Industrial Structure Change in Chinese Cities: Measurement Based on the Extent and Quality

Promoting industrial restructure and optimizing industrial structure are the keys to improve ecological environment and upgrade products’ global value chain. From aspects of the extent of industrial change and productivity of industrial upgrading, by constructing the extent index of industrial change and quality index of industrial upgrading, we examine and evaluate the industrial structure change of 270 cities of China since 1999. This paper finds that, the extent of China’s industrial structure change in 1999-2007 appears to follow an inverted U-shaped trend with a turning point emerging in 2004. The productivity index of industrial upgrading rises and China’s industrial structure increasingly depends on industries with high productivity and high technology complexity. Eastern regions are characterized by biggest change and the best quality, better in the central and the worst in the west. However, from 2001, the regional difference of the extent of industrial change and quality of industrial upgrading is narrowing, the spatial distribution pattern of big change of the industrial structure in the east and the small change of the west is gradually broken down, the quality of industrial structure converging.