Abstract:

It is a meaningful task to choose indexes to measure the socio-economic development degree of a nation or a region. In this paper the authors try to build a complete index system to measure the development degree of the western part of China. It is considered that the concept of development should contain three basic intensions,namely,existence,self-esteem and freedom. Based on the comprehension of the concept,a set of indexes as well as their algorith is put forward,which is divided into three layers to measure the development level,wherey the first layer is group indexes,the second is main part indexes,and the third is overall index. The relationship between layer indexes is linear,and principal component and cluster analysis is used as concrete algorithm. Yunnan Province is taken as an example to be analyzed with the index system. According to comprehensive indexes and regional conditions,three types of regions with different development levels are defined. They are 1)Kunming-Yuxi region which is more developed,2)The outer-ring around Kunming-Yuxi region which is influenced by the latter,and 3)Marginal region which is less developed. It is proved that the index system is serviceable and rational.

Key words: Regional development level, Index system, Development type, Principal component-cluster analysis