Abstract:

Under the new normality of China's economic development, service industries are becoming the strong driver for maintaining and advancing growth. Urban agglomerations are an important spatial carrier of China's service industries. The development level of core cities' service industries is pivotal for the comprehensive competitiveness of these cities and a symbol of modernization degree in urban agglomerations. This article uses the entropy method, location quotient, and external service flow model to analyze the characteristics of services specialization, external function, and development level of 32 core cities of China in 2003 and 2012. Conclusions can be drawn as follows: Territorial division of service industries was clear in these core cities. The division degree of producer services was much higher than consumer and public services. Internal differences of producer services' exhibited an increasing trend. The core cities' external service ability showed strong correlation with city scale. The majority of the core cities were predominantly producer service-oriented, and fewer core cities were consumer service-oriented. Spatial concentration of external function of the core cities' service sectors was clearly different. Overall, spatial concentration of producer service was higher than that of consumer service. The spatial differentiation of services development level of the core cities was significant—core cities of national urban agglomerations generally had higher levels of services development than the regional and local urban agglomerations.

Key words: service industries, external function, development level, spatial differentiation, core cities, urbanagglomeration