New infrastructure has become an important support for China's economic transformation and high-quality development in the new era. In order to investigate the temporal and spatial evolution of China's new infrastructure development and its driving factors, this study first constructed a comprehensive evaluation index of the development level of new infrastructure based on the provincial panel data from 2013 to 2020. Then, it used the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) entropy method and spatial econometric model to measure the development level of new infrastructure and analyze its driving factors. The results show that: 1) The development level of China's new infrastructure has increased year by year, and there is a trend of balanced development among provinces. 2) There is great spatial heterogeneity in the development level of China's new infrastructure. The new infrastructure development level is much higher in the eastern region than the central, western, and northeastern regions. The overall temporal and spatial evolution pattern showed an east-west expansion trend, and the center of gravity continued to move to the southwest. 3) The development level of new infrastructure is affected by many factors, among which the economic development level, financial development level, innovation foundation, urbanization process, and population size are the key driving factors. By examining the evolution of the spatial pattern of China's new infrastructure development level and its influencing factors, this article may provide a decision-making reference for its optimal layout and development.
Spatial interaction of human mobility is a heated topic for scholars, but little is known about the nonlinear relationship of the influencing factors in the spatial interaction. Using Tencent migration data in 2018 and employing the gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) model, this study analyzed the nonlinear characteristics of the distance-decay parameter. The results show that: 1) In the annual data benchmark model the distance-decay parameter presents nonlinear characteristics; the partial dependence curve presents two "platform areas" where the distance-decay parameter is close to 0, and two "attenuation areas" where the distance-decay parameter is about 2.8; and the results are still robust using road-based distance or data from other years. 2) There are significant differences between the distance-decay parameters of aviation, railway, and road transportation. The distance-decay pattern during the Spring Festival is basically consistent with the annual benchmark model. We recommend to plan metropolitan areas and urban agglomerations according to the nonlinear characteristics of intercity connection influenced by distances-decay pattern, and optimize the layout of territorial development accordingly.
The flow of urban and rural elements runs through the entire process of urban and rural development and is the core of achieving urban and rural integration. Exploring the mechanism of influence of urban-rural element flow on urban-rural integrated development can provide a scientific guidance for breaking the plight of urban-rural integrated development. Based on the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) model, this study evaluated the development level of urban-rural integration in 292 cities across China, and used the ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models to explore the impact mechanism of urban-rural element flow on urban-rural integration. The results show that: 1) There are large spatial differences in the level of urban-rural integrated development at the city level in China. Most of the cities that have reached the level of deep urban-rural integration are economically developed. In general, the eastern region has the most balanced urban-rural integration. 2) Overall, the flow of land elements and population elements has the most significant impact on the urban-rural integrated development, and the driving effects of the two are negative. Locally, the influence of the flow of various urban-rural elements on the urban-rural integrated development has obvious regional differences. 3) The loss of land elements of the countryside causes loss of production elements and development space in these areas, and the lost talents have no effective way to return to the countryside, which limits urban-rural integrated development. Government investment promotes the agglomeration of elements and reduces the cost of element flow, urban and rural industries achieve division of labor and complement each other in functions, and the effective flow of information elements reduces allocation costs and improves allocation efficiency of other elements, which are beneficial to urban-rural integration.
Poverty reduction is one of the primary goals of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda of the United Nations. Clarifying how inclusive finance alleviates rural poverty and impacts rural development can provide new perspectives and avenues for alleviating rural poverty. Based on the sustainable livelihood analysis framework, this study explored the poverty reduction mechanism of rural inclusive finance and integrated multi-source data and methods to conduct a systematic empirical test on the poverty reduction effect, pathways, and heterogeneity of rural inclusive finance. The results indicate that rural inclusive finance plays a direct and an indirect role in reducing poverty. According to the three-dimensional poverty standard, the marginal impact of rural inclusive finance is 67.5%, and the poverty reduction effect is stable. Rural inclusive finance has a variable poverty reduction effect based on group differences, such as poverty degree, educational level, and type of poverty. There is a relatively small effect of poverty reduction on the deeply impoverished groups and the poor with low education levels, but a mitigation effect on income, employment, health, and living standards poverty. For the purpose of deepening, extending, and sustaining the reduction of rural poverty through inclusive finance, it would be necessary to scientifically identify the coupling process between rural inclusive finance and poor groups/regions and to determine and develop the differentiated supply of inclusive finance and an in-depth connection with rural education.
