New quality productive forces act as a bridge for balanced economic development between urban and rural areas. This study analyzed the change of China's new quality productive forces using the panel data from prefecture-level cities spanning from 2011 to 2021. Through the application of mediation effect models and spatial econometric models, the study examined the influence of new quality productive forces on the urban-rural income gap, the mechanisms at play, and the spatial spillover effects. The results indicate that: 1) Since 2011, the overall level of new quality productive forces in Chinese prefecture-level cities had shown a steady upward trend, with significant spatial clustering characteristics. The various components of the new quality productive forces exhibited a "point and area clustering" spatial pattern. 2) The development of new quality productive forces had a significant positive impact on reducing the urban-rural income gap. This conclusion remained valid after robustness and endogeneity tests. 3) The results of the mediation effect analysis confirm that improvements in new quality productive forces in Chinese cities not only contribute to narrowing the urban-rural income gap overall but also affect the gap through mechanisms such as enhancing labor productivity and resource allocation efficiency. 4) The results of the spatial econometric analysis indicate that the development of new quality productive forces in China had a positive spillover effect on the urban-rural income gap. While it reduced the gap within a region, it also positively influenced the narrowing of the gap in neighboring regions. The enhancement of new quality productive forces is crucial for optimizing regional layouts. Moving forward, it is essential to integrate urban-rural coordinated development goals with the cultivation of these productive forces, emphasizing their positive impact on promoting urban-rural coordinated development.

Based on the agricultural product e-commerce data of Taobao and Jingdong from 2012 to 2022, this study analyzed the development trend and spatial distribution pattern of China's agricultural product e-commerce industry by using kernel density analysis, average nearest neighbor index, and standard deviation ellipse. It also explored the driving factors and formation mechanisms by using multiscale geographically weighted regression in combination with the macro economic data of prefectural-level cities. The results of the study show that: 1) The spatial distribution pattern of agricultural product e-commerce industry is highly consistent with China's human and natural geographic factors, and shows the characteristics of regional agglomeration. 2) The spatial direction of industrial development shows a pattern of northeast-south (slightly eastward), forming a multicore circular structure with gradient diffusion from the center to the periphery, and the change and layout of the industry show a dependency on the established development path, presenting an unbalanced spatial distribution. 3) There is an obvious spatial heterogeneity in the driving effects of various factors for the agricultural product e-commerce industry, and there is a general tendency for the driving role of industrial structure factors, economic and social development factors, market potential factors, and government support factors to gradually decrease from east to west, and the driving role of infrastructure factors shows a tendency of gradual decrease from south to north. Based on the above conclusions, this article put forward the following policy recommendations: 1) Each region should primarily focus on exploring the market and stabilize the relationship between production and marketing for the development of agricultural product e-commerce. 2) The positive role of policy guidance should be further utilized to provide more positive externality inputs for the development of e-commerce in the western region. 3) Infrastructure development of agricultural products logistics should be further strengthened. 4) In the development of the industry, different regions need to take into account their own actual situation and implement targeted measures to avoid wasting resources.

Cognitive impairment care is an inevitable demand for China's transition from "aging with support" to "aging with quality care". Based on various spatial analysis methods, this study explored the spatiotemporal pattern, evolutionary leaps, and regional optimization paths of cognitive impairment care development in China. The results indicate that: 1) The development of cognitive impairment care in China experienced three stages from 2010 to 2022: fluctuating growth, continuous growth, and slowing growth rate. The kernel density curves of the number and density of institutions gradually changed from multi-peak polarization to a bell-shaped equilibrium. 2) In terms of local spatial structures and dependencies, some regions in the east and the Chengdu-Chongqing area exhibited strong volatility, while other regions were relatively stable, showing clear characteristics of transfer inertia and path lock-in. 3) Regarding driving factors, public cultural development and socioeconomic foundations were the main drivers that influenced the spatial distribution of cognitive impairment care institutions, and the interactive effect of living environment factors with both was also the strongest. 4) High potential areas for the development of cognitive impairment care in China presented a circular-point pattern, featuring both the zonal distribution of coastal city clusters and the isolated island distribution of provincial capital cities in the central and western regions. Meanwhile, the medium and low potential areas showed a contiguous patchy distribution pattern. 5) Cognitive impairment care in China can be summarized into four types: advantageous development zones, coordinated development zones, resource cultivation zones, and key focus zones. In practice, it is necessary to shift from pursuing extensive scale growth to intensive supply-demand coordination, emphasizing top-level design tailored to local conditions.

