Research on the Regional Gaps and Its Changes of the Provincial Urbanization Levels in China

This paper has measured the provincial urbanization levels of the year 1996～2002 in China by establishing complex indicators system according to the connotation of urbanization, decomposed the regional gaps of the urbanization levels in China by Theil index, and analyzed its change's trend. The analyses show, the whole urbanization level in China is not high, the basic pattern of the urbanization level in China has little change, nonequilibrium urbanization development is outstanding. The three large zones' gaps are still a serious problem as well as the inner differences in the east, the midland and the west zones. Because of the large gap between the east, the midland and the west zones, the urbanization task for the latter is harder and more important.