Accurate assessment and classification of rural development levels is an important issue in rural revitalization research, which can provide a scientific basis for the implementation of rural revitalization strategies by development type and stage. Taking Luanchuan County, Henan Province as an example, this study integrated multi-source data such as administrative village census and electronic maps to construct a multi-dimensional development potential measurement indicator system for the village scale, and carry out multi-dimensional evaluation and type identification of rural development potential. The results show that: 1) The overall situation of rural multi-dimensional development potential in Luanchuan County is poor, with only 45.89% of the villages having medium and above development potential, and the interaction between any two dimensions has a nonlinear enhancement effect on explaining the spatial differentiation of multi-dimensional development potential. 2) The spatial differentiation characteristics of rural multi-dimensional development levels are obvious. Villages with high development potential are concentrated near the county seat and where key township centers are located, while villages with low and medium-low development potential are mainly distributed in the border areas of the county and in the areas between the towns in the central part. 3) The development level of each dimension shows relatively significant spatial agglomeration characteristics, but the spatial agglomeration pattern is different for different dimensions. Villages with higher development level in geographical location and natural background are mainly concentrated in areas with good resource endowment and relatively flat terrain; and villages with higher development level in the four dimensions of geographical location, population development, economic foundation, and social welfare gather near the county seat, township centers, and tourist attractions. 4) According to the multi-dimensional development assessment results, the villages are divided into five types: priority revitalization, preliminary revitalization, maintaining the status quo, decline and relocation, and priority relocation. Based on the characteristics of different types of villages, revitalization paths and development strategies are proposed to improve the development quality of villages.
Building an international science and innovation center is the strategic direction for the sustainable development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), and it is also an important spatial carrier for China to cope with future global competitions. On the occasion of the third anniversary of the promulgation and implementation of the "Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Development Plan Outline", by reviewing the main progress and problems of the innovation and development of the region, this article presents the strategic re-thinking of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area international science and technology innovation center under the new situation. The GBA has initially entered the stage of "innovative economy" development. Platform construction, talent agglomeration, and policy support have continued to be strengthened. Diversified cross-regional innovation collaboration models have emerged, but real challenges also exist in the areas of R&D output quality, resource allocation, and structure of talents. On the basis of continuing to consolidate the progress made in the construction of an international science and technology innovation center in the region, it is necessary to focus on the acquisition of innovation resources and improvement of innovation capabilities and the coordination and redistribution of innovation resources in the future, with continuous strategic optimization and adjustment.
Virtual tourism flow (VTF) to some extent represents geographic biases of tourist demands. It is a crucial entry point for analyzing the spatial structure of China's tourism and promoting the formation of domestic circulation. From the perspective of VTF, this study built models of virtual tourism attraction and latent emissiveness using Baidu index search data from 2016 to 2020. Coefficient of variation and spatial autocorrelation were employed to analyze its spatial distribution characteristics. Virtual tourism dominance degree and correlation of each provincial node were analyzed to further investigate the characteristics of the spatial change of VTF network structure. The results show that: 1) Beijing, Shanghai, and Yunnan are the radiating centers in the spatial structure of China's VTF. Based on this, a virtual spatial structure with the core of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan-Chongqing region is formed. 2) The polarization and diffusion features of VTF are manifested in the obvious diffusion effect of the Yangtze River Delta, and the significant polarization effect of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and areas to its south and the Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan-Chongqing region. Among them, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and areas to its south has changed from a dual core to a single core structure, while the Yunnan-Guizhou-Sichuan-Chongqing region has formed a robust regional circulation structure with multiple cores and multiple levels due to the region's continuously strengthened internal and external ties. 3) According to the spatial change of VTF network structure, intra-regional circulation is an effective way to balance the development of tourism within and outside a region. Meanwhile, provinces with strong virtual tourism advantage degree have stronger resilience, which can well boost the circulation of inter-regional tourism flow. 4) The change of VTF network structure is mainly affected by economic development level, tourism resource endowment, infrastructure development, and temporal and spatial proximity. This study broadens the horizon of tourism flow research by introducing the concept of VTF and analyzing both virtual tourism attraction and latent emissiveness. Its results provide a reference for the geographic direction of tourist demands, which can help to promote the coordinated regional development of tourism.
In the era of digital economy, digital technology has brought profound changes to the production system of creative industries. The influence of virtual space built on Internet platforms on physical geographical space is increasing, which destroys the old spatiotemporal relationship, new socioeconomic organization geospatial pattern is created, and the changing importance of geographical proximity and its role in the decentralization of cultural production remain to be explored. In order to examine the impacts of new digital technologies on the geographies of cultural production and to provide a reference for exploring the high-quality development model of cultural industry in the new era, this study applied social network analysis and negative binomial gravity model to examine the urban cooperative network structure and multi-dimensional proximity mechanism of the online game industry, based on the data of Chinese online game projects from 2016 to 2020. The conclusions are as follows: First, the new digital technology has strengthened the decentralization and agglomeration trend of the online game industry. The findings demonstrate the dominant role that external networks play in the operation of online game projects. Small and medium-sized cities rely more on cross-regional cooperation networks in particular, because they lack strong and influential local companies. Second, the connections between cities based on the division of value chain of the online game industry are relatively sparse, the cooperative network presents an uneven diamond-shaped connection pattern, the spatial pattern of the network is highly imbalanced, and the industry is mainly concentrated in the economically developed eastern coastal region. There is a mismatch between the influence of cities in the network and the scale of local clusters. The network hierarchy basically follows that of China's existing urban system, and the core nodes are highly concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. Local administrative centers also play an important role in the cooperation network. Social proximity, cognitive proximity, urban industrial scale, external connectivity, and human capital have positive effects on the establishment of cooperative network in the online game industry, while the wide application of digital technology makes the effects of geographical proximity and institutional proximity insignificant. At present, the main channel for enterprises in remote areas to obtain resources is still the dominant cultural production centers, which is related to the complex and diverse urban structure system in China.