The Hukou transfer intention of migrant workers serves as a forward-looking indicator for assessing the process of granting permanent urban residency to eligible people who move from rural to urban areas. It is essential for advancing the new urbanization strategy and promoting the integrated development of urban and rural areas. This research aimed to provide some insights for the implementation of policies on granting permanent urban residency to eligible migrant workers. Using data from the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS), we conducted an updated and comprehensive study on the characteristics and determinants of migrant workers' Hukou transfer intentions, from the perspective of source areas. The results suggest that at present, migrant workers generally have a low inclination to transfer their Hukou, and those who aspire to transfer Hukou are most likely to settle in county seats, followed by provincial capitals and municipalities, and then prefecture-level cities. Furthermore, migrant workers prefer to transfer their Hukou to the local and nearby areas, considering distant locations only as a secondary option, and an integrated analysis revealed that nearby county seats are the most desirable locations for such migrant workers. The results also demonstrate that family characteristics and mobility features closely related to the family are common determinants, having significant effect on both the migrant workers' intentions to transfer Hukou and the intended Hukou transfer place. Urban housing and home trip frequency are also key factors that influence the decision-making process of migrant workers when it comes to Hukou transfer. The development of the collectives' economy in their original villages is crucial for deciding whether to transfer Hukou to urban areas, while the distance to county seats and the living environment in their original villages significantly influence the choice of transfer location. The results offer a deeper understanding of the Hukou transfer decisions made by migrant workers and provide policy insights for addressing the challenges of their urban integration and advancing the new urbanization strategies.

Cross-city patient mobility vividly encapsulates the supply and demand dynamics of medical resources across urban landscapes. By exploring the spatial patterns and determinant factors of the cross-city medical network, valuable insights can be gleaned to enhance regional healthcare systems. In this study, using a robust dataset of nearly 500000 online patient comments, a cross-city medical network within the Yangtze River Economic Belt was constructed. This network was rigorously analyzed using sophisticated social network analysis and exponential random graph models to decipher its spatial configurations and driving forces. The findings of the study are multifaceted: 1) The cross-city medical network in the Yangtze River Economic Belt predominantly exhibited a single-core and multi-centers pattern in terms of supply distribution, whereas demand scales down progressively from west to east, indicating a geographic gradient in medical resource utilization. The supply-demand relationships are characterized by single-center aggregations. 2) Spatially, the intercity medical services within the region are organized into a three-tier hierarchical structure, spanning from ordinary cities to provincial capitals, with Shanghai serving as a superlative node. This pattern, however, is occasionally disrupted by cities that transcend these conventional boundaries of the region. 3) Enhancements in geographical, institutional, social, and cultural proximities are observed to significantly bolster intercity patient mobility, underscoring the importance of multi-dimensional connectivity in healthcare access and delivery. This study proposed an innovative analytical framework for understanding the spatial organization of intercity medical services and constructed a proximity analysis model tailored to patient mobility. By revealing the intricate structure of the cross-city medical network in the Yangtze River Economic Belt and its influencing factors, this study contributes theoretical and empirical insights that can inform strategic planning and policy making aimed at optimizing the regional distribution of medical resources in the region. This research not only aids in theoretical advancements but also serves as a practical guide for healthcare policymakers seeking to refine resource allocation and enhance service delivery in complex urban networks.

