal structure, with the average values being 1.3988~1.5635, which are close to random value, thus desertified land are prone to a flowing trend. The desertified land is identified into four types, i.e., weak, median, serious and more seriously desertified land, among them, fractal structure of weak desertification has increased in the form of fluctuation, suggesting that spatial structure of weak desertification has become more and more complex and that the stability has decreased; while the stability of spatial structure of seriously desertified land has increased since 1987, and the stability is relatively high. Analysis of spatial structure of desertification land in this paper can provide the basic theory for the governments to control desertification.

  • Culture and Tourism
  • Culture and Tourism
    LUO Pei-cong
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    The inbound tourism market in mainland China can be divided into two parts. One is overseas Chinese and compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan; the other is foreigners (including the overseas Chinese who have foreign nationalities). With the strengthening communication across the Taiwan strait, Taiwan tourists will play an increasingly important role in mainland China tourism market. The author analyses the data of tourism market (1998~2008) of different provinces (cities, districts) in mainland China, using the methods of geographic analysis, indexes of seasonal intensity, seasonal variation, geographic concentration, dynamical degree, and GIS to analyse the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of tourists and its evolution. (1) Viewing from time dimension, the change in the number of tourists from Taiwan Island to the mainland during the year is not obvious. The peak seasons are mainly February, April, July, and October, and the off-peak seasons are mainly January, March, June, September, December and other months. The yearly change can be described as a clear "double M" shaped curve, and this "Double M" shaped curve become more and more obvious over time (except the year 2003). The number of tourists from Taiwan to mainland China is increasing in a wave-shape type, and its share number of inbound tourists in mainland China increased from 1.38% in 1988 to 3.37% in 2008. Tourism development is in line with general economic development cycle, and there are Kitchin cycle, Juglar cycle, and Kuznets cycle. (2) Viewing from the spatial distribution, the overall number of tourists from Taiwan was mainly concentrated in the east instead of the middle and west China, covering 60%~70%. Spatial patterns characterized by the "W"-shaped type tended to be the "U"-shaped type. The geographic concentration of tourists from Taiwan is consolidated, and the difference among the provinces is gradually expanding, and the east-oriented trend remains. Provinces with the changing rate in the number of tourists from Taiwan above the national average (20.01%) are mainly in the eastern coastal zone, northeast region, central region and Tibet. Tibet had the maximum changing rate, which is 270.66%. This study is practical and significant in guiding and promoting the tourism development between Taiwan and mainland China, especially in tourism planning, tourism products upgrading tourism marketing and tourism management services, and so on.

  • Culture and Tourism
    XUE Xi-ming, ZHU Hong, CHEN Xiao-liang
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Diffusion and distribution of religions were often influenced by geographical environment, so the subject has been a long-term topic of religious geography. In the mainland of China, the study is still to be strengthened on the religious diffusion pattern in the specific area and during the course of social changes. On the analysis of the spread of Protestants in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century in Guangdong, four diffusion patterns were presented at least, including point-axis relocation diffusion, hierarchical diffusion, contagious diffusion, and springboard diffusion. The spread of Protestants in the point-axis relocation diffusion pattern relies on the constant movement of missionaries, thus MRCs (Missionary Residential Centers) extended from port to inland along the axis (usually a traffic line). However, the existence of obstacles in the middle may also cause the veer of the developing axis. Hierarchical diffusion of Protestants launched on the level of population, of transport node and of administrative area, especially for the foremost two. In general, MRCs will spread by the grade, but also vice versus in some periods. According to the different types of media, different characteristics of space-time were shown in the pattern of infection diffusion. In the history, Hong Kong became not only a springboard, but also a resource for the Protestants' diffusion in Guangdong. This is called island-based springboard pattern, with the character of point (island) to point (seaport). It is noticeable that all of these patterns evolve from the classic cultural diffusion ones, but may be different from them more or less. The research tries to explain the classic cultural diffusion patterns, and to provide a good case for the cultural diffusion theory of "hinterland-port-market".