With the continuous improvement of the strategic status of China's marine economy, enhancing the resilience of marine economy in China's coastal areas under internal and external disturbances has become an inevitable way and an important guarantee for its development. In this study, we carried out resilience research from the perspective of marine economic network structure. We used the data of sea-related A-share listed companies and their subsidiaries to build a marine economic network, and evaluated the structural resilience of the marine economic network in 2010, 2015 and 2020 from the three dimensions of hierarchy, assortativity, and transmission. The results show that: 1) The hierarchical structure of the marine economic network in China's coastal areas has been enhanced, and regional absolute polarization and relative equilibrium coexist. 2) Assortativity has changed to disassortativity, and the connection between core cities and peripheral cities has been strengthened. 3) Transmission is generally at a low level but has the tendency to improve. 4) The enhancement of hierarchical structure, disassortativity, and transmission has improved the cohesion, innovation, and openness of the marine economic network, which increased the structural resilience of the marine economic network in China's coastal areas. This study aimed to enrich the resilience research in economic geography and provide some basis and reference for the safe development of the marine economy, in order to facilitate the high-quality development of marine economy in China.
Under the background of global production network development, the research on "global-local" cross-regional relatedness of production organizations has important theoretical significance. The cross-regional network characteristics and geospatial representations of China's joint venture automobile production network have been explored in the global-local interactive situation. Based on the perspective of global-local production relatedness and multi-scale integration and using primary supply data of automobile manufacturing, this study analyzed the cross-regional relatedness and influencing factors of China's joint venture automobile production network represented by FAW-Volkswagen. The results show that: 1) The global-local multi-scale integration provides a good perspective for understanding the industrial transfer footprint of multinational corporations in building global production networks. The German company Volkswagen is embedded into China's automobile manufacturing system by building global production network, and the structure of the production network shows a typical characteristic of global-local relatedness. 2) The spatial distribution of local primary suppliers in the FAW-Volkswagen automobile production network is highly consistent with the "T"-shaped pattern of China's territorial development strategy. Investment type / technology control of automobile suppliers presents a regional organization model of the same type of spatial agglomeration, and the agglomeration degree presents the characteristic of sole proprietorship ≈ joint venture > local investment business. 3) Through the production transfer of automobile assembly plants and the procurement by cross-regional supply chains, the production organization of FAW-Volkswagen has formed a cross-regional cluster network structure with the core of cities where the automobile assembly plants are located and are restricted by geographical boundaries. 4) Spatial and temporal constraints, location advantages and agglomeration effects, technological innovation represented by modular production, venture strategies of multinational groups, and foreign investement club strategies jointly influence the spatial organization structure of the FAW-Volkswagen production network. Through a typical case study, this study provides theoretical and practical bases for understanding the organizational structure of China's key industrial production networks under the global-local multi-scale.
Strategic emerging industries are important support for national economic development. It is of great significance to explore the spatial-temporal evolution characteristics and influencing factors of the development level of related industries in Northeast China to promote regional economy and industrial innovation development. Using the Tianyancha software to extract the A-shares and the new over-the-counter market listed company data in 2009, 2014, and 2019 for Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces and applying the methods of Markov chain, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and geographical detector model, this study explored the spatial and temporal change of strategic emerging industry development level and analyzed its influencing factors. The results show that: 1) The development level of strategic emerging industries in Northeast China is constantly improving, and the growth rate is slowing down. All types of strategic emerging industries in Northeast China have achieved leap-forward development, while the industries at a high development level have achieved steady development. 2) The development level of strategic emerging industries in Northeast China is characterized by a "polar area" in the central part of the region and a "S-shaped polar zone" in the south. Spatial agglomeration is weakened, and the spatial differentiation of the provinces is gradually enhanced. The spatial centers of gravity of development level of various industries have shifted southward, with both diffusion and agglomeration effects. 3) Different factors play different roles, and multiple factors jointly affect the change of the development level and spatial pattern of strategic emerging industries in Northeast China.