Constructing a non-local innovation network is of great significance for continuously improving the international competitiveness of the biomedical industry in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Based on the information entropy of the network, this study adopted the Fisher optimal segmentation method to divide the development of the non-local innovation network of the YRD biomedical industry into germination, growth, and maturity stages, and explored the mechanism of change of each stage with the help of the social network analysis method, the exponential random graph model (ERGM), and the comparative static analysis method. The results showed that: 1) The non-local innovation network of the biomedical industry in the YRD has developed to a mature stage, and the redundant information within the network has increased. 2) The network structure has shown the trend of multicentric and cross-regional development, with some cities moving from the periphery to the core of the network, and the core-periphery structure has weakened. Cities outside of the YRD, such as Beijing and Chengdu, have become the core cities of the non-local innovation network of the YRD biomedical industry, which provide important knowledge supplement for the YRD biomedical industry. 3) Along with the increase of network complexity, the driving force of the endogenous transfer effect of the network structure, Matthew effect based on the innovation capability, and multidimensional proximity on the change of the non-local innovation cooperation network showed great dynamics and their relative importance was changing too. The key driving forces dominating the change of the network at this stage are social proximity and institutional proximity based on trust relationships. The study concludes that in the future, the biomedical industry in the Yangtze River Delta should be alert to the lock-in effect of innovation cooperation led by trust relationships, and it should expand the scope of searching for cooperative partners by removing institutional barriers.

With the development of the country and the progress of society, China's medical resources have become increasingly advanced. However, due to regional differences, there still exists an imbalance in the distribution of medical resources. Accessibility, as an effective tool, is often employed by scholars to measure the spatial balance of medical resources. With the increasingly common practice of long-distance medical treatment seeking, it has obvious scientific significance and application value to explore the accessibility of high-quality medical resources at the regional level. Considering the increasingly prominent position of high-speed railway in intercity passenger transportation, this study took the Yangtze River Delta region as an example to examine the high-quality medical resources accessibility issue. The cumulative opportunity method and hierarchical two-step mobile search method (H2SFCA) were used to analyze the accessibility of regional high-quality medical resources under road transportation and land transportation considering high-speed rail, respectively, and to explore the impact of high-speed rail on accessibility. The results show that: 1) The accessibility of high-quality medical resources in the Yangtze River Delta is generally high in the east and low in the west. With the increase of the time threshold, the core-periphery pattern of accessibility becomes prominent, and the region around Taihu Lake becomes the center of high accessibility because it is located in the enclosed area of Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou. 2) High-speed rail shortens travel time and improves the average cumulative opportunity accessibility of high-quality medical resources in the Yangtze River Delta; At the same time, the number of people served by the top three hospitals increased, the supply and demand ratio of medical services decreased correspondingly, and the average H2SFCA accessibility of high-quality medical resources in the region decreased. The accessibility of the study units along the Beijing-Shanghai, Nanjing-Anqing, and Hefei-Hangzhou high-speed railways is significantly improved under the influence of high-speed railways, and the high accessibility values show a high-speed rail directivity when considering the land transport modes of highway and high-speed railways. 3) The cumulative opportunity method only considers the number of medical resources, and the municipality directly under the central government (Shanghai) and the provincial capitals are the centers of high accessibility at different time thresholds; Considering the supply and demand of hospitals and residents' choice of medical treatment, the H2SFCA accessibility in Shanghai and provincial capitals is significantly lower than the cumulative opportunity accessibility, showing a dip at the time thresholds of 2 h and 3 h. The supply of high-quality medical resources in Shanghai, Hefei, and Hangzhou is relatively insufficient, and hierarchical diagnosis and treatment should be continuously promoted, the referral mechanism should be optimized, and the pressure of high-level medical institutions should be reduced.

