The influencing mechanism of Tibetan agricultural modernization on its urbanization

Agricultural modernization improved agricultural productivity, which increased agricultural contributions to urban development and promoted the urbanization. This paper constructed an index, which includes six dimensions of agricultural productivity level, agricultural output level, agricultural industrialization level, agricultural economic structure, rural social development level, and agricultural eco-environmental development level to evaluate the agricultural modernization level in Tibet Automatous Region and analyzed the influencing mechanism of Tibetan agricultural modernization on its urbanization during 1990-2019. Results show that: 1) the agricultural modernization level in Tibet increased significantly from 1.22 in 1990 to 17.65 in 2019 and the urbanization rate increased from 16.36 in 1990 to 31.54 in 2019; 2) Tibetan agricultural modernization played significant and positive roles in the development of urbanization, and it worked by increasing the contributions of agriculture to urban development and by changing the push-pull forces of urban and rural areas; and 3) the effects of the six dimensions of Tibetan agricultural modernization on the development of urbanization were inconsistent. Such heterogeneity was rooted in the differences of the social development stages in the contributions of agriculture to urbanization. To further increase agricultural modernization level and to strengthen the effects of agricultural contributions on urbanization in Tibet, this paper provides the following suggestions: providing more investiment support for agricultural mechanization to enhance agricultural productivity level and agricultural output level, constructing agriculturial processing industries to enhance agricultural industrialization level, and motivating rural commodity market to increase rural income and living standard in Tibet.