Abstract:

The high-quality development of national strategic regions is a hot topic in today's academic circles. Central China connects the east to the west and links the south to the north, which plays a pivotal role in supporting the coordinated development in China. At present, there is a relative lack of multi-scale and multi-dimensional comprehensive analysis on high-quality development in Central China. Based on the basic logic and scientific connotation of high-quality development in Central China, this paper constructs an evaluation index system to measure the high-quality development level of Central China from 2006 to 2019, and examines the spatiotemporal pattern of high-quality development in Central China from a multi-level spatial scale, and uses the traditional and spatial kernel density to analyze the distribution dynamic evolution and long-term transfer trend, and explores its formation mechanism from a structural perspective. The results show that: (1) The high-quality development level in Central China is lower than the national average, but the growth rate is relatively large; the gap is obvious between the eastern and central regions, and it is close to the western and northeastern regions; Central China presents a distribution pattern of "provincial capital cities are better than non-provincial capital cities". (2) The high-quality development in Central China is generally good, but there is a trend of spatial polarization, among which, Henan and Hubei are prominent. The high-quality development in Central China generally has the characteristics of "club convergence"; the positive spillover effect of the high-level neighboring cities in the whole region and most provinces is significant, while the spatial spillover effect of Hubei and Shanxi is not obvious. (3) From the perspective of structure, the differences between the central and other regions are mainly due to differences in economic structure, ecological environment and people's livelihood development, and internal differences come from differences in coordination and innovation; structural optimization and people's livelihood development are the main driving forces for high-quality development in Central China, and the formation mechanism of polarization characteristics varies from province to province. Among them, the polarization trend of Henan and Hubei is mainly determined by the characteristics of structural coordination and technological innovation; the spillover of industrial elements, ecological cooperation and development, and people's livelihood co-construction and sharing are the main reasons for the transfer of high-quality development in the region, but there is obvious spatial heterogeneity in the formation mechanism of transfer across provinces.

Key words: Central China, high-quality development, spatiotemporal pattern, dynamic evolution, kernel density estimation, Geodetector