AN ASSESSMENT OF CHINA’S NEW URBANIZATION LEVEL - BASED ON THE VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL LEVELS OF THE GRADE METHOD

Yang Wangping and Lu Xiaolu

School of Economics and Finance of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China

In this paper, we construct the six criterion layers evaluation index system of new urbanization, including population urbanization, land urbanization, economic urbanization, social urbanization, ecological civilization and overall planning of urban and rural areas. We use the horizontal and vertical levels of the grade method in order to determine the weight of each index, and then calculate the quality of the urbanization process at the provincial level in 2004-2013. The result shows that the overall comprehensive evaluation index of China has a trend of rising volatility. The quality of new urbanization has continuously been improving since 2004; the new urbanization process, however, shows significant differences between the regions and specific performances: eastern urbanization level is the highest, whereas the western is the lowest. The evaluation index, however, increases steadily during the studied period and the gap with other regions gradually narrows.

Keywords: new urbanization, index system, vertical and horizontal levels of the grade method, quality
evaluation

JEL Classification: R12, C10