Regional Economic Gap of the Manufacturing Industry in China

Abstract

After the Liberation Policy in 1978, more attention has been paid to regional and provincial economic gap in China. The purpose of this study is to clarify economic gap in the manufacturing industry at the provincial and regional levels. The economic gap is measured by the following four macroeconomic indicators as of 1994: a level of manufacturing industry; a scale of manufacturing industry; economic efficiency of manufacturing industry; and dependency on small-scale manufacturing industry in gross regional/provincial products.

Followings are clarified from the analysis. Though a wide gap is relatively seen among the provincials in terms of the scale of industry and the dependency on small-scale industry, a gap is relatively small in the level and the economic efficiency of industry. Furthermore, it is tend that the higher the values of the scale, level and economic efficiency indicators are, the wider the provincial gap gets.

The values of those four indicators go down at the regional level from the Eastern, the Central to the Western Region. Provinces of the Eastern Region mark relatively high values in the dependency on small-scale industry as well as the rest of the indicators.

Both the scale of industry and the dependency on small-scale industry in the Central Region do not score as high as in the Eastern Region. However, there makes no big difference in terms of the economic efficiency of industry and the dependency on small-scale industry in these two regions.

Compared to provinces in the Eastern and the Central Region, the scale and the level of industry in provinces of the Western Region stay low. Moreover, the economic efficiency of industry in the region also pegs low while the region marks the lowest in the dependency on small-scale industry among the three regions.