城市等级、人口增长差异与城镇体系演变

City Administrative Hierarchy,Differential Growth of City Size and Evolution of Urban System in China

针对近30年来中国不同(行政)等级城市人口增长的显著差异,本文从政府偏爱视角阐释城市发展政策对城市人口增长差异及城镇体系演变的影响。以1990—2015年423个城市为样本,选取与城市等级紧密相关的行政审批制即国家级开发区和撤县设区为指标,运用PSM-DID方法进行实证研究。结果表明:设立国家级开发区或撤县设区的政府偏爱均有助于城市人口增长,兼有这两方面则效果更显著,有利于发挥产业政策和土地政策的协同效应;城市的市场潜力是政府偏爱效果的重要条件。实证结果还表明,政府偏爱高等级城市以及偏爱沿海而忽视内陆中低等级城市,使得不同等级城市人口增长呈“两头高、中间低”的浅U型特征,加剧了中国城市规模分布不合理程度。为促进城镇体系协调发展、防止内陆中低等级城市相对“塌陷”,应打破对高等级城市的偏爱,产业政策和土地政策由“特惠制”转向“普惠制”,“双管齐下”向具有一定市场潜力的内陆中低等级城市倾斜。

The past three decades has witnessed widening population growth among Chinese cities subject to different administrative hierarchies.This paper adopts government favouritism to explain the impact of industrial policy and land policy on city size and evolution of urban system.Sampling from 423 cities,this paper chooses numbers of national development zones and county-to-district reforms in each city from 1990 to 2015 as indicators of the hierarchical-related administrative approval system.PSM-DID method is used to process the data,and empirical results show that both the setup of national development zones and the county-to-district reforms have contributed positively to the growth of city size.The combined result of both aspects is even more significant,owing to the synergistic effect of industry and land.An important condition of government favouritism,however,is the market potential of cities.The results also indicate that the government’s favouritism for high administrative level cities and coastal cities and neglect of inland low-and-medium hierarchy cities makes population growth among Chinese cities show a shallow U-shaped characteristic of“high at both ends and low in the middle”,which has exacerbated the uncoordinated distribution of Chinese cities.For coordinated development of cities,and for low-and-medium hierarchy cities to avoid relative collapse especially in the inland,the state should change industrial policy and land policy from preferential to inclusive means,and even extend more support to low and medium hierarchy cities in the inland with certain market potential.