Abstract:

China's Major Function Zoning, a prospective map comprehensively envisioning China's future conservation and development pattern, actually tells how urbanization areas, agricultural development areas and ecological security areas coordinate and evolve together to maintain the territorial development order in China, right in accordance with certain principles and rules. In this paper, the overall pattern and internal differences of the core-periphery structure are gauged by a feature point-axis-area-vector method in the proportion of the three areas, with an analysis in physiographical spatial differentiation, socio-economic spatial organization and interactions between the function zones. The result shows that the core-periphery structure is prevalent in all provinces of China: the local proportions of urbanization areas, agricultural development areas and ecological security areas follow a circling layer pattern spatially differentiated against the distances to the regional core, while the structure is complicated by differences in core location, axis direction, function attribute of edge area and internal function proportion. Through analysis of relevant factors, it can be concluded that the core-periphery structure of major function zones develops out of combined effects of physiographical spatial differentiation, socio-economic spatial organization and regional spatial connection. The core-periphery of the provinces of western China is greatly influenced by the main physiographical boundaries, while that of the eastern plains is primarily affected by existing urban system structure, socio-economic layout, and inter-regional connection strength. Where the natural geographical constraint is weaker, local socio-economic development and regional spatial connection affect the region more significantly.

Key words: major function zone, territorial function, core-periphery structure, spatial structure, spatial analysis