In recent years Chinese economic policy has re-emphasized agriculture and the rural areas because the gap between rural and urban incomes has widened again. This issue is also at the centre of the quot;Western developmentquot; strategy. However, it is not clear whether spatial factors determine...

The paper applies the standard decomposition analysis of the General Entropy Measure to a new set of GDP and sectoral income data for Chinese prefectures with three points of observation over a decade (1993, 1998 and 2003). Prefectures are arranged into regional subgroupings on different levels...