  • Urban and Rural Studies
  • Urban and Rural Studies
    YU Bin, JIE Yi, LUO Jing, ZHU Li-xia, ZENG Ju-xin
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Ecology provided a new viewpoint to the development study of regional industry. According to the theory of ecology, regional industrial departments could be viewed as a kind of industrial population based on life organism of enterprise while regional industrial system could be taken as industrial community organically composed of different populations. The regional industrial ecology is an organic ecosystem with interactions between the regional industrial cluster and both the internal and external regional environments. Regional industrial ecology and its spatial structure are elaborated via ecological niche approaches. Again from two aspects, firstly, market niche founding on region demonstrates the interaction within industrial populations and that between them and their environments, the essence of which indicates the regional capability of exploiting the environmental resources. Secondly, spatial niche founding on location demonstrates the spatial distribution of different industrial populations in a region, the essence of which indicates the capability of using spatial resource by different industrial populations. In order to satisfy the need of development in "Wuhan settlement groups", a calculation of regional market niche and spatial niche was performed based on statistics of 20 categories of major industries in different cities within this region. Several definite pathways of achieving ecological transformation of regional industry and space optimization were also raised in this dissertation. The results show that the ecological evolution of regional industry experienced four major stages, including formation, reinforcement, retrogression and adjustment. The traditional industrial ecology in "Wuhan settlement groups" is a mode of "inlaid ecology" driven simplex by the investment with spatial discreteness of the regional industrial cluster. However, on the condition that significant changes occur in external economic environment, it is suggested that the regional industrial ecology should be a shift into an "embedded ecology" mode driven by innovations which enable it to reach a state of spatial integration during their regional economic development. Both the construction of the regional innovation environment and the cultivation of specific regional innovative culture help to transit ecologically the regional industrial development; the construction of the complex cluster net and the development of the distinctive industries with competitive advantages would facilitate the space optimization process of the regional industrial development.

  • Urban and Rural Studies
    QIU Ling, FANG Chuang-lin
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    It is a prerequisite to keep an optimal and efficient industrial structure for urban socio-economic development. In order to put forward scientific advice for upgrading the industrial structure and changing the way the economy grows, this paper constructs spatio-temporal assessment models for urban industrial restructuring, basing on Data Envelopment Analysis model and Factor Analysis model to build corresponding indicator systems. Then taking Beijing city as an example for empirical analysis, the results can be concluded as follows. Firstly, in the past 30 years since China's reform and opening-up in 1978, Beijing's industrial structure is basically at a relatively high level, excepting the years of 1991 and 2004, which over-use resources and decrease returns to scale, and the years of 1987, 1995 and 1996, which use resources ineffectively and increase returns to scale. Secondly, level of industrial efficiency, industrial benefit, industrial science and technology, and industrial comparative advantage are main factors determining industrial structure optimization of the 18 districts and counties in Beijing. Thirdly, owing to high level in industrial efficiency as well as its great contribution rate, industrial structure optimization in center regions and suburbs of Beijing is higher than that in outer suburban districts. Finally, it is quite discrepant in the comparative advantages of the four factors in the 18 districts and counties in Beijing, so it is imperative to take differentiable development paths to promote urban industrial restructuring.

  • Urban and Rural Studies
    ZHANG Wen-jia, CHAI Yan-wei
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    The researches of shopping behavior in urban geography and planning mainly focus on how to manage urban residential non-work travel, how to regulate and optimize commercial spatial structure, and how to improve residential everyday life quality. In this paper, we put forward the conceptual model of the shopping decision-making behavior on the perspective of intra-household interaction. Hereby, using the first-hand data from a activity-travel daily survey of Beijing in 2007, we derive and formulate a multinomial logit model (MNL) for shopping timing decision-making, and a conditional logit model (CLM) for shopping destination choice, to interpret the behavioral diversity among different groups and evaluate the spatial policies. The results indicate that: First, the influences of the factors about intra-household interaction and different decision-making levels on the shopping space-time decision-making process are more significant than that of traditional socio-demographic characters. Therefore, the characters of household-based decision should be paid more attention by the studies of activity-travel behavior. Then, the groups travelling in the morning peak period seem to be low-income or exurb-living, with non-motor mode or longer shopping duration. Also, the dwellers travelling in the evening peak period seem to be with family companions, suburb-living or choosing the tour mode of HWSH. Moreover, it does mean to attract more shopping activities with higher commercial density. At the weekend, residential shopping activities are mostly concentrated within 6 km far from the home, or appear at the high-density CBD. Furthermore, the impacts of personal characters on the destination choice give more attention to the home-to-shop distance, rather than the density of the shopping district. Finally, the results from estimation and simulation evaluation show that the policy of mixed land-use might indeed reduce the travel time, but increase the probability of multi-purpose shopping tour, which will more probably choose the peak-time travelling, then aggravate the traffic jam. Besides, suppose that the commercial establishment would be uniformly distributed, the more shopping activities will be concentrated surrounding the home. Although the cities have commercial hierarchical structure, it would be better to use the policy of decentralization, rather than aggregation, to improve the urban transportation and advance the residential everyday life quality.

