Impacts of unbalanced regional economic development on the agricultural

Applying cluster analysis, principal component analysis, Kuznets ratio analysis, and R/S analysis methods this research examined the current situation and the influencing factors of the unbalanced regional agricultural economic development in Southern Xinjiang and predicted the possible trends of the development of the regional agriculture economy in the future. Results show that the five regions of Southern Xinjiang can be divided into three types on the basis of the agricultural economic structure and development level, including non-agricultural economy dominant region, stable agricultural development region, and the less developed agricultural region. There are two main factors leading to the agricultural economic regional difference in Southern Xinjiang. The first one is the income difference among agricultural population and the gap between high income group and the low income group. The second one is the difference of the agricultural productivity among different regions. As for the comprehensive competitiveness of the agricultural economy of the five regions in Southern Xinjiang, Kashgar region is the strongest one and Kirgiz region is the weakest one. The big difference is caused by the different development level, population size, and natural and geographical conditions between these two regions. The gap between these two extremes has surpassed the alert level of regional agriculture economy. The negative impacts from the big gap can affect future development of agricultural economy of Southern Xinjiang. By our projection, the difference will continue to exist for a long time with the possibility of getting worse.