Abstract:

At present, the world is progressing toward the economic recovery of the international financial crisis, which is also a major adjustment period in the international industrial division pattern, as well as the focus of the world economy and the contrast of economic power. The overall economic growth of advanced economies remains relatively weak. At the same time, with the rapid development of the economy and urbanization process of China since the implementation of the Reform and Opening-up, the high resource environment load, along with contradictions among urban, resources, environment and economic development, has forced us to deepen economic reform and transformation. It is of great significance for the urban economic transformation process to promote regional economic growth, as well as the quality and efficiency of the economic development. This article, based on the connotation of urban economic transformation, takes the 15 deputy provincial cities of China as the research object, builds an index system which includes four dimensions, and undertakes research on the effects of urban economic transformation in China from 2000 to 2012 by means of the fuzzy matter element model based on comprehensive weight and the European approach degree comprehensive evaluation method. Then the article analyzes the temporal and spatial differences based on the results, by using the kernel density estimation model, thereby revealing the inner change rules, and determining the following conclusions: 1) The low-value areas’ development speed accelerates, while the high-value areas show a slow trend from 2000 to 2012 in the economic transformation of China. However, the overall pattern presents a good transition state, and the regional gap is narrowing. In 2005, especially after the 2008 financial crisis, the effects of urban economic transformation have been abating. 2) At the dimension level, urban economic development maintains a steady improvement, but the spatial pattern does not change significantly. At the same time, the expansion of economic scale, optimization of economic structure and degree of economic development show positive trends in the space, and the effects of transformation are obvious. In addition, the economic benefits of improving degree in the space shows a reverse rotary trend, which indicates that the implementation of the government policies in the process of transition exhibit a time-delay effect, and the transformation also produces a crowding-out effect of the society employment, which has a significant impact on the social investment and consumption, as well as the income of the residents. 3) The spatio-temporal evolution of urban economic transformation is the result of a large amount of factors. The historical basic factors lay the foundation for urban economic transformation, and the enhance power factors inject vitality into the urban economic transformation, while the interaction between the two factors jointly determines the current status of the economic transformation. The future of the urban economic transformation factors will be composed of the development ability in the region and the administrative factor. At the macro level, the administrative leading factor has a guiding effect on the economy; while at the micro level, urban development ability plays a core role, and the strategic positioning and improvement of the system and mechanism are important factors also affecting the urban economic transformation.

Key words: deputy provincial city, urban economy, effect of transformation, fuzzy matter-element, kernel density estimation