  • Economy and Regional Development
  • Economy and Regional Development
    LV Tao, CAO You-hui
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Tobler's First Law is the core and the basis of spatial autocorrelation statistics. Spatial weight matrix is decided by the traditional spatial autocorrelation in the way of proximity or the given distance function. The rapid transportation networks are becoming saturated; hence, the meaning of spatial distance changes essentially. The connotation of proximity should be extended from "spatial proximity" to "spatial-temporal proximity". Based on such connotation, we propose a new concept-spatial autocorrelation of spatial-temporal proximity, and construct the corresponding calculation method. This study applies the above concept and method to regional economic disparity in the Yangtze River Delta, focusing on the index of accessibility. By examining the indexes of Global Moran's I and Local Moran's I, we have the following findings: (1) In terms of GISA, spatial autocorrelation of spatial-temporal proximity is a better approach to the dynamic change of relations between different geographic units than the traditional spatial autocorrelation. (2) For LISA, proximity has better robustness when temporal distance is in a reasonable range. (3) However, there are differences in spatial autocorrelation between spatial-temporal proximity and space proximity to a certain extent. So the combination of the above-mentioned two concepts is helpful to reveal the laws behind the dynamics of spatial relationship among geographic units.

  • Economy and Regional Development
    LI Bo, TONG Lian-jun, HAN Zeng-lin
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    The development of coal-mining cities in Northeast China is the hot topic which the country pays attention to. The article carries out the vulnerability appraisal of coal-mining cities in Northeast China from three levels of natural system, economic system, social system and from three description angles of exposure, sensitivity, and resilience. In 2000, Hegang city belongs to relatively low vulnerability district, and other coal-mining cities belong to intermediate ones. In 2005, all the coal-mining cities belong to intermediate vulnerability districts, in which vulnerability indexes in Jixi and Qitaihe cities are nearly 0.5701 and 0.5568, respectively. At the same time, it points out the vulnerability phenomenon, the approach to reduce vulnerability and diagnoses the vulnerability of natural system, economic system and social system, as well as the existing problems. Vulnerability of natural system is presented in ecological environment deterioration, water pollution, air pollution and forest resource destruction. Culture and community employment structure in coal-mining cities closely relate to urban economic structure and shortage of labor skills of mining industry, which have aggravated the unemployment and the difficulty of re-employment. Besides, the high pressure causes urban poverty and disadvantaged groups to get jobs, which have caused social vulnerability. Some other problems may cause the economic vulnerability, such as the unreasonable resource utilization, unreasonable productivity distribution and single industrial structure, Regional natural system, economic system and society system affect each other. This article discusses the coupling mechanism from the aspects of ecology, humanity and society. The intrinsic agents which affect the coal-mining cities are the limited resources and the changed exploitation capacity, and they are the key aspects to restrict vulnerability of human-land system. Then some models are put forward to reduce vulnerability, such as comprehensive development model, anticipation cultivation model, connection development model and harmonious society model. Finally, it puts forward some sustainable development countermeasures which provide the valuable reference for the reforming, ecology construction and community development of coal-mining cities. Besides, it is suggested that the development model could be built for coal-mining cities specifically in different development stages and vulnerability phenomenon.

  • Economy and Regional Development
    SUI Wen-juan, LIU Xiao, LIAO Bei-yu, WANG Zheng
    Download PDF ( )   Knowledge map   Save

    Since the reform and opening up, China has achieved unprecedented economic growth, and made considerable progress in reducing poverty. However, with the rapid economic growth, the income inequality also increases significantly in China. On the one hand, the economic growth pattern affects the trend of inequality; on the other hand, the degree of inequality and imbalance will affect the subsequent reduction rate of poverty. Therefore, the economic growth pattern and the trend of inequality in the interaction affect the overall development of China. This study focuses on the economic growth patterns and poverty reduction of China over the past decade. Poverty can be divided into absolute poverty and relative poverty, with the latter meaning the income gap or inequality. Besides, this article analyzes the income inequality in unit of city. The authors use the poverty growth curve (PGC) to analyze the pattern of China's economic growth, according to the population and GDP in unit of city at prefectural level between 1994 and 2006. In general, the regional disparity was restrained when China's average GDP growth was high. From 1998 to 2000, China's witnessed the immiserizing economic growth, with the lowest GDP growth rate and rapid expansion of regional disparity due to the Asian financial crisis. Between 2003 and 2004, China's economic growth presented a pro-poor growth curve, with the highest GDP growth rate after the Asian financial crisis and shrinkage of regional disparity. During the other periods, China has undergone the trickle-down economic growth, and along with economic growth, although absolute poverty has been alleviated, people in poorer areas have received proportionally less benefits than the non-poor, and regional disparity has been widened. The paper suggests that governance should be essential in the process of the economic growth patterns and poverty reduction in China.