Cultural heritage sites are a comprehensive space constructed by a large number of signs and symbols, both material and immaterial, such as ancient architecture, folk customs, ritual traditions, and identity recognition. The Beijing Central Axis is located in the center of the old city of Beijing, with a total length of 7.8 km. It is not a single line, but a multidimensional dynamic space that encompasses multiple subjects, constantly constructing meaning, imagining symbols, and spreading narratives. It is a highly concentrated area of urban functions. Drawing on Lefebvre's dialectic of spatial triad, this study examined the spatial production characteristics and problems of the Beijing Central Axis from three levels—spatial practice, spatial representation, and representational space—through field research, case comparison, and social semantic network analysis. We found that protection of heritage and tourism practices driven by social factors and forces under the leadership of the government have reshaped the heritage and tourism space of the Beijing Central Axis, forming an important socialized structure of the current central axis space. This process is not only about the restoration and renewal of physical space, but also about the inheritance and innovation of social aspects and culture. However, this process is facing many challenges, including the high complexity of the heritage protection and management system, the lack of innovative interpretation of the overall value of the central axis, and an imbalance in the allocation of tourism space versus heritage space. Therefore, the relationships between power, interests, and cultural identity should be properly handled. In terms of heritage protection and management, the system should be further simplified, and a more efficient multisectoral coordination mechanism should be established; in terms of heritage value interpretation, the application of digital technology should be strengthened to enhance the accessibility and appeal of heritage; and in terms of public participation, the design of the tourism routes should be optimized to balance and enhance tourism space while enriching heritage space through diversifying community activities, education programs, and volunteer services.

Based on 220 survey questionnaires collected from Hongni Village, Pingshun County, Changzhi City, Shanxi Province and the perspectives of positive tourism impact perception and negative tourism impact perception, combining the mediation effect of the interaction between hosts and guests and the moderating effect of place attachment, this study used the structural equation model and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the formation mechanism and improvement pathways of residents' subjective well-being in rural tourism destinations. The results show that both positive tourism impact perception and negative tourism impact perception directly affect subjective well-being. There exist some mediation effects in the above two pathways. Place attachment has a negative moderating effect on the positive perception of tourism impact and subjective well-being, and a positive moderating effect on the negative perception of tourism impact and subjective well-being. The simultaneous occurrence of high levels of positive impact perception and place attachment is the sufficient condition with strongest explanatory power for obtaining subjective well-being. The research results provide some practical guidance for revealing the mechanism of impact of subjective well-being and improving the subjective well-being of local residents in rural tourism destinations.

Urban vitality is the organic component and strong driving force of high-quality urban development. As a special area for national security and under the influence of multiple powers, the urban vitality of border cities is vulnerable to the comprehensive impact of complex geopolitical situations, domestic opening-up policies, and their own development conditions. This study constructed an urban vitality evaluation system composed of economic vitality, social vitality, and cultural vitality, attempting to measure the urban vitality of border counties in Yunnan Province in 2013, 2015, 2019, and 2022, explore their spatial differentiation patterns, and analyze the influencing factors with the help of Geo-detector. The results show that: 1) The urban vitality of border counties in Yunnan presented an obvious spatial heterogeneity, strong vitality was concentrated in the southeast of Yunnan while the west developed slowly, and the policy supports and COVID-19 pandemic had an important impact on local development. 2) The spatial agglomeration effect was significant, and the spatially correlated cooperation of adjacent regions was continuously enhancing and evolving with time. 3) Tourism development and foreign trade were the key factors affecting urban vitality, and the synergistic effect of factors changed significantly in different years. This study extended the theory of urban vitality to border cities and built an assessment framework based on the geographical characteristics of the border. The results provide a useful reference for the sustainable and healthy development of border areas.

Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (hereinafter referred to as Inner Mongolia) is an important ecological barrier in northern China. Under the joint drive of natural and human factors, the dynamic process of vegetation change in Inner Mongolia has significantly varied since the twenty-first century. However, there is still a lack of systematic quantitative research on the location, degree, and occurrence of abrupt changes in vegetation, and the contribution of different driving factors. This study selected six remote sensing vegetation indices and used the Theil-Sen trend, Mann-Kendall test, and Breaks for Additive Season and Trend methods to monitor the spatiotemporal patterns of vegetation greening and browning in Inner Mongolia from 2000 to 2022. The contributions of natural and human factors were quantitatively analyzed using the improved Residual Trends method and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. The results show that: 1) From 2000 to 2022, 29.62%-36.96% of the areas in Inner Mongolia experienced vegetation greening, while only 0.36%-0.51% of the areas experienced browning. Positive abrupt changes mainly occurred in grasslands (35.9%) in the central and western regions and forested areas in the eastern region (25.7%), while 42.7% of the negative abrupt changes occurred in the western grassland areas such as Chifeng City and western Hulunbuir City. 2) Climate change dominated 88.8% of vegetation greening and 62.8% of vegetation browning in the study area, with 5.8% of greening and 14.8% of browning being dominated by land use. Both factors had positive effects on vegetation greening areas and negative impacts on browning areas. 3) For greening areas and browning areas, direct impact of temperature, soil moisture, population density, and land use intensity had dominant effects on most areas. The direct and indirect effects of various factors exhibited significant spatial heterogeneity in distribution. This study can provide a scientific guidance for the development of ecological restoration in Inner Mongolia.

In the context of climate warming, the risk of extreme rainfall-induced flash floods has become one of the major constraints on sustainable socioeconomic development. This study focused on the Magui River Basin in western Guangdong Province to investigate the impact of land surface changes on extreme rainfall-flash flood hazard. First, a regionalized extreme rainfall-flash flood numerical model was constructed to simulate flood inundation characteristics under extreme rainfall scenarios. Subsequently, multi-source remote sensing data were used to interpret the characteristics of human construction activities, river engineering activities, and natural factor changes, and different land surface change scenarios were established. Finally, based on the relationship between extreme rainfall-flash flood hazards and land surface characteristic changes, the quantitative impact of land surface changes on flash flood hazards was analyzed. The results indicate that within the study area, human construction activities had a significantly greater influence on flash flood hazard changes than natural factors, with river engineering activities, particularly channel widening, showing notable effectiveness in extreme rainfall-flash flood hazard prevention and control. Specifically, when the area of river engineering activities increased by 5.72%, the high-risk and medium-risk zones for extreme rainfall-flash flood hazards decreased by 11.53% and 7.99%, respectively. An increase in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from 0.19 to 0.58 (an increase of 0.39) resulted in reductions of 1.96% and 1.07% in these two risk zones, respectively. This study's findings can guide disaster prevention and mitigation engineering and regional planning at the watershed scale, in order to reduce regional extreme rainfall-flash flood disaster risks.

Historical land use and cover change (LUCC) is an important field of global change research. Since ancient times, irrigation has been a vital approach of intensive land use in China, and influenced the development of China's agriculture and society. However, direct records of irrigated cropland areas in historical materials are extremely scarce, which results in a very unclear understanding of the change in the scale of irrigated cropland in China's historical periods. In this study, we selected the north of Anyang City, Henan Province, which has a long history of irrigation in China, as the case study area. We first extracted records of exact and approximate irrigation scales, and the length and number of canals from historical documents, gazetteers since the Qing Dynasty, journal publications, and statistical yearbooks for the north of Anyang City since the Warring States period. Then we explored and developed a methodology to reconstruct the change of historical irrigated cropland at the regional millennial-scale based on multiple data sources through indicator quantification and data fusion, and elucidated the change and characteristics of the scale of irrigated cropland in the study area from the Warring States period to the present (423 B.C.-2015). The main results are as follows: 1) From the Warring States period to 2015, the scale of irrigated cropland in the north of Anyang City showed a fluctuating upward trend, increased from about 100000 mu to 910000 mu (1 mu=1/15 hm²). It only grew by 40000 mu before 1949, while the increase was about 770000 mu after 1949. 2) The end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the early Tang Dynasty, and the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty were the peak periods of fluctuating change in the scale of irrigated cropland before 1949, when the scale of irrigated cropland reached 420000 mu. The Sixteen Kingdoms period, the middle of the Tang Dynasty, and the late period of 1912-1948 were trough periods of the scale of irrigated cropland, when irrigated cropland shrunk to 100000 mu. The high comparability of the reconstruction results of this study with the prosperity and decline of the Chinese society through history and the construction and abandonment of farmland water conservancy projects in other regions, and the correspondence with climate change and forest destruction all confirm the reliability of the reconstruction results.

