By Sun Zhiyan & Liu Peilin, Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.10, 2021 (Total 6075) 2021-1-25

Abstract: Due to the digitalization-based production of goods and services, as well as the rapid development of new business forms such as platform economy and sharing economy, some amount of EVA (economic value added) cannot be accurately calculated under the traditional statistical framework, and there are technical deviations in the traditional economic indicators’ measures for judging the level of regional economic development. This paper evaluates regional disparity and spatial imbalance in China by using the big data of night-time lights, and concludes that the uneven level of regional development in China may be underestimated in the context of rapid development of digital economy, and the circle-layer differentiation of concentric zones around the downtown areas is more prominent than the gap between the northern and southern cities; the activity of county-level economic development has declined, facing the risk of wider-range fading. The policy options raised are to promote the integrated layout of digital infrastructure in cities at different levels, build a new governance mechanism of urban agglomeration with shared growth, and effectively control the circle-layer differentiation of concentric zones of cities through the new thinking of digitalization. In addition, based on the new pattern of regional development in China, we need to speed up the functional transformation of county-level economy.

Keywords: digital economy, inadequate issues, policy for regional development