Based on the data of permanent residents from six national population census of China over the period 1953-2010, this study conducted an empirical analysis on the size heterogeneity of city size distribution and the relationship between the evolution of city size distribution and city growth model, to which little attention was paid in previous studies. We selected all cities (including prefecture-level cities and county-level cities) and prefecture-level cities (city propers) alone as samples, and empirically analyzed the morphological characteristics and evolution trends of urban rank-size distribution in China and its relationship with Gibrat's Law. The results show that the main body of city size distribution in China conforms to the linear distribution of Zipf's Law. However, the two ends of the city size distribution spectrum, namely small cities and megacities, deviate from the linear distribution due to insufficient sizes. This phenomenon is not unique to China, but supported by evidence from other countries of the world. From the perspective of evolution, the city size distribution in China gradually dispersed and deviated from Zipf's Law in the early stage. However, from 2000, it began to return to the direction in line with Zipf's Law, with big cities taking the lead in 1990, which shows the coupling with the random growth of urban population in this stage and verifies the logical consistency between Zipf's Law and Gibert's Law. The findings of this study have important implications for promoting the high-quality development of city size distribution in China.
The scientific and reasonable siting of administrative centers directly affects the efficient allocation of resource elements, equality of basic public services, coordinated and balanced regional development, and modernization of national governance system and governance capacity. This study used spatial analysis and the difference-in-differences (DID) model to analyze the basic characteristics, mechanism, and economic effects of administrative center relocation in China since the reform and opening up in 1978. The results show that in terms of relocation characteristics, the higher the administrative level, the longer the relocation distance is, and the relocation is mainly concentrated after 2000, especially in North China, while the relocation distance in western China is generally much longer than that of other regions. In terms of relocation effects, the growth rates of population, economy, and construction land around the new administrative centers are obviously faster than that of the original administrative centers. On the whole, the relocation of administrative centers plays a certain role in promoting economic development, but there is also a clear spatial heterogeneity. In terms of the factors and mechanism of influence, the process is mainly influenced by the restriction of resources and environmental conditions, the promotion of old city planning and reconstruction, the guidance of the development and construction of new areas, the reform of the administrative system, and urban development strategies. The relocation of administrative centers is usually the result of the joint action of multiple factors.
Beginning from the behavioral revolution, behavioral geography has gradually moved towards a diversified development direction, by continuously expanding its theoretical framework and practical extension, as well as reflecting on its own meaning. It is an important part of human geography. In the 21st century, geographic mobility has increasingly become a core factor in shaping human-environment relationships. Mobility not only constitutes a new mode of operation of the world through flows and networks, but also fundamentally reshapes the relationship between geographic space and social space. As an important part of geographic mobility, space-time behavior demonstrates the diversity and dailyness of mobility, which is key to understanding urban and rural space and social development. This brings new opportunities for the development of behavioral geography, which promotes related research to micro-interpretation, simulation, and evaluation, and puts the actual problems of people and society at the core of the research. To understand the recent development and future direction of behavioral geography, this article examined the disciplinary position of behavioral geography, reviewed the latest research results of behavioral geography in the past 10 years, discussed the challenges faced by the development of behavioral geography, and explored its future development trends. Behavioral Geography is a branch of human geography describing and explaining the interactions between the geographical environment and human behavior. The core is to explore how people's spatial behaviors are generated in the geographical environment and how people's behaviors react to space. Behavioral geography has five characteristics, including microscopic perspective, behavioral process, subjective and objective combination, integration of time and space, and interdisciplinary. The development of behavioral geography has experienced rise, integration, and expansion, and has gradually developed from the initial narrow positivist framework to more diversified directions. In the recent years, behavioral geography has presented three frontier development directions, including understanding dynamic human-environment relationship, individual quality of life, and sustainable social development. First, behavioral geography provides a new perspective to understand the interaction between geographic space and individual behavior from the perspective of micro-processes. It includes three new directions including analyzing dynamic geographic backgrounds, emphasizing the combination of subjective and objective, and deepening the understanding of cognitive space. Second, behavioral geography focuses on the quality of life at the individual level, and understands the quality of life and its changes from the perspective of temporal and spatial behavior. The main topics include lifestyle, social relations, subjective well-being, and physical and mental health. Third, behavioral geography understands urban issues and improves urban governance from the perspective of micro-processes, and bridges the gap between individual research at the micro-scale and urban spatial research at the macro-scale. It brings a behavioral perspective on social equity, smart cities, low-carbon cities, and planning applications. Behavioral geography faces challenges in methodology, research methods, and interdisciplinary aspects. It needs to think about aggregation and scale issues, develop theory- and problem-oriented research, find new interdisciplinary development points, consolidate the core of geography, expand its boundary, and optimize its theoretical system.