Talents and technological innovation are key elements in cultivating new quality productive forces in the new era. Based on the data from the sixth and seventh national population censuses, this study systematically examined the spatial nonstationarity of the impact of human capital on innovation in Chinese cities between 2010 and 2020 using the Moran's index, ordinary least squares (OLS), and the multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model. The aim was to uncover the factors that influence urban innovation in China and the mechanisms underlying spatial nonstationarity. The study revealed the following: 1) There was a high degree of spatial coupling between the geographic distribution of human capital and urban innovation, primarily concentrated in the core cities of the three major urban agglomerations in eastern China—the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta—as well as in some key provincial capitals and regional central cities in the central and western regions. The spatial distribution characteristics of these factors remained relatively stable over the study period. 2) Human capital positively influenced urban innovation, although its marginal impact had decreased. Factors such as population size, income level, financial environment, environmental conditions, and foreign trade also impacted urban innovation to varying degrees, with the bandwidth of each variable reflecting the different spatial variations in their impact on urban innovation. 3) The influence of human capital on urban innovation exhibited pronounced spatial nonstationarity. In 2010, the hotspots of the marginal impact of human capital on innovation were concentrated in the three major eastern urban agglomerations, but by 2020, these had diminished to only the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. 4) Income level and foreign trade variables showed a positive spatial moderating effect on the impact of human capital on urban innovation, although this effect had weakened over time. The findings of this study provide insights for promoting innovation-driven development, high-quality development, and balanced regional development in the new era and offer guidance in formulating talent attraction and innovation policies tailored to local conditions.

As a key driving force to achieve the dual carbon goals, green and low-carbon technology innovation (GLCTI) not only provides practical methods for realizing low carbon, zero carbon, and negative carbon at the technical level, but also plays a role in promoting the green transformation of urban development mode. This study used the spatial and temporal data on the number of patents granted for green and low-carbon inventions at the city level in China, and employed spatial analysis, the Dagum Gini index, and the spatial Durbin model (SDM) to reveal the characteristics of the spatial and temporal patterns, characteristics of the spatial differentiation, and multidimensional mechanisms and their spillover effects of GLCTI in China in the period from 2002 to 2020. The following results were obtained. 1) In terms of both the number of patents granted and the participation of cities, the carbon reduction technology from fossil fuels has been leading the innovation and development of GLCTI in China. 2) The spatial distribution of GLCTI in Chinese cities showed a significant spatial agglomeration, presenting a concentrated distribution trend along the coast with Beijing and Tianjin, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta as the core. The spatial differentiation of China's urban GLCTI has improved, the uneven development of GLCTI across the country was most heavily influenced by the spatial differentiation between the eastern, central, and western regions. 3) The GLCTI of Chinese cities was booming in the field of carbon reduction, and non-resource-based cities were in a good state of innovation and development, especially the eastern non-resource-based cities with carbon reduction type I. 4) Both at the national level and at the level of the three major carbon-reducing types of cities, talent reserve, financial investment, foreign direct investment (FDI), urban economic scale, urban air quality, and tertiary industry-based industrial structure were the key factors to enhance the green and low-carbon technology innovation capacity of local and surrounding cities, while the secondary industry-based industrial structure had an inhibitory and constraining effect on local and surrounding cities. This study will provide a theoretical basis for China to achieve the dual carbon goals with high quality and help cities in China to transform into green and low-carbon cities.

