China

During the process of China's promotion of its industrialization, oil, coal, natural gas and other resources were continuously in high demand. In China, many cities with richer resources took this opportunity to rapidly develop a resource-based industry, and, achieving remarkable results, gradually formed the local industrial system with its resource-based industry as the leading factor.

In these cities, when the resources had not yet been completely exploited and with continued high resource prices, the futher expansion of resource-based industry could bring about huge interest. As a result the development of resource gathering areas seriously depended on the resource-based industry, bringing about in these areas an imbalance of industrial structure, a lack of industry upgrade and a weak innovative awareness.

When resources became depleted or macro-economic downturn caused a considerable dip in the demand for and price of resource products, these cities would surely face huge pressure of transition. According to statistics, among 118 resource-based cities in China, 69 cities are facing such pressure, and whether or not these cities can succeed in this transition, will directly determine wheter or not the fiscal revenue of these cities can maintain stability, and if people's living standards can continue to be improved.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands is one of the countries with the biggest natural gas reserves in the world. Natural gas export had brought lots of incomes for the Netherlands and greatly raised the national social welfare degree. However, with increasing natural gas export, in the Netherlands a series of problems of rising exchange rate, labor cost and aggravated national welfare load turned up, causing rapid gliding of the international competitiveness of the Netherlands industrial products. Later, with the efforts of the Netherlands government, enterprises and people, the Netherlands was rid of "resource curse" successfully and the economy began to revive. At present, the Netherlands has a series of large enterprise groups of Royal Dutch Shell, Heineken, Philips, the Dutch Bank, Unilever, Ing Group, Akzo Nobel, Tomtom, DSM, TNT, and Fortis which ranks No. 3 in the quantity of number of Europe's top five hundred enterprises.

Research

During this visit, I will mainly do research on the main experiences and practices of resource-based city transformation in the Netherlands, thus providing references for the Chinese government formulating resource policy and provide help to the cities facing a lot of pressure in transition.

The research content will include the following four aspects.

  1. The Netherlands Resource policies. Research on how the Netherlands realized the sustainable exploitation and utilization of resources so that the resource-based industry could achieve the unity of the economic, ecological and social benefits in its development. Research on how the Netherlands government regulated the actions of the ore resources enterprises so that the enterprises would not do some actions not conform to the corporate social responsibility. Research on whether differences exist among the different resource-based cities in the Netherlands and what consequences would be produced by these differences.

  2. The balanced development between the Netherlands resource-based industry and the non-resource-based industry. Research on what influences of aspects did the development of the Netherlands resource-based industry affect the development of the other domestic industries. Research on the distribution of the Netherlands different types of production factors between the different industries, analyze the flow of these production factors between the different industries. Research on that how many economic and social institutions promoting the balanced developments of the resource-based industry and the non-resource-based industry.

  3. Transformational development of the Netherlands resource-based city. Research on how the Netherlands resource-based city developed the circular economy and carried on the ecological environmental protection. Research on how the Netherlands resource-based city maintained the community culture and promoted the local humanities construction. Research on when facing resource exhaustion how the Netherlands resource-based city assisted the declining industry in exit and promoted the non-resource-based continuing and alternating industry development.4. The Netherlands ore resource income distribution and shared mechanism. Research on the distribution mechanism of the Netherlands ore resource incomes among the central authorities, local authorities, enterprises and people. Research on the function of such income distribution mechanism in promoting resource-based city transition.