Urban Green Transition in Northeast China: A Comparative Study with Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong Province

Abstract

The strategy of revitalizing the old industrial base in Northeast China has been proposed for many years, but the achievements had not been remarkable until now. The GDP growth of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces in 2015 was 3%, 6.3% and 5.7% respectively, lower than the national average. Therefore, the State Council issued opinions on further promoting the implementation of a new strategy for Revitalization of the Northeast in November 16, 2016, in order to alleviate the economic downturn. Meanwhile, it stressed the establishment of a counterpart cooperation mechanism with Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces to form a joint effort in the revitalization initiatives.

When the bottleneck of regional development occurs, it means that the industrial sector needs structural adjustment and transition. However, we find that there is no obvious difference in the aspect of urbanization rate and industrial structure between the three provinces in the Northeast and their counterpart provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong; while huge gaps occur in the rates of population growth and GDP contribution, which indirectly points out the mismatch existing between the industrial structure and economic development level in Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces.

Cracking the Northeast dilemma depends on how the city is transformed. This paper compares the experiences of urban transition in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces to reveal the predicaments of urban development and their root causes in Northeast China. Based on the theory of urban metabolism, this paper has preliminarily developed a quantifiable framework of urban green transition, using data envelopment analysis to measure the urban green transition efficiency. Then, a generalized method of moments is used to analyze the impact of influencing factors on the efficiency of urban green transition. We conclude that:

(1) the gap of green transformation efficiency between the three provinces in the Northeast and the other three in the South is obvious, and presents a trend of continuous expansion;

(2) specialization, diversification, urbanization rate, population density and science & education support have a significant positive effect on urban green transition efficiency of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces. In fact, the three provinces, through the interaction of industrial agglomeration and population agglomeration, have gradually formed a modern urban agglomeration with reasonable levels and compact network structure. Meanwhile, under the influence of agglomeration effect, science & education support provides sufficient guarantee for a sustained regional prosperity;

(3) By contrast, the urban size in Northeast China, as a whole, is so small that the industry layout is hardly to be optimized according to the urban value chain; the return on the investment in science & technology and education is not significant enough, which leads to the lack of impetus for a continuous urban transition. Therefore, the urban development strategy in Northeast China should be carried out around the urban value chain, thus to promote urbanization and industrial restructuring and integration, improve the talent adsorption effect and regional resource allocation efficiency, and achieve complementary advantages and differential development among cities.

The main contributions maybe as follows: first, we develop a quantifiable framework of urban green transition according to the concept of metabolism, and the results measured by super hybrid window analysis may be closer to the reality; second, we integrate space agglomeration and government's science & education support into a unified framework, to objectively reveal the reasons why the urban green transition efficiency is maintained at a high level in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces for a long term, and then, by means of normative economics, try to identify the “How” to realize the urban green transition in Northeast China.

Keywords: urban green transition; Northeast China; efficiency; data envelopment analysis (DEA); comparative study