“A country will be stable if its counties are well governed”. As the basic unit of national economy, county economy plays an important part in supply-side structural reform. Recent years have witnessed a rapid development in China’s county economy, especially in areas such as Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu where there have appeared a large number of characteristic and competitive counties through adjustment of country economy structure based on regional characteristics. However, in general, there are still problems such as unreasonable economic structure, slow growth of farmers’ income, financial difficulties in counties and townships, lack of human resources, and lack of regulation and control by county governments in the development of county economy in the vast central and western regions of China. As the First China County Economy Development Forum in the Era of Big Data was convened on January 7, 2017, county economy development has once again become a focus of concern of experts and scholars. In this regard, Professor Liu Zhibiao, Dean of Yangtze IDEI, raised the topic “The Status of County Economy and Its Role in Supply-side Structural Reform”, and held discussions with experts and scholars in various industries on the topic.