Based on the external conditions of technological progress and market demand upgrading in the process of high-quality development and the evolution of production factors, the factors of production in a digital economy are no longer limited to the traditional factors of production of labor, land, and capital. As knowledge and information, data have become the new core factor of production. However, data do not spontaneously generate economic value, and their impact on the economy does not break away from the framework of the traditional endogenous growth theory. They integrate technology flow, material flow, capital flow, and talent flow effectively, which render many factors in the traditional economic growth theory with new meanings. Therefore, it is necessary to appropriately expand the existing theoretical system. Based on the evolution of the endogenous growth model, this study constructed an input-output indicator system including data factor to measure the total factor productivity of marine economy in 11 coastal provinces of Chinese mainland (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) and the productivity changes of each factor from 2006 to 2018 using the directional distance function (DDF)-Luenberger index and its decomposition model. The results show that: 1) The performance of data factor in all coastal areas of Chinese mainland increased to different degrees, but the digital divide between these areas during the study period still cannot be ignored. 2) The measurement results of the DDF-Luenberger index show that since 2006, the total factor productivity of marine economy in all coastal areas has increased, and the stage characteristics are obvious. 3) The results of single factor performance measurement show that: with regard to the data factor, having large amounts of data only indicate the potential to transform them into real productivity, and the change of total factor data productivity still depends more on the change of digital technology. With regard to the labor factor, the development of digital economy shows the Matthew effect in the improvement of labor skills. During the study period, the total factor labor productivity in all coastal areas showed an upward trend. With regard to the capital factor, the change of total factor capital productivity shows obvious temporal and spatial differentiation characteristics. With regard to the resource factor, in general, the total factor resource productivity of coastal provinces shows positive changes with obvious stage characteristics.
Urban-rural transformation (URT) is a comprehensive process with the characteristics of multi-domains and multi-levels. A scientific understanding of the concept and connotation of URT and a systematic discussion of the patterns and mechanism of URT are of great significance to solving the problems of unbalanced urban-rural development and insufficient rural development. Based on the theoretical cognition of URT, this study comprehensively analyzed the urban-rural development level and its spatial-temporal patterns in China, revealed the patterns of URT according to the coupling coordination degree of urban-rural development level, and discussed the key of urban-rural integrated development in different types of URT areas. The results show that URT is the result of the interaction between the change of urban regional system and the change of rural regional system, and its external representation is the coupling coordination state of the two different but closely related processes. From 2000 to 2018, the level of urban and rural development in all provinces of China's mainland has risen rapidly, and the coupling coordination degree of urban and rural development level has changed from being on the verge of imbalance to intermediate coordination. Spatially, the provincial coupling coordination degree of the central and western regions is significantly lower than that of the northeast and eastern regions. Accordingly, URT in China has realized the transformation from low-level urban-rural coordination to medium-level urban-rural integration, showing a spatial characteristic that provincial URT in the central and western regions lags behind the eastern areas, especially Beijing and the provinces in the Yangtze River Delta, where urban-rural development has entered or will soon enter the stage of high-level urban-rural integration. According to the features of URT in each province, URT in China can be divided into four types, that is, high-level urban-rural integrated area, medium-level urban-rural integrated area, low-level urban-rural integrated area Ⅰ, and low-level urban-rural integrated area Ⅱ. To continuously promote the development of new-type urbanization and the implementation of rural revitalization strategy, it is urgent to establish and improve the system and mechanism of urban-rural integrated development through measures such as deepening the reform, innovating the mechanism, and making up for the shortcomings.
Firms spatial expansion is of great significance to enterprise efficiency and regional coordinated development. Based on the data of listed manufacturing firms in Beijing and their subsidiaries from 2009 to 2018, this study examined the enterprise spatial expansion model through the changes of spatial distribution of subsidiaries, and analyzed the change of the distance between headquarters and subsidiaries brought by expansion. Furthermore, the dynamic panel measurement method was used to empirically test the impact of the change of geographical distance and economic distance between headquarters and subsidiaries on the efficiency of manufacturing enterprises with different expansion modes. The study found that: First, during the study period, the scale of expansion of the sample listed manufacturing firms in Beijing was relatively large, and the spatial expansion mode has changed from hierarchical diffusion to a combination of hierarchical diffusion and contagious diffusion, with contagious diffusion as the dominant mode. The geographical distance between headquarters and subsidiaries showed an upward trend, and the economic distance first decreased and then increased. Among these firms, technology-intensive firms and non-state-owned firms tend to experience hierarchical diffusion, while non-technology-intensive firms and state-owned firms tend to undergo contagious diffusion. Second, for the firms with contagious diffusion as the main expansion mode, geographical distance between headquarters and subsidiaries was negatively correlated with firm efficiency, but the efficiency of firms that did not take contagious diffusion as the main mode of expansion was not affected by geographical distance. Third, regardless of firm expansion mode, economic distance between headquarters and subsidiaries was positively correlated with firm efficiency. Therefore, different types of manufacturing firms should choose different expansion strategies.
