Li Shantong & Wu Sanmang

Optimizing the spatial distribution of industries is important for raising the efficiency of resource utilization, promoting coordinated regional development and enhancing industrial competitiveness. As a result of the advance of China's progressive market-oriented reform, enterprises have gradually become market players and the spatial distribution of industries has also undergone marked changes. Studies indicate that the regional distribution of China's manufacturing industry was scattered before the mid-1980s, but demonstrated a trend of concentration in the 1990s. And the intensity of concentration surpassed that of earlier decentralization. In recent years, industrial upgrading has become an inevitable trend and industrial transfer has become an important mode of industrial upgrading. Along with industrial transfer, the spatial distribution of the manufacturing industry has also demonstrated new changes. This article uses various indicators to analyze the features, trend and recent changes of the spatial distribution of China's manufacturing industry.

I. Classification of Manufacturing Industry and Measuring Indicators of Its Geographic Concentration

1. Classification of manufacturing industry

In classifying the manufacturing industry, this article mainly takes into account two factors. One is the foreign orientation of the manufacturing industry, namely the sales of the finished products of the manufacturing industry in domestic and foreign markets. The other is the factor structure of the manufacturing industry, namely the intensity of labor input in various segments of the manufacturing industry. We classify China's manufacturing industry according to the data about 27 segments of the industry during the 1999~2008 period and the results of classification are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Classification of China's Manufacturing Industry

2. Measuring indicators of manufacturing industry's geographic concentration

(1) Manufacturing industry's regional Gini Coefficient. The regional Gini Coefficient can be used to reflect the unevenness of the geographic distribution of economic activities. The Gini Coefficient reflecting the geographic concentration of an industry changes between 0 and 1. When the value is 0, it means the regional distribution of the industry is completely even. But when the value is 1, it means all the production activities of the industry are concentrated in one region. The larger the value is, the higher the geographic concentration of the industry.

(2) Manufacturing industry's concentration rate in the first n regions. The CRkn indicator is the ratio of the total sum of the added value of the industry k in the first n regions to the total added value of the industry k. It can be used to reflect the concentration of the industry k in the first n regions.

(3) Manufacturing industry's average concentration rate in different regions. This indicator is the arithmetic mean of the occupancy rates of all segments of the manufacturing industry in a region and can be used to reflect the level of the geographic concentration of the manufacturing industry in different regions. The value ranges between 0 and 1. A higher value means a region has a larger average share of the manufacturing industry and a more developed manufacturing industry.

II. Features of Spatial Distribution of China's Manufacturing Industry

1. Overall features of spatial distribution of China's manufacturing industry

First, the spatial distribution of China's manufacturing industry demonstrates a high level of geographic concentration. In the first place, the manufacturing industry's regional Gini Coefficient indicates that in 2008, only three, or 11.1%, of China's 27 two-digit manufacturing segments had a regional Gini Coefficient of less than 0.5. All the remaining 24 segments, or 88.9% of all, had a regional Gini Coefficient of more than 0.5. They posted an industrial added value of 8,291.722 billion yuan, or 90.1% of the total added value of the manufacturing industry as a whole. Secondly, the CR4 coefficient indicates that only four, or 14.8%, of all manufacturing segments in the first four provinces had a regional concentration rate of less than 40%. On the other hand, 12, or 44.4%, of all manufacturing segments in the first four provinces had a regional concentration rate of more than 60%.

Second, the east region is the main concentration area of China's manufacturing industry. In terms of large regions, the manufacturing concentration rate in 2008 was 0.672 for the east region, 0.068 for the northeast region, 0.147 for the central region and 0.114 for the west region. In terms of provinces, the provinces in the east region had a drastically high regional concentration rate than those in the northeast, central and west regions. In 2008, Guangdong posted the highest regional concentration rate of 0.155, which was followed by Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang and other provinces in the east region with their concentration rates being either higher than or close to 0.1. Tibet posted the lowest regional concentration rate of only 0.00001, which was followed by Qinghai, Xinjiang and other provinces in the west region where the rates were universally very low (Table 2).

Table 2 Regional Concentration Rates and Changes of China's Manufacturing Industry

Source: Based on provincial statistical yearbooks (2009).

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