Can Market Reforms Curb the Expansion of Industrial Land?—Based on the Panel Data Analysis of Five National-Level Urban Agglomerations

Abstract

As China entered marketization in the late 1980s, it soon established a market economy system and implemented tax-sharing reforms. Driven by the marketization, local governments have rapidly developed the economy under the pressure of fiscal competition caused by the reform of the tax-sharing system. Industrial land is an important factor of local economic development, and it enables local governments to invest heavily in the industrial sector to promote economic development, leading to urban expansion. In order to shed light on the relationship between the market reforms implemented by the Chinese government and the expansion of urban industrial land, this paper used the data of 77 prefecture-level cities in China’s five national-level urban agglomerations as research samples from 2007 to 2018. We first constructed the marketization rate of industrial land (MIL) and used the panel data model to examine whether China′s market reform will curb the expansion of industrial land. The results showed that: (1) land market reform can restrain the scale of industrial land expansion, and the impact is different in different urban agglomerations; (2) under the effect of marketization, foreign direct investment (FDI) has restrained the expansion of industrial land to a certain extent. The amount of industrial investment (AII), the ratio of secondary industry to GDP structure (RSG), and the number of industrial enterprises (NIE) will aggravate the expansion of industrial land. We suggest that the Chinese government should deepen the reform of land marketization and develop a differentiated land market mechanism. It is also necessary for local governments to develop stock land, improve the efficiency of industrial land use, increase the investment in advanced technology, and improve the intensive utilization of industrial land. The research provides a reference for other countries in the world that are developing in a transitional period to restrain unlimited land expansion and save land resources in the process of economic development.

The Industrial Sprawl in China from 2010 to 2019: A Multi-Level Spatial Analysis Based on Urban Scaling Law

“…After the tax distribution system reform in 1994, industrial land was the driving force for Chinese local governments to attract investment and drive economic growth. The government expropriated low-price land from rural collective economic organizations and released low-price industrial land to exchange for investment and future tax revenue [ 43 ], forming the “land-driven development” mode [ 27 ]. This mode denotes that China’s local governments control the land supply through their monopoly position in the land market and take land as an important tool for local governments to promote economic development and urbanization.…”

“…Many studies use remote sensing image or construct an evaluation index to quantitatively analyze the spatial-temporal pattern of industrial sprawl [ 14 , 25 , 26 ]. Moreover, some studies use regression models like OLS, the logistic regression model, the spatial econometric model, and the random forest model to analyze the relationships between industrial sprawl and industrial land marketization [ 27 ] and environmental securities [ 18 ], and to study the driving forces of industrial sprawl [ 28 ]. However, there is a lack of studies using innovative methods and perspectives to explore the spatial-temporal pattern of industrial sprawl and to provide suggestions for solving problems caused by industrial sprawl in the interest of achieving urban sustainable development.…”

Achieving sustainable development by reducing income inequality: The differential impact of industrial land expansion in urban agglomerations

“…Industrial land is a spatial carrier of urban and rural economic development (Li et al, 2021; Xiong & Tan, 2018), including absolute and relative expansion. Absolute expansion refers to the increase of industrial land area (Cui et al, 2019; Li, Chen, et al, 2022b; Pu & Zhang, 2021), namely scale expansion. Relative expansion refers to the proportion of the increased area of industrial land to the total increased area of construction land (Yu et al, 2022); that is, structural expansion.…”

“…Urban agglomeration plays an important role in a nation's capacity to participate in global competition and the international division of labor, and thus is the most dynamic and potential region in China's regional development (Huang & Liu, 2021; Li, Ma, et al, 2022a; Pu & Zhang, 2021). Land, population, and industry are the three most important elements in economic activities, and industrial land, as the spatial carrier of economic activities, is the main force driving the development of urban agglomeration (Ahmad et al, 2021; Ning et al, 2022; Schneider and Mertes, 2014).…”

“…Land, population, and industry are the three most important elements in economic activities, and industrial land, as the spatial carrier of economic activities, is the main force driving the development of urban agglomeration (Ahmad et al, 2021; Ning et al, 2022; Schneider and Mertes, 2014). Different urban agglomerations show the characteristics of diversified industrial land expansion (Pu & Zhang, 2021) that lead to rural labor mobility and income changes through the creation of employment opportunities (Athukorala & Wei, 2018; Liao et al, 2020), thus affecting the urban–rural income distribution pattern.…”