Evolutionary Pattern and Effect of Administrative Division Adjustment During Urbanization of China: Empirical Analysis on Multiple Scales

Abstract

The adjustment of administrative divisions is one of the important factors guiding China's urbanization, which has profound economic and social effects for regional development. In this paper, we comprehensively describe the process of the adjustment of administrative divisions at provincial and municipal levels in China and summarize the effects on the basic structure and patterns of the spatial development. We quantitatively assess the effects on fields such as urbanization and social economy through the use of multidimensional scaling. The results show that: 1) Upgrading county to municipality (or city-governed district) is the main way of adjusting the administrative divisions. It is also an important factor in the spatial differentiation of interprovincial urbanization. China's population urbanization can be divided into four patterns including interprovincial migration, provincial migration, natural growth, and growth caused by the adjustment of administrative divisions, which is also the main reason for the increased Chinese urbanization rate at the provincial level. 2) Taking the city of Beijing as an example, we generalize five adjustment patterns made to administrative divisions: the setup of sub-districts, the setup of regional offices, the upgrading of townships to sub-districts, the upgrading of townships to towns, and the setup of towns and the addition of new regional offices. We summarize the municipal urban spatial structure, including the sub-district office area in the central urban area, the regional office area in the new urban area, the mixed area of villages, towns, and sub-district offices in the suburb area, and the township area in the outer suburb area. 3) The adjustment of administrative divisions triggers a significant circulative accumulation effect, resulting in the spatial locking of population and industrial agglomeration. It affects the evolution of the urban spatial form and plays an important role in shaping the urban spatial structure to move to the characteristic of multicenter. In general, the adjustment of administrative divisions was an important factor affecting the inflated statistical level of urbanization and also an important driving force for the evolution of Chinese urban spatial organization structure.

The Time and Spatial Effects of A “City-County Merger” on Housing Prices—Evidence from Fuyang

“…Table 10 shows the spatial effect on the house prices of Fuyang four years after the merger of Fuyang. Column (1) shows that the coefficient of interaction term T × D is 0.0624, which is significantly positive at the statistical level of 0.05, indicating that the housing prices within the range of 3-6 km away from the West Lake District increased by about 6.24% as compared to the benchmark group. Column (2) shows that the interaction term of T × D had a significantly negative impact on housing prices in Fuyang, with a coefficient of −0.11.…”

“…Faced with the above queries regarding the fact that the impact of city-county mergers on urban economic growth may be insignificant, other scholars sustained that the city-county merger is conducive for efficiency, fairness, and economic development. Yu [1], Martin and Schiff [9], Boyne [18], Hudnout [19], Faulk, and Hicks [20] have pointed out from an economic perspective that the amalgamation of city and county can reduce administrative duplication, which is conducive for the reduction of government financial expenditure and the realization of the economies of scale. Henderson [42] further argued that the merger directly brought about the growth of per capita income.…”

“…The realization of economic and social integration development regionally is a common challenge for metropolitan governance globally. However, in contrast with mature countries that are inclined towards a more independent evolution of the economy and society, China is more accustomed to the compulsory integration by administrative means [1]. At present, China's local administrative regions are divided into four levels: provinces (autonomous regions, centrally administered cities, special administrative regions), prefecture-level cities (prefectures), counties (county-level cities), and township [2].…”

“…After the city-county merger, the economy, society, and administration need to be integrated. Logically, whether the integration process is smooth has a crucial impact on the economic growth and urbanization level of the new merged municipal district [1,21,22], and these will also be reflected in the variation of local house prices [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. However, there is no time and spatial explanation for this uncertainty in the existing research.…”

Water Pollution and Administrative Division Adjustments: A Quasi-natural Experiment in Chaohu Lake of China

“…The historical establishment of administrative divisions is based on national unity and political stability, and modern administrative division adjustments are implemented mainly to address the evolving needs of rapid economic and social development and urbanization (Zhou, 2008;Zheng and Kahn,2013;Wang and Liu, 2015). Yu et al (2018) provided a comprehensive summary of administrative division adjustments at the province and prefecture levels in China. They concluded that administrative division adjustments have been a major factor influencing the progress of urbanization progress and a substantial driving force for the evolution of the urban spatial structure in China.…”