“新基建”的空间非均衡及增长收敛性分析:以广东省为例

Analysis of Spatial Imbalance and Growth Convergence of“New Infrastructure”with Guangdong Province as the Case Study

“新基建”能否促进省域内空间尺度上的区域经济增长收敛,是关系到“十四五”时期深入实施区域协调发展战略的重要现实问题。本文首先基于理论模型推导出“新基建”能促进区域经济增长收敛的理论假说,然后利用广东省21个地级市的数据构建“新基建”指标体系,定量分析了广东省域内“新基建”的典型特征,最后基于β收敛模型对理论假说进行了实证检验。研究表明:一方面,广东省域内“新基建”具有显著的非均衡特征,深圳、广州、佛山的“新基建”发展水平始终保持前列,其核心竞争力主要在于要素基础优势和产业基础优势。另一方面,“新基建”发展水平的提升,能够通过优化产业结构对经济增长产生非对称的促进效应,即对于经济增长相对落后的地区,提升“新基建”发展水平可以实现更快的经济增长,从而产生区域经济增长的收敛性。

A coordinated regional development system,which is basically characterized by the convergence of regional economic growth,is an important and difficult task in the process of Chinese-style modernization and an inherent requirement for achieving high-quality development.Under the current wave of vigorous development of the digital economy,China s infrastructure construction is undergoing transformation and upgrading to a new type of infrastructure construction.Whether the“new infrastructure”can promote the convergence of regional economic growth at the provincial spatial scale is an important practical issue related to the further implementation of the regional coordinated development strategy in the“14th Five-Year Plan”period.In our research,firstly,based on the theoretical model,the theoretical hypothesis that“new infrastructure”can promote the convergence of regional economic growth is derived.Secondly,the data of 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province are used to construct the“new infrastructure”index system to quantitatively analyze the typical characteristics of“new infrastructure”in Guangdong Province.Finally,the theoretical hypothesis is empirically tested based on theβconvergence model.The results show that,on the one hand,in the current new stage of development,the advantages of the factor and industrial foundations are still important core competitiveness.Among them,Shenzhen is the top-ranked city in Guangdong Province in terms of the level of development of“new infrastructure”,and possesses an absolute advantage in the development of“new infrastructure”,while Dongguan,because of its proximity to Shenzhen,benefits from the spillover effects of factor resources and technological innovations,and thus has great potential for the development of“new infrastructure”.Guangzhou and Foshan,with their factor and industrial advantages respectively,have laid the cornerstone of“new infrastructure”development.On the other hand,the improvement of the development level of“new infrastructure”can produce an asymmetric promotion effect on economic growth by optimizing the industrial structure,that is,for regions with relatively backward economic growth,upgrading the development level of“new infrastructure”can achieve faster economic growth,thereby producing convergence of regional economic growth.The above findings provide important policy implications for the goal of China-style modernization to narrow the economic development gap between regions.Compared with previous studies,the innovations and possible contributions of this paper are as follows:on the one hand,due to the relatively short period of time since the introduction of“new infrastructure”,there are not many quantitative indicators and related empirical analyses of“new infrastructure”.Most previous studies focus on the digital economy with a single research perspective,while this paper focuses on constructing a“new infrastructure”indicator system from a more macroscopic perspective.On the other hand,due to the inter-regional development gap within a single province is often easy to be ignored,but in fact,in China s developed provinces,such as Guangdong and Jiangsu,the internal development gap cannot be underestimated.Only these areas taking the lead in narrowing the internal gap,the national level can truly realize the regional coordinated development.Therefore,this paper focuses more on whether the“new infrastructure”can promote the convergence of regional economic growth on the spatial scale within the province,and takes Guangdong Province as the object of the study to conduct empirical tests,so that the study can be more closely related to the important realities of the current regional economic development issues.