Shanghai university lecture
Zhaowei (Zhejiang University)
I am very glad to be invited to attend this conference, and thank the organizer of the conference, School of International Business Administration, Shanghai University, for your kindness!
The theme of the conference is urban service economy and trade. I personally understand that there are three key words: the first is the city, the second is the service, and the third is the economy and trade. The topic of my speech is: the evolution of modern city service function: the experience of pioneer countries and the dilemma of China. The theme is also very clear, that is, I want to talk about the characteristics of urban services in advanced industrialized countries, briefly understand the general laws of the development of modern urban service functions, and then compare the current situation of China cities to see our predicament, that is, the constraints faced by the development and upgrading of urban service functions.
As I have said in many places, my method is "trinity", that is, combining economic theory, economic history and social and economic reality observation to analyze the phenomenon we want to study. I have always believed that a good major can't see the connection behind the phenomenon without theory, and can't form a dynamic vision without historical knowledge formed by professional development, and it is easy to treat problems as static. Without a good insight into reality, or without a "penetration" into reality, it is difficult to find problems. The so-called "penetrating power" of vision is what the French artist Rodin said. It can "see unusual things in what ordinary people are used to."
I also think that there is a misunderstanding among domestic economic researchers at present, that is, they spend a lot of energy on those difficult or obscure problems, especially mathematical models, while ignoring some seemingly simple problems, especially seemingly simple concepts and reasoning. In fact, a big mistake that people easily make is to throw away important but seemingly simple things and chase those unimportant but seemingly important and complicated things. For example, some guys have been professors for half their lives, but still don't know what a professor is. They regard "official business" and "official learning" as models and think that this is the most important. Expect leadership instructions more than innovative research. I wonder what a professor is. No wonder Schmidt, the former president of Yale University, sarcastically said that most professors in China University have no jobs, and only a few people are still interested in their majors, while most people "have no real jobs unless they are profitable".
As far as today's meeting is concerned, I think it is important to deduct the theme, and first deduct those seemingly simple concepts. We mistakenly think that these concepts can't be simpler because we understand them thoroughly. In fact, if you buckle it carefully, you will find that you don't really understand it. Carefully buckle and cut through, and you will find out what the theme of our meeting is really important. Where should our research focus?
Let's talk about three "keywords" first, which represent the topics listed by the conference organizers. What is a city? What are the basic characteristics of modern cities? The explanation of foreign authorities is that the city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. In the English-speaking world, cities have specific administrative, legal, historical and cultural connotations. I think the modern city is a collection, and the understanding of this collection varies with the professional vision. I think that if we cut into the vision of spatial economics developed by Krugman-Fujita Chang and others. , the city will have the significance of multi-level center:
The first is a multi-level space management center, or administrative center. As far as some cities in the Yangtze River Delta where we live are concerned, Shanghai is the regional administrative center, Hangzhou is also the regional administrative center, Ningbo and Jiaxing are the regional governance centers at the next level, and the counties below are small regional governance centers. And so on, forming a hierarchical structure.
Secondly, it is the multi-level economic core of the regional economy. According to the core-periphery framework of the new economic geography, Shanghai can be regarded as the core of the Yangtze River Delta regional economy, while Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions are the periphery of this regional economy. However, since Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are separate regions or secondary regions, Nanjing and Hangzhou are the core of these "secondary regional economies" respectively, and the "prefecture-level cities" outside the provincial capitals of the two provinces belong to the periphery. At the level of prefecture-level cities, manufacturing centers such as Suzhou and Ningbo have become the core of the region, and the periphery belongs to the periphery. By analogy, it presents a multi-level core-periphery framework. On this point, I have written an article (Zhao Wei, "Yangtze River Delta Economy: A Multilevel Core-periphery Analysis Framework", Zhejiang Social Sciences, No.5, 2007). I think a good analytical framework is needed to inspect the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone, and a multi-level core-periphery framework can be used as the analytical framework. I won't say much here.
