中国沿海部の経済成長と農村地域の変容 : 福建省を事例として

In this paper, I try to clarify the characteristics of China’s rapid economic development since its “open door” policy was implemented in 1978. I also examine how it affects the landscape of rural areas in coastal China. To analyze the spatial transformation of rural areas, I have selected Fujian Province as representative of costal regions. I use statistical data for the province to analyze the differences between coastal and inland regions in terms of their economic development and the transformation of their rural areas. In the first part of the 1990s, the transformation to a market economy contributed to the economic development of the province. This development was achieved by the growth of secondary industry and was concentrated in the coastal regions and in the main cities of the inland regions. With the economic development of Fujian Province, the urbanization rate has increased dramatically. Before 2000, only the core cities of the coastal and inland regions had a high urbanization rate in the province. Moreover, some counties in the coastal regions had a relatively low urbanization rate compared to their economic development level. This was because industrialization progressed in rural areas in particular but could not contribute to an increase in the urbanization rate in these counties. After 2000, the progress of industrialization expanded from the coastal regions to the inland regions. In 2010, the urbanization rate as a whole was higher than that in 2000, especially in the core cities of the coastal regions, but most inland regions had also achieved a higher urbanization rate than in 2000 because of the continuous flow of rural labor to urban areas. In coastal rural areas, the rapid industrialization and urbanization have meant not only a decrease in population and cultivated acreage but also the development of commercial agriculture and the fishery industry. In addition, the employment structure of coastal rural areas is now dominated by off-farm jobs rather than on-farm work. However, most of the inland rural areas are still engaged in subsistence farming, and because of the low speed of economic development in inland regions, rural-to-urban migration is the dominant employment pattern, except for some core cities. It is evident that the level of economic development is different between coastal and inland regions. This spatial pattern brings about non-farm transformation and contributes to the solution to employment problems in coastal rural areas. However, the employment issue is still severe in inland rural areas because of the lack of off-farm job opportunities.