Analysis on the Regional Disparity in China and the Influential Factors
Abstract
Regional income disparity is one of the crucial issue faced by China in its medium and long term development, it is also a core problem to be solved with full effort to achieve coordinated regional development. This paper is devoted to analyze regional income disparities in China from 1978 to 2014. Since China began its reform and opening up, inter-provincial disparities have experienced a process of narrowing first and then expanding. But this expansive trend of inter-provincial income disparities has slowed down and began to decrease somewhat around 2000, and the income disparity between the regions has kept a narrowing trend since 2004. Using provincial economic growth data, we analyze the changes of China’s economic growth pattern since reform and opening up and investigate main factors influencing regional economic growth and regional disparities.