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is in an important period of rapid technological breakthrough and application growth, which will vigorously promote the low-altitude economy development. The low-altitude Internet of Intelligences (IoI) is the cornerstone of the UAV industry development and an important infrastructure to realize the "human-UVA-physical objects" fusion and AIoT (All in Internet of Thing) in low-altitude airspace. The construction of low-altitude IoI aims to realize the transition from the traditional Internet to the AIoT by the space-air-ground-sea network infrastructure, and to form a physical cyberspace for the digital and intelligent operation of low-altitude services. It can provide a digital, intelligent, and networked environment for the UAV industry, which is of great significance for promoting the development of low-altitude economy.
With the increasing economic interaction between cities, capital flow across regions has gradually become a key factor affecting the regional economic disparities. Cross-regional enterprise investment is regarded as the micro embodiment of capital flows. It is of great significance to explore the characteristics of cross-regional enterprise investment for reducing regional economic disparities. Thus, this study examined the cross-regional investment network using the cross-regional investment data of Chinese listed companies in 1998-2018, and analyzed the characteristics of the spatial evolution of China's cross-regional investment network and its influencing factors at the national and regional levels. The results show that: the spatial agglomeration trend of node centrality in China's cross-regional investment network at the national and regional levels is obvious and the cities with high node centrality are mainly concentrated in the five major urban agglomerations. There are obvious hierarchical structure, spatial heterogeneity, and path dependence of the cross-regional investment network; the net investment inflows and outflows are mainly in the eastern region, and the investment activities tend to develop toward the central and western regions; the influence of city economic development level, industrial structure, and financial environment varies across regions and types of cities with different population scales.
The Chinese government has curbed the outbreak of COVID-19 through a population flow control rarely seen in history. The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the recreation industry. Using mobile location data, this study quantitatively analyzed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on population heat map in the leisure areas within the Third Ring Road of Beijing City on the Qingming Festival and Labor Day. The results showed that: 1) The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted population heat map in leisure areas in Beijing on holidays, and the population heat map values of the three types of leisure areas investigated in this study declined by 54.2% and 53.0% on the Qingming Festival and Labor Day in 2020 as compared to the 2019 values, respectively. To be specific, the population heat map values of famous scenery, shopping services, and hotel accommodation decreased by 53.6%, 57.5%, and 52.9% on the Qingming Festival, and by 48.5%, 52.0%, and 55.6% on Labor Day, respectively. 2) There were differences in the degree of the impact on population heat map in different types of areas in famous scenery. The impact on the three major segments of famous scenery can be ranked in ascending order as follows: temples and churches (41.7%, 50.3%), parks and squares (53.1%, 47.1%), and scenic spots (61.1%, 51.2%). Wilcoxon rank sum test showed that the hourly variation of population heat map in temples and churches was smaller, and the overall demand can be ranked in ascending order as follows: sightseeing, daily leisure, and religious activities. 3) The 2020 population heat map of the leisure areas within the Third Ring Road of Beijing City was significantly negatively and positively correlated with the population heat map before the pandemic and area of these leisure areas, respectively. This can be attributed to the risk perception of the leisure crowds and the spatial and environmental factors of the disease prevention and control measures. This study provides a scientific basis for assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on leisure forms in big cities of China.
"Development driven by innovation" is an important strategy of the Chinese government. This study used data including inter-city patent transfer from China Intellectual Property Office for 2017 and 2018 to explore the technology-introduction pattern of cities in China from the perspective of technology relatedness and complexity, using Gephi, ArcGIS, and Stata. This study hypothesized that: 1) cities tend to introduce technologies highly related to local knowledge structure; 2) the more complex a technology is, the less opportunity that cities will introduce it; and 3) the relatedness of a technology will mitigate the effect of its complexity on technology transfer. Based on the average relatedness and average complexity of technologies introduced in each city, this study identified four technology-introduction patterns, which are "high relatedness and high complexity", "low relatedness and high complexity", "low relatedness and low complexity", and "high relatedness and low complexity". Furthermore, unique mechanisms of change exist for different technology-introduction patterns. This study found that the complexity of introduced technologies increases with the economic development stage of the city, while the relatedness of that displays an inverse U-shaped mode. Hence, we divided technology introduction into three stages according to the level of urban development: 1) the learning stage dominated by low relatedness, 2) the reinforcing stage dominated by the increase in relatedness, and 3) the leaping stage dominated by diversification into unfamiliar technology fields. The empirical results show that in general, the increase in technological relatedness and the decrease in complexity of a technology will promote cities to introduce the technology, and the increase in relatedness will encourage cities to introduce more complex technology in that field. Additionally, the mechanism of change was tested through regression by groups—cities were sorted into four groups by their GDP per capita and population density, then we performed regression on technological relatedness and complexity respectively, which shows that the coefficient of relatedness lost significance in the most developed 25% cities, while it remained robust in the other three groups. The coefficient of complexity similarly lost significance in the most developed 50% cities. These results jointly verify the hypothesis of three technology-introduction stages. This study analyzed the pattern of technology-introduction empirically, stressing on the importance of relatedness and complexity in innovation research, which offers a grounded reference for guiding the innovation development path of cities.
