PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2014, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (3): 347-355.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2014.03.006

• Regional and Industrial Development • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Funding source structure in different types of provincial-level Major Function Oriented Zones (MFOZs) in China

CHENG Jingyao1,2,3, FAN Jie1,2, CHEN Dong1,2   

  1. 1. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
    2. Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, CAS, Beijing 100101, China;
    3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • Received:2013-05-01 Revised:2014-01-01 Published:2014-03-24
  • Contact: 陈东(1979-),男,湖南龙山人,博士,助理研究员,主要研究方向为金融地理学和空间结构的经济地理学分析,E-mail: chend.04b@igsnrr.ac.cn。 E-mail:chend.04b@igsnrr.ac.cn

Abstract: Fund is one of the most important factors of regional economic growth and social development, and the spatial distribution of funds plays an important role in the distribution of regional development activities. Sound distribution of funds will help narrow the gap in regional development, or otherwise the gap will be widening. Various factors drive the distribution of different types of funds and there are significant variations between the spatial distributions of market fund and government fund, with the results that different areas have different ratios of such funds. Coordinating the allocation of market and government funds is an effective guarantee of smooth implementation of Major Function Oriented Zone(MFOZ) Planning. Within a particular region, different types of MFOZs are confronted with different fund constraints and fund needs. They also have different abilities to attract the two types of funds. Theoretical analysis shows that while market fund focuses on efficiency, government fund emphasizes fairness. Thus, because of their varied levels and potentials of economic development, Development-Optimized Regions have higher attractiveness to market funds as compared to Development- Prioritized Regions, and Development Regions have higher attractiveness than Restricted Regions. Nevertheless, based on the request of the national planning of MFOZs, Restricted Regions must protect food security and their ecological integrity, which also require a large amount of fund supply. The large gap between the demand and supply of market funds should be reduced by government funding, which leads to different funding structures in different MFOZs. This paper verifies the above theoretical analysis using data from 12 provincial- level administrative units that have issued Major Function Oriented Zones Planning, with two indices: degree of market fund utilization index and state financing dependency index. We found that: (1) There is an inverse relationship between these two indices, that is, the regions that have better potential of attracting market funds received less central government funding. (2) The provincial scale analysis for county fund data shows that the proportion of market fund from high to low is as follows: Development-Optimized Region, Development- Prioritized Region, Development-Restricted Region. (3) The empirical finding is not entirely consistent with the theoretical analysis results, because industrial upgrading pressure in Development-Optimized Regions is not completely translated into fund overflow pressure. (4) Based on the experiences of areas that underwent the most successful economy transition, regional industrial upgrading should be implemented through the process of "economic downturn and rebound". (5) More government funds should be diverted to Development-Optimized Regions as well as Development-Restricted Regions in order to balance production development and livelihood improvement considerations.

Key words: China, government & market, Major Function Oriented Zone(MFOZ), regional funding allocation

CLC Number: 

  • K90