Once again, it is a multi-level cultural gathering and exchange center. Shanghai is the center of cultural convergence and integration in the whole Yangtze River Delta, and "Shanghai School Culture" is the only culture that can compete or rival other big regions in China, such as "Beijing School Culture" and "Lingnan Culture". Previously, Lu Xun had a short article comparing Shanghai school with Beijing school, saying that Beijing school tended to "help officials" and Shanghai school tended to "help businessmen". Times are different now. There are many wealthy businessmen in Beijing and many senior officials in Shanghai. The role of regional literati in helping leisure is no longer so "professional". But the difference is still very big! I won't talk about it here. What I want to say here is that even the Shanghai culture is formed on the basis of the integration of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai regional cultures. Under Shanghai, the capital cities of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces are the centers of cultural convergence and integration of the provinces, and under them, the sub-central cities of each region also play the role of regional cultural convergence and integration centers. Cities at all levels have this ability or function because of regional personnel flow and economic exchanges. Not only do residents come from many regions, but there are also many exchanges between regions. It is the migration of large and small regional populations that brings large and small regional cultures into large and small cities and endows cities with the function of integrating culture. Needless to say.
The second key word is service. The authoritative American Traditional Dictionary lists many explanations for the word service, two of which are closest to the theme of our meeting: one is "the occupation or duty of a servant" and the other is "what you do for others as a position or business". Personally, service means "providing convenience for others". By analogy, the service industry is also a convenience cause. Looking at the service in the real world, it does have the characteristics of "facilitating enterprises or undertakings". Financial services facilitate our financial management, wholesale and retail services facilitate our lives, catering services greatly facilitate our diet, personal services facilitate our family life, and so on.
The third key word is economy and trade. These two words are more complicated. The meaning is not exactly the same. As we all know, "economy" has many meanings. The authoritative English dictionary lists many explanations about the word "economy". But in my opinion, these two meanings are the closest to Chinese, and they are also the theme of our meeting today: one is "managing resources prudently and frugally (as the success of money, materials or labor)"; The other is the system or scope of economic activities in a country, region or community to create and manage the wealth of a country or region. )。 As for "trade", contemporary authoritative English dictionaries interpret it as "the process of buying, selling or exchanging goods within a country or between countries". )。 These two words are linked and extended, which can be understood as "commercial service activities as an economic activity system".
Looking at the above three "keywords" together, I think the theme of our meeting today should be: the development of urban service industry that makes people live and work comfortably and conveniently. Speaking of this theme, especially the "modern urban service system", we must first look at the reality of modern cities.
Although the service industry in modern cities is huge, it is often linked with the service industry, making the city civilized, comfortable and safe, with the characteristics of economies of scale. Urban service industry covers a lot of content, and almost everything people think of may form a service industry. But I think that for the life and work of urban people, the development of service industry in three aspects is the most critical and closely related to public life:
The first one is closely related to public health. Urban public health and medical and health system are the most important. Not to mention public health, only the medical and health system is not satisfactory in developed cities, but the foundation is solid and humanized. Compared with the same system in our city, there are at least two important signs: first, the problem of "difficulty in seeing a doctor" is rare, and the difficulty in seeing a doctor in our city has reached an intolerable level I haven't been to the hospital for many years, but it was many years ago in my mind. I went to a big hospital for a physical examination a few days ago. I saw that the registration office of the hospital was like the waiting room of the railway station, and people were waiting to register. It really surprised me. And things like "the whole country goes to Beijing to see the Union Medical College Hospital" are even more rare. I have never heard of the profession of "scalping" in medical registration.
The other is the phenomenon of "doctor-patient disputes" and "medical disputes", which are also rare in developed countries. We know that it is risky for doctors to see a doctor, and it is difficult to ensure that there are no mistakes. This is common sense. The problem is how to deal with mistakes. Modern civilized countries have a set of effective mechanisms that can be solved in a civilized way and eliminate potential social contradictions at the same time. Our reality is that medical mistakes, small mistakes, there is no effective solution mechanism, and sometimes doctors actually have no mistakes. Due to the lack of an effective solution mechanism, social contradictions often turn into deep contradictions. The hospital is uneasy and the government is uneasy. In fact, "medical trouble" has become a phenomenon in many cities. It is said that in some cities, there are also "professional medical troubles" to give advice to patients' families. Medical and health care is a product of civilization and a civilized industry. Becoming uncivilized in our city shows the lack of urban governance!
The second is public transportation. In modern industrialized countries, public transportation gives priority to development, taking a development road of rail transit first and cars coming from behind. Now mass rail transit is everywhere in developed countries, especially in continental Europe and Japan. I have lived in several famous cities in Europe and Kyoto, Tokyo, Kobe and other cities in Japan, where the popularity of rail transit is unimaginable to those who have never experienced it. My impression is that in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and other big cities in Japan, each residential area takes less than ten minutes to walk, and most of them can take rail transit. Either an electric train, a subway or a light rail. Regardless of the subway or