R/S AND WAVELET ANALYSIS ON EVOLUTIONARYPROCESS OF REGIONAL ECONOMIC DISPARITY IN CHINA DURING PAST 50 YEARS

This paper shows the dynamic process of regional disparity of economic development in China in the past 50 years from a new insight by using the rescaled range statistic (R/S) analysis and wavelet analysis of the Theil index sequence with different time scales. The main conclusions are: 1) The regional disparity of economic development in China, including the inter-provincial disparity, inter-regional disparity and intra-regional disparity, has existed for many years. Theil index by the comparative price has revealed the true trend for comparative disparity of regional economic development from 1952 to 2000. 2) Decomposition of Theil index indicates that the dynamic trend of comparative inter-provincial disparity in the coastal region is in line with dynamic trend of inter-provincial disparity in the whole China. 3) The R/S analysis results tell us that during 1966-1978, the Hurst exponent H=0.504 approximate to 0.5, which indicates that in that period the evolution of comparative inter-provincial disparity of economic development showed a random characteristic, and in the other periods, i.e. 1952-1965, 1979-1990 and 1991-2000, the Hurst exponent H>0.5, which indicates that in those periods the evolution of the comparative inter-provincial disparity of economic development in China had a long-enduring characteristic. 4) By using wavelet analysis at different time scale, we arrived at a conclusion that the evolutionary process of the disparity of economic development of China is not a simple inverted U shape but a compound of several U shapes. The result tells us that the evolutionary plot of inter-provincial disparity in China follows the inverted U on the whole at the higher scale, 24 ( 16 years). That is to say, the disparity tends to rise in the first stage of economic development, and fall slowly over the peak in the second stage of economic development. However, if we shorten the time scale to 23 ( 8 years), then a link of several U shapes will appear.

Identifi cation and decomposition of regional economic disparity for the west coast of Taiwan Strait of China

Regional economic disparity is a hot issue in the development of society and economy. As the conjunct of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta and the frontier to Taiwan, the west coast of the Taiwan Strait （WCS） is of great social and political significance. The paper defines the connotation of the WCS, decomposed the regional economic disparity by using weighted coefficient of variation and Theil coefficient, and explores the industrial and regional source of the regional economic disparity of the WCS. The analysis results show that： （1） the WCS has important political, economic and military position, so it＇s better to regard it to be comprehensive region, not just refer to Fujian Province; （2）from the industrial decomposition of weighted variation coefficient, the influence o.f the primary industry was tiny; conversely, the development inequity of the secondary and the tertiary, indusoy was the main source of regional economic disparity. Their contribution has had the converse trend and the secondary contribution has gone beyond the tertiary since 2003; （3）from the regional decomposition of Theil coefficient, the regional economic disparity mainly came from inter-area inequity of 4 areas. Moreover, the inner economic disparity mainly drove by Fujian, suggesting that the urban development inequity in Fujian Province was comparatively outstanding.