Abstract: Taking Henan province, the most representative and the most“collapsed”traditional agricultural province, and Hubei province, the traditional industrial province, as examples, this article makes an evaluation of the policy effects of the strategy for the rise of Central China with the synthetic control method. The results show that the implementation of the strategy for the rise of Central China has increased the economic growth rate in Henan province and Hubei province. This strategy has also played a significant role in promoting the total factor productivity of the two provinces. However, the strategy has less promotion effects on economic growth and total factor productivity in Henan than that in Hubei. Further research shows that the accumulation of human capital, the policy orientation on national science and technology development, the industrial structure and the urbanization level are the most important factors in resulting in the differences of policy effects of the strategy for the rise of the Central Region in Henan and Hubei provinces.

Key words: the Rise of Central China; policy effect; synthetic control method; performance appraisal