High-tech enterprises occupie a pivotal position in enhancing urban innovation capacity, but the nexus between city scale and high-tech enterprise distribution remains unclear. This study examined the market dynamics and administrative structure and city scale, and used the two-stage least squares estimation model (2SLS) to analyze the distribution characteristics of high-tech enterprises in China and its association with urban hierarchy. The main results are as follows: 1) High-tech enterprises in China exhibit a tendency to cluster in large cities, with the eastern region predominantly characterized by the aggregation of these enterprises in mega-cities and their surrounding areas, while the central and western regions show a concentration around provincial capitals. 2) City scale exerts influence on high-tech enterprise clustering through both market dynamics and governmental interventions. The advantage of high-tech enterprise agglomeration in cities of greater market potential and higher administrative status is significant, although this advantage diminishes as city scale expands. Moreover, the impact of city scale on high-tech enterprise clustering varies regionally, with market forces playing a more pronounced role in the eastern region, while governmental influences have a stronger impact in the central and western regions. Our findings unveil the underlying role of city scale in shaping the spatial distribution of high-tech enterprises, thereby enriching the empirical studies on high-tech enterprise location choice.

Numerous studies have focused on the employment effect of the expansion of the tradable sectors, but there are relatively few studies on the employment multiplier of shrinking cities. Based on the employment statistics of cities at the prefecture level in China from 2003 to 2016, this study took cities with declining tradable sectors as the research objects and calculates their employment multipliers. First, we found that the recession of the tradable sectors had a significant impact on the employment of the non-tradable sectors, which declined after the recession of the tradable sectors. However, this effect was smaller than that of the expansion of the tradable sectors. To be more specific, the employment multiplier increased first and then decreased with the expansion of city size. The employment multiplier reached the maximum when the urban population was between 1.01 million and 1.25 million, which means that when the tradable sector of such cities declined, the cities shrank the fastest and the risks were higher. Second, the higher the economic complexity, the higher the employment multiplier. Third, the spillover effect of the central cities led to the cities close to a central city having a higher ability to resist job loss. The farther away from the central city, the higher the employment multiplier. When the distance from the central city reached 201-300 km, the employment multiplier was the highest. This study dealt with the estimation error caused by ignoring the problem of urban contraction and expansion in previous studies on employment multipliers, and provided a new perspective on the mechanism of employment change in the process of urban contraction.The study of employment multiplier in shrinking cities not only improves the employment multiplier theory, but also plays an important role in understanding the change of employment structure in shrinking cities and formulating corresponding industrial policies.

A scientific understanding of the allometric growth relationship between cultural and tourism industry efficiencies during the period of economic transformation change is of great significance for promoting the deep integration and high-quality development of cultural and tourism industries, and for building a culturally strong country and a leading country in tourism. This study constructed an evaluation indicator system for cultural and tourism industry efficiencies. Based on the threshold of allometric growth relationship, this study adopted the super-EBM model, allometric growth relationship model, and random forest regression algorithm to explore the allometric growth relationship of the cultural and tourism industry efficiencies in China's provincial areas and its formation mechanism from 2011 to 2021. It was found that: 1) Cultural industry efficiency and tourism industry efficiency both showed fluctuating improvement during 2011-2019, but then declined, forming a spatial pattern of leading in the east and bulging in the central, respectively. The average value of the cultural industry efficiency was higher and the fluctuation was smaller. 2) The vertical allometric growth scale coefficient showed a down-up fluctuation change, forming a strong type of cultural industry efficiency growth anisotropic relationship. Horizontal allometric growth was dominated by negative allometric types in both the before and after phases, and the strong type of growth in cultural industry efficiency and the contraction of cultural and tourism industry efficiencies were concentrated in the eastern and central-western regions of the province respectively. 3) The allometric growth of cultural and tourism industry efficiencies was driven by internal and external factors, in which the contribution rate of endogenous factors has been improved, especially of resource endowment and labor supply; among the exogenous factors, government regulation maintained a high contribution rate in the early and late stages, and the contribution rate of transportation facilities has been greatly improved. Each factor had a nonlinear effect on the allometric growth, basically fluctuating and then levelling off. The study provides a new theoretical basis and empirical support for understanding the internal logic and evolutionary differences of the cultural and tourism system, and for promoting the quality and efficiency of cultural and tourism industries and their deep integration.

