Changing rural development inequality in Jilin Province, Northeast China

Rural development inequality is an important practical issue during the course of full establishment of a ‘moderately well-off society’ in modern China, and the objective understanding and evaluation of the status and regional inequality of rural development can provide scientific basis for ‘building a new countryside’ and coordination development of rural-urban regions. Based on the county-level data of 2000, 2005 and 2009, this paper examines the rural development inequality of Jilin Province in Northeast China by establishing a rural development index. The spatio-temporal dynamic patterns and domain factors are discussed by using the method of exploratory spatial data analysis and multi-regression model. The results are shown as follows. Firstly, most of the counties were in lower development level, which accounted for 58.3%, 62.5% and 66.7% of the total counties in 2000, 2005 and 2009, respectively. The characteristics of spatial inequality were very obvious at county level. For example, rural development level of Changchun Proper and the proper of seven prefecture-level cities were much higher than that of the surrounding regions. The counties in the eastern and northern Jilin Province were the lowest regions of rural development level, while the middle counties were the rapid growth areas in rural economy. Secondly, Moran’s I of rural development index (RDI) was 0.01, −0.16 and −0.06 in 2000, 2005 and 2009, respectively, which indicated that spatial agglomeration of RDI was not obvious in Jilin Province, and took on the characteristic of random distribution. The counties of both the units and its adjacent units have higher development level (HH) were transferred from the western areas to the eastern areas, while the countries of both the units and its adjacent units have lower development level (LL) were diffused from the eastern to middle and western Jilin Province. Finally, the result of multi-regression analysis showed that the improvement of agricultural production condition, development of agricultural economics and the adjustment of industrial structure were the domain factors affecting rural development inequality of Jilin Province in the later ten years.