The development strategy of industrial transfer and upgrading, coordinated development, and in-depth integration of advanced manufacturing in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region put forward higher requirements for the spatial layout of manufacturing industrial clusters. Research on the change of manufacturing industry spatial pattern can provide a reference for the optimization of urban agglomerations' advanced manufacturing industries. Based on the micro-level data of industrial enterprises above designated size in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region from 2000 to 2013, this study used kernal density analysis and panel data regression models to explore the characteristics and driving factors of the change of the manufacturing industry spatial pattern in the region. The results of this empirical research show that: 1) The overall spatial pattern of all manufacturing industries in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is relatively stable, and high-value areas are concentrated in the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan area. The regional linked development of capital-intensive industries is gaining momentum; technology-intensive industries are increasingly concentrated in a few districts and counties, and the degree of spatial autocorrelation with surrounding districts and counties has weakened as a whole; spatial expansion into nearby districts and counties and spatial transfer of labor-intensive industries appeared alternately; and the regional linked development promotes the balanced growth of manufacturing industries in various regions and narrows the development gap. 2) The manufacturing industry in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region shows a clear trend of specialization and regional division of labor, and labor-intensive industries are increasingly spreading to the periphery of the central cities and the counties in the central and southern areas of the region. Capital-intensive industries are concentrated in the industrial belt on the west coast of the Bohai Sea, the industrial output value of the peripheral areas of the region has increased significantly, and technology-intensive industries are gathered in the Beijing-Tianjin high-tech industrial belt. 3) The key driving factors of the three types of manufacturing industries are different. Labor-intensive industries are affected by investment and transportation accessibility. Capital-intensive industries are highly dependent on local market size and investment, and are insensitive to transportation accessibility. Technology-intensive industries are mainly constrained by transportation accessibility and wage levels. The three types of manufacturing industries are obviously affected by local fiscal expenditures.
Residents' daily life circle is one of the key issues in relation to the national spatial planning in the "new era". Supply of public service facilities is the primary condition for plan-making of this type of circle. Spatial match between residents' daily life circle and public service facilities reveals the human-environment relationship at the community level. There exist many studies on spatial match between residents' daily life circle and public service facilities. However, the existing findings are mainly based on survey data, which have disadvantages such as insufficient samples, small geography coverage, and so on. This study investigated the spatial match between residents' daily life circle and public service facilities in large cities by taking Beijing as an example. Using mobile phone data and point-of-interest (POI) data collected in 2018, this study measured the spatial range of residents' daily life circle and accessibility of public service facilities, and analyzed the relationship between the spatial range of residents' daily life circle and accessibility of public service facilities by the bivariate spatial autocorrelation method. It also analyzed the geographical variations in the relationship. The results of analysis show that residents' daily life circle has a multi-centric structure at the city level. The length of radius of the circle increases from the central areas to the periphery. Accessibility of public service facilities is featured with a zonal structure but its level decreases with the distance away from the centers. The level of accessibility is negatively related with radius of the circle, which means that the higher level of accessibility, the smaller radius of the circle. There are geographical variations in the relationship. The relationship is "high-low" in the city center and new town centers, but dominated by "low-low" and "low-high" pattern in the fringe of the city center and new town centers. There are also variations in the relationship between different types of public service facilities. For the cultural and leisure facilities, the degree of spatial match between residents' daily life circle and public service facilities is obvious lower than other facilities. The conclusion of this research provides new evidence for residents' daily life circle study, and has policy implications for residents' daily life circle planning.
Regional population decline has gradually become a new phenomenon in recent years, which has attracted extensive attention from scholars and the government. Using the national census data and 1% population sampling survey data, this study identified the population decline areas at the county level from 1990 to 2015 from a multi-periodical perspective. Based on the theoretical analysis of the driving factors of population decline, a cluster analysis has been conducted to reveal the spatial differences of the driving factors of population decline, which resulted in four typical cases of causes. The findings are as follows: First, the population decline areas have very different trajectories: while about 24% of them are characterized by fluctuating but overall decline, about 13% of them have experienced continuous decline, and about 5% of them have only experienced recent decline. Second, the fluctuating but overall decline county units were mainly distributed in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and Gansu, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, and Fujian Provinces, and the continuous decline county units were mainly concentrated in Sichuan, Guizhou, Chongqing, and the Northeast region, and the recent decline county units were mainly concentrated in the Northeast region, Henan, and Xinjiang. Third, there are obvious regional differences in the driving factors of population decline: the county units driven by lagged economy accounted for the highest percentage, and these units were mainly distributed in the central and western regions; the county units in the Northeast region were mainly driven by the slowed economic development and the low natural growth level; in contrast, the percentage of county units only driven by the low natural growth level is relatively low, and these units were mainly distributed in the eastern region. Based on these findings, we argue that it is necessary to pay more attention to the phenomenon of population decline at the regional scale, and take targeted measures by fully considering the trend of change and driving factors of population decline in different regions.