Industrial collaborative agglomeration is the product of industrial development to the advanced stage, and the spatial attribute is its most prominent feature, but existing research pays little attention to the spatial element test problem of breaking through the administrative boundary barriers. To address this deficiency, this study took the high-tech manufacturing industry and productive service industry in Beijing as the research objects, and constructed a comprehensive methodological system of "identification and screening-measurement of levels-factor analysis" based on the location information of micro-enterprises, in order to realize the quantification and visualization of the phenomenon of industrial collaborative agglomeration, and to obtain the degree and internal mechanism of impact of the four spatial factors of terrain, distance, transportation, and policy, at the intra-city level. The results show that: 1) After identification and screening, high-tech manufacturing industry and high-tech productive service industry are located in the first quadrant of the two-dimensional system of industrial association and spatial interaction, with strong industrial association and high spatial interaction, which is suitable for further research. 2) In the results of the horizontal measurement, the high-level collaborative agglomeration is mainly distributed in the central area of the city, with small-scale cluster distribution in the peripheral areas, and a small "leapfrog" phenomenon occurs within the city. 3) In the detection of the influencing factors, the influence of the transportation factor is 0.2450, which plays a dominant role; the distance factor is the second largest, which is 0.1372; and the terrain and policy factors are relatively weak, with influences of only 0.0541 and 0.0995, respectively. The interaction effect of any two factors is stronger than that of a single factor, and the influence of transportation and distance is 0.2828, which represents the most significant interactive effect, reflecting the mutual game relationship between the two and also the current results of Beijing's industry relocation to outside.

Nepal is an important partner of China in building the Belt and Road in South Asia. In-depth analysis of the evolution of Nepal's foreign trade pattern and its driving factors is of great significance, not only for strengthening Sino-Nepalese cooperation and building the China-Nepal-India Economic Corridor, but also for promoting the construction of the Belt and Road. Based on Nepal's foreign trade data from 2009 to 2022, this study analyzed Nepal's trade pattern change and its driving factors using GIS spatial analysis and the panel regression model. The results are as follows: 1) From 2001 to 2022, the scale of Nepal's foreign trade was fluctuating and rising, which can be divided into three stages: slowly growing, recovering and developing, and fluctuating and developing. 2) From 2009 to 2022, Nepal's import commodity structure was relatively balanced and stable, dominated by resource-intensive and technology-intensive products. The export commodity structure was relatively homogeneous, dominated by resource-intensive primary products. 3) With regard to the spatial and temporal patterns, Nepal's foreign trade was highly dependent on its neighbor India. Its trading partners were more concentrated and mainly distributed in the neighboring countries and the world's major trading countries. The import pattern changed from peripheral agglomeration to north-south equilibrium, and the export pattern changed from single-core of India to double core of India-the United States. 4) As for the main trade flows, Nepal-India represented the core trade flow. Its import trade flow from key importing countries showed different focuses, but the commodity structure was relatively stable, and the export trade flow to key exporting countries was always dominated by textile raw materials and products. 5) The change of Nepal's foreign trade pattern was mainly driven by language proximity, organizational proximity, geographical proximity, political tendency proximity, and trade policy proximity, while other influences were driven by economic development, industrialization, and political stability.