ABSTRACT
Existing studies focus on disparities between (1) three major regions (eastern, central and western China), (2) China’s provinces, (3) regions within China’s provinces, and (4) rural and urban areas. These studies deal with three major issues. First, studies of the evolution of disparities suggest that inter-provincial disparities narrowed during the 1980s and widened during the 1990s, but that the coastal-inland disparity has continuously increased (Lyons, 1991; Tsui, 1996; Fan, 1995; Chen and Fleisher, 1996; Ying, 1999; Wei, 1999). Correcting for the fl oating population (Kam Wing Chan and Man Wang, 2008), interprovincial inequalities stopped growing after 1995. However, most other studies show that inter-provincial disparities only started to stabilize after 2000, and followed a gradual declining path after 2004 (Fan and Sun, 2008; Liu Weidong et al., 2011).