With the increasing emphasis on coordinated regional development, transport and socioeconomic developments in China have taken a new turn in recent years. Based on the present and future integrated land transport network, the trend of city network accessibility and its impact on the change of regional development patterns in China were analyzed in this study by focusing on the construction of travel circles and regional balance. The results show that the completion of the existing planning can greatly improve the accessibility of China's city network and can largely support the construction of travel circles according to the shortest travel time. By promoting the development of hub-spoke organization mode and spatial cascading order, the existing planning can guide the multi-center and networking development of spatial structure and provide a basis for the coordinated and balanced development between regions. In the future, China's transport development should continue to optimize the supply structure of transportation services and improve the ability of the integrated transport system to serve the needs of people's daily lives and production.
This article started with an analysis of the background of rural decline, and the content and logic of the national strategy of rural revitalization from the perspective of human-land relationship. We proposed that rural recession is the result of the adjustment of human-land relationship lagging behind the process of social and economic development. The ultimate purpose of rural revitalization is to adjust the relationship between human and land to adapt to the change of the value of production factors in the new stage of social and economic development. Then, the review of the literature on rural revitalization found that the existing research has paid more attention to the implementation of its strategic content, but not enough attention to rural settlements that have been the important carrier of rural population. There is a close relationship between rural settlement and rural revitalization. Rural settlements are the focus of human social and economic activities in rural areas, and are the core and starting point of rural human-land relationship adjustment. But in the existing literature on rural settlements, emphasis is placed on development cases and neglecting mechanisms, especially the mechanism of change of rural settlements, which is closely associated with rural revitalization. Therefore, bearing in mind the key role of rural settlements in rural revitalization, this article finally put forward five focus areas of future research: the theory of rural settlement evolution, changing trend of spatial structure in rural settlements, specialization transformation of rural settlements, optimization of rural settlements, and landscape of rural settlements.
Community life circle examines urban communities from the perspective of residents' daily activities. It is the frontier of urban geography and urban related studies. It is also an important part of the innovation of Chinese territorial and spatial planning system and an important starting point for the sustainable development of China's urban society. With the continuous deepening of mobility and informatization, the agents of community life circles, community activities and residents' spatiotemporal behavior, and the function and meanings of community space are becoming more diversified, which needs innovative research and practical guidance of urban social geography. Time-geography is a comprehensive social-technical-ecological approach to understand the relationship between humans and the environment, which provides an essential basis for early research on community life circles based on activity space. New time-geography attaches great importance to the interactions and spatiotemporal combinations of projects between family and other social organizations. It can provide an important basis for the study of the complex interactions between individual, family, and community and the sociocultural constraints, the complex context analysis, and the simulation of spatiotemporal behavior in community life circles. Based on the new time-geography approach, this study proposed a new time-geography research framework of community life circle from theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives, including: 1) constructing the community life circle theory based on spatiotemporal behavior and revealing community life circle spatial and temporal structures; 2) developing methods for collecting and analyzing spatiotemporal behavioral data of community life circle and simulation; 3) innovating Chinese urban planning and management from the aspects of optimizing residents spatiotemporal behaviors within the community life circle, community social interaction life circle, and community safety life circle.
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative, and "unimpeded trade" is one of the priorities of cooperation in the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China. It is important to examine the spatio-temporal characteristics of international trade between China and Pakistan for promoting economic prosperity and regional cooperation along CPEC. This study examined the spatio-temporal characteristics of trade cooperation between China and Pakistan, and analyzed its influencing factors using a stochastic frontier gravity model. The findings of this research are as follows: First, the scale of China-Pakistan trade is small but growing fast; China has trade surplus that continues to increase, and Pakistan shows low status in the global trade network of China; in China-Pakistan trade, China mainly exports capital-intensive products such as machinery and electrical equipment, and imports textile raw materials, textile products and other primary products, and labor-intensive products. Second, significant spatial differences exist in the trade scale and commodity structure of provinces in China with Pakistan; notably, eastern coastal provinces in China have significant advantages in terms of trade scale with Pakistan, while western provinces, except Xinjiang, have limited trade with Pakistan. Third, most of China's provinces have undergone significant changes in the structure of trade commodities, among which provinces with diverse commodity structures, such as Xinjiang and Shandong, have relatively little change. Fourth, higher economic development level and larger market size of provinces in China significantly promote China-Pakistan trade; shipping distance shows negative impact on China-Pakistan trade; shared border provides good conditions for cross-border trade; the construction of railway and shipping ports has shown a significant promoting effect on trade. Fifth, great trade potential still exists between provinces in China and Pakistan, especially in Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Guangxi, and Shaanxi provinces and autonomous regions.
