Release of Index of the Harmonious Development in Cities of China

The scientific, harmonious and peaceful outlook on development, put forward in the Report to the Seventeenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, will be the main theme of China s development in the twenty-first century. However, the problem is how to evaluate the level of the scientific and harmonious development in all the regions and cities around China? As for this, the research group of the harmonious Chinese urban development of ECUST released the harmonious development index concerning altogether 30 provinces, distracts, and towns, and 41 cities in China yesterday, which made some critical comments, predications and analyses for the present-day Chinese harmonious urban development level, as well as the required times it would be in building the harmonious society in China by the year 2020.

Moreover, the release of the harmonious development index provided us with the coordination for the standard of China regional, urban harmonious development, and depicted a blueprint for China regional, urban harmonious development.

In the process of the study and implementation of the spirits of the Seventeenth National Congress and the deepening research of scientific outlook on development, the release of the China regional, urban harmonious development index is based on the full cognition and wise choice through the understanding of historic law of China s urbanization, as well as the needs for balancing urban and rural development, development among regions, economic and social development, relations between man and nature, and the necessity of converting the way of urban development.

Since 1990s, the way of urban development demonstrated itself in the following three main mistaken area . Firstly, mistaking urban economic increase as urban development; secondly, considering urban transformation, expansion as urban development, resulting in urban vision pollution, lacking of urban style and the spirit of cultural self-consciousness; thirdly, regarding the promotion of the urban competitiveness as the principles of the urban development.

The basic principles of city are civilization, harmony and making life become better. However, in recent years, the overemphasis on the research and publicity of the urban competitiveness made both at home and abroad, leading to the economic gross competition among cities, city size expansion, the acceleration of the city modernization speed (i.

e. taking the lead in modernization), launching the city ranking and city competition, such as the most competitive city, the best 100 counties competition , which has formed the train of thought and trend centered on city competitiveness. Just like what we usually criticized the the Theory of Productivity , the city competitiveness-centered practice caused considerable disruptions between history and culture, lacking of social space, and ecology deficit in urban development (i.

e. the erosion of soil resources, the pollution of water, air, etc.) due to the ignorance of the relations between human beings, human and society, man and nature, as well as the humanistic, environmental and ecological environment in the urban development. The development of the recycling economy, the construction of the resource-efficient city, green city, and the establishment of the theme of the World Exposition Shanghai China 2010-- Better City, Better Life are the new discoveries for harmonious capacity in the sustainable development in which urban competitiveness is stressed, as well as the reflections and corrections of the numerous new city diseases brought by the urban competitiveness-oriented values.

According to the five principles of being scientific, conductive, comparable, feasible and forward-looking, based on the cognitive logic and the logic of the index s inner correlation that should be adhered to in the index system construction, and from the four dimensions of economic increase index , humanistic development index , social progress index , and ecological civilization index , the research group of the harmonious Chinese urban development of ECUST evaluated the urban harmonious development of 30 regional areas, and 41 cities in China, which reflected and displayed the overall standard of harmonious social development in China, and estimated and predicted some characteristics and tendencies of Chinese society on its way to civilization and harmony.

Then, what are the future trends for harmonious development of the different regions and cities in China? If it is predicted according to the objective of building a harmonious society by and large by the year 2020, how the predictions about indexes concerning the harmonious development of the different regions and cities in China can be made? The research group weighted the average of highest scoring gained at the present from the 43 indexes of the 41 cities, and achieved the ideal goal point for the urban harmonious development, that is 51.

33353429, which should be the goal for every city striving to get in order to achieve the standard of harmonious society. The attainment of the objective score and the realization of the harmony constitute the true essence of the harmonious society by 2020. On the contrary, we weighted the average of highest scoring gained from the 43 indexes of the 41 cities, gained the present lowest level of the Chinese urban harmonious development, that is, the disharmony situation between city and society valued at 21.

19482415.

Taking the objective score 51.33353420 by 2020 when China has built a harmonious society by and large as the goal, based on the starting point of the average score 37.94108852 of Chinese urban harmonious development, even if the calculations made that harmonious development of Chinese cities were at the speed of 2.

5%, it would take 12 years of efforts to realize the objective score (standard) of building a harmonious society by the year 2020. In the meanwhile, based on the gaps between existing score and objective score of the harmonious development level in 41 cities, we predicted the years it took to achieve the harmonious society of the cities on the grounds that harmonious development of Chinese cities was at the speed of 2.

5%. The results are: it will take 5 6 years to realize the construction of the harmonious society, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Weihai, Nanjing, Jinan will need 9 10 years, Guangzhou needs 10 11 years, Shaoxing needs 10 11 years, Qingdao needs 10 11 years, Yantai needs 10 11 years, Guiyang and Zhangjiakou will spend 18 19 year and 21 22 respectively.

Similarly, we predicted the years it took for 30 provincial, regional, and metropolitan areas to achieve the harmonious society of the cities on the grounds that harmonious development of Chinese cities was at the speed of 3.9%. The results are: it will take Beijing 3 4 years to realize the construction of the harmonious society, while, Shanghai needs 4 5 years, Tianjin needs 7 8 years, Zhejiang province needs 9 10 years, Guangdong province needs 10 11 years, Jiangsu province needs 10 11 years, Gansu province needs 14 15 years, and Guizhou province needs 16 17 years.