Empirical Analysis on the Level of Economic Development in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Western China

This paper aims to establish a method to demonstrate the disparity of the economic development levels among the counties of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Based on the theory of information entropy, eight variables are selected from the statistical database as indicators to measure the economic development of Ningxia from 2002 to 2004. Membership function is then applied to standardize the fuzzy information of the indicators, which could be categorized into benefit factors and cost factors. A weight set is constructed with the introduction and use of concepts of ideal and informational quantity to describe the quality of these indicators. Finally, the development stages of each county are quantitatively and graphically demonstrated which are categorized into 5 levels. The standardized results are compared and analyzed, according to the differences in natural conditions, locations, resource distribution, as well as economic and political factors.